To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out -- since our self-image is untenable--their false notions of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give.
(the whole essay deserves to be transcribed here in full)
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Saturday, August 27, 2011
from 'Seeing through the studio: Bruce Nauman' by MaryJo Marks
Recounting time spent in his first studio, after graduating from art school in 1966, Bruce Nauman said:
"If you see yourself as an artist and you function in a studio and you're not a painter ... you do all kinds of things - you sit in a chair or pace around. And the question goes back to what is art? And art is what an artist does, just sitting around the studio."
Some forty years earlier, Siegfried Kracauer had published a short essay on the subject of boredom. Instead of examining, as one might expect, the tedium of modern industrial labor and the repetitive, oversimplified tasks that constitute unskilled work, his topic was modern leisure. Kracauer considered its diversions, however spectacular, just as dull. Moreover, he concluded, contemporary popular culture - designed as escape from the drudgery of work - distracted from life. The critic doesn't complain that the modern subject is bored; rather, that no one is bored enough. He advocates a kind of 'extraordinary, radical boredom.' Neither concerted productivity nor focused play, it entails the fruitlessness of just sitting around, making or doing apparently nothing:
" but what if one refuses to allow oneself to be chased away? Then boredom becomes the only proper occupation, since it provides a kind of guarantee that one is, so to speak, still in control of one's own existence. If one were never bored, one would presumably not really be present at all and would thus be merely one more object of boredom. One would light up the rooftops [like a neon sign] or spool by as a filmstrip."
The remedy? Stay home, Kracauer instructed, draw the curtains and recline on the couch so that
"one flirts with ideas that even become quite respectable in the process, and one considers various projects that, for no reason, pretend to be serious. Eventually one becomes content to do nothing more than be with oneself, without knowing whoat one actually should be doing... Frivolous, one harbors only an inner restlessness without a goal... If, however, one has the patience, the sort specific to legitimate boredom, then one experiences a kind of bliss.
"If you see yourself as an artist and you function in a studio and you're not a painter ... you do all kinds of things - you sit in a chair or pace around. And the question goes back to what is art? And art is what an artist does, just sitting around the studio."
Some forty years earlier, Siegfried Kracauer had published a short essay on the subject of boredom. Instead of examining, as one might expect, the tedium of modern industrial labor and the repetitive, oversimplified tasks that constitute unskilled work, his topic was modern leisure. Kracauer considered its diversions, however spectacular, just as dull. Moreover, he concluded, contemporary popular culture - designed as escape from the drudgery of work - distracted from life. The critic doesn't complain that the modern subject is bored; rather, that no one is bored enough. He advocates a kind of 'extraordinary, radical boredom.' Neither concerted productivity nor focused play, it entails the fruitlessness of just sitting around, making or doing apparently nothing:
" but what if one refuses to allow oneself to be chased away? Then boredom becomes the only proper occupation, since it provides a kind of guarantee that one is, so to speak, still in control of one's own existence. If one were never bored, one would presumably not really be present at all and would thus be merely one more object of boredom. One would light up the rooftops [like a neon sign] or spool by as a filmstrip."
The remedy? Stay home, Kracauer instructed, draw the curtains and recline on the couch so that
"one flirts with ideas that even become quite respectable in the process, and one considers various projects that, for no reason, pretend to be serious. Eventually one becomes content to do nothing more than be with oneself, without knowing whoat one actually should be doing... Frivolous, one harbors only an inner restlessness without a goal... If, however, one has the patience, the sort specific to legitimate boredom, then one experiences a kind of bliss.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Monday, March 23, 2009
from Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities...
In the modal feudal journey, the heir of Noble A, on his father's death, moves up one step to the father's place. This ascension requires a round-trip, to the centre for investiture, and then back home to the ancestral demesne. For the new functionary, however, things are more complex. Talent, not death, charts his course, He sees before him a summit rather than a centre. He travels up its corniches in a series of looping arcs which, he hopes, will become smaller and tighter as he nears the top. Sent out to township A at rank V, he may return to the capital at rank W; proceed to province B at rank X; continue to vice-royalty C at rank Y; and end his pilgrimage in the capital at rank Z. On this journey there is no assured resting-place; every pause is provisional. The last thing the functionary wants is to return home; for he HAS no home with any intrinsic value. And this: on his upward-spiralling road he encounters as eager fellow-pilgrims his functionary colleagues, from places and families he has scarcely heard of and surely hopes never to have to see. But in experiencing them as traveling-companions, a consciousness of connectedness ("Why are WE ... HERE ... TOGETHER?) emerges, above all when all share a single language of state.
Friday, February 6, 2009
I had a dream that I was upstate- I think I morphed/amalgamated a beautiful rustic location for the center for book arts with a special retreat place that belonged to WSW, not belonged, but belonged to someone they are friends with and i'd been too before. it was in a verdant, big-sur like woods (but small-scale, east coast) and on a slight rise and i was walking around the outside with someone talking about how it was this amazing place but impossible to photograph - eg this main area that was like a warren of conjoined small log cabins, but we were saying it was just impossible to get back from it enough to take a picture (and weirdly the structure and the fact that in the beginning i was doing marbling in the rustic cba space with dexter sinister and stuart was really anxious). Many details of this dream make me equate it with present work and task related stress, this wood installation that is not getting to france in time for an exhibition etc. Yet the place was amazing, and right before i woke up, or right before i became aware of needing to pee in a way that made me aware of dreaming, i was walking down a path realizing that it was 8.30 and growing dark and time to drive back to the city or wherever, a couple of hours, and i caught a whiff of some woodsy smell that i associated with childhood/long lost places, and i had to sit down and cry.
Monday, May 12, 2008
from liz The introduction of vogtherr's 1538 pattern book titled:
"a new and wonderful little art book such as has never been seen by anyone or published; very useful for painters, woodcarvers, goldsmiths, stonecutters, carpenters, armorers, and cutlers"
"Because the Good Lord, through Divine Ordinance, has brought about a marked reduction of all ingenious and liberal arts here in Germany, causing so many to turn away from art and try other trades, that in a few years painters and woodcarvers would seem to have all but disappeared. To prevent painters, goldsmiths, silk embroiderers, stonecarvers, cabinetmakers, and so on from giving up and tiring, I, Heinrich Vogtherr, painter and citizen of Strassburg, have assembled an anthology of exotic and difficult details that should guide the artists who are burdened with wife and children and those who have not traveled. It should store stupid heads and inspire understanding artists to higher and more ingenious arts until art comes back to its rightful honor and we lead other nations."
"Because the Good Lord, through Divine Ordinance, has brought about a marked reduction of all ingenious and liberal arts here in Germany, causing so many to turn away from art and try other trades, that in a few years painters and woodcarvers would seem to have all but disappeared. To prevent painters, goldsmiths, silk embroiderers, stonecarvers, cabinetmakers, and so on from giving up and tiring, I, Heinrich Vogtherr, painter and citizen of Strassburg, have assembled an anthology of exotic and difficult details that should guide the artists who are burdened with wife and children and those who have not traveled. It should store stupid heads and inspire understanding artists to higher and more ingenious arts until art comes back to its rightful honor and we lead other nations."
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
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