Suprematism
So much was happening 90 years ago. Especially in the mind and art of Kazimir Malevich.
"It is from zero, in zero, that the true movement of being begins."
Malevich attempted to make marks from outside of time: yet, his work is so much of his time.
*
Carl Andre: "Art is what we do. Culture is what is done to us."
*
Malevich implies that the world is a grid into which the individual fits. Mondrian suggests that the individual is the spirit of the world grid.
*
"It is from zero, in zero, that the true movement of being begins."
Malevich attempted to make marks from outside of time: yet, his work is so much of his time.
*
Carl Andre: "Art is what we do. Culture is what is done to us."
*
Malevich implies that the world is a grid into which the individual fits. Mondrian suggests that the individual is the spirit of the world grid.
*
posted by borneman at 9:48 PM
4 Comments:
being has no discernable beginning
pure act cannot be acted upon
eternity begs the limits of imagination
the mind is immaterial
nonetheless real
andy goldsworthy
seeks to incorporate
dissipation
natural disintegration
into "solid" works of art
he builds stone seed structures
at the edge of the sea
and watches as the tide
slowly assumes the thing
from the sky
all the drainage marks
on the western landscape
look almost precisely
like the nerve endings
in physiology photos
or the cappillary
veins to blood vessel
pattern of the blood system
being precedes perception
by a few days
euclid grid
but squares are
abstractions of the imagination
a square does not occur in nature
we are swirling in ovoid
patterns
intersected by one another
like those models
of atoms rotating
proton nucliei
or are lives
are like ethereal hoops
all linked in some way
some more than others
in every pattern of time and space
in every size
i think i know the interest we have
in order
i think i know the interest
in ardour
things do fall apart
and they sing when they do
physics holds'
nothing is static
not even stones
ripples cracks striations
serrations
protrusions
mounds swirls
drops
tears
clouds
and
entropy
this is the activity
and form we know
i of course being
something of an aesthetic boor
cannot comprehend the significance of many of the "movements" in art of the past century
some of malevich's ideology of "pure feeling" seems to me to be a private personal rebellion
against meaning
and perhaps every artist
at some point wants to express
something purely
but to deny that objects are without meaning and to deny that our conscious mind is of no value
is to court a certain suicidal agenda
for it is to deny what children know
and we should never do that
the exploration of purely geometrical non-representational representation is interesting
but in some ways it is like twelve-tone or serial music
not really meant for sitting around and listening
and then
what is the point
creating space for playing with blocks in a rather grownup way is an approach to art i guess
i know a monk from belgium who used to divide his time between designing ceramic figures of saints that became quite popular in christian book stores and gift shops around the world
and in his spare time he did
malevichian white on white paintings
i guess someone will have to explain to me something about
"pureistic" pursuits like pure reason or pure absolutes
or pure logic or pure painting
i can only believe that somehow minds are forced there by a previous decision to walk down a path of individualized apprehension and thereby engage either a reader or an observer to simply contemplate activity which is not determined by common sense or activity relating to daily life any where in the world
pbs did a piece on the "icons from sinai" showing now at the getty in L A
within the short despcription was the reference in history to "iconoclasm" that tendency to become impassioned about the "evil" of images
no telling how much fine "representational" art was destroyed in the various iconoclast purges
the reporter doing the story even admitted as a catholic he is strangely attracted to the "pure" unadorned interiors of protestant churches
yet
and yet
the orthodox and catholic position
has always held that
all of creation is redeemed
in christ
thus all representation is
in some way an access to
the "restored" beauty of all creation
and icons are not objects but "means" to prayer
a glimspe by way of the imagination
into the divine
the insistence has won out
even while modern churches are
toning down the imagery to an aesthetic of "simple is better"
and creating space that is at times
an acknowledgement of
the "fear of images"
but even within the benedictine
cultural spectrum there is
an aesthetic that radically minimizes the importance of
visual imagery
the trappists
while not completely devoid of some design ideas of their own
seem to favor spaces and buildings which have only an immediate "feel" about them
nothing to draw the eye of the imagination like gargoyles or representation in glass
but "pure" objects so that there will be no dstraction on the path of interior prayer
i guess
one cannot help but wonder
if a sort of iconoclastic reaction takes place in the soul of
the pure self authenticated man
i am aware of a cognitive log jam
in the diatribe
#3 which i put forth
in the choice of words
to critique the working principles
of malevich
as they were articulated
via a website
the notion he puts forth
"objects are without meaning
and the mind and it's cognition
is of no value"
was stated by me
in the negative
i mean to say
"to state that objects are without
meaning"
and not to say
to "deny"
perhaps i need to be aware
of a level of agreement
in my own subconscious world
somehow i get way ahead of myself
fatigue and demetia set in
but the issue stands
and i ask
"how is it that someone can posit
the intelligible meaninglessness
of what we apprehend
in the natural world?"
if it is to promote a project
wherein radical denial
of sense perception is somehow
necessary in order to
express something which preceded
sense perception
perhaps then it has merit
once we know the world of natural essences the things we apprehend
in the language of those who teach us
and do not lie
then we have it in us
lodged as it were
in the mind
in an immaterial fashion
to recognize always
that an egg is an egg
a bird is a bird
a mountain is a mountain
a man is a man
(unless gender deception is a play)
it is one thing to experiment with art and meaning
it is another thing to confuse
this with philosophical awareness
perhaps we tire of the
sounds and forms and ways
of those who have tried
to work creatively
before we arrived
and we desire to
state something new and
unique
i'd like to know why
we feel we must
circumvent the process
of emulation
as the sure means of
artistic expression
only by emulation
can the artist come to
some sense of his work
and after that process
launch out on a "new" approach to things or
non-things
are we limited
by the notion
"art for art's sake"
was that not oscar wilde's
greatest distortion
we have art because it should
by rights
mean something greater
than anyone of us can say
individually
and then
it is no longer art
but service
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