danielflahiff_journal

Weltanschauung: The Wind in the Trees

The Weltanschauung, Ignatius J. Reiley spoke of, if you haven't already guessed or if you've forgotten your high school German, is a kind of personal world view. Yesterday I had a confirmation of sorts of my current weltanschauung. I'd picked up a translation of Montaigne's 'Essays', and flipping through the collection literally 'at random', I read this passage from "Of idleness":

"Lately when I retired to my home, determined so far as possible to bother about nothing except spending the little life I have left in rest and seclusion, it seemed to me I could do my mind no greater favor than to let it entertain itself in full idleness and stay and settle in itself, which I hoped it might do more easily now, having become weightier and riper with time. But I find-

Ever idle hours breed wandering thoughts
                                                                --Lucan

"--that, on the contrary, like a runaway horse, it gives itself a hundred times more trouble than it took for others, and gives birth to so many chimeras and fantastic monsters, one after another, without order or purpose, that in order to contemplate their ineptitude and strangeness at my pleasure, I have begun to put them in writing, hoping in time to make my mind ashamed of itself."

And the moment for me took on the aspect of revelation. I shit you not. The experience of, 'seeing as in a mirror, dimly' my own reflection, reminded me of one of the things that first attracted me to art and literature; a process of discovery, of learning to be human.

Montaigne wrote this passage in the late 16th Century and it is just as relevant today as ever. Not in the term 'idleness' per se, but more specifically, in the false industry of instant information availability.  For example, do something like Google your name--'chimeras and fantastic monsters' indeed!

This is not the idleness artists need. What we need, what I need, is to be still; to listen to the wind in the trees. Godard said we need more films with wind in the trees. I trust Godard. I've got to go back into my DVDs and find the scene. Was it "Helas Pour Moi" or something much earlier?

Here's one from YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwrLmtlo1e0

On Laughter, Angst and Cai Guo-Qiang

And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh. --Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

When I read Roberta Smith's description, in todays New York Times, of the small army of assistants to the artist Cai Guo-Qiang--Mr. Cai puts large sheets of paper on the floor, distributes some combination of gunpowder and/or fuses across the paper and then lights it all, after which the assistants rush to put out the small fires which have ignited on the paper itself--it cracked me up! Imagine the sight, a room full of blue, sulfurous smoke and a half-dozen m.f.a. students running around stamping out little fires with their soon-to-be-ruined Converse lo-tops.

Mr. Cai's work reminds me that Democritus and Heraclitus were both right; we are at once pathetic and pitiable. But we are hilarious as well. Mt. Rushmore? It's a caricature of hubris and it's really funny!  Or Warhol's "Empire"? Sadistic and terrifyingly boring and bust-a-gut funny! Thank you Mr. Cai for taking up this honored tradition.

 

Mr. Cai's bravado illustrates how in the western world, where anything seems possible, much of our privileged, existential angst can be traced to the ongoing problem of keeping our Franklin/Covey® 'To Do' list up to date; schedule the meeting, pay the bills, buy the groceries, fill the gas tank, finish the novel, call mom. It's frantic. It seems really important. We court misery and worry ourselves sick. And eventually we need meds. [some of us, anyway.] And this is all exactly like  Mr. Cai's work. The tyranny of absolute freedom, theoretical or not, wreaks havoc among every one of us not singularly motivated by financial gain. Remember John Kennedy Toole's Ignatius Rielly,  from 'A Confederacy of Dunces':

    "Employers sense in me a denial of their values." He rolled over onto his back. "They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century which I loathe. That was true even when I worked for the New Orleans Public Library."
     "But Ignatius, that was the only time you worked since you got out of college, and you was only there for two weeks."
    "That is exactly what I mean," Ignatius replied, aiming a paper ball at the bowl of the milk glass chandelier.
    "All you did was paste them little slips in the books."
  "Yes, but I had my own esthetic about pasting those slips. On some days I could only paste in three or four slips and at the same time feel satisfied with the quality of my work. The library authorities resented my integrity about the whole thing. They only wanted another animal who could slop glue on their best sellers."
    "You think maybe you could get a job there again?"
  "I seriously doubt it. At the time I said some rather cutting things to the woman in charge of the processing department. They even revoked my borrower's card. You must realize the fear and hatred which my weltanschauung instills in people." Ignatius belched.

Slap me in the face if that ever fails to make me laugh!

Thank you John Kennedy. Thank you Andy Warhol. And thank you Cai Guo-Qiang. You crack me up, even those flying Fords in the SAM lobby. [I know I'm supposed to be thinking about the ubiquity of violence, post 9-11, ruminate on the mediation of extreme brutality and terrorism by technology, etc. But they just look so...hammy! Thanks again.]

Goethe, Faust and Tricky Translations

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless   ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. --Goethe

I've always liked this sentiment, romantic as it is, and I believe there is a certain kind of truth in it. The quote is all over the internet and I was thinking about jotting down some thoughts on the idea and was in turn trying to find the correct attribution. But as it turns out, Goethe never wrote those words. According to a story on the Goethe Society Website, the phrase is actually a paraphrasing of Goethe by W. H. Murray in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition,1951. Murray's text reads:

But when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money--booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

Goethe, on the other hand actually wrote:

    Enough words have been exchanged;
    Now at last let me see some deeds!
    While you turn compliments,
    Something useful should transpire.
    What use is it to speak of inspiration?
    To the hesitant it never appears.
    If you would be a poet,
    Then take command of poetry.
    You know what we require,
    We want to down strong brew;
    So get on with it!
    What does not happen today, will not be done tomorrow,
    And you should not let a day slip by,
    Let resolution grasp what's possible
    and seize it boldly by the hair;
    it will not get away
    and it labors on, because it must.

                           [Der Worte sind genug gewechselt,
                          Laßt mich auch endlich Taten sehn!
                          Indes ihr Komplimente drechselt,
                          Kann etwas Nützliches geschehn.
                          Was hilft es, viel von Stimmung reden?
                          Dem Zaudernden erscheint sie nie.
                          Gebt ihr euch einmal für Poeten,
                          So kommandiert die Poesie.
                          Euch ist bekannt, was wir bedürfen,
                          Wir wollen stark Getränke schlürfen;
                          Nun braut mir unverzüglich dran!
                          Was heute nicht geschieht, ist morgen nicht getan,
                          Und keinen Tag soll man verpassen,
                          Das Mögliche soll der Entschluß
                          Beherzt sogleich beim Schopfe fassen,
                          Er will es dann nicht fahren lassen
                          Und wirket weiter, weil er muß.]

        - Goethe, Faust I, Zeilen 214-230

So what's a poor blogger to do? Idleness must eventually acquiesce to action, for without action, there is nothing. Without action, there can be no 'this' or 'that', but only 'potential'. We recognize the person of action when we meet one. We call them 'a force of nature' and 'bigger than life'. They convey a sense of confidence and authority without pretense. What of the rest of us?

J. says 'just show up, it's half the battle'. Not bad. For now, I will print these lines and post them on my monitor:

Grasp what is possible and seize it boldly by the hair..

And then I set my quota. I'll report back on this on Friday.

Note: It seems IBM has been brushing-up on its Goethe too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziOG_GHNVq0 :

Ambition is to Idleness as Industry is to...

Art. Here's a little digression on the idea. The only profession in which idleness is an asset is the artist's. It takes time--distance J. likes to say--to make something interesting, unusual or unexpected. This is one of the reasons that great art is rare; it takes time, a lot of time (and not a little talent). In my experience, it cannot be scheduled, regimented, put on a calendar or charted by project management software. It is not some romantic notion of inspiration we are talking about, but a kind of lack of industry.

Lou Reed quoted Andy Warhol's refrain, "All that really matters is work." ('Work' on 'Songs for Drella' ) And he was right. But a large part of what Warhol called 'work' is not the physical production of objects as might be assumed. Producing an object is but the last five or ten percent, for me anyway, the flowering of a plant whose root system is deeper and wider and has taken longer to manifest than is commonly acknowledged.

Additionally, one of the greatest things about most art today is that it is worthless, at least according to the principles by which most ventures in the west are measured: it can't be processed, incorporated, unionized, depreciated, consumed, added to or subtracted from? [this argument is not the Platonic/Aristotelean split in which Plato dismisses art as mere imitation while Aristotle champions it as a means of conveying universal truths, this little riff has more to do with economics than philosophy, though the slope is slippery] Obviously, this is not the art that is stolen from museums or auctioned at Sotheby's. We are talking about the world of objects and ideas that are never commodified, that never make it into the history books, but that make up the vast majority of art that is produced every day--the painting you saw at a swap meet, the novel that came and went and was never read again, the poem by that unknown poet you heard that one time downtown and will never forget, but which will nevertheless go on to be forgotten by 'history'. Its 'worthlessness' is the very thing that makes art so important in a world of de facto global capitalism.

On one end of the spectrum, Duchamp plays chess; on the other, Chihuly fills the world with glass, glass, glass...the rest of us fall somewhere in between. I make art and I run a business, several business ventures actually. I am married, have children, need exercise, nourishment and sleep. I want a house, a car, a TV, maybe some nice shoes--all that bourgeois shit. I want to feel good about the work I do. For me and for many of the artists that I know, ambition and idleness are constantly at war. Does this seem odd? It shouldn't. It is a cliché. Finding the balance-- the sweet spot between the joy of the creative process and the rest of life's joys--continues to elude me.

In the classic "The Poetics of Space", Gaston Bachelard wrote that, "To say that one has left certain intellectual habits behind is easy enough, but how is it to be achieved? For a rationalist, this constitutes a minor daily crisis, a sort of split in one's thinking which, even though its object be partial--a mere image--has none the less great psychic repercussions." He was laying the ground work for his definition of the transsubjectivity of images, what he called a "phenomenology of the imagination", but what he described resonates with my own daily experience.

My "minor daily [psychic] crisis" is also a kind of transsubjectivity, not of images but rather of consciousness, a way of being in the world; a subjectivity that is not fixed but fluid, fickle and unpredictable. It could also be called a kind of schizophrenia, which is kind of a relief, and kind of fucked-up.

Michael Darling's Seattle and Is Provincial a Bad Word? @ The New Museum

Hot coffee, warm slippers, frost on the grass outside. Surfing blog posts while still half-asleep, I arrived this morning at Regina Hackett's great post on Michael Darling, the new curator of contemporary art at the Seattle Art Musem, and two of his recent purchaces; Whiting Tennis' "Bovine."  and Pedro Reyes' "Evolving City Wall Mural"

The choices have Ms. Hackett "concerned":

"I'm in the raised eyebrows camp, among those who are not cheering. I doubt Corrin (Darling's predescessor) would have chosen this sculpture (Bovine) for SAM, not because it's challenging, but because it isn't. It reeks of frontier nostalgia and trades in wild West stereotypes. It's shabby chic without the chic...

"Bovine" is one thing, but isn't Darling responsible for Pedro Reyes' "Evolving City Wall Mural" in the park's pavilion? Reyes sees it as a tribute to Mexican muralists early in the 20th century, but it lacks their passion, politics and point.

It's not fair to judge Darling on a few early choices, but I'll admit to being concerned. Another thing: He's nice, and nice curators finish last at SAM.

My immediate reaction was to post this:

"The "Bovine" choice should not come as a surprise. Remember Darling's comment to Jen Graves in April:

"...there are artists who have Seattle roots but have not been shown there much, like Matthew Day Jackson, who now lives in New York but was in Seattle, and still has that Seattle ethos. He has a piece [a life-size covered hay cart draped with state flags called Chariot (The day after the end of days)] in the Whitney Biennial..."

And in describing the "Seattle ethos", Darling says,

"Well, he is politically progressive, I think he would consider himself a feminist, and he has an ecological sensibility, an awareness of the land. He's down-to-earth, not pretentious, not New York..."

And while it may be true that "Bovine", "...trades in wild West stereotypes. It's shabby chic without the chic."--an opinion I tend to agree with--contemporary art in Seattle does not [and in my opinion, should not] look like a carbon copy of Los Angeles, New York or anywhere else. Let's see what Darling can come up with out here in the wild West. If the fantastic "Superflat" is any indication, his vision will be anything but another attempt to look like everything in the Contemporary Art Rags...

"Art Rags"?! The same publications I read, looking for former classmates to envy (as I chose to work primarily in commercial art for most of the last decade to pay off outrageous art school debts, rather than slog away in the Echo Park trenches. But we've been over this...)

Okay, I confess; I was feeling a little defensive. Having recently relocated BACK to Seattle after ten years in Los Angeles, I am still doing my own re-evaluation of what  location can and/or should mean in my work, particularly as I am now re-animating my own art (Art) practice from outside the "center" as it were.

The question, really, is one of provincialism--or more politely, regionalism. Ms. Hackett's concern is quite the opposite of what one might expect. Rathern than fearing that Darling might foist an LA-centric agenda upon this fair city, Hackett seems to fear the opposite; that Darling might be planning a hopelessly irrelevant provincial agenda for SAM. That once again, a major opportunity to put Seattle "on the map" might be squandered. But maybe I'm projecting. Let me explain...

The New Museum of Contemporary Art in NYC recently presented a panel discussion titled, "Location, location, location or Is Provincialism a Bad Word?"

Some obvious insights:

1. Saskia Bos, Dutch curator and Dean of the School of Art at The Cooper Union for the last 15 years:

--"if you don't ever leave New York City you run the risk of becoming provincial."

--being "outside" is a choice due to modern transportation and communications

--"outside" is not determined by location

     2. Nicolai Ouroussoff, architecture critic for The New York Times:

--provincialism "is not an issue in this country, except for New Yorkers...who still believe in the idea of a cultural center or magnet."

--quoted Rem Koolhaas from '96, "New York is dead. This is the right time to go."

Easy things for people who live in NYC to say. Kind of like the rich saying that money does not matter.

Some observations however, were not so obvious:

     3. Roger Buergel, curator and Artistic Director of Documenta 12:

--"we must get rid of exhibition formats which are inadequate to what we are now seeing."

--"the notion of the place of the subject has become central again."

--"to extend the notion of  exhibition also to the display of subjectivity in every day mediality..."

--"fragmentation is no solution."

--"give them what they really need...what they really need is never what they want."

So, not every insight was on-topic. But the gist of the argument was, hey, it's okay if you don't live in NYC or LA or Berlin because the top curators are looking for diversity, not watered-down ARTFORUM clones, but a new way to open up ideas around "looking", "subjectivity", and "the exhibition".

Isn't this just what everyone outside the "center" wants to hear?

I would love to be able to accept the "centerless" idea at face value because then I would not have to listen to the part of me that thinks that moving AWAY from the "center" --as I recently did (away from the people, publications, parties, museums, galleries) when you are trying to establish your art career is professional suicide.

So why did I move? (Excuse the indulgence) The answer is simple; emotionally and physically I function much better outside the "center", I have small children that I want to raise in a house with a lawn, something I cannot affort in the "center", and philosophically I DO believe that we are moving toward a "centerless" system. I am one of the one's who could not work in the din of the city and the art-world action/party/scene. We have only been here in Seattle seventeen months and already I am much more productive and my work is far better, if I do say so myself. Maybe I can even get off the meds.

Getting back to the Hackett post, I suggest we give Darling the benefit of the doubt and assume he is a supporter of the "centerless" ideal. I trust he will try to bridge that gap between local idealogy/iconography and the broader, global language and history of art.

The challenge is no small task. It is rather like having the vision of Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith who, in 1929 chose to publish a fourth novel by a thirty-two-year-old failed poet about the slow decline of a once prominent southern family. A story which had all the elements of the cliched southern tale. Cape and Smith saw something else:

"When the shadow of the sash appeared on the curtains it was between seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather’s and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools."

from The Sound and the Fury , W. Faulkner