The essay as an owl is an interesting image, Vittorio. Your point about everything being over before it started, reminded me of an idea of Nietzsche’s. He said that what we can find words for is already dead in our hearts. It’s a frightening idea for a writer who thinks that words can breathe life into experiences. But his line definitely captures an aspect of what you’re getting at in this piece.
Hi Michael, absolutely. Thank you for the reference; I did not know this one by Nietzsche.
It is indeed frightening for a writer. Yet, I think it just reminds us that visual art and writing operate in different domains. On the one hand, there is art which is more instinctive, emotional, and fierce. On the other hand, there is writing which is ineluctably mediated by words. By this very act of mediation, it loses the pathos that the visual art preserves, but at the same time it gains the power of infiltrating into the rational self too.
I read it slowly. "The glass never tastes what it holds" stayed with me.
As someone who makes commercial work, the Warhol part felt close to home. We make things for a client's purpose, and we rarely know what they will mean later.
One small thought, as someone who also photographs ordinary days: I'm not sure a photograph only copies the glass. For me it works more like a stake driven into the flow of time. Its meaning tends to arrive later, a bit like the paintings you describe.
Transubstantiation is a quality of deep intuition to change what is plain and ordinary into a shift of meaning or relevance. It isn't a conscious logical process.
Vittorio, the discussion of Warhol was fascinating, particularly the connection between his repeated images of consumer products and tragedies and the way we scroll through everything today.
I spend a great deal of time exploring perfumery, and I've often thought that fragrances can capture something of the period in which they were created, even when that wasn't necessarily the intention. It's interesting to consider how much an artist might reveal about their own time without realizing it.
Wonderful site ... I love it ... my way of looking or drinking art is this ... I stand facing the painting, so that it's center of gravity is fully in front of my body, my stomach if possible ... then I simply let it enter me ... I do not think anything ... I just feel ... Rothko is the best ... saw him a few months ago here in Paris ... amazing !!!
Beautiful and tragic choice to monumentalize the role of art as structural memory starting from Egon Schiele and the methaphor of death embedded in the owl. Egon’s short life has truly been an accounting of physical and mental death and suffering: from his father’s decline and passing due to late stage syphilis, the breakup with both the Vienna’s art academy and his Muse Wally Neuzil, imprisonment for immorality, the violent witnessing WW1 when he enlisted as a guard, culminating in the great losses by the Spanish flu of 1918 of his mentor Klimt, his spouse with child and himself. As per Athena’s sacred companion, it’s not universally known as a dark omen; in Japanese culture an owl is the bearer of good luck, protection as literally fukurō means “no hardship". So maybe we, the owls of the present are spectators, drinkers of the art/artists’ storytelling within their snap-shots of the past-moments, while being made conscious of fleeting and fragility of life and simultaneously protected by its cathartic power.
Vittorio such compelling thoughts on visual art and human philosophy. I grew up with a book of art masterpieces and just loved looking over and over again. So that was my true art education with many missing works,artists, and history. Always so good to learn new art information and new thoughts. Thank you.
Another thought-provoking dissertation Vittorio. I find it perplexing that so much "contemporary" art is predicated on an apparently rational theory or premise that the artist has massaged and developed through their doctoral thesis. In your proposition it is the "not knowing" that is the most interesting aspect of the equation.
I love Jean Dubuffet's assertion that: “Art doesn't go to sleep in the bed made for it. It would sooner run away than say its own name: what it likes is to be incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what its own name is.” As a practising artist it is the very thing that excites me in the studio, the idea that I am beholden to no one, that I am untrammelled in the creative act. I make no attempt to channel the latest zeitgeist. I frequently use/reuse found objects and materials that are difficult to pin down in terms of their origin and moment in time.
It is not an easy road for an artist to tread though. Visual art at this point in our history must be freighted with meaning, it must have explicitly political, social, cultural and intellectual credibility to be thought of as relevant in this current milieu. The concept of imbuing a work of art with such a conscious agenda (to me at least) has had a deadening and soul-destroying effect. My most recent work, a small sculptural object, has the following aphorism stamped in 23K gold into its face: "Making art is no more a rational act than dreams are rational thoughts...". The words are my own but the sentiment is definitely Dubuffet's.
The essay as an owl is an interesting image, Vittorio. Your point about everything being over before it started, reminded me of an idea of Nietzsche’s. He said that what we can find words for is already dead in our hearts. It’s a frightening idea for a writer who thinks that words can breathe life into experiences. But his line definitely captures an aspect of what you’re getting at in this piece.
Hi Michael, absolutely. Thank you for the reference; I did not know this one by Nietzsche.
It is indeed frightening for a writer. Yet, I think it just reminds us that visual art and writing operate in different domains. On the one hand, there is art which is more instinctive, emotional, and fierce. On the other hand, there is writing which is ineluctably mediated by words. By this very act of mediation, it loses the pathos that the visual art preserves, but at the same time it gains the power of infiltrating into the rational self too.
This essay is profound, not a word I toss about with blithe abandon.
Thank you, Janet
Excellent column!
I read it slowly. "The glass never tastes what it holds" stayed with me.
As someone who makes commercial work, the Warhol part felt close to home. We make things for a client's purpose, and we rarely know what they will mean later.
One small thought, as someone who also photographs ordinary days: I'm not sure a photograph only copies the glass. For me it works more like a stake driven into the flow of time. Its meaning tends to arrive later, a bit like the paintings you describe.
Transubstantiation is a quality of deep intuition to change what is plain and ordinary into a shift of meaning or relevance. It isn't a conscious logical process.
Yes indeed!!
Vittorio, the discussion of Warhol was fascinating, particularly the connection between his repeated images of consumer products and tragedies and the way we scroll through everything today.
I spend a great deal of time exploring perfumery, and I've often thought that fragrances can capture something of the period in which they were created, even when that wasn't necessarily the intention. It's interesting to consider how much an artist might reveal about their own time without realizing it.
Yes, indeed, that is the interesting part.
Thank you, Tony.
Wonderful site ... I love it ... my way of looking or drinking art is this ... I stand facing the painting, so that it's center of gravity is fully in front of my body, my stomach if possible ... then I simply let it enter me ... I do not think anything ... I just feel ... Rothko is the best ... saw him a few months ago here in Paris ... amazing !!!
Hi Andre, thank you so much. I am very glad that the article resonated with you.
Beautiful and tragic choice to monumentalize the role of art as structural memory starting from Egon Schiele and the methaphor of death embedded in the owl. Egon’s short life has truly been an accounting of physical and mental death and suffering: from his father’s decline and passing due to late stage syphilis, the breakup with both the Vienna’s art academy and his Muse Wally Neuzil, imprisonment for immorality, the violent witnessing WW1 when he enlisted as a guard, culminating in the great losses by the Spanish flu of 1918 of his mentor Klimt, his spouse with child and himself. As per Athena’s sacred companion, it’s not universally known as a dark omen; in Japanese culture an owl is the bearer of good luck, protection as literally fukurō means “no hardship". So maybe we, the owls of the present are spectators, drinkers of the art/artists’ storytelling within their snap-shots of the past-moments, while being made conscious of fleeting and fragility of life and simultaneously protected by its cathartic power.
Vittorio such compelling thoughts on visual art and human philosophy. I grew up with a book of art masterpieces and just loved looking over and over again. So that was my true art education with many missing works,artists, and history. Always so good to learn new art information and new thoughts. Thank you.
Another thought-provoking dissertation Vittorio. I find it perplexing that so much "contemporary" art is predicated on an apparently rational theory or premise that the artist has massaged and developed through their doctoral thesis. In your proposition it is the "not knowing" that is the most interesting aspect of the equation.
I love Jean Dubuffet's assertion that: “Art doesn't go to sleep in the bed made for it. It would sooner run away than say its own name: what it likes is to be incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what its own name is.” As a practising artist it is the very thing that excites me in the studio, the idea that I am beholden to no one, that I am untrammelled in the creative act. I make no attempt to channel the latest zeitgeist. I frequently use/reuse found objects and materials that are difficult to pin down in terms of their origin and moment in time.
It is not an easy road for an artist to tread though. Visual art at this point in our history must be freighted with meaning, it must have explicitly political, social, cultural and intellectual credibility to be thought of as relevant in this current milieu. The concept of imbuing a work of art with such a conscious agenda (to me at least) has had a deadening and soul-destroying effect. My most recent work, a small sculptural object, has the following aphorism stamped in 23K gold into its face: "Making art is no more a rational act than dreams are rational thoughts...". The words are my own but the sentiment is definitely Dubuffet's.