How all his came about.
Oh, I remember now, it started with Picasso, the Rennaisance, and Byzantine art.
The Rennaisance is the beginning of what is commonly thought of as representational art in the west. What comes before that is in places ridiculed as being characiture or cartoonish, but, because of the commonality between the pre-Rennaisance styles and the Byzantine style of painting we know that this is not true. The Byzantine style, which can be seen today in the Iconography of Orthodox Christianity,
is self consciously stylized in order to communicate specific qualities about the subject. So it may be for medieval painting.
The paralell with Picasso is quite interesting because Picasso can be seen as the person who definitively took painting away from representation and into something which, while being partially representational, nevertheless was more than just an extension of the non-representational parts of painting which are omni-present. The fauves, Gaugan, most of the expressionists, could be seen as extenders of those parts rather than true innovators in the way that Picasso was. And the school of modern art which discards reprentation and instead focusses exclusively on the non-representational parts of art has little to with what Picasso was up to either.
An extension is not a qualitatively different change. Picasso made a change not just of quantity but of quality, which attempted to change painting in the way that the transition from medieval to Rennaisance painting changed painting.
The methods, ideas, and means, are similar. Although it's not referenced many places, I think that what Picasso was attempting through his extended experimentation (which led to cubism) was to deconstruct western painting and sculpture and come to the bottom of it. For Picasso, I think, the bottom of it led to West Africa. I think that the case could be made that Picasso believed that the precursors of Spanish, and possibly Latin, art, society, and culture, lay in Africa and that by successively going back---first to the South of France, then to Iberian sculpture, then to African sculpture---he was discovering the personal roots of representational art. The essence of it. And the essence lay in the representation of exterior and interior qualities of a subject through the stylization and distortion of African sculpture.
By getting back to African sculpture Picasso breaks with the representational tradition established by the Rennaisance and gets to something closer to the Byzantine stylizations of medieval art.
Friday, March 26, 2004
Leonardo Da Vinci.
After all the cant which has been written about Leonardo I'd like to put forward some real, justifiable, thoughts on the subject of the man's philosophy.
Particularly, where his philosophical thoughts fall in relation to the history of philosophy.
His philosophical musings are rather odd in that, well, for a couple of reasons, the first being that he appears to have been totally convinced that a thing does not exist apart from all of the different ways in which it can appear to the eye.
That's sort of strange, but what's more curiouser, you could say, is that this Rennaisance man's philosophy is actually a mixture of medieval and rennaisance philosophy, not the pure sort of rennaisance philosophy found, for example, in Pico di Mirandola's works.
Specifically, Leonardo's thought seems to be a mixture of Neo-Platonism and the medieval platonism which proceeded from Plotinus, which became the source of philosophy for the west after the fall of the Roman empire, and which stayed in that position until Aquinas reintroduced Aristotle.
Even stranger is that the Medieval Platonists appear to have mattered more to Leonardo's thought than the Neo-Platonists, who were his contemporaries, did.
The results of this, though, are positive rather than negative; for the Neo-Platonists of the Rennaisance, in working out a humanistic philosophy based on those principles, fell into what G.K. Chesterton, in his biography of Aquinas, contended that the pre-Thomist Christian theorists went wrong on: constructing a very elaborate theoretical framework which, despite it's care, has little to do with the thinking and feeling reality of everyday life.
The Neo-Platonists, in talking about man in cosmic terms, tend to sever their connection with man as a mortal being incarnated in this world.
The Medieval philosophers who built on Plotinus, meanwhile, never lost that essential connection to the tangible, and that connection is what Leonardo grafts his Neo-Platonist ideas onto, making his presentation of the world as a series of images in some way coming from a final nature a more realistic presentation about how the world actual appears and feels to people.
One can both intellectually and practically understand where Leonardo is coming from, which, by the way, is what he declares his whole point to be in his remarks about the neccesity of learning from experience as opposed to just repeating what books have said about a subject.
Interesting stuff.
After all the cant which has been written about Leonardo I'd like to put forward some real, justifiable, thoughts on the subject of the man's philosophy.
Particularly, where his philosophical thoughts fall in relation to the history of philosophy.
His philosophical musings are rather odd in that, well, for a couple of reasons, the first being that he appears to have been totally convinced that a thing does not exist apart from all of the different ways in which it can appear to the eye.
That's sort of strange, but what's more curiouser, you could say, is that this Rennaisance man's philosophy is actually a mixture of medieval and rennaisance philosophy, not the pure sort of rennaisance philosophy found, for example, in Pico di Mirandola's works.
Specifically, Leonardo's thought seems to be a mixture of Neo-Platonism and the medieval platonism which proceeded from Plotinus, which became the source of philosophy for the west after the fall of the Roman empire, and which stayed in that position until Aquinas reintroduced Aristotle.
Even stranger is that the Medieval Platonists appear to have mattered more to Leonardo's thought than the Neo-Platonists, who were his contemporaries, did.
The results of this, though, are positive rather than negative; for the Neo-Platonists of the Rennaisance, in working out a humanistic philosophy based on those principles, fell into what G.K. Chesterton, in his biography of Aquinas, contended that the pre-Thomist Christian theorists went wrong on: constructing a very elaborate theoretical framework which, despite it's care, has little to do with the thinking and feeling reality of everyday life.
The Neo-Platonists, in talking about man in cosmic terms, tend to sever their connection with man as a mortal being incarnated in this world.
The Medieval philosophers who built on Plotinus, meanwhile, never lost that essential connection to the tangible, and that connection is what Leonardo grafts his Neo-Platonist ideas onto, making his presentation of the world as a series of images in some way coming from a final nature a more realistic presentation about how the world actual appears and feels to people.
One can both intellectually and practically understand where Leonardo is coming from, which, by the way, is what he declares his whole point to be in his remarks about the neccesity of learning from experience as opposed to just repeating what books have said about a subject.
Interesting stuff.
Cursor.org - Table of Contents page
Interesting story got via the Cursor page.
Rumsfeld, it seems, is now saying that actions following 9/11 were 'law enforcement issues'.
What a complete slap in the face for everyone, myself included, who wanted a truly law abiding response to 9/11 in the days and weeks after it happened.
If there is one thing which typified the administration's response to 9/11 it was it's flagrant disregard for law and it's insistence that 9/11 was a military issue, hence enabling the U.S. to invade Afghanistan in response.
If 9/11 was essentially a law enforcement issue then we had no right to invade Afghanistan and we have no right to be there now.
Interesting story got via the Cursor page.
Rumsfeld, it seems, is now saying that actions following 9/11 were 'law enforcement issues'.
What a complete slap in the face for everyone, myself included, who wanted a truly law abiding response to 9/11 in the days and weeks after it happened.
If there is one thing which typified the administration's response to 9/11 it was it's flagrant disregard for law and it's insistence that 9/11 was a military issue, hence enabling the U.S. to invade Afghanistan in response.
If 9/11 was essentially a law enforcement issue then we had no right to invade Afghanistan and we have no right to be there now.
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Conason article on Clarke
You know, symbolism is a powerful thing, and this article brings up the possibility of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden being prevented and being prevented from acting on America in sum total. What if 9/11 had never have happened?
During the Clinton years terrorism was regarded as aberrant actions by marginalized individuals with no sort of message or relevant ideas behind them.
Bush has elevated bin Laden from an aberrant individual to a valid symbol of evil, which has probably already done, and if not already done will do very quickly, more damage to the U.S. than if he had just responded to 9/11 by saying that it was a criminal act by distorted personalities.
You see, by saying that this is about 'Evil', that we're fighting an 'Axis of Evil', and that the people who committed 9/11 were 'Evil Doers', not just criminals, Bush has gone much more than halfway in doing bin Laden's job for him.
What better help could there be in spreading virulent Islamic fundamentalism than the leader of the country attacked by it responding by acknowledging the religious content of the attacks and positioning himself not just against the people who did it but against the religious ideals which fueled it, and labeling them as evil and saying in just so many words that the U.S. was opposing Islam as a Christian nation confronting the Muslim infidels?
Islam is a decent religion believed in by a billion people around the world, and by treating the ideas of the 9/11 terrorists as if they represented the mainstream of Islamic thought, and labeling that evil, Bush has in all likelihood alienated quite a few people who would otherwise think kindly about the U.S. How could it be otherwise?
He did not need to do that. He could have maintained that these were just isolated extremists who didn't represent anything except themselves, but he chose to slur the beliefs of a huge portion of the globe and, on top of that, to give the person who he is supposedly opposing more credibility than he would ever have had if Bush had just kept his mouth shut.
Which brings me back to the original question: what would have happened if 9/11 hadn't happened, or, rather, what would have happened if 9/11, after happening, had been treated in the way that the Clinton administration treated terrorism?
We'd have been spared this ugly and hateful dredging of the prejudicial and racist depths of the collective unconscious of this country, of having the worst that America represents featured on the front pages and lead stories of countless papers and news networks, day after day after day.
We'd have been spared the opportunity for the U.S to get in touch with it's inner bigot, which, at this point in world history, is quite big.
You know, symbolism is a powerful thing, and this article brings up the possibility of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden being prevented and being prevented from acting on America in sum total. What if 9/11 had never have happened?
During the Clinton years terrorism was regarded as aberrant actions by marginalized individuals with no sort of message or relevant ideas behind them.
Bush has elevated bin Laden from an aberrant individual to a valid symbol of evil, which has probably already done, and if not already done will do very quickly, more damage to the U.S. than if he had just responded to 9/11 by saying that it was a criminal act by distorted personalities.
You see, by saying that this is about 'Evil', that we're fighting an 'Axis of Evil', and that the people who committed 9/11 were 'Evil Doers', not just criminals, Bush has gone much more than halfway in doing bin Laden's job for him.
What better help could there be in spreading virulent Islamic fundamentalism than the leader of the country attacked by it responding by acknowledging the religious content of the attacks and positioning himself not just against the people who did it but against the religious ideals which fueled it, and labeling them as evil and saying in just so many words that the U.S. was opposing Islam as a Christian nation confronting the Muslim infidels?
Islam is a decent religion believed in by a billion people around the world, and by treating the ideas of the 9/11 terrorists as if they represented the mainstream of Islamic thought, and labeling that evil, Bush has in all likelihood alienated quite a few people who would otherwise think kindly about the U.S. How could it be otherwise?
He did not need to do that. He could have maintained that these were just isolated extremists who didn't represent anything except themselves, but he chose to slur the beliefs of a huge portion of the globe and, on top of that, to give the person who he is supposedly opposing more credibility than he would ever have had if Bush had just kept his mouth shut.
Which brings me back to the original question: what would have happened if 9/11 hadn't happened, or, rather, what would have happened if 9/11, after happening, had been treated in the way that the Clinton administration treated terrorism?
We'd have been spared this ugly and hateful dredging of the prejudicial and racist depths of the collective unconscious of this country, of having the worst that America represents featured on the front pages and lead stories of countless papers and news networks, day after day after day.
We'd have been spared the opportunity for the U.S to get in touch with it's inner bigot, which, at this point in world history, is quite big.
Former Bush Adviser Apologizes for Sept. 11
Justice is finally being done.
At least Clarke was man enough to accept the blame for 9/11, unlike our courageous commander in chief, who isolates himself in a cone of self imposed ignorance and acts like a mafia don on the run when it comes to 9/11 responsability.
Justice is finally being done.
At least Clarke was man enough to accept the blame for 9/11, unlike our courageous commander in chief, who isolates himself in a cone of self imposed ignorance and acts like a mafia don on the run when it comes to 9/11 responsability.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Actually, the author of Don Giovanni was Lorenzo Da Ponte, the librettist, not Mozart. Mozart wrote the music. Ponte should be credited with the story.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Don Giovanni and social evil.
I just finished watching a French film adaptation of Mozart's Don Giovanni, which retained all the arias but adapted it to a film setting instead of keeping it on a stage.
It's food for thought. Don Giovanni is Don Juan, the lover, the adulterer who meets his final doom.
I think that there's a sense of evil which people miss, especially in Protestant countries. Protestantism reduces the devil to a man in a goat suit who tests a person's individual conscience. If you can become aware that you have a clear conscience or that you're mostly a good person, than, voila, you can start discounting the existence of evil as a corrupting force.
But there is a strong sense in which countries as a whole, or towns, or states, or any group, can be susceptable to a sort of debilitating corruption which doesn't confront individuals when they're their strongest---when they're contemplating 'I'----but when they're at their weakest, when they just act non-self consciously according to whatever winds or ideas float into their heads.
A person can be corrupted in this way and maintain a pure conscience, indeed, conscience comes to justify accepting moral corruption into your life.
But it's not a corruption that's specially tailored for you or me, or for some guy down the street, it's forces which tug at society as a whole, indifferent to who they're going for but providing a sort of feather bed of corruption---justified in it's social acceptability---for those who respond to it to rest on.
I think that by conceding that the battle against evil is over by recognizing the true fact that people's consciences aren't naturally twisted to evil ends we've lost the war against a subtler form of corruption which we have no awareness of.
Not that I would like people to think that their consciences are naturally twisted, that's just wrong, but there are other options besides thinking that human beings are totally corrupt in every way, from the most basic level up, and thinking that human beings aren't without any potential tendencies towards corruption at all, if people are generally honest and nice, etc....that that is the other word on society.
I just finished watching a French film adaptation of Mozart's Don Giovanni, which retained all the arias but adapted it to a film setting instead of keeping it on a stage.
It's food for thought. Don Giovanni is Don Juan, the lover, the adulterer who meets his final doom.
I think that there's a sense of evil which people miss, especially in Protestant countries. Protestantism reduces the devil to a man in a goat suit who tests a person's individual conscience. If you can become aware that you have a clear conscience or that you're mostly a good person, than, voila, you can start discounting the existence of evil as a corrupting force.
But there is a strong sense in which countries as a whole, or towns, or states, or any group, can be susceptable to a sort of debilitating corruption which doesn't confront individuals when they're their strongest---when they're contemplating 'I'----but when they're at their weakest, when they just act non-self consciously according to whatever winds or ideas float into their heads.
A person can be corrupted in this way and maintain a pure conscience, indeed, conscience comes to justify accepting moral corruption into your life.
But it's not a corruption that's specially tailored for you or me, or for some guy down the street, it's forces which tug at society as a whole, indifferent to who they're going for but providing a sort of feather bed of corruption---justified in it's social acceptability---for those who respond to it to rest on.
I think that by conceding that the battle against evil is over by recognizing the true fact that people's consciences aren't naturally twisted to evil ends we've lost the war against a subtler form of corruption which we have no awareness of.
Not that I would like people to think that their consciences are naturally twisted, that's just wrong, but there are other options besides thinking that human beings are totally corrupt in every way, from the most basic level up, and thinking that human beings aren't without any potential tendencies towards corruption at all, if people are generally honest and nice, etc....that that is the other word on society.
Here ye here ye here ye. Ghost Dog Press has been added to my links bar.
Ghost Dog is a new worker run alternative poetry press coming out of Ann Arbor which will be publishing some very interesting stuff in the coming months.
It's first book, "Gone", by Jimmy Nil Fishhawk, is fantastic. I have a copy of it right in front of me. Especially good in it is the poem "Rant for Lovers", although "Gone" itself is also really good. They're all good.
I think that I put a little bit of prejudice against "Gone" and pick "Rant for Lovers" instead is because I've heard Mr. Jimmy, who I know, read "Gone" and so it's not as new to me as "Rant for Lovers".
Anyways, it's all good, and, for whatever it's worth, this book of poetry gets an enthusiastic endorsement by this website.
Jimmy has been doing poetry for a long, long time, and is very overdue in getting a book of his own published. It more than stands on it's own merits, it is outstanding. So, well, um, you know, I would not recommend a friend's book unless it had some merit. I'm sort of a bastard like that. But Jimmy's definitely does have what it takes to get an honest endorsement from this blog.
Bon Appetit.
Ghost Dog is a new worker run alternative poetry press coming out of Ann Arbor which will be publishing some very interesting stuff in the coming months.
It's first book, "Gone", by Jimmy Nil Fishhawk, is fantastic. I have a copy of it right in front of me. Especially good in it is the poem "Rant for Lovers", although "Gone" itself is also really good. They're all good.
I think that I put a little bit of prejudice against "Gone" and pick "Rant for Lovers" instead is because I've heard Mr. Jimmy, who I know, read "Gone" and so it's not as new to me as "Rant for Lovers".
Anyways, it's all good, and, for whatever it's worth, this book of poetry gets an enthusiastic endorsement by this website.
Jimmy has been doing poetry for a long, long time, and is very overdue in getting a book of his own published. It more than stands on it's own merits, it is outstanding. So, well, um, you know, I would not recommend a friend's book unless it had some merit. I'm sort of a bastard like that. But Jimmy's definitely does have what it takes to get an honest endorsement from this blog.
Bon Appetit.
Monday, March 22, 2004
A way in which Vietnam and Iraq are dissimilar
Although Vietnam and Iraq have many parallels there is one area where the parallels cease and a totally opposed meaning exists. It is in the area of vision and how vision is treated by both the people executing the war and its opponents.
In Vietnam the protesters were the ones who were asserting a different and new vision against the conservative and by that point traditional opinion of the administration regarding communism and the world order. In Iraq, on the contrary, the people who are opposing the war are the ones who want to conserve the world order which existed before 9/11 as much as possible, while the people who are executing the war are those who profess to have a new vision of the world.
But what a difference in those two competing notions of vision; on the one hand you have the idealism of the Vietnam protesters which wanted to see a world at peace with itself where there was no Cold War, on the other you have the paranoid rantings of the war hawks, whose vision of their new world order is a return to brutality, senseless war, senseless death, and imperialistic visions for all who can afford them.
It's a vision which would plunge the world into a chaos of world war so serious that in all likelihood the wars fought would become nuclear and the world would face a significant chance of being destroyed forever as a result of it.
This is what "Getting over the Vietnam Syndrome" in the minds of the Bush administration implies.
Let's hope that this vision of hell doesn't reach any sort of fruition and that the pre-9/11 world order survives, repairs itself, and continues to exert a stabilizing influence on potential world conflicts around the globe.
Although Vietnam and Iraq have many parallels there is one area where the parallels cease and a totally opposed meaning exists. It is in the area of vision and how vision is treated by both the people executing the war and its opponents.
In Vietnam the protesters were the ones who were asserting a different and new vision against the conservative and by that point traditional opinion of the administration regarding communism and the world order. In Iraq, on the contrary, the people who are opposing the war are the ones who want to conserve the world order which existed before 9/11 as much as possible, while the people who are executing the war are those who profess to have a new vision of the world.
But what a difference in those two competing notions of vision; on the one hand you have the idealism of the Vietnam protesters which wanted to see a world at peace with itself where there was no Cold War, on the other you have the paranoid rantings of the war hawks, whose vision of their new world order is a return to brutality, senseless war, senseless death, and imperialistic visions for all who can afford them.
It's a vision which would plunge the world into a chaos of world war so serious that in all likelihood the wars fought would become nuclear and the world would face a significant chance of being destroyed forever as a result of it.
This is what "Getting over the Vietnam Syndrome" in the minds of the Bush administration implies.
Let's hope that this vision of hell doesn't reach any sort of fruition and that the pre-9/11 world order survives, repairs itself, and continues to exert a stabilizing influence on potential world conflicts around the globe.
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