Ben Brantley in tonight's online review of a show that
reportedly opened off-Broadway on Dec. 10, 2015 —
" 'Mattress' has its charms, but they do wear thin. "
See also The New York Times on Martin Gardner Nov. 30:
A companion image from this journal
on the "Mattress" opening date —
Midrash:
Vonnegut Asterisk
Peter Schjeldahl in the current (Dec. 14) New Yorker :
The phrase “outsider art” was coined in 1972 by a
British art historian, Roger Cardinal, to translate
the sense of “art brut ,” which Dubuffet had
considered rendering as art “raw,” “uncouth,” “crude,”
or “in the rough.” But the term misses the full thrust
of Dubuffet’s elevation of “people uncontaminated
by artistic culture,” as he called them. He aspired not
to make outsiders respectable but to destroy the
complacency of insiders. He disqualified even tribal
and folk artists, and spirited amateurs like Henri
Rousseau, for being captive to one tradition or another.
Art brut must be sui generis, from the hands and minds
of “unique, hypersensitive men, maniacs, visionaries,
builders of strange myths.”
The literary art of Fritz Leiber and Stephen King seems to
fit this definition.
Somewhat less brut — the literary art of Plato.
A non-literary illustration:
Time as "a moving
image of eternity.”
— Plato
The two symbols on the monolith
may, if one likes, be interpreted
as standing for Damnation Morning
and for the Windmill of Time.
* "Award-winning fashion icon."
— Harvard Graduate School of Design
From The Snow Queen , by Hans Christian Andersen —
|
SEVENTH STORY. What Took Place in the Palace of the Snow Queen, and What Happened Afterward The walls of the palace were of driving snow, and the windows and doors of cutting winds. There were more than a hundred halls there, according as the snow was driven by the winds. The largest was many miles in extent; all were lighted up by the powerful Aurora Borealis, and all were so large, so empty, so icy cold, and so resplendent! Mirth never reigned there; there was never even a little bear-ball, with the storm for music, while the polar bears went on their hindlegs and showed off their steps. Never a little tea-party of white young lady foxes; vast, cold, and empty were the halls of the Snow Queen. The northern-lights shone with such precision that one could tell exactly when they were at their highest or lowest degree of brightness. In the middle of the empty, endless hall of snow, was a frozen lake; it was cracked in a thousand pieces, but each piece was so like the other, that it seemed the work of a cunning artificer. In the middle of this lake sat the Snow Queen when she was at home; and then she said she was sitting in the Mirror of Understanding, and that this was the only one and the best thing in the world. Little Kay was quite blue, yes nearly black with cold; but he did not observe it, for she had kissed away all feeling of cold from his body, and his heart was a lump of ice. He was dragging along some pointed flat pieces of ice, which he laid together in all possible ways, for he wanted to make something with them; just as we have little flat pieces of wood to make geometrical figures with, called the Chinese Puzzle. Kay made all sorts of figures, the most complicated, for it was an ice-puzzle for the understanding. In his eyes the figures were extraordinarily beautiful, and of the utmost importance; for the bit of glass which was in his eye caused this. He found whole figures which represented a written word; but he never could manage to represent just the word he wanted–that word was "eternity"; and the Snow Queen had said, "If you can discover that figure, you shall be your own master, and I will make you a present of the whole world and a pair of new skates." But he could not find it out. "I am going now to warm lands," said the Snow Queen. "I must have a look down into the black caldrons." It was the volcanoes Vesuvius and Etna that she meant. "I will just give them a coating of white, for that is as it ought to be; besides, it is good for the oranges and the grapes." And then away she flew, and Kay sat quite alone in the empty halls of ice that were miles long, and looked at the blocks of ice, and thought and thought till his skull was almost cracked. There he sat quite benumbed and motionless; one would have imagined he was frozen to death. …. |
Related material:
This journal on March 25, 2013:
For Josefine Lyche, by fellow artist Nuno Borges:
Related material:
Recent remarks by Lyche and
a recurring image from this journal.
The two symbols on the monolith from yesterday —
— may, if one likes, be interpreted as standing for
Damnation Morning and for the Windmill of Time
(alternately, as motifs for a ukara cloth).
The above explanation may help those confused by
knight's-move discourse like that described by
Jemima in The Eiger Sanction .
Note the number, 701,
on the colonel’s collar.
Adapted from Log24,
February 19-22, 2008:
See 2/22/08,
4/19/08,
and 5/22/08.
Die Liebe nahm kein Ende mehr.
Undertakings bring misfortune.
Nothing that would further.
“Brian O’Doherty, an Irish-born artist,
before the [Tuesday, May 20] wake
of his alter ego* ‘Patrick Ireland’
on the grounds of the
Irish Museum of Modern Art.”
— New York Times, May 22, 2008
THE IMAGE
Thus the superior man
understands the transitory
in the light of
the eternity of the end.
Another version of
the image:
See 2/22/08
and 4/19/08.
Michael Kimmelman in today’s New York Times—
“An essay from the ’70s by Mr. O’Doherty, ‘Inside the White Cube,’ became famous in art circles for describing how modern art interacted with the gallery spaces in which it was shown.”
Brian O’Doherty, “Inside the White Cube,” 1976 Artforum essays on the gallery space and 20th-century art:
“The history of modernism is intimately framed by that space. Or rather the history of modern art can be correlated with changes in that space and in the way we see it. We have now reached a point where we see not the art but the space first…. An image comes to mind of a white, ideal space that, more than any single picture, may be the archetypal image of 20th-century art.”
“Nothing that would further.”
— Hexagram 54
|
…. Now thou art an 0 |
“…. in the last mystery of all the single figure of what is called the World goes joyously dancing in a state beyond moon and sun, and the number of the Trumps is done. Save only for that which has no number and is called the Fool, because mankind finds it folly till it is known. It is sovereign or it is nothing, and if it is nothing then man was born dead.”
— The Greater Trumps,
by Charles Williams, Ch. 14
April 19, 2008–
“On this date….
Ten years ago….
Mexican poet-philosopher
Octavio Paz died at age 84.”
“Mexico is a solar country–
but it is also a black country,
a dark country. This duality
of Mexico has preoccupied
me since I was a child.”
— Octavio Paz, as quoted
by Homero Aridjis
.- El Arzobispo Emérito de México, Cardenal Ernesto Corripio Ahumada, falleció esta mañana a las 05:30 a.m., en su domicilio….
— Bernard Holland in
The New York Times
Monday, May 20, 1996
In 1564,
artist Michelangelo
died in Rome.
… Todo lo sé por el lucero puro
que brilla en la diadema de la Muerte
— Rubén Darío
Related material:
Yesterday’s entry
and Anthony Lane
in this week’s
New Yorker:
Powered by WordPress
