The Fugue of Wog: Prelude

Its all starts with white wall tires, and wind. I mean no wind inside. Inside the machine we were pleased. The machine had its clasps, doors- she- he called her a she: Betsy had heavy and thick doors. She was fleet. Aeordynamic. She leaned, leaned into what was sent her way. Glided. She had confidence, is what it was. Her glass was darkish, greenish- f’you looked through her I mean. Say you see the Fable’s house, through her windows, the lower portion- and the upper portion in plain air- you would say that the whites, and that’s basically what white means, no? Out here on a day with few clouds coming into it, with the sun on his climbs, rolling out into this blue, and we should have something more to say about this blue- ever really ask yourself what it is what it means? What is flat and what is deep? I mean when you look into the sky, into the plain blue sky, when the humidity is not so great? White is when its not too humid, and there are few clouds in the day, white is when the sun falls on a white house. There is a “zero” for white- there is your white balance. Now you look up at the Fable’s house, its clapboarding (no cheap siding for these guys), up there on her bedroom’s outside wall, see the sharpened shadows running parallel to the whole flat expanse of our land-locked empire? Under each of the clapboards, the lapping; tapered boards, primed and painted, that run there neatly, almost, you could say, perfectly- not the shadows, I mean where the sun’s hitting full face on those boards. That is what I mean- and that is white. Now look through Betsey’s glass, at the same basic things, lower on the house- underwater, right? Bluegreens there- Betsey; lets agree right off, she is for fucking real. Many things were real then. What the fuck wasn’t? Gilligan? The moon? I mean, talk about Gilligan’s fucking Island. The moon? Really? Well, if it didn’t really happen, don’t fucking tell me about it. What’s real? What about corpses? Are dead things real? These are the questions I pondered, day in and day out. A Day. A day was a fine thing back then too, can I tell you? Specially summer ones. A day was like a column of the Parthenon. I was told not to refer too much to articles of culture. I have rules sprouting like the worst and most pernicious variety of weeds: shoulds and advisemenents; hesitations and regulations, etc. What should I be doing with all this? How am I to help you come to terms with where you is at? Where is the question that leads me to – what the fuck is my ownly goal, anyways? For one- just to tip my hat- just to tip this fucking humble cap o’mine, to tip it to the times of reality, to the time of confidence- to having a hero for a father; a hero who drove a real car- how about that? To having a real tree to climb, to knowing what snow and mud, weeds, dandelions, pesky neighbors, houses, streets, avenues, cul de sacs full of boxed in pesky people, whom I will in fact allow into this, because how could I manage without them? Betsey had real glass: do you know yet what the fuck I mean? Thick glass, material glass, the glass changed things, it evidences its material nature in its fucking effects. Look look look look look look look. Ok, so the shoulds- I should not beat my reader like the corpse of a horse. Beat a dead horse.

In this instance the horse was an owned creature. Ownership has long been with us. Unlike the heathen savages whom we imagine were the marvy fucking stewards of this “place” we call the Island or what have you. Seriously, seriously- some mother fucker did eventually look upon the last remaining, scraggly, bent-assed piece of shit mother fucking tree, of a certain island civy- but you can find the same books I have read, care you to do so. And you will know what I will know. Together we go, hand in fucking hand. They will take out some of this shit I know. Assuming this ever sees day’s light- and it will- mind you- it will see day’s light. Some skank ass pair of eyes has got to lay down something, regarding this- and there ain’t no other homeless; starved soul I have come across that will take care of you the way this body will do. I will not now utter those particular words. How words have become corpses. In the vast dead zone known to us as “reality”.

°°°

Pretty much every house was with the cheap siding. Say in the new life, or “life”; which is how I see it- when whomever this be that zombied-over the wunderkind you are about to meet- when Gord answered the message, whatever three decades later? You understand right? A ghost returned- this ghost, yours truly, your narrator, your voice, your speaker- me- I- returned there- try to picture what it felt like. I won’t say I named the trees, I nearly did- but they were like lovers of mine. Gord was a real friend too, but lets face it- Gord’s a shell no more substantial than the ghost that I am. The tree- she’s what’s left- she and a few original interior surfaces- she’s herself. Ash trees must be some slow, slow growers. Gord and me, I mean- so good to see him- terribly good you know?- but for your purposes, it may be best to imagine two older guys- two guys gone to seed, so to speak- guys biologically obsolete- make a note of this- guys quite out of the time of life of the father who drove, who tenderly cared for- who gently stroked Betsey’s dash, as she aged- who knew she’d need putting down, that her life was coming to its  last ignitions- Betsey’s back seat (an expansive and accommodating locale, not  like the cockpit-like experiences of today’s confections of plastic and other softwares. The distance between our faces, Gord and I, or my sibs and I, or just my face- how I loved loved loved being driven by my father. Somewhere out there is a road. And a weighty automobile, gliding gracefully. A straight road- endless, really. Scenery is to be had there- a world being measured, in a way- a world presenting itself, turning out from this center, blooming in the furrow of this meeting of her weight: some friction, pneumatics, hydraulics- all simple machines- nothing knowing anything- levers- bearings- grease- everything fucking item is what it is here- the no one who steadies her knobbled wheel- he’s not there- he’s daydreaming, no? Or he’s stressed. Some asshole “foreman” at “the shop” causing unneeded strain? I was saying the distance from our face to the back of his seat, was like a studio apartment in Tokyo these days (what a wonderful term, the shop- very American)  “her” backseat being the place where so much happened- how many hours did I get to spend in there? Gord would get ecstatic- like twice weekly- because my father would do things that made us happy- that was like his mission in life- he would take us camping, take us swimming, take us to collect frogs, when they were trying to bury themselves in the muck for their hibernation- that tray of wet leopard frogs (named for their beautiful leopardlike spots, in their deep green wetsuits, rubbery looking they were, with the golden brown spots, and their bulbs of alert; worried looking eyes) that tray was one of the many things, such as trays of drivein burgers and fries, waxy paper cups sweating along with Gord and I on those two or three days each summer when hot weather came over the flat northern expanses- Gord’s moments of ecstasy were generally expressed in a special kind of handshake that came about between us, the inter-wriggling of our four excited hands, with the energy of four hummingbirds at their deep; nectar providing pitchers of lovely blooms- one of the many things, such as the lumber- never bought; always found- that my father brought to provide us the materials for our fort- reminding me of his special (“ingenuity” would be the word- smile-) strategies- converting Betsey’s back seat, as he often did, being without a pickup truck- to a cargo hold, by pulling the seat out, and leaning it against the oxidized planking of the interior of the garage. Meeting of her weight; the “third” fucking mind, and a road, one which, mind you, was bound to be flat. We did have our ravines (you could still go down); and there was the moraine (two hour’s inside of Betsey to make it) where a generous glacier, noticing how fucking boring and limited the vast extent of the craton’s real meat actually is- a glacier as generous as an uber-farmwife granma- (everything providing and accommodating, everything seeking long term establishments, everything tending to whiteness; to order; to home, is motherly. My father was a motherly man. A glacier had its tricky; destructive; shifty; coyote side to it, but what this glacier destroyed has been long scarred over. Loping through its amalgamated leavings; its selected curiosity cabinet of examples from the different locales it skimmed; steam rollered;  flattened; scooped out; striated; scraped at; shoveled; buried; forgot; forgot; forgot; hid; hid; hid;…. flowed, flowed, flowed, being a real liquid-solid, a real yinynag personality-  like  yours truly- loping through there behind myself, beside myself, before myself, within myself, as Peter no doubt will come along to multiply the angles, to help bring about the foreground/backgroud, multi-valent experience that this must absolutely- ooops- apologies- the first of many, I would wager- fucking “don’t tell”. Don’t explain. Science can drain the life out of it all- leave that to the ones who seek to know.

Marilyn Gold

See details here of Marilyn's opening, and her latest wonderful paintings:

http://www.marilyngold.com/

artist's choice at MoMA

There is an amazing carved pear table by Hector Guimard standing on a low white pedestal, in a small room, buried somewhere in the bowels of MoMA. It would be worth your while, I mean to say, just to get there, and find that table, and take in its elegant tripartite forms, its rather organic manner of flowing in lovely tapers to its contours, and its subtle; intense and sexy presence- the precise and labial; graceful petals of the flowery front triangle. 

I don’t know that you want or need an orientation either, in a situation like the one you will find yourself in, in that particular room. Leave your orientation in the coatcheck, and wander, its free on Friday night, this cavernous Las Vegas of culture; this disorienting and vast (dis)connection of rooms; atriums; vertigo inducing glass-walled drops of what feels like a hundred feet. And so you may, as we did, find yourself enjoying more physical contact than is normal in a “museum”, because there is no elbow room, so to speak- in fact one hot young couple I noticed at one point inches away in peripheral vision were sharing a mutable, two chambered mouth energetically. In the future, it won’t just be the nude couple in Yvonne Ranier’s black and white video undressing in these rooms? When they ask me to do artist’s choice…..

The room’s dominant theme is set by a group of intensely colored; intensely patterned and structured images, on onionskin, brite white paper, in thin polished aluminum frames, and hung somewhat away from the wall, at an angle, with their bottoms some six inches out, and tops maybe two. These are frightening- terrible- (terrablita, recognized by the Pope was it? in Michaelangelo, is here in quantity), they are also gorgeous, sumptuous, fascinating, compelling, incomprehensible to most of us, utterly so- you feel the intense and tyrannical footprint here of a relentlessly utilitarian language, a terrible precision of logic dictating the surprisingly varied forms.

The fact that they tell so much in relation to the central theme show currently running in the same building, Inventing Abstraction, that they encompass decorative patterning and other ways of confirming the forms that many painters distilled long before these diagrams were dreamed up in arroyos in the ad-hoc chunks of continent that were jammed together recently at the western end of Nevada, adds to the impetous you may feel to visit the room soon.

And learning that they were diagrams necessary to the process of manufacturing computer chips, and that these rather large diagrams were created in advance of etching the same patterns onto microscopic bits of silicone, after using photography to reduce them? They aren’t as titillating as the Guimard table, but they are something to see. This only leaves out about ninety nine point nine nine nine percent of the exhibition in which these items are currently on display- and its an exhibition that easily lives up to its author’s claim and apology, which says in other words: sorry its so dense, but there is no non-epic item here, and none that feel to me less than necessary.

Trisha Donnelly then is an artist who I look forward to following, an artist who’s work I am entirely unfamiliar with, apart from this exhibition- in itself truly an artwork that rocks.

Paul's Post 1: Cora Cohen

http://guidedbyinvoices.us/artists/Cora_Cohen/Cora_Cohen_work.html



http://www.coracohen.com/



I wanted to insert an image of the painting you will see if you follow the link to Cora's exhibition invitation, or the link to her website above. The painting is called Curtain 7.
But Google must have seen me trying to copy it here- I'll have to figure out how to get permission, or to make portals. 

So, take a look- follow the link.

I was struck by the layering of experiences in this painting, and I'm just responding for now to the image on my screen, sadly- although of course what I remember from many experiences of her work, and conversations also inform these thoughts.  I find it full of evening light, just prior to dusk. Cora talks about the difference between the depicted light which can infuse a painting (Turner comes to mind), and the literal light by which we see the painting, and how the painting can play with that. There already are two simultaneously and consciously deployed layers.

By creating a surface with its own texture, and painting over that, Cora isn't trying to short circuit a process of the coming about of a surface. 

In the past, I remember Cora telling me that in her work, things that happen of their own accord would be as important- maybe more important- than things that happened by her intervention. (It sounded to me then as though she almost wanted to get intervention as close to zero as possible.) Chemical reactions were a very good example of processes that happen autonomously. At that time, she was using some in her process. I believe the oxidation of copper was one- and that gorgeous pale green, almost celadon hue that results from it.

I think of her prepared surface of texture in a sense as an eminently useful distraction- a sort of stand-in for a found object- in fact, it becomes a found object. Its independence from what happens later is as important as its collaboration in that. Nothing in Cora's painting involves subterfuge. Everything invites the viewer's projections; dreaming- everything is suggestive- everything also is just what it is.

This will make a fine start for our blog- because for me there are two centers of gravity, or three, say, that are often on my mind, and they apply to what's on my mind now, thinking about my experiences of Cora's work, and listening to her talk. One would be Leonardo da Vinci's advice to painters, that if they find themselves stuck; lacking subject matter- the thing to do is to find an old crumbling plaster wall, and gaze into that- you can find any number of subjects there, he said. 

Another would be the painter Francis Bacon's assertion about Rembrandt. He said that if you study the surface of a Rembrandt painting closely, you won't find "a single illustrational mark", but a concatenation of accidental events appreciated by the profound sensibility of the artist. Bacon made a distinction between an experience that "comes off directly onto the nervous system"; and a less useful one that first is diverted "through the cataract of the brain". Bill Jensen made it very efficient simply saying "the painting is the experience." 

What happens here is something that only happens here- it can only happen between the viewer and the painting- not between the viewer and the pictures, or the viewer and someone's words, as wonderful as they might be. 


So, its good that the show just opened yesterday. 


The third thing I alluded to is the music of Bach. 

Bach is considered all around the epitome of achievement as far as polyphony is concerned.

Bach maximizes the possibilities in the idea of having many things happen at once that are all equally worthy of attention. Each voice has its own trajectory and integrity, its own "narrative" (I use this word to describe a particular type of attention). There is a process the listener goes through. The listener is highly active- choosing what to take for foreground, and what as background- choosing how to take the forms of structures that emerge as larger patterns within the overall texture. The options are many, and the choices vary from performance to performance, and from listening to listening. There is an overall structure and a final resolution. But what's  remarkable is the extent of the extendability of diversion- an elasticity; a stretching out of anticipation- that rupture is where Bach wants to take us. 

(To my mind, Bach's music is and will always be quite radical. 
I have heard people say that Bach should be thought of as the producer of mechanical contraptions that depict a Newtonian, deterministic world. To me, nothing could be further from the truth.) 

The aspect that applies here is the aspect of polyphony- a multi-valent experience. An "irreducible plural", (which could only actually relate to an indeterminate realm). 

Cora 's paintings invite a similar experience. In Bach, its the stretching of anticipation in the adventures of modulations, and the delaying of resolution. In Cora's work its the slowing of attention; the possibility that, for one example out of many offered- materials have a soul,say, (which is how Jim Clark describes this). 

Something allowed to be what  it is can  take on a special corporeality under these circumstances (Guston)- and then, the materials are endowed with the same (ontological) status as the flesh of our bodies- maybe more to the point- the flesh of our loved ones. However surreal, or geological, or astronomical, the "language" at hand may be, the material has a life. 

Irreducible- unreconcilable; unresolvable- a flowering of questions; provocations-  a vital, and ever-blooming process of interactions between what the artist left and the viewer.

In Bach, this can be, for me anyway, uncomfortable at times, in a way that I cherish, but is beside the point here- in Cora's work its generally more inviting than confrontational, although some of the works that  involve collage have plenty of jarring transitions and discontinuities to them.

The paintings lately have become  slow burning balms, as supple as the breath of the happiest monk in Tibet (say, a hundred years ago to be safe). Gently sturdy, unaccountably patient. And as different from one another as the kids in a kindergarten class at any Manhattan grade school. Each painting finds itself within terms that are particular to that painting. 

I haven't seen the show that opened yesterday as yet, I'm in bed with the latest virus for now, but I expect that there is nothing here that seeing the show would prompt me to reconsider much. 

We'll see.

2/16/13
Paul