Replying to LO29895 --
Dear Don,
>Andrew, lovely composition. A couple of things elicited in me from reading
>it:
>> (Last week I studied colour photo images of the innocent children wounded
>> and killed in the last Iraq war - )
>A project comes to mind: a portfolio of these and other similar images
>from that war, and the ongoing devastation in that country. On the cover,
>the inscription "There are other ways, better ways. Find them." Inside
>the cover, a request that these pictures be displayed in commonly visible
>places around the offices. Send a copy to the President of the US and all
>his cabinet-level officers, all heads of committees in the Senate and
>House (hell, all congressfolks if you can afford it). Maybe Tony Blair
>would like one?
- I think they actually see worse. They also see images (if only those
conjured up by 'intelligence' and reports from those who escape) of those
mutilated by Iraq's dictatorship in dungeons. Unmentionable. So, dear Don,
they will say that the (albeit unintended) slaughter of the innocent,
singular or plural, is a necessary 'evil' on the long 'better' road to
'good'
- which is a fine thing - save that thought - that no men can do 'good'.
And so the circle turns from a constructive looking 'loop' (Varela) to a
destructive looking 'noose'.
- I have here by me a book that is like the one you imagine. I quoted a
particle from it about a year or two ago. It was about the Lebanon then,
and how a madman was running around the shell struck asylum, he was asking
if the forces loosed and fighting around him, over 'good' and 'evil' had
'gone mad'. The author is the war correspondent and photographer Don
McCullin, the book is called, Unreasonable Behaviour, by Vintage. In this
book of horrors is one picture-stained in my mind, it's of a starving
Biafran boy, he's albino. The words surrounding the image are almost its
equal. McCullin says the boy is 'double damned' because even in the 'house
of horror' on the 'ship of fools' that this world is become, he is
rejected even by his ravenous rickety 'fellows' for his whitened
'strangeness.' I will send this image to Rick and write just a few of the
words of McCullin on A4 format convertible to a pdf format, for Rick to
consider the worthiness of placing in the LO archive. The conflict it
represents is gone, the suffering I imagine remains in large measure in
Biafra for Biafrans. Don, do you know the works of the great Spanish
artist Goya? His etchings of war? McCullin quotes Goya in the flyleaf.
' No se puede.' ( I cannot look at this.)
' Yo lo vi.' ( I saw it.)
McCullin has seen in quality (sic) and quantity things that most soldiers
and politicians never see for real, engaging all the senses even to the
depth of his bowels. And he has created a high art in the midst of human
depravity, much as Goya and Picasso were able to do.
' To make you hear, to make you feel, to make you see.' Conrad
The shortest sentence in the Bible, I believe I learned a few days ago
is,
'He wept.' And, I think it refers to Jesus, on seeing the Temple, in
Jerusalem for the first time? (At, can you help me with that?)
I have tried not to speak too directly of my experiences of 'becoming' an
artist, a 'painter' here. It seems that way. Perhaps I am wrong in my
head. I have tried as much as possible to come in from other angles;-)...I
have taken literally the advice of At about transdisciplinary learning -
knowing full well I will never attain the statushood ;-) of 'expert' in
any of them. Ho hum;-) For fun, in the next few days I will make a list of
the ideas and areas I have make an effort to comprehend.
I have an idea, that a painting, drawing, sentence or a photograph, if of
a sufficient aesthetic quality (manifesting singuplexity) can contain, and
then release in the presencing of 'another' the 'past', in the 'present'
to inform the 'future'.
Short paragraph eh, Don?
This means -in my life anyway, that art and a love of things like art,
aesthetical things, are like singular 'candles' in complex darkness. How
many 'fires' can by lit by one 'flame', and where is the home of the
'flame'. Where and what is the beginning of a 'flame'? Where and what is
the end of a 'flame'?
I used to pass a stone into which was written, 'All The Darkness of the
Universe Cannot Extinguish the Light of One Small Flame'.
Maybe, somewhere, somehow, somewhy, Something (SomeOne;-) gathers up all
those flickering flames and builds a new space out of them. Great works of
art work on a variety ;-) of levels.
Thirty years ago I made a brief study of the sub geometry in the Sistine
Ceiling compositions. Finding it full of asymmetrical triangles. There is
that famous image, God's hand reach toward Adam's - well, it's kind of
binary, from left to right, it's sort of life and not life (yet) but in
the becoming/being moment (present) a triangle happens, and that creates a
new plane of meaning and possibility, so now thinking that spark
grounding;-) I have to reveal my ignorance, and ask At about electricity.
At, on earth;-) is it possible to have a 'positive charge' and without a
'negative charge' and either without a potentiating (?) 'neutral'? There
is that phrase by Michelangelo , which effectively offers a vision - that
the more he discharges creatively in this world diminishing one way ;-)
so he increases into the next (increasing another) behind is left the
stains of his Victory, like on the bandages of his life, our shared life.
There is much to be gleaned by humble learners like us from the lives of
men like Goya, van Gogh, and Michelangelo.
One final thing Don. Creating an authentic work of art, especially for me
an abstract painting, is a supreme 'model' of
learning-complexity-creativity experienced inside out without the
slightest possibility of failure - so long as the 'sought outcome' was
always the seeking after a 'deeper truth' rather than the 'shallow
beauty'.
Sorry to have gone on so, but what else to do between 4.00 and 6.00 in an
unheated room surrounded by a colddarkness?
Love,
Andrew
(Rick, I will create that document in a few days)
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