Hellen Douglas does Daddy Long Legs

A book from Hellen Douglas. Perfect spider.

What Waldemar Januszczak said about text art.

Tower of babble: Jenny Holzer's text art.

This an article from March, but I keep returning to it.

"Text art gives me problems. Obviously, it is not an ism that speeds the pulse. You cannot imagine anyone adoring it with a crazy passion, can you? “What’s your favourite art?” “Text art. It shakes my kidneys!” That isn’t going to happen. If text art gives pleasure, it does so in a mild, thoughtful, dry and passionless way.

As a writer, I also have powerful conceptual difficulties accepting its basic premise. If someone has put some writing in a gallery, surely it needs to be judged first as a piece of writing, not as a piece of art?"

Why is it, that text art seems so passionless as compared to... hm... non-text art? Generally, purely text art gives me a kind of intellectual pleasure that a good thought does. However, it never really grips my heart. Visual, less language based art, on the other hand, can stop the breath. Is it because of the hemispheres or is it just me?

Cluster Thoughts

This blog is related to Pteronarcophobia - fear of flies and Lepidopterophobia - fear of butterflies.
Could I build a metaphor and literally visualise it as a scenario, develop it in a variety of ways. To make up something like a new conceptual metaphor and then invent a pretend reality to accommodate it?











THINKING IN PROGRESS

Box for dormant Cluster Thoughts.

More lepidopterophobia

And now,
here's some REALY beautiful things about butterflies:

Alex Earl lampshade

Butterfly Ball by Diffuse Studio

Oh and this incredibly gorgeous chandelier, which - in fact - is made out of... fairies :-)

designed by bodo sperlein as part of the re-cyclos collection for lladro, the niagara chandeliers feature porcelain butterflies suspended on sideglow optic fibers. ceiling rose is fireproof black lacquer. 150W halide projector.

my work: Lepidopterophobia - fear of butterflies (1)

I do not have a fear of butterlies. However, I have a friend who does. I can really see where she is coming from: butterflies look careless and colourful as they flutter aimlessly, but one close look reveals their hairy heads and alien eyes.
Horrible creatures.
Well.
For some.

Affected by all this (above) I tried to make a book. Oooh, dear! Because of the nature of the course I am on, I am so conscious about making specifically artist's books. And it is really not good to be conscious about it - I tend to produce rubbish when I am.
Anyway, I made a book, trying to deal with the restrictive power of fear: how it paralyses our senses and our ability to think clearly. Pages do not fully open for the butterflies: the text inside is very hard to read.






I don't think much of this book (or most of the others I have made). It could be an interim stage to somewhere else. I like the simple quality of it and the structure, but I find it lacking substance. The stuff I said about Charlotte Cory. I should find ways to dig deeper, but still look like fun.

"Introducing Wittgenstein" to those who get easily bored

That could be me :-)

Heaton and Groves show, that one does not have to bore readers shitless when dealing with the "serious" philosophy. Fantastic illustrations and a great sense of humor throughout the book.

In Introducing Wittgenstein we meet a strange man, a rigorous logician who prized poetry above philosophy, who inherited a fortune and gave it away, who sought death in the trenches of the First World War, a great teacher who advised his students to give up philosophy, a solitary man who nonetheless inspired lifelong friendships. We are also given a clear and accessible guide to Wittgenstein's central works.

88 Constellations for Wittgenstein

Witgenstein has been extremely well written about and painted about. As a result, it is hard to come across something fresh. Especially, because a lot of the visual artists seem to have a very bleak grasp of Wittgensteins ideas (or any other language matters, in fact). I will get back to this subject later.

Anyway, here's what I have found and I thought it was really good and really well made.

“88 Constellations for Wittgenstein (to be played with the Left Hand)” is an interactive artwork by David Clark. The piece is a sprawling, non-linear contemplation of the life and work of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein consisting of 88 interactive flash animations each corresponding with one of the 88 constellations in the night sky. The viewer is invited to navigate through a maze of interconnecting narratives – moving from association to association – in a way that brings Wittgenstein’s work into conversation with our contemporary digital culture. As a nod to Wittgenstein’s concert pianist brother Paul who lost his right arm in World War One but continued to perform work for the left hand, the piece invites the viewer to ‘play’ with the collages using the left hand on the computer keyboard.

At the centre of piece is the number 88. It is both the number of keys on the conventional piano and the number of constellations in the night sky (as determined by contemporary science). Music and the night sky both seem to me to stir up the limits of our understanding of existence. The constellations also provided me with a structure. The work is like a ‘connect the dots’ portrait of Ludwig Wittgenstein. I have drawn the facts of his life together and numbered them but it is up to you to connect the dots.

The Happy Lion

by Louise Fatio - pictures by Rodger Duvoison

A beautifully illustrated book. Love the quality of lines, colours and textures.

84 Paintings at Wilkinson Gallery

What you see here are the paintings produced as part of ‘84 paintings’, a project which took place at Wiels, Brussels in late 2009. From the 2nd - 16th of November 2009 three painters worked in the Wiels project space. Each artist produced two paintings every day, with the aim of producing 84 paintings over the two-week period of the project. During the fortnight an open invitation was given for anyone to watch the development and discuss the project.
The conclusion of the project would always be dependent on the progression of the work during the two weeks. However, no emphasis was put on the project to produce a final event or exhibition, the conclusion would inevitably be 84 works.
Participants
Fiona Mackay b.1984 Aberdeen, Scotland
Morag Keil b.1985 Edinburgh, Scotland
Manuela Gernedel b. 1982, Bad Ischl, Austria

This is a good one.
Because it is clear and concise.
I often get surprised, when galleries/artists bother with pages of press releases and artist's statements, when so many people in the arts are dyslexic. But that is another subject.

There is no grand eco concept in this and there is no painful self-regurgitating. Just 84 painings. The "Display Instructions" are interesting: the paintings only exist as part of the group of the 84. There should be no hierarchy, no names. A kind of communist state order. The paintings can only be read in a group of all 84 paintings present. Like a text of some sort, where each painting should represent a fragment of meaning. Except that there is no semiotic meaning attached to any of them. And for that reason they could be mixed up and changed around or substituted without any effects on the reading. Or is the meaning of that work, that there is no meaning to it? (oh, I love that idea!) Just 84 paintings. Full-stop.