Sundog Rising!
Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog
You See Art
Is it Art, or did the plumber get lost in the gallery on his way to the Men’s Room?
A madman provocateur after my own heart, Frenchman Marcel Duchamp offered the above “artistic work” for display in 1917 to the Society of Independent Artists Exhibit, which was supposed to accept and show any piece submitted by any artist so long as they paid the exhibit fee. They rejected Marcel’s work, and did not display it. Even though he paid the fee. Said it wasn’t art.
Marcel called it "The Fountain".
Alfred Stieglitz photographed and displayed the original piece in his studio, and a picture was published in The Blind Man. Today, Marcel’s urinal is considered a major landmark in 20th Century art, and replicas commissioned from Duchamp in the 60s are on display in any number of different museums and galleries, including the Tate in London. The original, alas, has been lost.
Needless to say this entire event has confused and angered the hell out of people for almost a century now …
Let’s try and figure it out one more time, shall we?
This early part of my argument is not original. I lift heavily from Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach, a very good book when you’re trying to discuss the very thought of thinking. The example has a mathematical basis, but that doesn’t mean we can’t extend it to wherever we want. Consider the central issue and the “artwork” representing it we’re exploring here.
Let’s play with hyphens and letters. Take a look at this possibly random pattern.
- - ex - - eq - - - -
Does that say anything to you at all? Some people would look at it and go: Oh! Two times two equals four. Right on.
But what about:
- - ex - - eq - - -
People will be going that’s not right! Two times two doesn’t equal three!
In fact, there’s no reason to assign meaning to either line of symbols. I didn’t say anything about numbers. I just said let’s play with hyphens and letters.
However human brains have a tendency to assign isomorphic meaning to images they look at. That means looking for similarities in form and relations to ideas already in their minds. So when you see something that numbers two with something that feels like a multiplication sign with something else that numbers two and then something that starts the same as “equals” culminating in something that numbers four, it’s not hard to think you’re seeing 2 X 2 = 4. Even though the actual mathematical equation doesn’t look anything like what you’re literally seeing. Similarly, with the first idea in mind you can’t look at the second example without thinking 2 X 2 = 3. Which, quite frankly, is upsetting. That first representation was obviously right, and now I’m throwing something wrong at you.
Well, there you have visual art and our interpretation and reaction to it in a nutshell. Trust me, you can include poetry in that experience as well.
Hofstadter’s book is all about the combination of interpretations happening on different levels of perception. I’m giving you a quick look at three levels happening here with the hyphens and letters.
Level One: just plain hyphens and letters.
- - ex - - eq - - - -
Level Two: isomorphic interpretation
2 X 2 = 4
Level Three: value judgement
2 X 2 = 4; that’s right! 2 X 2 = 3; that’s wrong!
So when we look at a piece of abstract visual art for the first time, we duplicate that same thought process. Let’s try it with another one of Marcel’s famous pieces, a painting this time, “Nude Descending a Staircase”.
Even though at first glance the painting may objectively look more like a frenetic haystack, isomorphically you can catch the sense of downward movement and the impression of legs and arms, which, thanks to the colour, you can assign the idea of “nude” to, and integrate the concept in your mind into something you can accept giving you the impression of an actual naked woman walking down a staircase.
So you might work through your levels of perception something like this:
Level One: frenetic haystack
Level Two: No, wait a sec … I’m getting movement here. Diagonally downwards. Arms and legs. Skin, maybe.
Level Three: Okay, I’m getting it. Nude walking down a staircase. Right. The title makes sense.
Level Four: I figured it out. Good for me. This is a good painting, because I can make sense out of what the artist is trying to do.
Level Five: Now that I’ve stroked my ego with being so clever, I can look at it and decide whether I find the image in itself pleasing. Invoke the strictly aesthetic.
Personally, I like to look at that painting just for the way it looks, so it works for me aesthetically. Though I do find it nice to have the rest fall into place as well. But it’s even more exciting for me when X.J. Kennedy shoots it up another level and makes a poem out of it.
Nude Descending a Staircase
Toe upon toe, a snowing flesh,
A gold of lemon, root and rind,
She sifts in sunlight down the stairs
With nothing on. Nor on her mind.
We spy beneath the banister
A constant thresh of thigh on thigh—
Her lips imprint the swinging air
That parts to let her parts go by.
One woman waterfall, she wears
Her slow descent like a long cape
And pausing, on the final stair,
Collects her motions into shape.
X.J. Kennedy
I’m sold! So modern art can work in a very satisfying manner.
But what about that urinal?
Back to the process. On its most fundamental level, the observer takes in a physical object that may or may not directly represent something literal; isomorphically composes what he or she can make out in the image into some interpretation of meaning; then assigns value to that self-composition as either good or bad, successful or unsuccessful, likeable or unlikeable.
Three levels, at its most basic application. But you can add any number of levels to that.
So what do you do with an artist who decides, I’m gonna add a fourth level. And I’m gonna mess with ya!
How do you value an artist who decides the fundamental approach of his creation is to interfere with or completely break down the process you’ve been using to make sense of things? The whole point of what you’re doing is to look at something through a common human process of observation and decide whether the artist has created something beautiful or not? Well, here’s a urinal! Whaddaya think of that?
The ultimate point being since the object has been introduced into the process usually attributed to appreciating art, whatever is thrust into that particular mode of seeing therefore takes on artistic status in its presentation. Obviously you relate to a urinal perceptually differently depending upon whether you’re viewing it at the Tate Gallery or rushing into a Men’s Room.
Personally, I think doing it once and making you think about what’s being done, works as art. Doing it multiple times is just taking the door off the bathroom.
This approach while clever in one sense has obvious evaluative problems in another. Okay, I accept artists taking the process one level further and trying to short circuit the whole conception of aesthetic perception, which does expand one’s consciousness of how one looks and what one is looking at.
On the other hand, how do you tell when an artist has managed to achieve taking the process one level higher? Or has just failed to communicate any message at all?
Fortunately, these days, either the artist him or herself or someone from an art gallery is there to tell you, “This is art.”
But that’s an issue for next week.
*******
REALITY FICTION UPDATE!
And what is Reality Fiction, you may well ask?
Simple. The concept of the Reality Television Series translated to the printed page. 40 characters from my backlog of generally unpublished material are gathered together to compete in a different theme each Episode, with one or two characters being eliminated each sequence until there are only two left to fight it out in the final. The winner gets a short novel of their own as the grand prize.
But somehow, things always seem to go horribly wrong ...
What’s happening now?
Enmeshed in the cliffhanger wondrousness of Episode Twenty-Four, Pulp Fiction, our remaining Contestants fall victim to the Intruders’ Reality Reallocating Master Plan! Or do they? Illustrated with a plethora of covers from the original Weird Tales magazine, stop for an Odd Moments magazine production: “The Jeweled Shadow” by Bela Jhihloin.
Continuing Friday at: realficone.blogspot.ca
REALITY FICTION TOO! EPISODES TO DATE
EPISODE TWENTY-THREE: STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The Imp of the Reverse
EPISODE TWENTY-TWO: FAIRY TALE
Princess NoName
EPISODE TWENTY-ONE: THE WEDDING
Dearly, Beloved
EPISODE TWENTY: EXISTENTIALISM
Face the Hangman
EPISODE NINETEEN: ABDUCTION
Abduction/Apperception
EPISODE EIGHTEEN: MELODRAMA
“Terror in Tarnation! A Thrilling Narrative in Three Acts”
EPISODE SEVENTEEN: POETRY
“landescapes”
EPISODE SIXTEEN: SILLY EUROPEAN SPY SPOOF (DUBBED)
“Diet Ray of the Stars!”
EPISODE FIFTEEN: EROTIC SUPERNATURAL ROMANCE
“The Shadow of Her Passion”
EPISODE FOURTEEN: FLYING:
“Sky Calling”
EPISODE THIRTEEN: SLAPSTICK:
“The Phantom of the Werewolf”
EPISODE TWELVE: DAIRY FARMING:
“Early One Morning”
EPISODE ELEVEN: BURROUGHS:
“Chapter Nine”
EPISODE TEN: WEREWOLVES:
“The Silver Solution”
EPISODE NINE: WRESTLING:
“Suckerslam XIV”
EPISODE EIGHT: JANE AUSTEN ROMANCE:
“The Proud and the Senseless”
EPISODE SEVEN: THE JAZZ AGE:
“The Bucky-Dusky-Ruby Red Hop!”
EPISODE SIX: SUBMISSION:
“Re-Org”
EPISODE FIVE: MASQUERADE:
“The Eyes Behind the Mask”
EPISODE FOUR: SELF HELP:
“Sausage Stew for the Slightly Overweight Presents:
Some Several Suggestions Guaranteeing Success for the Mildly Neurotic”
EPISODE THREE: NUDIST:
“If You Have To Ask ...”
EPISODE TWO: FRENCH BEDROOM FARCE:
“Un Nuit a Fifi’s!”
EPISODE ONE: STEAMPUNK:
“The Chase of the Purple Squid!”
A J.H.B. Original!
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