Unreason vs. reason

Cults_of_Unreason_1974

Adorable seventies graphic design on the book depicted above.

Of course, the classic illustration of unreason is:

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monstersis a 1799 print by Goya from the Caprichos series. It is the image the sleeping artist surrounded by the winged ghoulies and beasties unleashed by unreason.

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters is a 1799 print by Goya from the Caprichos series. It is the image the sleeping artist surrounded by the winged ghoulies and beasties unleashed by unreason.

Unreason on the whole is a subject of innumerable greater interest than reason. As such, I’ll take the counter-enlightenment over the enlightenment any day. Conceded, there were interesting aspects of the enlightenment, ignored by history, such as the enlightenment of Thérèse Philosophe. See Robert Darnton’s The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France.

Art or exhibitionism?

are-they-yours

Above is a feebly related image to introduce this post on Art or exhibitionism?

A recent post [1] by Belgian blogger Martin Pulaski, in which he shares with his readers his list of medication, prompts me to think about the relation between art and exhibitionism.

All of us bloggers are to a lesser or greater extent exhibitionists and artists. We want to share, get our message out there, we imagine a readership, we want it to grow, we want to connect. All are qualities of the artist and the exhibitionist. Whether we succeed or not can only be left to posteriority. This has not always been the case perhaps, I hear myself wonder. It hasn’t and it has.

One can easily point to the Romantics and JJR‘s Confessions as a starting point of this exhibitionism. One can even go further back to Catullus who authored these incredibly explicit lines of poetry in the first century BC.

Coming back to the present age and the contemporary relevance of “art or exhibitionism?,” there has been the internet which has made each and everyone of us self-publishers.

Back to the arts, the real arts, the institutionalized arts.

I’ve been very much intrigued by Tracey Emin‘s Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995, a concept that needs no explanation except maybe a Google gallery [2].

I’ve made a variation on this candid list: Everyone I’ve personally known who committed suicide. I know it’s macabre, even more than Emin’s listing the foetus of her aborted child; but this is a dedication to those who’ve said goodbye, and a thank-you-note to whoever for my life until now.

On ‘difficult’ people

If you ever feel bad because you’ve been unkind to a friend; if you feel bad because you’ve had one of your tantrums; if you feel bad because you’ve been unbearable; if ever you think that you are a ‘difficult’ person, watch this clip from My Best Fiend (1999), you will feel a better person instantly. Nothing compares to the tantrums of Kinski. My Best Fiend is a 1999 documentary by Werner Herzog about his tumultuous yet productive relationship with German actor Klaus Kinski.

Icons of erotic art #20

Jeune fille en buste 1794 by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, a typical illustration for the blog Femme, femme, femme

Consider me: my hands can not cover my breasts, I cling to them tightly to hide my shame. But also consider this: sunlit windows gaze down upon me like undeniable eyes, millions of bronze eyes; and shame turns into pride.

Jeune fille en buste 1794 by Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, a typical illustration for the blog Femme, femme, femme.

Previous entries in Icons of Erotic Art here, and in a Wiki format here.

Oh baby, is this the woman I want to be? (wmc#25 and wcc#41)

Mystery picture

“Oh baby, is this the woman I want to be? The door is unlocked, the windows are open, every time the place looks best for me. I said, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me again, kiss me again…”

These lyrics are from “Kiss Me Again“, a track by Arthur Russell. Listen to the entire track here (unfortunately the lesser of the two mixes of this twelve inch).

The photograph is of Maria Bonnevie, one of the more interesting actresses currently working in European cinema. She is the lead in the 2003 small masterpiece Reconstruction and the current cult favorite; Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s The Banishment.

The audio track posted above comes via here, a new blog of someone who goes by the nick fac586, what I believe to be a reference to Fac 51 Haçienda also known as just The Haçienda.

The author of this blog does an extended analysis of the song and its lyrics. Regarding the lyrics he says:

Have you ever gotten back together with someone who you shouldn’t have? I think most of us have, and I think that’s what this song is getting at, and the music tells the story even more than the words.

Deserving mention in this context is a recent article by popular music scholar Tim Lawrence, author of “Love Saves the Day” and current biographer of Arthur Russell. The article is titled “Connecting with the Cosmic: Arthur Russell, Rhizomatic Musicianship, and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-92” and connects Arthur Russell in a tired way to the theory of rhizomatics of Deleuze & Guattari.

“Kiss Me Again” is world music classic #25 and Reconstruction is world cinema classic #41

The Aporias of the Avant-Garde

 

Einzelheiten by Enzensberger

While I was in Amsterdam in the winter of 2006-2007 I asked the people in a philosophy bookstore: “If Slavoj Žižek and Sloterdijk are my two favorite contemporary philosophers, who would the third be?” They came up with Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Alain Badiou.

I had remembered Badiou but had almost forgotten Enzensberger, but last weekend at the used book store De Slegte I bought a Dutch translation of Enzensberger’s Einzelheiten, and was very much taken by his analysis of the concept avant-garde in his essay The Aporias of the Avant-Garde.

Aporias, published in 1962 in Germany, is one of the first essays that preached the “death of the avant-garde” which has been celebrated since the advent of postmodernism. It features good analyses too of Lukacs petty defense of literary realism and stimulating reflections on the absurdity of some critics’ grouping of individual artists into art movements, especially in cases such as expressionist literature (no writer has ever called himself expressionist).

On a general level it provides excellent etymological and semantic analyses of the term avant-garde.

P.S. Published in the same year was another work on avant-garde practices, which I suspect is more an eulogy: The Theory of the Avant-garde by Renato Poggioli.

Honoré Daumier @ 200

Honoré Daumier would have been 200 today.

This Year, Venuses Again... Always Venuses! (1864) - Honoré Daumier
This Year, Venuses Again… Always Venuses! (1864) – Honoré Daumier

At the Theater (The Melodrama) (c. 1860-64) - Honoré Daumier
At the Theater (The Melodrama) (c. 1860–64) – Honoré Daumier

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (ca. 1865-70) - Honoré Daumier
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza (ca. 1865–70) – Honoré Daumier

Honoré Daumier (February 26, 1808 – February 10, 1879), was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, sculptor, and one of the most gifted and prolific draftsmen of his time. He is best-known for his satirical work in Le Charivari, and underrated for his work as a painter.

RIP Teo Macero and Joe Gibbs

RIP Teo Macero [1] and Joe Gibbs

Teo Macero (October 30 1925 – February 19 2008), was an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and record producer. He was a producer at Columbia Records for twenty years, and most notably produced the Miles Davis album Bitches Brew[2], one of the first albums to apply the studio as a musical instrument, featuring edits and studio effects that were an integral part of the music.

Joe Gibbs (1943 – 21 February 2008) was a Jamaican reggae producer, best-known for producing “Uptown Top Ranking”.

“Uptown Top Ranking” [3] (1978) is a single by Althea and Donna, produced by Joe Gibbs based on the riddim of the Alton Ellis’s song “I’m Still In Love” of 1967.

Alton Ellis‘ song “I’m Still In Love” [4] is a 1967 single previously popularized by Marcia Aitken’s cover “I’m Still In Love With You Boy” and the dub track “Three Piece Suit” by Trinity. It’s still a popular riddim today.

Via Simon Reynolds [5].

A last farewell to Grillet

The French paper Le Monde reports [1] on the cremation of Alain Robbe-Grillet, who died last week. The attendance was small, about 80 people and members of the literary establishment were absent.

A text was read, a text that had been written by Robbe-Grillet for the occasion of Roland Barthes‘s death.

My translation from French:

“I love life, I do not like death. I like cats, I do not like dogs. I like little girls, especially when they are pretty, I do not care very much for little boys. (…) I dislike journalist gossip. I distrust psychiatrists. I like to irritate people. I don’t like people who annoy me.”

Via Papieren Man