bad time for poetry

Radical Doubting

2008-12-02T10:00:00.001-08:00

People vary in their capacity for accepting doubt, especially of cherished beliefs, and they also vary in how much of themselves they are willing to doubt.

The belief that our experience, our education, our status and our upbringing are proofs and guarantees is vanity. Although never easy, it seems clear erasing some aspect of attributes-of-self is necessary. In “Fear and Trembling,” Kierkegaard quotes Luke 14:26, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.”

What does one trust? I have considered this question for a long time but neither the question nor its implications have become easier. Some time ago I read Alan Watts, “To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.”

Relax and float.

Yet, while relaxing and floating are necessary, they are not sufficient; at least not for doing something interesting and meaningful—admittedly values. To do, and perhaps also to be, something interesting and meaningful, passion and faith must exist as well. Art, like life, depends in part on desperate passion and faith amid unshakable doubts. A leap of faith must not only be taken despite doubts but in fact depends on those doubts. There is no leap without doubts.

While faith—the confidence of a better condition—is probably always spiritual in essence, ought not to be religious in practice, in discipline. Of course, without religious doctrine, as if the case in art, passion and faith often become soft and end up being more attributes of vanity. In my view, the crucial word in the previous paragraph is “desperate.”

Radical doubting.

Painting and Structure

2008-11-11T11:24:00.000-08:00

Why does an image work in a painting while another (a similar one, say) does not? What is the balance between presence and reference and on what does that balance depend? How is distance created in the interaction between viewer and painting and is it possible to speak of the autonomy of a painting?

Usually, painting is seen mostly for the amalgam of attributes that it is, such as treatment, imagery, scale, etc—painting as a sum of sorts. However, if instead of seeing painting as sum we look at it singularly as a state of thought, our view of painting and how it is achieved can change in significant ways. Most of the issues that matter, for instance, will quickly show themselves to be related to structure. That is, related to the underlying supports that give shape to the state of thought, and by thought here I mean the entire force of the spirit: reason, emotion, intuition, etc.

I will try to write more about this in the future.

Mayakovsky, Mandelstam and Barnes

2008-10-31T12:20:00.000-07:00

Two interesting poetry events.

1. Whale & Star's recent publication of “Mandelstam: Modernist Archaist.” The book's editor, Kevin M. F. Platt, assembled new translations by notable contemporary poets combined with an exceptional selection of previous translations. You can buy it here.

2. Thomas tells me that one night in the winter of 1978 Clifford Barnes was holding fort at the White Horse Tavern, where from time to time Cliff lowered his voice, looked at one of his admirers in the eyes and delivered a bit of wisdom. He wielded his softness like a flamethrower and that annoyed Vladimir Mayakovsky, who was drinking quietly nearby. Mayakovsky told Cliff to shut up but the bard, not used to people like the Georgian, smirked, which cost him a beating.

A Sentimental Education

2008-10-21T10:07:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I am asked about my influences or my education, and I sometimes ask others for the same. I am not sure what we expect to find. Causes and effects are usually separated by years and events; a bent here; a twist there; a fear, for instance, that reacts with an image or a song to make a new emotional compound and part of a personality. The stories we build to make sense of what happens or happened are fictions, always oversimplified and often misunderstood.

In 1978, Pablo and I had a sleepover and as part of the rituals we ate late, talked—mostly lied—about girls, and played records. I think Pablo had gotten the records from his father. Through the night Paco Ibañez, Silvio Rodriguez and Joan Manuel Serrat sang and we listened pretending to be more mature than we were; at fourteen we could still take ourselves seriously. At some point we played Serrat’s record devoted to the poems of Miguel Hernandez and laid on the floor looking up at the ceiling, in silence. Since then “Umbrío por la pena” has been an ongoing education.

UMBRIO POR LA PENA
Umbrío por la pena, casi bruno, 
porque la pena tizna cuando estalla, 
donde yo no me hallo no se halla 
hombre más apenado que ninguno.

Sobre la pena duermo solo y uno, 
pena es mi paz y pena mi batalla, 
perro que ni me deja ni se calla, 
siempre a su dueño fiel, pero importuno.

Cardos y penas llevo por corona, 
cardos y penas siembran sus leopardos 
y no me dejan bueno hueso alguno.

No podrá con la pena mi persona
rodeada de penas y de cardos: 
¡cuánto penar para morirse uno!

°
Shadowed by sorrow, nearly black
because sorrow soots when it bursts,
where I am not, it is not
the most sorrowed man.

I sleep alone and one on the sorrow,
sorrow is my peace and sorrow my battle;
a dog that neither leaves nor lies quiet,
always faithful, but inopportune.

Thistles and pain I carry as a crown,
thistles and pain sow leopards
that do not leave a bone uncrushed.

Surrounded by sorrow and thistles
my body can bear no more.
So much sorrow only to die!

[In translating this poem I used Ted Genoways translation as a starting point.]

Unreasonable Pursuits: Moby-Dick

2008-10-14T06:37:00.000-07:00

The reasonableness of most pursuits is arguable, especially pursuits carried, consciously or unconsciously, as affronts to reasonableness. In the arts, but not just in the arts, these reasonableness-challenging pursuits tend to lead far from certainty. The mighty and the ones who like to appear mighty or who don’t know any better, suggest trusting, an advise that has kept many in foolish voyages from which they never returned. The prudent and the cowards suggest retreating and the results of this advise are plain to see.

It is not easy to be a good judge of time and circumstance, which is what is called for here. The following are excerpts from contemporary reviews of Moby-Dick and from a note on Melville’s death (from www.melville.org, a useful website). I find it interesting to read these from a distance of 150 years, which we don’t (usually) have in our own pursuits.

The more careful, therefore, should he [Herman Melville] be to maintain the fame he so rapidly acquired, and not waste his strength on such purposeless and unequal doings as these rambling volumes about spermaceti whales. —London Literary Gazette, December 6, 1851

In all other aspects, the book is sad stuff, dull and dreary, or ridiculous. Mr. Melville's Quakers are the wretchedest dolts and drivellers, and his Mad Captain ... is a monstrous bore. —Charleston Southern Quarterly Review, January 1852

We have no intention of quoting any passages just now from Moby Dick…But if there are any of our readers who wish to find examples of bad rhetoric, involved syntax, stilted sentiment and incoherent English, we will take the liberty of recommending to them this precious volume of Mr. Melville's. —New York United States Magazine and Democratic Review, January 1852

It is strange how he persists—and has persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before—in wondering to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us.— Nathaniel Hawthorne, Notebook Entry, November 20, 1856

The sum and substance of our fault-finding with Herman Melville is this. He has indulged himself in a trick of metaphysical and morbid meditations until he has almost perverted his fine mind from its healthy productive tendencies.—Fitz-James O’Brien: Our Authors and Authorship, Melville and Curtis. In Putnam’s Monthly Magazine (New York), April 1857

Herman Melville, one of the most original and virile of American literary men, died at his home on Twenty-sixth street, New York, a few days ago, at the age of 72. He had long been forgotten, and was no doubt unknown to the most of those who are reading the magazine literature and the novels of the day. Nevertheless, it is probable that no work of imagination more powerful and often poetic has been written by an American than Melville's romance of Moby Dick; or the Whale, published just 40 years ago […] Certainly it is hard to find a more wonderful book than this Moby Dick, and it ought to be read by this generation, amid whose feeble mental food, furnished by the small realists and fantasts of the day, it would appear as Hercules among the pygmies, or as Moby Dick himself among a school of minnows.—Springfield, Massachusetts Republican, October 4, 1891

On T.S. Eliot's Birthday

2008-09-26T14:10:00.000-07:00

Let’s celebrate T.S. Eliot’s birthday. Here is Section I of “Ash Wednesday." The entire poem is available online.

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

The Freedom to Be

2008-09-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

In the essay “The Wisdom of Life” Schopenhauer writes,

"Everyone believes himself a priori to be perfectly free, even in his
individual actions, and thinks that at every moment he can commence
another manner of life. ... But a posteriori, through experience, he
finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected to
necessity, that in spite of all his resolutions and reflections he
does not change his conduct, and that from the beginning of his life
to the end of it, he must carry out the very character which he
himself condemns...."

Spin Paintings

2008-09-16T17:56:00.000-07:00

In contrast to the perspective offered by distance, our daily living favors the immediate and the fashionable, and sometimes persuaded by that immediacy as well as by cultural repetition and the desire to seem informed, people praise the artistic merit of dubious artworks, and moral flexibility and status anxiety encourage these colorful evaluations.

On September 15, 2008, the same day the Stock Market lost more than 500 points, partly as a result of whimsical investments in the financial field gone bad, more than 200 pieces of new work by Damien Hirst sold through Sotheby's for more than 200 million dollars. The offering of pickled animals, butterflies and dots, which were made by the more than 180 people who work for Hirst, was the first time an artist used an auction house to sell new work. Hirst’s action and it's success are part of a larger condition, which Robert Hughes appropriately described in the following way, “Where you see Hirsts you will also see Jeff Koons's balloons, Jean-Michel Basquiat's stoned scribbles, Richard Prince's feeble jokes and pin-ups of nurses and, inevitably, scads of really bad, really late Warhols. Such works of art are bound to hang out together, a uniform message from our fin-de-siècle decadence.”

Some of us feel like hypocrites when we call for ambition of spirit and authenticity in the work of art, knowing we don’t ask for the same in our own lives. And so we learn to accept trivial and cowardly gestures as significant and brave because in them we sense our own failings. We become practiced in self-serving praise of the meager and the vicious, but irrespectively of these moral accommodations, when time has passed and our fears and status no longer matter, the diamond-encrusted skulls and spin paintings will become, mainly, symbols of our dishonesty and lack of clarity.

What we need in art is ambition of spirit, quality and authenticity, not because those imperatives are abundant in our lives but precisely because they are not.

The Scholar

2008-09-09T09:24:00.000-07:00

The following quotes are from E.M. Forster’s “Aspects of the Novel.”

The scholar, like the philosopher, can contemplate the river of time. He contemplates it not as a whole, but he can see the facts, the personalities, floating past him, and estimate the relations between them, and if his conclusions could be as valuable to us as they are to himself he would long ago have civilized the human race. As you know, he has failed. True scholarship is incommunicable, true scholars rare. There are a few scholars, actual or potential, in the audience today, but only a few, and there is certainly none on the platform. Most of us are pseudo-scholars, and I want to consider our characteristics with sympathy and respect, for we are a very large and quite a powerful class, eminent in Church and State, we control the education of the Empire, we lend to the Press such distinction as it consents to receive, and we are a welcome asset at dinner-parties.

Pseudo-scholarship is, on its good side, the homage paid by ignorance to learning.

*

Everything he says may be accurate but all is useless, because he is moving round books instead of through them, he either has not read them or cannot read them properly. Books have to be read (worse luck, for it takes a long time); it is the only way of discovering what they may contain. [...] The reader must sit down alone and struggle with the writer, and this the pseudo-scholar will not do. He would rather relate a book to the history of its time, to events in the life of its author, to the events it describes, above all to some tendency. As soon as he can use the word “tendency” his spirits rise, and though those of his audience may sink, they often pull out their pencils at this point and make a note, under the belief that a tendency is portable.

The Hand (II)

2008-09-08T15:16:00.000-07:00

I should come back to the blog by getting the hand out of the way.

My hand is doing well. So well in fact, it is hard to lay the memory of what it looked like on what it looks like now. More importantly, my hand is fully functional.

The credit for this small miracle goes to Dr. Jerry Yoram Haviv, a surgeon who practices in Santa Monica, California. When I arrived at the hospital following the accident, the surgeon in charge said, “If this had happened to me, I would want Dr. Haviv to be my surgeon.”

Dr. Haviv’s seriousness and palpable intelligence impressed me right away. I was also pleased to see he carried his magnifying glasses in a small, old-world wooden box. He introduced himself, removed the bandages wrapped around my hand, studied the bloody fingers and told me what he was planning to do. What Dr. Haviv said was more promising than I expected and what he did was even better. In the last few months, I have looked forward to his evaluations of my progress and to our talks about art, Israel and books.

Nature's Silence

2008-07-18T16:55:00.000-07:00

This entry is in response to Cory’s comment and to similar questions I have been asked in the past.

Cory wrote: “To me, what is important in art is reaching deep into the silence of nature's ‘building.’ I do not find theoretical understanding of art helpful in this pursuit, and I really just want to know if you do.”

I think I understand the spirit of the question but I disagree with its underlying premise. The question, consciously or unconsciously, frames an opposition between “the silence” and reason, an opposition that, in most cases, comes from prejudices about the nature and use of reason as well as “the silence.” I don’t think we are able to reach into “the silence of nature's building” but it might be possible to sense aspects of what I think Cory means by “the silence.”

However, I haven’t met too many people who have a direct channel to this silence, or perhaps it is more accurate to say I haven’t met many people whose claim to direct channels seem credible. Any help in clarifying one’s work— theoretical or not—is good and necessary because, for the most part, we are lost. Each of us has ways and methods we prefer—as it should be. Of course, there is a time for everything; a time for theory and a time for doing; a time for looking and a time for not looking.

The Hand

2008-07-16T16:44:00.001-07:00

When I cut my left hand the words from the Hagakure, “At that time is right now,” came to mind. As I looked at the hand, life was both—and not contradictorily— more factual and more dreamlike, and what was happening was no longer in the future but right there. The first part, the taking off the glove, was the hardest. Once I had seen it, there was nothing but coming to terms with things.

It happened while I was carving a large wood sculpture. I was going back and forth between a chainsaw and a high-speed grinder equipped with a chainsaw blade, which allowed me to move quickly through the wood. I almost remember the moment when my hand touched the blade but I remember better the moment just before and just after.

My life will soon continue, more or less, as it was. The turn, however, did happen; in my case a minor turn, for which I am grateful. The turn has been worse for others. In the ambulance I couldn’t stop thinking about the people losing body parts in Iraq—the American soldiers, the Iraqis, the children. The images that came to my mind seemed then—as they do now—unjustifiable by any policy or by any excuse.

Right now, someone, somewhere, holds on to his or her dismembered leg, arm or hand, or to the dismembered part of a daughter, a father, or a friend. That we can know that and continue on with our banal lives clearly says something about the machinery of survival.

Nietzsche an underpinning to my aesthetic ideal?

2008-06-13T18:44:00.000-07:00

In response to gawalt’s comment to the previous blog entry.

No. I was trying to distinguish my ambivalence towards the value of work I’ve done with Nietzsche’s certainty.

But your question regarding the underpinnings to my aesthetic ideal is interesting.

It might be Nietzschean but it is difficult to say, particularly because Nietzsche’s aesthetics and his views about the function of art changed throughout his life.

When I was younger I read Nietzsche and other authors influenced by his ideas. Those readings had an impact on me, among other things because they came at the right time and because I didn’t have a well-developed frame of reference. So I think it is likely that to some extent Nietzsche has influenced my work—possibly to a large extent—but the way in which his ideas influenced my work and thought are indistinguishable now from the foundation of my point of view. I probably read him too early.

It makes me think of an old friend who, regarding the books of Hermann Hesse, said: “Demian” is a book that should only be read when you are starting your life and “Steppenwolf” a book that should only be read when you are coming back from life. I am not sure what he meant but it sounds right.

As a youth it is easier to feel comfortable with adoring Nietzsche.

On Looking at the Work Done

2008-06-12T18:42:00.000-07:00

“I find it an impossible book: I consider it badly written, ponderous, embarrassing, image-mad and image-confused, sentimental, in places saccharine to the point of effeminacy, uneven in tempo, without the will to logical cleanliness, very convinced and therefore disdainful of proof, mistrustful even of the propriety of proof, a book for initiates, "music" for those dedicated to music, those who are closely related to begin with on the basis of common and rare aesthetic experiences, "music" meant as a sign of recognition for close relatives in arbitus [In the arts]–an arrogant and rhapsodic book that ought to exclude right from the beginning the profanum vulgus [The profane crowd] of "the educated" even more than "the mass" or "folk,"” wrote Nietzsche in regards to his book “The Birth of Tragedy.”

But despite his accusations and reservations Nietzsche found value in his book because he trusted the intent and the merits of its subject (the history of Greek tragedy and the psychological/philosophical distinction between the Dionysian and Apollonian spirits), and also because Nietzsche had an ability (coming from clarity, arrogance or both) to see his own personal enterprise in a historical perspective: “this audacious book dared to tackle for the first time: to look at science in the perspective of the artist, but at art in that of life.”

For two years my studio has been working on a series of books documenting the work I have done since my days as an apprentice. It is not a work for publication. Nonetheless, seeing it in the world, even in its limited visibility, makes me consider the value of much of what I have done, and in turn, much of what I am doing. Looking at these books I have feelings not unlike the ones Nietzsche had in regards to “The Birth of Tragedy,” with the exception of his conviction of the work’s importance.

There is one argument the books make very convincingly: some things won’t be again.

Being Cuban

2008-05-13T16:52:00.000-07:00

For some time questions and bewilderment about my “Cubanness” has hovered around my work and me. From what I gather, it seems to some people that my influences, my behavior and public choices, and the way I go about presenting my work do not easily conform to notions of being Cuban, or even Latin American.

Today I will contribute my opinion to this minor debate.

I have often thought that Tolstoy’s first line in Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” is not only a fine remark on the specificity of misery but also a warning against the tendency to trust generalizations.

Undoubtedly, ethnicity and nationality contribute to self-definition, but are they as relevant in day-to-day living as our individual experiences of class, family, exile, disease and books, and our happenstance of epoch, encounters and genetics? Furthermore, if we are heirs to values and assumptions that influence the manner in which experiences are lived and perceived, how do the experiences, in turn, influence those values and assumptions? And in the arts, where does heritage begin and end? For instance, in the question of Joseph Conrad’s “Russianness,” where is Poland, orphanhood, lost nobility, the sea, sickness, exile and language? Is Conrad’s Russianness something more than an aroma perfuming the man and his writing? And what in T.S. Eliot is American? Is Pablo Picasso’s work Spanish? Is Jorge Luis Borges a traitor for preferring English and German?

I won’t attempt to answer any of these questions. Instead I offer them as disclaimers to what follows.

For me, being Cuban is about the tone of my childhood and subsequent exile and, less importantly, some values and fears that colored the way I was raised.

My childhood is a childhood of images I still don’t understand and hence, to be Cuban, for me, is to not have been in Cuba long enough to understand them: poorly lit rooms decorated with furniture that couldn’t be bought anymore and therefore couldn’t be used; standing in dilapidated yards on bright hot days; watching adults mourn our impending departure; talks of “El Norte;” talks of Fidel; surreal juxpositions of old toy soldiers and caged birds and billboards of the revolution; suffocating asthma attacks on a sweaty bed; leaving on an “Iberia” plane knowing we will never go back. To be Cuban is also to have lived in Spain as a foreigner; to have endured the jokes; to have learned to speak with a Castilian accent; to have gone to Mass only to look at the girls; to have been poor in Madrid in winter; to have sought country in my family, compatriots in my brothers and fistfights in school.

To be Cuban is also the Cuban writers who I read as a kid: Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Nicolás Guillén, José Martí, Reinaldo Arenas and Alejo Carpentier; it was the Spanish translations of Kafka and Tolstoy and my mother’s choice of reading to me a story about the sinking of the Andrea Doria at nighttime.

I did most of my reading in Puerto Rico, however, where being Cuban meant being an outsider but also a fellow “Caribeño.” “Caribeño,” in the 1970s (and probably still), was being part of the sea, Colonialism, humor, food and a collective sense of inferiority. It was also reading Kant in Junior High School hoping we were smart enough (we weren’t) to understand it, but free of the idea that the German philosopher wasn’t speaking for us.

To be Cuban, for me, means more letters than country, more a way of looking at things than memories. It also means nothing really "is," everything is becoming, including self-definition; every idea can be my own and every failing possible. To be Cuban, for me, is to be thrown into the recognition, as Kristeva has suggested, that the foreigner is within us and that, consequently, what some people don’t understand about me and my work—German and Scandinavian influences, American literary references, Physics, concerns with time, Jewish parallels—is nothing but an attempt to makes sense of that foreigner.

The Architect

2008-04-08T12:16:00.001-07:00

Thomas and I drove to Encinitas to see a juggler who goes by the sobriquet “The Architect.” The drive this time of year is pleasant but I was happy when we finally arrived. The show was arranged at an old ranch—the type of production you know has some poet behind it. We sat under a eucalyptus tree with a good view of the stage, which was maybe the size of a small bedroom. The excitement built as the crowd grew, and when The Architect appeared we burst into applause. The Architect was dressed as a nurse, which at first seemed confusing but after a while began to make sense. His entrance was nothing to speak of, and during the show he barely acknowledged the audience. The show, however, was enthralling.

He began with one red ball, which he easily kept in the air, ease he exaggerated by looking at his watch while the ball went up and down. Then he brought in a second ball and about the time that second ball went up, a sudden breeze crossed the stage. The two balls were easy for him but the insistent little wind was definitely disturbing their trajectory. A third ball went up and a fourth. Each new ball exaggerated the unpredictability of the others, but The Architect didn’t seem to mind the chaos when four or five or six balls were in the air and his skill was enough to hide the balls’ uncertainty. But when the seventh ball went up the situation changed. The Architect’s efforts to compensate for the wind became noticeable and his movement lost some of their grace. The ninth ball ended the act.

We were walking towards our car when we saw the juggler coming out from a barn. He was not wearing the nurse uniform but jeans and a t-shirt. Thomas, who likes to talk to everyone, complimented The Architect on the show. The Architect thanked Thomas, said something about the wind, and introduced himself as Rick Gibson.

The Lucky One

2008-03-25T15:59:00.000-07:00

Thomas asked me today what had I earned and I answered, “Nothing, everything I got I got by luck.”

“That’s a fancy, muchacho,” he said, “you’re not that lucky.”

Then I remembered this:

‘Till, gaining that vital centre, the black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of its cunning spring, and, owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirgelike main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.’

“I guess I earned at least one pleasure,” I said.

“That’s the one I was thinking about,” he said.

Kierkegaard and The Present Age

2008-03-21T18:04:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from Søren Kierkegaard, The Present Age and of the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle, trans. Alexander Dru (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962)

If a precious jewel, which all desired, lay out on a frozen lake, where the ice was perilously thin, where death threatened one who went out too far while the ice near the shore was safe, in a passionate age the crowds would cheer the courage of the man who went out on the ice; they would fear for him and with him in his resolute action; they would sorrow over him if he went under; they would consider him divine if he returned with the jewel. In this passionless, reflective age, things would be different. People would think themselves very intelligent in figuring out the foolishness and worthlessness of going out on the ice, indeed, that it would be incomprehensible and laughable; and thereby they would transform passionate daring into a display of skill…The people would go and watch from safety and the connoisseurs with their discerning tastes would carefully judge the skilled skater, who would go almost to the edge (that is, as far as the ice was safe, and would not go beyond this point) and then swing back. The most skilled skaters would go out the furthest and venture most dangerously, in order to make the crowds gasp and say: "Gods! He is insane, he will kill himself!" But you will see that his skill is so perfected that he will at the right moment swing around while the ice is still safe and his life is not endangered…

Men, then, only desire money, and money is an abstraction, a form of reflection…Men do not envy the gifts of others, their skill, or the love of their women; they only envy each others' money…These men would die with nothing to repent of, believing that if only they had the money, they might have truly lived and truly achieved something.

The established order continues, but our reflection and passionlessness finds its satisfaction in ambiguity. No person wishes to destroy the power of the king, but if little by little it can be reduced to nothing but a fiction, then everyone would cheer the king. No person wishes to pull down the pre-eminent, but if at the same time pre-eminence could be demonstrated to be a fiction, then everyone would be happy. No person wishes to abandon Christian terminology, but they can secretly change it so that it doesn't require decision or action. And so they are unrepentant, since they have not pulled down anything. People do not desire any more to have a strong king than they do a hero-liberator than they do religious authority, for they innocently wish the established order to continue, but in a reflective way they more or less know that the established order no longer continues…

The reflective tension this creates constitutes itself into a new principle, and just as in an age of passion enthusiasm is the unifying principle, so in a passionless age of reflection envy is the negative-unifying principle. This must not be understood as a moral term, but rather, the idea of reflection, as it were, is envy, and envy is therefore twofold: it is selfish in the individual and in the society around him. The envy of reflection in the individual hinders any passionate decision he might make; and if he wishes to free himself from reflection, the reflection of society around him re-captures him…

Envy constitutes the principle of characterlessness, which from its misery sneaks up until it arrives at some position, and it protects itself with the concession that it is nothing. The envy of characterlessness never understands that distinction is really a distinction, nor does it understand itself in recognizing distinction negatively, but rather reduces it so that it is no longer distinction; and envy defends itself not only from distinction, but against that distinction which is to come.

A Witty Age

2008-03-17T14:42:00.001-07:00

The moralists are running to the microphones, their chest inflamed with indignation. They make an example of Eliot Spitzer and their theatrics remind me of that other Eliot, who thought the world would end with a whimper rather than a bang. If only some would avoid speech, as in that other line of “The Hollow Men.”

“What an age,” Thomas Hoveling once said and then, when I didn’t say anything, he added, “Wit. Don’t forget the wit.”

Here is a little fantasy:

I settle for smelling the orange blossoms as the powdered wigs walk by. Everyone looks so good under the glass tears of the chandeliers. Everyone but me, I say to Thomas, and with a finger smeared in saliva, I remove the dirt from my shoes. I sit in a corner trying to fit in. Experts in irony, the moralists, with their flaring cuffs, hold the little hands of the academics as they glide on the dance floor. The entertainers and the financiers talk about their retirement accounts while the rebels listen in.

I do fit in. And where are the arts?

They waive at me from the other side of the room where a small auction is being held. All of them, even the critics, are wearing Hirst’s Manolo Blahniks. On the men, the Manolos seem a bit puffy.

Soul Searching

2008-02-12T09:46:00.000-08:00

“A great nation deserves great art” is the slogan of the National Endowment for the Arts. It is catchy but what does it mean?

A nation inches towards greatness, in part, by assuming it doesn’t deserve much, and it maintains its greatness, in part, by understanding “greatness” is not a coronation or a title but a reflection of the quality of becoming.

Moreover, the relationship between great art and great nations is by no means tidy. Spain in the Seventeenth Century, for instance, was losing its hold on the empire and was burdened by disease. It was also entrenched in the Inquisition and abusing the American provinces. So did it deserve Velazquez, Zurbaran, Lope de Vega, Luis de Gongora, etc?

Perhaps it is more accurate to say—in the case of Spain as well as in many others—that nations get the soul searching they deserve in the work of their artists. Art is the mirror in which nations who think of themselves as great must see themselves, often, as otherwise. But that is a less catchy slogan.

Santa Monica Studio

2008-02-07T18:36:00.001-08:00

We have finished the construction on the Santa Monica studio, and seeing the effort, some people have asked me if the project takes away from my work.

The question seems to point at a more definite understanding of my work than the one I have. To me, “the work” is always shifting and always feeding on that shift. The question also underestimates the value of this particular “detour.” It would be hard for me to make a categorical distinction between the process that generates a painting and the process that decides I should hang the deer head in the studio’s library. In each gesture I am trying to sort myself in relation to it and to find something refuge-like in the final assembly. Space and furniture, for instance, are something quite distinct from the position one takes towards painting only if the purpose itself is quite distinct. For me, the studio is an embodiment of the same point of view that generates the artwork.

The artwork and the studio have many (though not all) of the same aims and provide me with similar comfort and discomfort, so what is the meaning of lost time or interruption of the work? I gain energy by using it.

The End of a Lovely Season

2007-12-31T14:04:00.000-08:00

The measurement of time seems more arbitrary than it did before. Seasons come and go, and it is hard to satisfy the hunger of their coming and going.

As my last entry for this year I am including a working excerpt of a conversation between Thomas Hoveling and myself (which in its final version will be included in the catalog for my exhibition in Australia), and a brief description of the weekend workshop I will teach this summer at the Anderson Ranch.

The Lovely Season
Excerpt from a conversation between Thomas Hoveling and Enrique Martínez Celaya.

“Tell me about the children who appear in many of the recent works,” he said while turning on the lamp by his side. I thought about our other conversations about childhood and I wanted to say something new, even if it was not true.
“Everything seems possible with them but also, they might show signs of the many things that will not be possible.”
“How about the two sculptures of boys?”
“Maybe they’re to the image of a child what a petrified tree is to a tree.”
“You don’t see these children as symbols?”
“No. I realize there’s a tendency to read images as symbols to be decoded though psychological or political machinations, but to me images are flatter. They represent themselves first and foremost. To stop at the thing…,” I said fearing I was sliding towards my typical, and dull, philosophical observations.
“Do you think our society is becoming more sophisticated about images as it is often said?” Thomas asked.
“I guess it depends what you mean by sophistication. One way to see our world is as a river of images moving quickly past our consciousness. Everyone is quick with the glimpse and the quick interpretation. But the whole thing is fairly trivial, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know anything about that world, really. I’m out of the loop,” he said.
“The current seems to be moving towards small screens with little movies and a taste more defined by sampling than by sustained engagement; the art fair booth with the one painting by each artist, the music download with the one hit song.”
When I finished talking, we remained quietly sitting near each other, while I tried to dissimulate my embarrassment. I shouldn’t have been speaking in front of Thomas about the restless spirit of modern life. It must have tested his patience.
“Let’s eat,” he said.

Brief Description of Workshop at the Anderson Ranch

Stumbling Towards an Artwork that is not as Terrible at it Could Be

Topics to be discussed include the challenges of making art in the age of careerism and art funds, the struggle between entertainment and art and the obstacles and help in the formation of an artist. In addition to the lectures, a selection of critiques will be held as a well as a “symposium” between the participants, the artist and his created character, Thomas Hoveling. The “symposium” will include debates with volunteers regarding artistic worldview, question and answer and interviews.

Each day will consist of a lively discussion followed by a critique and/or a directed argument.

Tall Words

2007-12-04T18:00:00.000-08:00

I have mentioned earlier on this blog the unnecessary tall words used by galleries on press releases. But the problem is not limited to that type of advertisement. Fancy terminology and confounding statements are, more or less, de rigueur in the art world. The reasons why this is might be illustrative of collective and individual anxieties but rather than explore those, now I just want to suggest we desist on the usage of terminology and postures that are not necessary.

At times, the need for clarity and precision requires terms and methods that might not be familiar to everyone. But arcane notions ought to be tools in the search for truths rather than veils to hide lies. It is more productive to study great thinkers to understand the mechanism of their thought than to find a quotable phrase or a hook for one’s deficiencies; even minor understanding of a good mind brings forth humility. The temptation is always there to firm our soft understanding with the prop of the big word or the important framework, but these affectations tend to hide truths not only from others but from ourselves as well.

Partly because philosophy and literature have played a role in my work and are part of my vocabulary, it has been a challenge for me to avoid the failings I have just described. Whatever the excuse, I am disappointed whenever I can’t find a way around fancy terminology. I think most people should avoid the embarrassment of sounding like intellectuals—particularly if they are intellectuals.

Foolishness

2007-12-03T18:13:00.000-08:00

The Head of the Extension Program: Don’t forget your notes on Beckett. Work hard. Remember: The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom

Marty The Fool: It is always a late arrival. And no one is waiting for you at the palace.

The heavy bottom lip of the Head of the Extension Program lost whatever shape it had.

Golden Ratio

2007-12-03T17:43:00.000-08:00

I understand the desire for ideal proportions, but the cult of the Golden Ratio seems puzzling to me. For all its divine attributions, the hope for a perfect ratio seems very human, and nowhere are the characteristic limitations, distortions and tenderness of humanity more apparent than in the need to find clues of the definite importance of the Golden Ratio—Fibonacci numbers, pyramids, ideal buildings. In the case of paintings, for instance, it might not make sense to decide shape independently of “content,” and once content has been taken into account, other criteria will reveal the secondary importance of an a priori proportion.