Structure (II)

It is probably the crudest but also the truest approximation to say what matters in art is Heart. If we were Tilman Riemenschneider, Heart will bring forth and organize, heighten and shape, as it should be. If we are not Tilman Riemenschneider, Heart might not be the fountain or the guide we wish it to be and, for the most part, little can be done about that.

Which might be why anything I say about art or its making often sounds like nonsense to me. In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein wrote,

“We have got onto slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!”

The pull towards objective understanding is the fool’s effort. The Heart, however, is slippery ice. No work can be done there. The nonsense is the rough ground.

Most of my own efforts to understand are centered on concerns with structure, and the main problem I have with the isolationists I mentioned in the previous entry is their structures are seldom complex enough.

A particular structure is a state of the work of art, a state that can be changed by content, purpose and failure. The tensions and points of support in the painting “of an apple” have to be different than those “of a horizon” and then they have to be different if it is “this apple” or “that apple,” handled “like this” or “like that” and so on. For instance, an apple painted by Cezanne exerts less “outward” pressure on the surface than one by Van Heem, and therefore brings about an entirely different armature or structure; a green apple is different than a red one; a mythic one is different than a “factual” one.

Which is why there is little chance of doing anything useful with general ideas about structure or simplifying its “physics” to perceptual illusions and formal aspects, particularly aspects imagined to be invariant to content, purpose and failure. Structure is the ensemble of forces and parts in the work of art and these forces and parts are re-made by perturbations of everything that matters to the work and its experience.

Perturbations are the type of elusive thing Heart can account for. There is also some sort of “dark matter,” invisible to most of us, in the ensemble of forces and parts. Heart finds itself in this uncertainty and this finding re-organizes both.

Structure (I)

Some artists consider structure the most exciting aspect of art and while others might not go that far, it is hard to imagine a musician, artist or writer who is not frequently puzzled by an aspect of structure. To consider structure in the visual arts, literature, dance and music means to take on the relationship between parts and whole, between forces and constraints, between the “in” and “out” of the work. That is, to consider structure is to consider why something work or doesn’t, and since art is only that which works, to consider its working is to consider its essence.

This might be why many visual artists have tried to make structure more explicit in their artwork and why frankness about structure has become expected in most intellectual circles. In fact, structure is one of the foci around which the 250 year-old Modern project revolves. In the last century, the desire to make structure more explicit led a significant number of artists to take structure, somewhat isolated from other aspects of art, as the subject of their work. The effort of the isolationists has, at times, produced work of subtlety and insight and, other times, the work has been mired by cleverness. In either case, the results—for the most part—only have the appearance of art.

Radical Doubting

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

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.

A Sentimental Education

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.]

The Hand (II)

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

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

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?

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.

Being Cuban

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.

Tall Words

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.

Reflections on a Return

It has been five days since I left Florida. I am now in Los Angeles as if I had never left and in other ways, as if I had never lived here. Undoubtedly, my mindset is different, though I don’t know how or if it will affect the work. From a distance, and without whatever clarity time might bring, Florida seems an important period. It might not be inaccurate to think of it as a self-imposed exile, thought I have to smirk at the idea of exiling oneself to anyplace in which there is a mall and a beach. But it was precisely that resort-quality of the little town in which I lived that wiped away the romantic aspirations to self-discovery and “toughness” that inevitably come up in pilgrimages to deserts, to Alaska or to New York. The charm of a little beach town, the homes decorated with coral, the gentle nights and the Lily Pulitzer outfits, meant that whatever ideas I wrestled had to be my own and, frequently, foreign to the day to day conditions. In other words, the angst of the artist in the little beach town is felt in sharp contrast to its surroundings. There is no nasty grit of the city or garbage or frostbite, no traditionally-grand landscape or historical weight to echo the brutality of living or to applaud the act of getting up in the morning.

Art in South Florida

I think about Florida more consciously now that I am leaving and in particular, I think of the arts in South Florida.

First, there is the Florida landscape, the water that is everywhere and the changing sky: these are good points of reference for artists. The housing developments and malls notwithstanding, there is also an end-of-the-world-everything-could-happen-here sense to Florida that is freeing for artists trying to find themselves (which ought to mean all artists).

Miami is an international city in ways New York and Los Angeles are not. Surely, NY and LA have people from many nationalities but these groups are frequently relegated to ghettoes and parades, and their appearance on TV and newspapers is usually as victims or perpetrators of crimes. In South Florida minorities and people from other countries are a visible force, not just token exceptions, and since they represent a wide variety of nationalities and economic backgrounds, their causes, unlike in other places, tend to be more than just self-serving.

Another interesting and useful quality of the arts South Florida is that here—with exceptions—people in the arts are a little insecure about their worth. Insecurity is good in the arts. It promotes self-discovery and expansion. This searching impetus can be of significance now that the Basel Fair and the proposed new Miami Art Museum are giving the arts in this region a boost. I think MAM has better leadership, scholarship and honesty than many museums—if this is not more obvious is because they are relatively understated; hopefully the new building will bring the necessary attention to the museum.

But in order to develop a world-class art community, South Florida needs to overcome some challenges. For instance, Basel has been good for the city but furthering the art’s community dependency on the Basel Fair is a precarious formula for success. Another danger is that the city can give in to the temptation of being a satellite of New York or a playground for the city’s well-known collectors—there are already signs of some of this going on. An approach the city could take to develop itself independently of Basel, New York and powerful figures, is to encourage education and exhibition spaces. By education I mean rigorous art programs whose intellectual preoccupations go beyond reading art magazines and theory blurbs. By exhibition spaces I mean venues that range from the true alternative spaces to a lively gallery scene, which should include a few dealers concerned with art.

I am cautiously hopeful.

In Favor of Speaking Up

A friend sent me a note. It said that while he agreed with the comments about Rosalind Krauss, he was not sure of the value of such comments. And knowing him, a remarkable person, I think I understand where he is coming from. It is difficult to walk lightly through life when one is attacking, criticizing and the like. It increases one’s burden—one’s footprint. Moreover, what has been said is difficult to take back and difficult to forget. Instead of attacking or criticizing other people’s views, the focus could be in living one’s beliefs. In this way, it might be possible to remain light and unmarked by the stain of public words. It seems a more elegant way to live and it would be hard to argue against its rewards. In my book Guide, Thomas Hoveling lived like that.

I frequently consider the question, and while I am never completely comfortable with my actions, I have, so far, concluded that it is important to speak up. It is important to take a visible stand against ideas one judges incorrect, misleading or evil. It is a burden, an annoyance, one is frequently wrong, and speaking up is often a detour from other projects. But unless alternatives are heard or read, they almost don’t exist, and ideas that don't exist are never re-discovered. The romantic (in the conventional use of the term) notion that greatness ultimately triumphs is the outcome of self-serving excuses and feel-good notions about life’s fairness, and it is frequently justified with misunderstandings about history and misquoted biographies.

Ideas do not exist in isolation. They are refined and clarified through exchange. Weaknesses in one’s position, for instance, are revealed quickly in the friction of a critique. It is easy to be pedantic about the value of one’s ideas when those ideas are not tested, poked—used beyond their circle of safety. Silence, something I revere, is at certain times the greatest arrogance, and has been at some key moments the greatest immorality. Moreover, many of the keepers-to-themselves are disingenuous: they feel above struggle but harbor resentment, pride and self-importance.

There is also the issue of offering alternatives, particularly in the art world, which for all its “diversity” often appears (particularly to emerging artists and students) polarized as a whole and monolithic in the particular sub-space of the relevant mainstream. If you consider the art world from their point of view, it would seem a conglomerate of sectors defined by the Artforum crowd or by the neo-conservatives or by the gut-trusters or by one of the many other “interest groups.” All these sectors have their canon, their loudspeakers, their publications.

So, if one believes something better or more authentic is possible, that belief should be shared and supported publicly. Many artists whose potential had not yet unfolded don't know what to think because they are bombarded everyday with, or intimidated by, ideas they distrust but don't know why. In our age there is a tendency towards polarization and tidy worldviews, so it is important to combat this tendency by putting “out there” the view that contradictions or dissonant points of view can co-exist in one mind, which makes me think of Fitzgerald: “The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” So, one good reason to speak up is to put forth ideas and attitudes that are ambitious and honest enough to retain internal conflicts, conflicts whose resolution propels investigation and inquiry.

A New Body of Work

My project, “For two Martinson poems, poorly understood,” is now finished. It consists of paintings, sculptures and one photograph. It will be shown (it opens October 4th) at the John Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco.

In this series, like in most of the work of the past four or five years, I tried to explore (by tapping, maybe like a physician testing reflexes) the limits to holding basic questions of existence in thought or words or art; in particular, how those limits impose themselves on my efforts to consider new choices against a growing body of past choices. The concern here is not memory, as it has often been said about my work, but the past as a definite force on the present—as a comparative weight on the balance scale of meaning.

In this exploration of or inquiry about highly abstract ideas, I have used the poetry of the Russian Osip Mandelshtam and the Swede Harry Martinson, both of whom, in deceivingly simple poems, transverse a lonely landscape of "the personal" while striving towards large and unwieldy concepts.

The imagery of this new body of work is dominated by trees, snow, horizon, light, soil and figures: I have paired down the work to those elements I consider fundamental in order to manifest and understand (better but, of course, poorly) the nature of choice, regrets and possibility. As always, this work is not the result of an a priori agenda of representational painting nor of a conceptual strategy. Instead, it is the CURRENT embodiment of my efforts towards making sense of the world as I want to make sense of it TODAY; tomorrow, I might work with words or empty rooms.

Neither culture (in the way “culture” is used in art writings) nor contemporary art have been considerations in this new body of work. If I had to locate this work anywhere outside of itself, it would be with poetry, but poetry in its most limited use of the framework created by Mandelshtam and Martinson. To be more specific, not in any way involved with the “discourse of poetry” nor with “the poetic,” a term frequently used to describe affected works lacking in strength of character.

The end is important in all things (III)

From the Hagakure:

In the Kamigata area they have a sort of tiered lunch box they use for a single day when flower viewing. Upon returning, they throw them away, trampling them underfoot. As might be expected, this is one of my recollections of the capital [Kyoto]. The end is important in all things.

The end is important in all things (II)

The ending of a body of work is like coming to the end of a good but difficult book: I wish I could stay in the world created by the work but the work itself expels me.

At the end of a series or a cycle there are no victorious trumpets and no certainty, at least for me. If a trumpet were to be heard it would be a little one, made of plastic, with a strident ironic sound. Instead of the sounds of victory, the ending of a series brings the confetti of doubt and regrets, questions about the works in the world, and ambivalence about parting with things I wish to keep.

The end is important in all things (I)

Nomad is almost finished and, as if to emphasize this finality, it has rained all afternoon. From time to time the sky looked like the sky in the summer painting.

The End of the Day in Florida

On my way to the 7-Eleven (a trip I take a few times a day), I walked through the empty studio courtyard. The amber-colored light was falling on the hibiscus and the silver-button bushes; the air was warm, had some salt in it and it smelled, as it often does, of soap thanks to the laundromat three buildings away.

Late afternoons in Florida have the stillness and glow of de Chirico paintings, except here the sky has more range. Since I am leaving soon, I stopped to notice it, and while looking around at the palm trees and sandy soil, I wondered why I paint winter landscapes.

I wasn’t there long when the repair shop next door, which usually closes early, began grinding something. It was annoying at first but then it helped settle some sort of order, an order in which the winter paintings didn’t seem as odd. However, it was not a relief.

The First Entry

The name of this blog is from Brecht.