Week 4: MEND

R.B.Kitaj

Last night's class--another good evening. Many of you are doing ambitious work. A couple need to push harder. Remember our various discussions of materiality. And Christina's question--about the "defamiliarization" of the representational image in order to be able to see it again as form... And whether there's ever a form without some kind of representational implication... Leonardo spoke of looking at the shapes in plaster walls--seeing their possible meanings. It's easy to do this with maps as well--the shapes of countries for example (an abstract concept to be sure, especially since an overview at that scale is never available to us). Siberia and Alaska (this was my own childhood image, from a map my father had framed and mounted on the wall above our beds)--a goat leaning forward to kiss a moose...

But seen the other way, take any seemingly familiar representational image--squint at it, or turn it upside down--and suddenly you've returned it to the world of form. In other words, we work from both approaches--as in R.B. Kitaj's charcoal drawing from about 1980, below. A good place to be... 
______

The new word: MEND

Which has a very physical component--but relates to the word heal--which in turn is related to the idea of making whole... Whenever and wherever possible. But why is this so? Relationship between fragment and whole. What makes a work complete? How do we get it there?

Pierre Renoir film (1915):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK12sFDOU54
________

 

The Day Lady Died

Frank O'Hara

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton   

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner

and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun   

and have a hamburger and a malted and buy

an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets   

in Ghana are doing these days

                                           I go on to the bank

and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)   

doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life   

and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine   

for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do   

think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or   

Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres

of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine

after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE

Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and   

then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue   

and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and   

casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton

of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of

leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT

while she whispered a song along the keyboard

to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing


Frank O’Hara, “The Day Lady Died” from Lunch Poems. Copyright © 1964 by Frank O’Hara. 
Reprinted with the permission of City Lights Books. 

Week 3: JOIN

The new word: JOIN

Very enjoyable evening, last.  The work and the discussion--good spirit. I liked where many of you took the projects--and the way the group came together in discussion--a good dynamic. So, we'll continue!

For the word JOIN recall that I said you mighty consider JOIN / MERGE and see where the two words together take you...

Also, thanks to Katia for taking the lead on a class blog. Great idea. Please set it up at www.blogspot.com (a google site)--the comments function is straightforward and easy to access. I'll send Katia everyone's name and email. She'll create the blog so that you're invited participants--that means everyone can add their own posts, as well as comment on each other's posts..

Here's the link to the film of the Cossack horsemen that we watched together: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwa9iB2zOsU&feature=related
________

And the poem by Po Chü-i, from the T'ang Dynasty in China--middle 700's. (As Ezra Pound once put it, "poetry is news that stays news.")


Beside the Pond, Under Bamboo

A path winds past brambleweave fence and simple home,
jade-green: ten acres of idle dwelling, a pond gracing half.

After eating my fill and dozing refreshed at the window,
I wander off under the trees, alone, my feet light as air,

for water clarifies the spirit no less than a perfect friend,
and bamboo is a master that frees the mind to emptiness.

Why worry about that world of people, why plague mind
and ruin eyes in search of a kindred spirit here or there?

Po Chü-i
(translated by David Hinton)

Week 2: LONG

Edward Hopper, Eleven AM, 1926

 

















The new word:  LONG

A good night, last night, although we went a tad late, and everyone was feeling the weight of Week 2 in the Berkeley semester. After seeing your projects for TOUCH, I suggested a double word. Let me revise that. The word to work from is LONG. The notion of OPEN should apply to everything we do. How's that for a clarification?

Welcome to Suok (good comments, bright smile) and to Jorge (look forward to your drawings). Cat and Katia, too. And glad to see the rest of you again--and to learn a little more about each one of you (through your own introductions, and your first projects.) You'll see soon enough, as the course develops, that each person's work becomes a kind of touchstone--one project influencing/reflecting the others... That's a good way to think about work. And remember the notion of letting the work develop "of its own volition"--that is, where the discovery of what you make happens in the making... 

Also: Do be shooting a photo record of your projects each week. We'll discuss this next time. 

And a poem by Theodore Roethke (American, 1908-1963). I'm sending it because of how he writes as well as the subject. Note that I don't intend it to relate to LONG in any direct way. So read it independently--as something to reflect on--and as a beautiful  encouragement...


The Waking
Theodore Roethke 
 

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?   

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?   

God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there,   

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?   

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do   

To you and me; so take the lively air,   

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.   

What falls away is always. And is near.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

 
Theodore Roethke, “The Waking” from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Copyright 1953 by Theodore Roethke. Reprinted with the permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

Week 1: TOUCH‏

Martin Puryear

The word for this week: TOUCH

All the senses (including memory). Remember worked paper project from first night. Something made by hand, and discovered in the making...

Also to consider--Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet, passed away on Friday. Made me recall one of his early poems... It's good to read aloud. The physicality of the sound corresponds to the physicality of what he describes...

Digging 

Between my finger and thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

Here's a link to Heaney reading:  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177017 for the sound of his voice.

VS 280 Course Description

Visual Studies 280: Graduate Seminar
Fall 2013 / 1-3 units
Tuesday Evenings / 6-9:30pm / Room 170 Wurster
Anthony Dubovsky

This is a class about imagination and ideas. A road trip, perhaps—or a voyage. We begin each week with a theme—often a single word---as point of departure. Each person in the group does a project in response—a drawing, a painting, a collage—the medium is open. In the following class we look at the work, and a conversation ensues. And then, a new word.

Note that the hand is important throughout--how the sense of touch becomes a guide. This would suggest autographic media.

Following this format, the class develops a certain rhythm--a kind of opening. Not just in terms of skill (although skill can play a part), but more in finding the right visual language to give form to one’s feelings about and understanding of the surrounding world. A challenge that carries over into any of the design fields—and beyond….

Important: Since discussion is central to each class, students need to be fully confident in spoken English—both comprehension and conversation.

Required: One project each week, made with energy and commitment... Attendance at all class meetings, and a well-crafted book with reproductions of your work, including a short essay about your journey, due at the end of the term. Open to grad students and some seniors from all departments, but limited in enrollment to 12 students. This can be a good place to explore your initial thesis ideas. If you're interested, send Anthony Dubovsky an e-mail with a paragraph or two about yourself and your backgound in the arts, along with 2-3 jpegs of your work. Make sure your name is on each jpeg. Send before August 15, 2013 to the following email address: chambersstreet[at]hotmail.com.

Painting: Anthony Dubovsky, Outrigger (1960), polymer on cardboard, 2013