synthesizing notes: honor to savage values

from Dubuffet's text Honneur aux Valeurs Sauvages:

in reference to the artistic creation, in general, Dubuffet states:
"il faut qu'il soit une projection immédiate de ces humeurs de l'artiste..." 
if we assume that there is little advance consideration of developing a well-rounded and cohesive oeuvre--by the ArtBrutists--during the actual creation of the works, the artist then is free to change.  and we must assume that the artists' temperment must necessarily change from day to day...so if there is no professional motivation underlying, one is truly free to be one's expressive-self-in-constant-flux.

"l'art consiste essentiellement dans cette exteriorisation des movements d'humeur les plus intimes, les plues profondément intérieurs de l'artiste."
Dubuffet continues this thought stating that this exteriorization of the deepest essential self will be recongnized by those seeing the art and the we will recognize that psychically we are the same (as the mad, or the psychically free, rather); we possess the same essence, compulsions, and inner-workings.

"we look for an artist who explodes away the surface layers, revealing all those glimmering beneath."

and sometimes we as artists do not realize we've been knocked-up by someone else' ideas, aesthetics.  the bastard art we call our own, not realizing it's been tainted by some outside forces to which we'd not seen we were susceptible.

an artist--argues Dubuffet, in regards to those interned in mental hospitals--needs solitude, perhaps a bit of boredom, to find in himself the drive and the will to create.  in the absence of other excitations, he will fabricate his own "théâtre de fêtes et d'echantements."

"tous les méchanismes qui fonctionnent chez le fou existent aussi chez le sain, et ils sont l'un et l'autre bien plus semblables qu'ils ne le croient--ou du moins que ne le croit celui-ce qui prétend être sain"
my translation follows:
all the mechanisms that function in the crazy also exist in the sane, and the are both more similar than they believe--or at least less so than those who pretend to be sane are willing to believe.


on the artist Aloïse, whom will undoubtedly be revisited in detail, in future entries...

the figures with blued-out eyes in Aloïse' drawings are often mis-construed to be representative of masked persons.  rather, they are blind to the reality into which their portraits gaze, for the simple fact that they don't exist in it.  in addition to bluing out the eyes, the figures are further removed from reality by Aloïse' negation of a continuous narrative consistent between the thousands of images.  though, some narrative may be perceived from one page to the next, the absence of any continuous logic frees her oeuvre from such banal requirements.  and further, it insists on a certain timelessness, impermanence, and irrationality as its rules, rather than its exceptions.

Dubuffet, unconvinced of Aloïse' acting mad--though her sever autism is documented in other writings-- says that one mustn't lose sight of the fact that one who's given themselves over entirely to madness has, at least in some small part, done so voluntarily.

Foucault, who we'll revisit in a few days, says in Madness and Civilization "madness is the déja-là of death... what death unmasks was never more than a mask...from the vain mask to the corpse, the same smile persists.  but when the madman laughs, he already laughs with the laugh of death."

pre-text to yesterday's post (re:PALANC)

it should have been noted, in yesterday's post, that all quotes and references therein were taken from Dubuffet's Prospectus et tous écrits suivants Vol. I .  and it should also be noted that Thévoz also discusses PALANC in his writing Art Brut.

so i'd like to premise yesterday's post with two brief explanations. firstly, i'd like to elucidate why i'm personally drawn to les écritures des gens fous.  secondly, i ought to explain further the connection made between Foucault & PALANC, and their ideas about words and things.

to begin with the second agenda first, because, why not? here's a bit of writing i've done on the subject of words & things and Deleuze & Foucault, which should help a bit :

In Gilles Deleuze’ essay Strata or Historical Formations, he argues that speaking is not seeing (and seeing is not speaking). This is a reference to Michel Foucault’s concept that although statements and visibilities are primary and irreducible utterances, there is not necessarily any system of causality between the two, nor is there any transferable symbolism.  Deleuze explains that the object of a statement is specific to that particular statement alone.  It can neither be transferred to another statement nor can it be transferred to the visible object to which it ostensibly refers. The lack of direct causality between articulable elements and visibilities evinces their truly independent existences. They effect each other indirectly, modulating the threshold of tension that binds their relationship.    

He then argues that the visible qualities of an object are exclusively related to its sensual experience; the articulable elements exclusively relate to the supportive text or dialogue. And that which is addressed in the form of text/statement creates its own correlative object within the text (the object of the statement is particular to that statement).  The visible qualities of an object evoke a visceral response (particular to an experience of an object). Because they are so very self-specific, or collapsed, they are each subject to their own revelatory limitations.

and in relation to my own work:

Rene Magritte suggests, “thought is what sees and can be described visibly.” In this, thought, an action, assumes a form.  Deleuze employs Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas un pipe as an example of an artwork that exacerbates the limits of articulable and visible things.  Ceci est incroyable in its com-possible relation of words and things.  In Consumption I, I attempt to “exacerbate that thin little line separating text from figure.”   

The piece consists of eight 4 x 6 foot dry-erase boards, almost entirely blacked-out with hand-drawn text in dry-erase ink.  The textual content ranges from Mixtape + Maussian gift-exchange, to the Limits of Rebellion in the Arts, to Spitwad Theory, and each text is approximately eight pages when typed.  The content, though deadly serious, analytical, and accented with dorky wit, is intimidatingly densely penned and difficult to read (a six foot long sentence is hard to follow).  Up close, it’s possible to read in the speed-reading method: scanning an amorphous area of text for content, rather than following entire sentences.  

From afar, the text forms grey waves on the white surface—Agnes Martin or Bridget Riley drawings come to mind.  And true to formalist sculpture, the object itself is intimidating.  Hung higher, and encompassing greater surface area than the human body, the text-on-board is elevated beyond its word-on-page/computer screen status.  Beyond decorating the surface of the object with text, as I’d intended, the text adds value-in-content to the object, and the object magnifies the potential power of the written word.  And as if this dialogue between viewer and text-covered object weren’t already confrontational, the ink of course is impermanent.  The reader is tempted (taunted) by this realization. 

 Dubuffet's chapter on PALANC concludes with a transcription of Palanque's text on Autogéométrie, which if i understand it correctly, is basically a set of instructions on how to draw with one's entire body, mind, and spirit simultaneously.  apparently, Palanque used a large black table to draw with both arms simultaneously on one sheet of paper.  he stresses understanding the difference between "la geste règle" and "le gest compas." and the attitudes of gestures : "curved," or "straight."  and the process of drawing (writing really) becomes a sort of metaphysical gymnastical exercise.  
he says (my translation):

All these reunited disciplines are a psychophysical treatment.
All the gestures, following their attitudes, their drives, their regularity, their precision, influence the physical and mental well-being. 

also, there are 17 published "poèmes géométriques," by Palanque.  when i've found and read them, i promise you'll be the first to know!

la closerie falbala

saturday afternoon, at 14:30, we arrived at the Closerie Falballa-- the site itself is in Périgny-Sur-Yerres, approximately 2 hours by train/bus/walk from centre-ville Paris.


i went with Edith, from Austria, who's last name, i've lost track of at the moment. it's not that i'm so forgetful--see, Edith was here this weekend visiting my friend Miriam Bajtala, who fell ill and couldn't come along with us. and so, it was just the two of us strangers...either way, Edith is the one person i've met in my time here that shares the same interest in ArtBrut, and specifically art of the insane. and so we had a lot to say to one another. we'd talked most of the way there about what we'd been reading, what we were making in our studios, and why it was relevant at all to read about art brut at this point in our histories. we agreed that it was particularly in effort to unlearn everything piled-on in art school, and in effort to unlearn critical thinking.

the closerie falbala was executed between 1971-1973 by Dubuffet and a team of technicians. it's quite a grand accomplishment, and is representative of the Hourloupe Cycle for which he's most known. the site is nestled away in the woods, and was damp and slippery with wet leaves when we arrived. the Closerie, the garden-simulacrum is just large enough to feel like a site, once you're in it, but not so grand as to feel like a park, say, and is larger than monumental sculpture--or more inviting anyway. and our group numbered about 10 people--two families, including a set of talkative toddlers, and locals from the banlieu. i'll update this post with pictures soon, but what was really most striking about being there, navigating this undulating, black and white terrain, was watching the way in which the groups' shapes and colors interacted with the piece. imagine this: a blond woman in fur coat, 50ish, stockings, and 3 inch heels with a toddler modifies her movements to the terrain and to the child run-amok. i mean at first you'd think the site seems out of place (stark white and black on earth-tones). within the closerie, you realize we the visitors are quite out of place there--tripping, wobbling around, and interrupting each others' views of the work with our brightly colored, awkward bodies.

the interior of the Closerie-the Villa Falbala- is warm, carpeted, and silent. it reeks of laquer and styrofoam, and is a claustrophobic's worst nightmare. the interior motif is blue and white and black (where the exterior is white and black), and for all its cavernous qualities, it's close and calm and very still. within the Villa Falbala is housed the Cabinet Logologique (completed between 1967 and 1969. it's made entirely of carved styrofoam slabs, vinyl based paint, and laquer....hence the odor. if not for the smell, it'd be possible perhaps to live there, in awe of the thing for months. unfortunately photography is not permitted. but if i were to attempt to paint you a picture of what i'd witnessed i'd begin thusly: imagine the linear intensity of Jackson Pollock's splatter paintings, four of them, measuring 20 x 20 feet each in very close quarters, forming a room. though, Dubuffet's lines demark 2D spaces with some intentionality, and within the spaces themselves live small terrains, and the individual terrains converse with one another across the grander space. and the colors of each line and each space are also in conversation. and we were there with three toddlers who, like us, were completely in awe and completely optically over-stimulated . and, the most remarkable things happen to non-archival substances over so much time: you'd never imagine what on earth the medium was--it'd yellowed so much that maybe it was marble, or papier- mache. and the combination of the yellowing and the boldness of the painted primary colors was so ecstatically perfect. and you know, i'm not biased at all...

Dubuffet says of the Cabinet Logologique:
"My work preceding this cycle creates sinuous graphics responding with immediacy to spontaneous and, so to speak, uncontrolled impulses of my hand which traces them. These graphics start uncertain, fleeting, ambiguous figures. Their movement unclenches in the spirit that finds itself in their presence a " suractivation " of the faculty of seeing in their tangles all sorts of objects which make and unmake themselves as the eye moves, thus aligning intimately the transitory and the permanent, the real and the deceptive. It results in (...) a grasp of conscience of the illusionary character of the world we believe to be real, to which we call the real world. "


the site across the road houses the CouCou Bazar, a grand selection of Dubuffet's earlier paintings, the maquettes for Closerie, and several large sculptures from the Hourloupe Cycle.

and it is with apologies that this post comes almost a week after the fact. j'avais la Grippe (the flu) since visiting last saturday. c'est pas la Grippe H1N1, peut-etre la Grippe Dubuffet??

synthesizing notes III : Michel Thévoz

from Art Brut, psychose et médiumnité:

Dubuffet believed that the most cultured people were the 'everymen,' those who found high culture intimidating.
He said of his own work, in an interview, "I seek to paint like everyone--like the everyman."
The interviewer is baffled.
"I am the only one in the world who paints like everyone," he explained.
(note : Sartre's 'serial alterity // passive activity // recurrence)

Baudelaire : "Genius is infancy revisited at will." (+ perhaps the capacity to play one's alter-egos, those perhaps retired since childhood)

Foucault : "la maladie mentale est comme une archéologie de la libido."

Feyerabend : "they must make an oneiric world to discover the characteristics of the real world"... (de la délire heuristique)

Dubuffet : "il n'y a que de l'art psychopathologique."

Thévoz : "la teneur artistique d'une oeuvre est en raison même de sa déraison."

Nietzsche : "si on voulait la santé, on supprimerait le génie."

Thévoz : "The theory of mediumnity adequatly reflects, or in each case is symptomatic of, the condition of the damned of Earth in search for their soul."

Augustin Lésage

Thévoz argues that spiritism/occultism is at base "psychology projected on the exterior world." unless we believe mediumistic practices actually channel the dead, we must believe that the medium is both author and 'reader' of the received messages. by displacing ownership of the messages received, the medium is freer to express 'pulsionnel' aspects of his being--those perhaps previously sublimated by the author.

et jadis,
le Platon dit que "les plus beaux poèmes épiques ne sont pas les effets de l'art de poète, mais d'un état d'inspiration et de possession. Tel poète sera possédé par telle Muse, telle par telle autre."

translation:
Plato says : "the most beautiful epic poems are not the effects of the poet's own artistry, but the state of inspiration (that comes from) possession. this poet will be possessed by this muse, each by each other."

hibernating and so...

My sincerest apologies to my fans, both of you, for my absence in the past few days. i've been reading, nesting, meditating on this new place.

what is it that happens exactly when a place transforms from 'strange and new' to something more akin to 'home?' it doesn't happen so suddenly i suppose--not overnight anyway. i mean, don't get me wrong, i'm not yelling "I OWN THIS TOWN" from the rooftops or anything. not yet, anyway. but you know what i mean. at some point, you stop getting lost all the time. it's easier to spot the tourists, not to get bowled over in foot-traffic in the metro, and you feel ok about the bakery lady being brusque... 'cause she's just like that. nothing personal. exact change makes her day.

but at the same time, that transition from alien-to-home, there's something discomfiting about it. it's perhaps why residencies are generally a month or so. just enough time for one to be wildly thrown off course and, while regrouping, sort some things out in the studio. that "fight or flight" gene kicks in and you make stuff of pure gut. the newness of place puts a good fear in you, i think.
..and you might guess from my tone here that i'm fearful of it wearing off in the coming weeks. but, quite the contrary! it's cold outside! i'm pleased to have found a home in my studio surrounded by books i've been dying to read! i swear to you.

tomorrow, i'm hoping to make it to london for frieze art fair. i naïvly imagined the eurostar train was something like amtrak: not inexpensive, yet not wildly overpriced. it's unfortunately the latter. and, as both of you know by now, there is no Chinatown bus to London. who knew? that said, we'll see.
plan b means going to la Closerie Falbala, which is arguably Jean Dubuffet's magnum opus. it's a private site about an hour and a half out of Paris. there are some photos of the site here. I'm also hoping to visit the Tiffany Lamps exhibition here in town, as well as the graffiti photography exhibition at the Cartier Foundation. but, we'll see how the chips fall. stay tuned...