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??

art brut préféré aux arts culturels

In its entirety and in translation, here is Dubuffet's (& Compagnie d'Art Brut) essay from 1949:

"Anyone who undertakes, as we do, to look at the works of the Irregulars, will find his notion of the approved art of the museums, galleries and salons - let us call it cultural art - totally transformed. This type of approved art will not seem representative of art in general, rather merely the activity of a particular clique: a cohort of careerist intellectuals. What country lacks its small clique of cultural arts: its troop of careerist intellectuals? It is obligatory. From one capital to another, they ape each other marvelously; they practice an artificial, Esperanto art tirelessly copied everywhere. Is art the right word? Does it actually have anything to do with art?
It is fairly widely thought that in considering the artistic production of intellectuals one is at the same time grasping the flower of production in general, since intellectuals, being drawn from the common people, cannot lack any of their qualities, having rather those additional qualities acquired by wearing out their trousers on the schoolroom bench - without allowing for the fact that intellectuals think themselves by definition far more intelligent than ordinary people. But is this really so? One also meets plenty of people with far less favourable opinion of the intellectual type. The intellectual type seems to them directionless, impenetrable, lacking in vitamins, a swimmer in pap. Empty, without magnetism, without vision.
Perhaps the solid seat of the intellectual has been pulled out from under him. The intellectual's labours are always carried out while seated: at school, at conferences, at congresses. Often while dozing; sometimes while dead. Dead in one's seat. For a long time, intelligence has been highly valued. When one says of someone that they are intelligent, has not said everything? Nowadays people are growing disillusioned with this; they are beginning to demand other things. Intellectual qualities are less prized. People now value health and vitality. One can see that what was called intelligence is nothing more than a modicum of knowledge in the manipulation of simple, false and pointless algebraic formulae, having nothing to do with genuine vision (but rather obscuring it).
One cannot deny that on the level of vision, the light of the intellectuals is far from bright. The imbecile (or those the intellectual calls imbeciles) shows greater aptitude. It might even be that this vision gets worn out by the school benches, along with the seat of the intellectual's pants. Imbecile perhaps, but sparks fly from him, unlike Mr Grammar School, who doesn't spark at all. Good for the imbecile! He is our man! [...]
There are still people, particularly the intellectuals, who do not clearly see that the intelligent are hopeless cases, and one needs to rely on the so-called imbeciles for moments of lucidity; indeed, they just laugh at the idea. They cannot take the idea seriously.
The intellectual is of course crazy about ideas; he loves to chew them over, and cannot imagine any type of chewing gum.
One can with justification call art a chewing gum totally devoid of such ideas. One can sometimes lose sight of this. Ideas, and the algebra of ideas, may be a level of knowledge, but art is another means of knowledge, whose levels are completely different: they are those of vision. Ideas are an inert gas. It is when vision in blinded that the intellectual pops his head up.
Art exists to be a way of operating that does not involve ideas. When it is mixed with ideas, art becomes oxidized and worthless. Let there be as few ideas as possible! Ideas do not nourish art!
There are people (the present writer for example) who go so far to maintain that the art of these intellectuals is false art, the counterfeit currency of art, which is intricately ornamented but unsound.
Certainly the ornament is of some slight interest, but whether it sounds true is more interesting. Many slight works, brief, almost lacking form ring very loudly indeed; and for that reason they are preferable to many monumental works by illustrious professionals. It is enough for certain people just to tell them that the creator of a work is a professional artist, so that the spell is immediately broken. Amongst artists, as amongst card-players or lovers, professionals are a little like crooks. [...]
True art is never where it is expected to be: in the place where no one considers it, nor names it. Art hates to be recognized and greeted by its name; it runs away immediately. Art is a person in love with anonymity. As soon as it's unmasked, as soon as someone points the finger, it runs away. It leaves in its place a prize stooge wearing on its back a great placard marked ART, which everybody immediately showers with champagne, and which the lecturers lead from town to town with a ring through its nose. That is the false Art. That is the art that the public knows, the art of the prize and the placard. The real Mrs Art no one recognize. She walks everywhere, everyone has met her, jostled her at very junction, but no one thinks it could be her, Mrs Art herself, of whom so much has been said. She does not have the right air about her. You see, it is the false Mrs Art who has the air of being the true one; it is the real one who lacks this air. That means that one is deceived! So many people deceive themselves! It was in July 1945 that we undertook in both France and Switzerland, then in other countries, methodical research into the relevant ways of producing that which we now call Art Brut.
We understand by this works crated by those untouched by artistic culture; in which copying has little part, unlike the art of intellectuals. Similarly, the artists take everything (subjects, choice of materials, modes of transposition, rhythms, writing styles) from their own inner being, not from the canons of classical or fashionable art. We engage in an artistic enterprise that is completely pure, basic; totally guided in all its phases solely by the creator's own impulses. It is therefore an art which only manifests invention, not the characteristics of cultural art which are those of the chameleon and the monkey.
Before concluding this essay we want to say a word about the mad. Madness gives man wings and helps his power of vision; many of the objects (almost half) that our exhibition contains are works by people in psychiatric hospitals. We see no reason to segregate them, unlike others. All the numerous dealings that we have had with our friends have convinced us that the mechanisms of artistic creation are the same in them as in so-called normal people. This distinction between normal and abnormal seems to us to be quite far-fetched: who is normal? Where is he, your normal man? Show him to us! The artistic act, with the extreme tension that it implies, the high fever that accompanies it, can it ever be considered normal?
Finally, mental 'illness' are extremely diverse - there are almost as many of them as there are sick people - and it seems quite arbitrary to label them all in the same way. Our point of view is that art is the same in all cases, and there is no more an art of the mad than there is an art of the dyspeptic, or an art for those with bad knees.

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."

synthesizing notes II : michel thévoz

from Art Brut:

it's essential to understand that the original impulse to study & classify ArtBrut as such (Dubuffet et al) was an antagonistic gesture--against culture, against 'fine art proper.' Thévoz points out that the modernists' initial interest in ethnographic art was similarly motivated. however, where the fetishization of ethnographica sets up a false dichotomy between Occidental Art and that of the Other, ArtBrut attempts no such polarization.

naïves perhaps cannot be accused of mystification (of their work/lives), rather the art world is guilty of "mythification" of these artists who are "with only one foot" in fine art, and with the other very hesitant to move from surer ground.

while there is no visually apparent defining characteristic to l'art chez les fous, the circumstances under which it is created are unique (life in l'asile vs la réalité):
*Thévoz compares life in the asylum to that of semi-somnambulance...the outside world ceases to be at all pertinent, and one undergoes an marked decline in ability to conceptualize reality.
*he also suggests that those interned were already existing on the cultural margins. they'd most likely not "paid the ransom (ie sold their creative innocence) to acquire the finesse of abstract-thinking, technical mastery," etc.
*the asylum also strips the interned of all reason to adhere to the structures of finite time and socially mandated behavioral limitations.

this is just a nice idea : "one may choose to 'émajusculer' reality rather than immasculating the Ego."

james ensor

what more is there to say about james ensor, really?
the show, previously in New York, is now on view at the Musée d'Orsay.

everything is words and things

stephanie syjuco's booth



thought provoking figures



provocative words (+ intervention) . click image for large view

london times

transcribed from journal:

" everywhere is sufficient. i mean it's probably possible to call anywhere 'home' as long as you leave often enough. the alternative perhaps would be to just never settle in anywhere. to be constantly on your toes and invigorated by, but enervated by your environs. that's really no way to live. and so we venture out every once in a while. clearly, the impulse to travel is manifold, for everyone. and i'll not be one to assume i know your motives, or anyone's... or quite frankly my own really. however, perhaps it's possible to simplify it into two impulses: on the one hand, we leave to fortify our connection to whatever place that is (or person, or emotion, etc) we call 'home.' on the other hand, traveling, leaving one's comfort zone is also perhaps a good test of one's wits. (as noted in previous blog entry) to expand on that, i think i meant that it's part of testing our selves (whomever we are at home) out in a non-familiar environment. and concomittantly the inverse--the non-familiar environment offers souvenirs {i'd always imagined this as getting stuck in brambles, or rolling down grassy hills...you bring all sorts of surprises back with you}.

everyone gets a souvenir! like it or not. your time away from 'home' will have a residual effect on your future interactions with 'home.' the very first time i went to California was in 1998. i distinctly remember wanting to maintain that California-ness {i think i'd called it the glow} upon my return to Pittsburgh. having visited half a dozen times since, and coming down from three years living there, i'm still quite sure there's no word to describe 'having been psychically affected by living in California.' and i was. and i remember after returning to pittsburg, how in the days and weeks that followed, something died...or faded rather. the light. and. because i could never figure out what it was, it remained impossibly irresurrectible.

i don't intend to suggest that one would ever think to venture off to some alien environ in hopes of becoming affected--though maybe this happens too--i'm just reflecting.

in the end, i was correct in presuming that a trip out of Paris might do me some good. getting there, or rather, getting together the means to get there, was in itself a day of traveling and tribulation. after a day and a half (literally 15 hours) of scouring ticket websites, kelbillet, and similar sites, i found the facebook-eurostar ticket exchange group and hooked up with two brits living in France, who'd found themselves stuck with extra passes. all told, the extra effort saved me a few hundred euro, though planning a month in advance would have done just as well. i'll spare you the gory details of waking up at too-too early & spending hours, cell-phone-less, attempting to rendez-vous with this chick.


friday night, around 8:30, i linked up with a dear friend from Philly days. you can see his blog at thevanities.org. a charming and brilliant cabbie gave me a lift from the station to Tottenhamcourt, where Will'd hunkered down for the moment. we had some drinks, caught up, and rounded out the evening at some norwegan metal pub.

saturday at the frieze fair: my eyeballs ache just to think of it. what is it about convention hall lights? that dry out the eyes, induce headaches, and wash out everyone's skin? the booths' rubber carpeting was pleasant: grey, cushioned, non-slip.









about the art:

if you have the means, i highly recommend going to marianne boesky gallery to see the Barnaby Furnas'. or buy one--they'd sold out the booth by saturday though.


claire fontaine . (period)

i'd like to propose an open forum on the works of Turner-Prize nominee Roger Hiorns. while i'm fairly certain i could fabricate some cleverly construed criticism of this work, i'm not entirely convinced by it. i mean, because i could argue either way--in 20 directions really--and truly believe my own words. by far, the most beautiful aspect of the piece on exhibit was it's ghostly remains on the gallery floor. briefly, the Hiorns involved a soap bubble extruding compressor and wire. the bubbles, extruded vertically, from a 4" diam. tube, tower precariously above the viewer. they eventually topple over--when they do, the bubbles leave behind a sea green residue on the carpet. here's a much larger version:

Bill Woodrow's Electric Fire with Yellow Fish
it's hard to see here, but the fish is cut from the heater itself. every once in a great long while you come across a work of art like this. one that reminds you why you got into this racket in the first place.

later, much later, i went with some friends to a gallery party at le moustache II, where i drank a bit (much) whiskey and apparently professed my love for Matthew Higgs (in the way that i love, say, Cyndi Lauper, or SpongeBob...as a fan). anyway, the gaggle of curator-ladies i arrived with and i danced the night away and had a grand old time."