arrangements

"...Diogenes Laertius, author of the hugely influential Lives of Eminent Philosophers from the third century AD, tells a fascinating story of Thales, usually considered to be the first philosopher.

     He held that there was no difference between life and death.  'Why then,' said one, 'do you not die?'

     'Because,' said he, 'there is no difference.'

To be a philosopher, then, is to learn how to die; it is to being to cultivate the appropriate attitude towards death.  As Marcus Aurelius writes, it is one of 'the noblest functions of reason to know whether it is time to walk out of the world or not.'  Unknowing and uncertain, the philosopher walks."

Simon Critchley,  The Book of Dead Philosophers

As an artist I am constantly searching for books that encourage my work; this might be in the sense of simply encouraging me to work through an idea in the studio, directly on paper or in 3-D; or it might be something that inspires thinking, processing, and observation of my surroundings in a new way.  Though there are glimpses of this in art writing--and good writing is certainly more prevalent with more access to art writing through blogs and social networking--I am typically left uninspired by art-specific texts.  I feel guilty saying it, but we need more and better writing concerning art and the ideas associated with it--beyond criticism and history, we need more solid and understandable theoretical writings about art that provide a structure for studio artists.

I can vividly recall meeting the painter Derrick Buisch during undergraduate studies and looking for any sort of recommendations in terms of texts.  I worked in the library and had access to copies of texts that my painting professor had on reserve at the library all of the time.  I think I explicitly asked Derrick him what art books he was reading--and he told me that he didn't really read art books.  He preferred books like Italo Calvino's  Six Memos for the Next Millennium and Bachelard's The Poetics of Space.  Since that point in 1999 or so, my outlook on what texts support my studio practice drastically changed.  It had opened up to a daunting range of texts and ideas that was fueled by graduate school.  I am admittedly not a good reader, but I need to have access to books and their ideas and at least have an understanding of what a book could contribute to, and books and texts are at the absolute foundation of my studio practice.  Nothing would get done without them.

I still find books outside of the spectrum of art books to be incredibly interesting.  One reason for fewer theoretical/metaphysical books on contemporary art might be because of our reliance, as a profession, on interdisciplinary studies--making it difficult to produce books that are simultaneously narrow in focus and applicable to many different people's studio practice.

My newest book discovery is The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley.  It is a book entirely posed as recounting the deaths of famous philosophers which is oddly humorous, witty, and intelligent. What is perhaps most important about this book to my studio practice are the ideas of how we deal with death, both in society, as an idea, and what is a result of these dealings.  It led me to three simply stated questions that relate to other ideas presented in this blog, translating what I've read so far from the book into an art-based line of questioning:

1)  As an act of contribution to culture, does art making memorialize the artist?

2)  Is art making, then, an act of defying death?  (I'm thinking here of Joyce, who reportedly wanted to write a book so complex it would take many lifetimes for it to be 'solved', giving him a sort of immortality.)

3)  Can this give meaning to art making that transcends the commodification of it?

Certainly all culture and its contributions can be commodified, but I am wondering if its supreme purpose might exceed any meaning given to it because of its commodification.  I.e. is an artwork as a memorial of an artist its most important trait, and commodification (or its value, or its place in museums) purely coincidence?

More to come...stay tuned.