If Yeats Was a Bicycle
Not Duchamp…
Not Gertrude Stein…
Not cave art…
Not Klee…
Not Mary Poppins…
Not Yeats.
Well…possibly. With one of his gyres. Formulating A Vision.
http://www.yeatsvision.com/yeats.html
poemimage
The visual & the poetic.
Category: Visual Art
February 28, 2016
A Quote by Hermann Hesse & Spirals Rising Above the Street Once Laid Upon a Syrian City
“I have no right to call myself one who knows.
I was one who seeks,
and I still am,
but I no longer seek in the stars or in books;
I’m beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me.
My story isn’t pleasant,
it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories;
it tastes of folly and bewilderment,
of madness and dream,
like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
I digitally reconfigured Syrian street photos (from happier times) for non-commercial artistic purposes, photographed by Vatse: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?s=62af56d2f3036c7b81759a06c26b1f1d&t=993201
One might intuitively connect seemingly disparate elements, only later discovering threads of DNA sound (or something) opening further into a parallel, related world. For example, Hesse & Syria:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Gundert
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayalam_literature
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Thomas_Christians
February 16, 2016
A Divining Rod of Ancient Silver Divining Twin Streams
A divining rod of ancient silver divining the outlines of the future
A divining rod of ancient silver divining channels between flowers
A divining rod of ancient silver divining the stone wheel of memory
A divining rod of ancient silver divining the wind upon the fields
A divining rod of ancient silver divining the moons beneath the city
A divining rod of ancient silver divining the roots of wisdom fruit
A divining rod of ancient silver divining sea and Self, an ongoing dialogue between sea and Self
A divining rod of ancient silver divining social collapse
A divining rod of ancient silver divining twin streams:
Pottery: the Jomon (縄文) Period (Japan, c. 12,000-300 BCE) and William Blake (1794) England.
Religious calendar art showing Jesus with children and the iconographic image of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevera.
Many years ago I did a printmaking project in an elementary school. One of the students made a print of (what I thought was) a Central or South American religious deity. I was intrigued with the clay pots or possibly drums. Then I realized I was looking at it upside down. How odd such a cartoon, reversed, depicts an altogether different creature. Nothing about the ‘accidental’ image reflected the student’s cultural heritage.
Photographic still from the B movie ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space.’ And the Pietà, Michelangelo’s great work, in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Angelus Novus by Swiss-German artist Paul Klee & the exquisite Donna Summer modelling a gown.
A painting by Giotto and a photograph of the parachuting Russian pilot whose jet was shot down by Turkey. Photographed before being shot, as he floated to earth, by terrorists allied with Turkey.
Digital configuration of Blake’s art + Jomon pottery.
Neil Armstrong Apollo 11 spacesuit & the Shroud of Turin.
Goldfish and residential street in Toronto.
January 26, 2016
Transformation of a Document
The document exists within a moment. Perhaps a sweet moment.
And the moment exists within the skin of a document. Perhaps bitter.
Perhaps not. Yet you begin the undoing.
You unwrap this moment, and every moment you see. You can’t help yourself. This moment tastes like nothing you’ve tasted before.
You’ve been out there working in the dark too long. You can’t see a thing.
You say the darkness is naked and for the darkness you must undo all of the moments.
You document everything.
And now look at you, at the very beginning of your moments.
In my very early twenties I drew two ink drawings titled ‘Fragmentary Moments of Momentary Fragments’ and ‘Momentary Fragments of Fragmentary Moments.’ As you might imagine the drawings were very similar.
One of the images used in this digital composition is Ancient Household, a 1945 sculpture by David Smith. I find David Smith’s line (particularly in his early work) strangely comforting. He seems to suggests a reality we once knew.
& Also the Cathach of St. Columba, a 6th century Irish manuscript: https://www.ria.ie/library/catalogues/special-collections/medieval-and-early-modern-manuscripts/cathach-psalter-st
(detail)
The moments continue
January 21, 2016
A Small Experimental Drawing (and the law of intended consequences)
After visiting the JMW Turner exhibition for a second time at the Art Gallery of Ontario and wading through the busloads of students and groups of seniors from retirement/nursing homes I realized how fortunate I had been on Friday night when the place was half deserted. Possibly half full.
Again I am reminded of Turner’s grey. Vanishing yet insistent. Drawing the eye. Drawing the eye into. Possibly even halfway in.
Sometimes one is drawn by the air of an unexplored territory. Or summoned by insistent mystery. Summoned halfway into a vanishing mystery.
I focus on the brilliant whites in Turner’s work, and escape the crush, wandering into a drawing exhibition pulled from the print & drawing vaults.
Three of the works refresh anew my dilemma. I think of the Judge’s black robes.
I join a raiding party. The Captain’s name is Font. His horse is called Halfway.
The raiding party does not solve my crisis. Nevertheless I raise the end of a burnt stick from the fire.
Marking the edge of the law. My declaration marking the edge of the law.
There is no natural boundary to the embedded law of intended consequence.
Another edge must roll it back to where it came from. Or swallow it. Leaving its bones along the trail.
The edge of the sun!
The ambers, and whites, and Naples Yellow in Turner’s sky, radiating with silent resolution.
Let me tell you a story about Naples Yellow.
I visited an artist one night many years ago.
There are many stories to tell about that night but I will tell you this one.
When I was leaving, at the bottom of the stairs, the artist began talking about Naples Yellow.
And did not stop.
The artists, the art periods, the art movements involved with Naples Yellow.
The secret uses of Naples Yellow, The powers of Naples Yellow, the magic of Naples Yellow.
Perhaps Naples Yellow can solve my dilemma.
April 8, 2015
Letters From Attica [an excerpt] by Sam Melville (1934 – 1971) & the Frederic Rzewski Composition ‘Coming Together’
I think the combination of age and the greater coming together is responsible for the speed of the passing time.
it’s six months now and i can tell you truthfully few periods in my life have passed so quickly.
i am in excellent physical and emotional health.
there are doubtless subtle surprises ahead but i feel secure and ready.
As lovers will contrast their emotions in times of crisis, so am i dealing with my environment.
in the indifferent brutality, incessant noise, the experimental chemistry of food, the ravings of lost hysterical men, i can act with clarity and meaning.
i am deliberate–sometimes even calculating–seldom employing histrionics except as a test of the reactions of others.
i read much, exercise, talk to guards and inmates, feeling for the inevitable direction of my life.
Sam Melville (Letters From Attica)
Above is how the spelling appears on more than one site.
I narrated this text four years ago or so with professional musicians performing Frederic Rzewski’s Coming Together & Attica.
Sounding this text to the music was one of the most emotional things I’ve experienced: hypnotic, exhausting and exhilarating.
Frederic Rzewski selected this body of text for his composition.
A performance featuring narration by stage actor Steve Ben Israel with Frederic Rzewski on piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSuuwJFw4wU The video opens in a new window so you can follow the text here if you wish.
Credits and information about this recording: http://incessantnoise.blogspot.ca/2009/08/frederic-rzewski-coming-together.html
March 26, 2015
aeroplane
Experiments at the Hadron Collider
were perhaps on my mind
as I digitally revised
the image of a crowd
observing an early flying machine.
The serendipity of the moment
was surprising.
I realized I wanted
to add text.
The first page I turned to,
in the first book I opened,
a paperback I bought for one dollar
many years ago
titled
Cinema in Revolution,
mentioned the word aeroplane
almost immediately.
‘Generally speaking the character of the local people helped us a lot.
They are very sensible.
Nothing surprises them; they continued about their business
without paying any attention to the camera.
They did all the market scenes themselves,
at our request,
perfectly calmly and amiably
and exactly as we wanted.
They are really excellent people.
When we needed to collect a large number of them
together for the final scenes,
the aeroplane served as bait.
We offered them trips in the plane.
Well, as I say, nothing surprised them!
They saw an aeroplane for the first time in their lives,
and they got into it as calmly as might be –
a man must not show that he is frightened of anything.
As for the monks, the lamas, it was even more simple:
they said that all this had already existed long ago,
only men had not considered it useful,
so had forgotten it…
Pudovkin was very impressed by all this.
We made the film,
with a very strong feeling
for all its living material.’
Interview recorded in Moscow (1965)
with
Anatoli Goloynya – Cinematographer,
Storm Over Asia.
Page 149, Cinema in Revolution,
Hill and Wang, 1973.
Edited by Luda and Jean Schnitzer
and Marcel Martin.
Translated by David Robinson.
As a result of the Khrushchev cultural thaw
Russians were able to see the work
of the Soviet experimental filmmakers
for the first time
since they were suppressed
under Stalin.
Director Vsevolod Pudovkin’s 1928 film
Storm Over Asia
can be found on YouTube.
In 1848,
an archaeological expedition working in Egypt
discovered hieroglyphs of flying machines
at an ancient temple in Abydos,
several hundred miles south of Cairo.
I do not claim copyright to the original image
of spectators & the flying machine
(photographer unknown).
I have revised the image to create a new work
for non-commercial purposes.
March 4, 2015
‘Mythological Visions of the Nature of Time’ (William Irwin Thompson)
In the post-Pleistocene period the glaciers retreated,
the seashore rose 300 feet,
the tundra turned to forest,
and the great herds disappeared
from Western Europe.
And gone with the animals
was the great ‘high culture’
of Ice Age humanity.
It is not hyperbole
to speak of the high culture
of these hunters and gatherers,
for cave paintings like Lascaux
are complex works that speak rather eloquently
for the abundant leisure
and rich cosmology
of their creators.
Primitive humanity devoted
most of its spare time
to matters of ritual and art.
As a contemplative people with time on their hands,
they gave much thought to menstruation and the moon,
observed nature,
constructed a calendar,
told stories,
and painted hundreds of thousands
of images
on the walls
of the caves.
As the Sistine Chapel expresses
the flowering of the culture
of the Renaissance,
so Lascaux expresses the flowering
of the culture
of the Magdalenians.
In more ways than one,
the two great murals have much in common,
for they are not mere decoration;
they are mythological visions
of the nature of time.
‘The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light: Mythology, Sexuality & the Origins of Culture’ – William Irwin Thompson
February 20, 2015
A Golden Compass by Hafiz
Forget every idea of right and wrong
any classroom ever taught you
Because
an empty heart, a tormented mind,
Unkindness, jealousy and fear are always the testimony
you have been completely fooled!
Turn your back on those
who would imprison your wondrous spirit
with deceit and lies.
Come, join the honest company
of the King’s beggars –
those gamblers, scoundrels and divine clowns
and those astonishing fair courtesans
who need Divine Love every night.
Come, join the courageous
who have no choice
but to bet their entire world
that indeed,
indeed, God is Real.
I will lead you into the circle
of the Beloved’s cunning thieves,
those playful royal rogues–
the ones you can trust for true guidance–
who can aid you
In this blessed calamity of life.
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky
January 30, 2015
Yes
I did a drawing
And decided to call it
‘Yes’
Because there are so many reasons
To say
‘No.’
After an extended break I find myself slowly catching up with the many interesting posts I missed. A short while longer to finish some things (I haven’t really been taking an actual…holiday) and POEMIMAGE will be active again. It will be my pleasure to introduce you to many interesting poets and writers whose work I will be addressing visually. As well I’ll relate some of my own ideas and writing. I need to complete my end of the ‘Blog Hop’ bargain after Richard Guest generously shared my page with his readers. Thank you for gracing this page with your presence.
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