about critique

[bee]

I don't know enough to judge its real artisitc merit but I enjoy the piece very much. It's possible that I am influenced by reading parts of Alison Lapper's recently published autobiography.

C2- Saddens me-if you can't judge the artistic merits-by means of what do you enjoy the piece? If you are enjoying, because your are influenced by reading-than it is a totally different area of art, what you've enjoyed is -literature. Seems to me, that enjoyment of yours comes trough propaganda, ideology-idea? Has is fact nothing to do with the quality of particular piece of artistic attempt. Remains me of the works of the 3. Reich, with heroic soldiers-the idea was-the war propaganda. Same here-no artistic quality-but ideology, just different. Same thing-propaganda tool.
Still, I hope, you are kidding.

[~greg]

One, perhaps, of maybe half a dozen "peak experiences" of my life
(-- and unfortunately people don't talk like that anymore.
As

That's the story of my life
That's the difference between wrong and right
But Billy said:
Both those words are dead.

- that's the story of my life.

)
was discovering (maybe on mescaline) Abraham Menashe's "Inner Grace"
http://www.humanistic-photography.com/g ... eIntro.htm

~---~

Also, about the cleaning up of the after-birth in the afterdark
that inevitably comes after the afterglow, that inevitably comes after
making stuff up,

-- William James ( perhaps = Lou Reed's "Billy"? ) wrote about it earlier,
and quite famously, maybe even first:

Hogamous, Higamous,
Man is polygamous.
Higamous, Hogamous,
Woman is monogamous.

and realized, while reading it back the next day,
that it wasn't quite the all encompassing ultimate truth that it seemed to him to be
the day before.

And for James, relative to any one of his sober insights, that's certainly true.

But for the average dude it's a bad example. Because the average
dude encountering James' Higamous Hogamous the first time,
invariably thinks it's just about the highest, and deepest,
insight they've even seen into the MOIA (- or Meaning-Of-It-All.)

James of course also produced much more typical examples
of the same sort of thing:

...
I have sheet after sheet of phrases dictated or written during the intoxication,
which to the sober reader seem meaningless drivel, but which at the moment
of transcribing were fused in the fire of infinite rationality.
...
Let me transcribe a few sentences:

What's mistake but a kind of take?
What's nausea but a kind of -usea?
Sober, drunk, -unk, astonishment.
Everything can become the subject of criticism -- how criticise without something to criticise?
Agreement -- disagreement!!
Emotion -- motion!!!
By God, how that hurts! By God, how it doesn't hurt! Reconciliation of two extremes.
By George, nothing but othing!
That sounds like nonsense, but it's pure onsense!
Thought much deeper than speech...!
Medical school; divinity school, school! SCHOOL! Oh my God, oh God; oh God!

The most coherent and articulate sentence which came was this:
There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
...

[ http://www.resort.com/~banshee/Info/N2O ... .mind.html ]

[lizzytysh]

Dear Greg ~

Thank you for offering the link to Abraham Menashe's very moving photo exhibition. It's titled well. For awhile, I worked with developmentally-disabled people, and the purity and brilliance of their inner spirit would so often put that of many, non-developmentally-disabled people to shame. There were some who were prone to violence and it was necessary to be physically circumspect when in their vicinity, but the majority were gentle souls with an amazing capacity to experience enjoyment, pleasure, and joy with guileless abandonment. It was, at once, both awesome and inspiring.

Some of those in these photos remind me of people who were on my caseload, as well as others in the group homes and day-care centers I would visit. One really can't imagine how rewarding interaction with these folks can be until it's actually experienced. I have so many, different memories of beautiful spontaneity and sharing. After I left that job, I tried to talk a male friend into going with me on Christmas Eve to play the guitar and sing for them. I knew, from knowing how they are, and knowing him and his musical ability, that it would have been one of those 'peak experiences' for everyone. However, I was just unable to convince him.

It's ironic how people produce photographs, paintings, and sculptures of beautiful, 'visually pleasing' subjects ~ and no one accuses them of being condescending or exploiting the subjects; or, in the case of [for example] a beautiful photo of two lovers, the subject of love; or being condescending for paying tribute to the state of being physically 'uncrippled.' No one accuses them of anything. The piece of art is simply admired and lauded for its beauty.

Yet, to find beauty in the depiction of someone in a natural state of pregnancy, someone who happens to have a disability, is conversely considered suspect, tasteless, and horrible ~ somehow, ugly. It has to be dismissed as propaganda and ideology. Simple acceptance of beauty being found in many things, I guess, is just too simple.

"Please don't pass me by . . . "

~ Lizzy

[Critic2]

I don't know enough to judge its real artisitc merit but I enjoy the piece very much. It's possible that I am influenced by reading parts of Alison Lapper's recently published autobiography.

C2- Saddens me-if you can't judge the artistic merits-by means of what do you enjoy the piece? If you are enjoying, because your are influenced by reading-than it is a totally different area of art, what you've enjoyed is -literature. Seems to me, that enjoyment of yours comes trough propaganda, ideology-idea? Has is fact nothing to do with the quality of particular piece of artistic attempt. Remains me of the works of the 3. Reich, with heroic soldiers-the idea was-the war propaganda. Same here-no artistic quality-but ideology, just different. Same thing-propaganda tool.
Still, I hope, you are kidding.

I enjoy it because the shape is pleasing above all, the texture appears attractive, the way it makes me reflect on the difference between her life and a more normal life. Many people in society are scared of "the different" and their fear emerges as hostility.

I am surprised you think "propaganda" is a possibility for my appreciation. So strange you compare it to war hero thinking. Trafalgar Square is the home of such persons, Nelson of course.

It succeeds as a piece for me because I look at it and enjoy it and I feel stimulated by it as well. The limitations I mentioned before were an acknowledgement that I have no training in this area and it could, for all I know, be technically not well accomplished.

[Critic2]

in the case of [for example] a beautiful photo of two lovers, the subject of love; or being condescending for paying tribute to the state of being physically 'uncrippled.' No one accuses them of anything. The piece of art is simply admired and lauded for its beauty.

Yet, to find beauty in the depiction of someone in a natural state of pregnancy, someone who happens to have a disability, is conversely considered suspect, tasteless, and horrible ~ somehow, ugly. It has to be dismissed as propaganda and ideology. Simple acceptance of beauty being found in many things, I guess, is just too simple.

"Please don't pass me by . . . "

~ Lizzy

beautifully expressed.

it takes so little effort to find beauty in the conventional good looks of a "super-model", you can see it with your eyes closed.

but you need to actually open your eyes and your mind to find it in the case of someone with a disability- far too much trouble for most people.

[Critic2]

One, perhaps, of maybe half a dozen "peak experiences" of my life
(-- and unfortunately people don't talk like that anymore.
As

That's the story of my life
That's the difference between wrong and right
But Billy said:
Both those words are dead.

- that's the story of my life.

)
was discovering (maybe on mescaline) Abraham Menashe's "Inner Grace"
http://www.humanistic-photography.com/g ... eIntro.htm

~---~

Also, about the cleaning up of the after-birth in the afterdark
that inevitably comes after the afterglow, that inevitably comes after
making stuff up,

-- William James ( perhaps = Lou Reed's "Billy"? ) wrote about it earlier,
and quite famously, maybe even first:

Hogamous, Higamous,
Man is polygamous.
Higamous, Hogamous,
Woman is monogamous.

and realized, while reading it back the next day,
that it wasn't quite the all encompassing ultimate truth that it seemed to him to be
the day before.

And for James, relative to any one of his sober insights, that's certainly true.

But for the average dude it's a bad example. Because the average
dude encountering James' Higamous Hogamous the first time,
invariably thinks it's just about the highest, and deepest,
insight they've even seen into the MOIA (- or Meaning-Of-It-All.)

James of course also produced much more typical examples
of the same sort of thing:

...
I have sheet after sheet of phrases dictated or written during the intoxication,
which to the sober reader seem meaningless drivel, but which at the moment
of transcribing were fused in the fire of infinite rationality.
...
Let me transcribe a few sentences:

What's mistake but a kind of take?
What's nausea but a kind of -usea?
Sober, drunk, -unk, astonishment.
Everything can become the subject of criticism -- how criticise without something to criticise?
Agreement -- disagreement!!
Emotion -- motion!!!
By God, how that hurts! By God, how it doesn't hurt! Reconciliation of two extremes.
By George, nothing but othing!
That sounds like nonsense, but it's pure onsense!
Thought much deeper than speech...!
Medical school; divinity school, school! SCHOOL! Oh my God, oh God; oh God!

The most coherent and articulate sentence which came was this:
There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
...

[ http://www.resort.com/~banshee/Info/N2O ... .mind.html ]

Greg, as ever, your research is superb.

bee, sorry, I will master the quotey thing, as promised!

[bee]

C2- You have to master that quotey thing, dear sir-you've been littering in cyberspace!

[Critic2]

C- Yo hae to mater hat uotey hing, dar ir-yo ben ring n cybepace! :ry:

I think I have mastered it! I have edited your post. is that what you advised?

[Critic2]

C2- You have to master that quotey thing, dear sir-you've been littering in cyberspace!

anyway bee, I have a grudge against you as ever since I noticed you have stolen my team's nickname we have not won a match, lost again today. don't try and deny that it is your fault, ok.

[bee]

Dear Greg and C2- Just some simple questions-why is "craft" a taboo word in the fine arts, while in literature it has continued to be a requirement that is taken for granted? Neither of you two would demonstrate a piece of literature by abandoning its medium, no matter what noble idea you prefer to express-suffering of a crippled person, heroism of that person etc. The individual, poet, " life" cannot posses itself in any other way than passing beyond itself into world of forms, by abandoning itself to it.
C2- you would beat a lousy poet with a broomstick to death, if they would use the word "soul" to describe the soul in their poems. Why would you think, that it is OK for a sculptor in order to show a "heroism" or just perhaps simply longing, desire of a women without hands, to hold and feel a baby in her hands? Should the sculptor express that very humanistic idea and tragedy of individual, in a form of a badly composed and badly crafted form of naked women without hands, abandoning the requirements of his medium? If a poet would sign up for such a bankruptcy of imagination, you would scream a roar. If I, as a reader would say-Oh, I enjoyed it very much, because there was that wonderful idea of a longing for motherhood in a crippled women's soul-you would smile sadly and say, well, whatyougonnado. I've seen how much you poets have to labor, to find the images expressing ideas. Sculptors and painters had same tasks for centuries. If you marvel at Marcel Proust, why are you cheering for a Hallmark card quality in sculpture?
I know.

[bee]

C2- I knew I've done something wrong-

you have stolen my team's nickname we have not won a match, lost again today.

[Critic2]

Dear Greg and C2- Just some simple questions-why is "craft" a taboo word in the fine arts, while in literature it has continued to be a requirement that is taken for granted? Neither of you two would demonstrate a piece of literature by abandoning its medium, no matter what noble idea you prefer to express-suffering of a crippled person, heroism of that person etc. The individual, poet, " life" cannot posses itself in any other way than passing beyond itself into world of forms, by abandoning itself to it.
C2- you would beat a lousy poet with a broomstick to death, if they would use the word "soul" to describe the soul in their poems. Why would you think, that it is OK for a sculptor in order to show a "heroism" or just perhaps simply longing, desire of a women without hands, to hold and feel a baby in her hands? Should the sculptor express that very humanistic idea and tragedy of individual, in a form of a badly composed and badly crafted form of naked women without hands, abandoning the requirements of his medium? If a poet would sign up for such a bankruptcy of imagination, you would scream a roar. If I, as a reader would say-Oh, I enjoyed it very much, because there was that wonderful idea of a longing for motherhood in a crippled women's soul-you would smile sadly and say, well, whatyougonnado. I've seen how much you poets have to labor, to find the images expressing ideas. Sculptors and painters had same tasks for centuries. If you marvel at Marcel Proust, why are you cheering for a Hallmark card quality in sculpture?
I know.

excellent point and well made. but I can't recognise Hallmark qualities in sculpture. my steak in it is a medium rare. so what I want to know is do you actually find this work artistically poor. I'd be interested to learn from your view. here, opinion is pretty divided on its merit although I think some no-voters are just bigots in disguise but perhaps counterbalancing certain bleedin' heart liberal yes-voters, and I am deffo. one of those)

yet I still find it a very pleasing work, so what you gonna do with me? curiously my co-empathiser, Lizzy, the other day actually liked the imagery of the next room hotel dweller observing Leonard Cohen's cigarette ash, whereas I found it cringingly awful. I then conceded that was just taste.


regards

mike

ps yes iI know I know editing thingy cyberwaste etc....

pps proof of your wicked spell on Barnet

http://www.barnetfc.premiumtv.co.uk/pag ... 19,00.html

[bee]

"Without a program or commentary, the eye is no longer satisfied; it has abdicated as an organ of enlightenment"- The fine arts have become the servants of the servile ear.

"The way in which theory has entwined itself around art reminds one of the method of manufacturing Emmentaler cheese on the principle: first take the holes, and then put the cheese round them. No matter whether the theoretical dough swelling up around the holes has been mixed in the dull cauldron of political correctness or in the sublime crucible of metaphysics-unless form and content interfuse, there can be no question of art.

[bee]

my steak in it is a medium rare. so what I want to know is do you actually find this work artistically poor. I'd be interested to learn from your view.

C2.- I was away all day, could not respond on time.
I examined some more the pictures of the sculpture, it is much better there, the pic on the main page was really blurry, gave caricaturish feel to it. I liked the pic. #1 and # 4 much more and have to take some of my judgment back. The artist has a good training in his craft, and for that I have to apologize, because I trashed him. I cannot offer you complete analysis of the work, it must bee seen up front and personal. But still, I have the main objection-and it is to the composition. The upper part on vertical central axis for some reason is continued on horizontal line/angle. The lines give an impression of a half open Swiss knife, which creates even more of a "torturing quality"- which any three-dimensional sculpture, free standing figure would give anyhow.
To view the sculpture, one has to look up then step back and get up on something, if the sculpture is going to be represented on the podium 5 meter high, the horizontal part will disappear, the piece will not represent itself a whole, by composition it has been cut in half.
As the artist has found a harmony and beauty in the women's body, he should have treated it more harmoniously and gently. Here I am coming to a dangerous ground, because it is rather unjust to talk about what should have been done, but what is there. because the work has to bee analyzed by it's own merits. Never the less, I would say, that if he had created more like a relief, two dimensional, it would give her gentle body a refuge, her cut of hands would be rested, they would not work as accusers (of what? whom?God?viewer?) if her body- the lover part. the hips and legs would harmoniously continue in a diagonal, it would emphasize the round beauty of her belly, the legs that of a mermaid. Well, there could be many more versions of that very challenging task. The podium where the sculpture is placed on, is most horrifying-sarcophagi.
Also, to put her in the public place with open space around, I do not know, if there are trees or flowers, or the street cars around, but seems to me- a rather barbaric prospect. I guess people are heartless for the sakes of idea.

[Critic2]

Also, to put her in the public place with open space around, I do not know, if there are trees or flowers, or the street cars around, but seems to me- a rather barbaric prospect. I guess people are heartless for the sakes of idea.

thanks for the technical views and when I go to see the sculpture "live" in the next week or so I will have them well in mind.

I don't take the barbaric point at all. settings make viewing easier or more appropriate, such as the peaceful surrounds of the horror I saw recently at the Yad V'Shem memorial in Jerusalem, but even if you have to work harder it should be possible to get lost in the work itself.