we're all monkeys chasing coconuts

That's our culture: Drive a Volvo. Look like people on MTV where everyone's pretty and packaged and no one is struggling to pay their gas bill.....That's what punk rock's about. Not trying to fit into that disco world or arena rock world, where everything's about money. Where you buy people, you buy love, you buy Acapulco, you buy everything, and you do it by getting over on the world. I know we're all monkeys chasing coconuts, but one person's freedom and liberty is another person's oppression. ~ Dave Dictor of MDC in Gimme Something Better

 Yeah, what is this thing where people are trying to get over on the world or each other?

Yves Klein, Buddhism and Immateriality

Le Saut dans le Vide (Leap into the Void); Photomontage by Harry Shunk, October 1960.

"The shape of the body, its lines, its strange colors hovering between life and death, hold no interest for me. Only the essential, pure affective climate of the flesh is valid… Having rejected nothingness, I discovered the void."  Yves Klein from the Chelsea Hotel Manifesto, 1961

Hmm. One can't help but be intrigued by a line such as that last one! 

So digging a little deeper I find this description of art bridging modernism and Buddhism.

"A work of art stops being about an individual’s accumulation of masterpieces; it is now about the participation or the disappearance of the public. The artist puts down his gun and starts smiling. This means that the artist abandons his false noble image, competition and innovation, and the standard of value. The public will neither panic nor feel strongly about it when faced with “new” ideas and works; they regard Picasso’s paintings both as meaningless scrawls on a piece of white canvas and as artistic masterpieces. This is exactly the same way that Chan Buddhism sees a wooden statue of Sakyamuni: both as Buddha and as a piece of firewood. As “Buddha,” so as to connect with the living world; as “wood,” so as to go beyond it. At this point, “Buddha” and “art” exist only as an unchangeable meaning in the living world."  Huang Yong Ping from “Xiamen Dada—Postmodern?” (1986)

Klein's ideas of immateriality and art's ability to represent the void in his Chelsea manifesto fascinate me. What a rich text to explore. Chance, the ephemeral, natural phenomena, the circle/cycle of life, and being present through "sensibility" (which i choose to take as mindfulness) all make an appearance. It is not a perfect document and that is precisely what makes it so rich.

"All facts that are contradictory are authentic principles of an explanation of the universe. Truly, fire is one of these principles, essentially contradictory, one from the other, since it is both the sweetness and torture that lies at the heart and origin of our civilization. But what stirs this search for feeling in me through the making of super-graves and super coffins? What stirs this search in me for the imprint of fire? Why search for the Trace itself?"

Untitled Fire Painting 1961

Universal Shapes and Forms

There are "universal shapes to which everyone is subconsciously conditioned and to which they can respond." ~ Henry Moore

Fashion Projects: Fashion and Memory film screening & reception

Film still from Boudicca's "Couture 3"

The M.A. Fashion Studies At Parsons The New School for Design presents:

A screening to celebrate the new issue of Fashion Projects, non-profit journal on fashion, art and visual culture. The screening features a range of short experimental films on the topic of fashion and memory–the topic of the new issue. They include films by the British-based fashion design duo Boudicca, Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf, designer Shelley Fox, and fashion photographer Laura Sciacovelli. The screening is curated by Tamsen Schwartzman and Francesca Granata.

The screening will take place Friday the 23rd of April at 6 pm in the Wollman Hall, 65 West 12th Street. (PS: It will start promptly!). A reception will follow the screening.

The event is free and open to the public.

Soot and Saliva: The Art of James Castle

Gabled building in vertical segments 

Using scraps of paper, string, soot, and saliva, James Castle (1899-1977) spent a lifetime creating art from a little bit of this and a little bit of that while living on farms in Boise, Idaho. The world of silence for a man who couldn't hear, speak, or read, burst with images, forms, and lettering that created their own unique sound.

Woman in red coat and boater hat,
collection of Susan and Alvin Chereskin

For almost 70 years, Castle found beauty in the most intimate of materials: siblings' schoolwork, reused flyers, brochures, envelopes, news clippings, paper containers, cardboard of any type. He'd make three-dimensional pieces of people, animals, or objects like chairs by layering and sculpting diverse types of paper and securing them with string, thread or ribbon.

Five dolls on top of piano 

His tonal images of landscapes and interiors, were drawn with a homemade paste made from soot and saliva that looked like charcoal when applied to paper using sticks or tissue. Castle paid attention to how things worked and examined objects like doors, locks, and even illustrated building schematics.

 

But for a man who couldn't read, the beauty of words were always present, whether through examining the mechanical construction of lettering or in the many small books he created. And in many ways, it are these that are the most poignant.

The Scent of Spring

"Float" by tamsen ellen, 2007

"It is spring in the mountains.
I come alone seeking you.
The sound of chopping wood echoes
Between the silent peaks.
The streams are still icy.
There is snow on the trail.
At sunset I reach your grove
In the stony mountain pass.
You want nothing, although at night
You can see the aura of gold
And silver ore all around you.
You have learned to be gentle
As the mountain deer you have tamed.
The way back forgotten, hidden
Away, I become like you,
An empty boat, floating adrift."

-- Tu Fu (eighth century Chinese poet)

Living in Nature

I'm drooling.  It must be time to get out of dodge! 

Shell House, designed by Artechnic, is in the woods of Karuizawa, Japan

 

~~~

The Modern weeHouse is a Prefab Home designed by Alchemy Architects.