Recursion

                                                                   Recursion

Last October during a visit to my sister's place, I was intrigued by a new coffee-table size art book,  Stuart Davis, In Full Swing. It was prominent on top of a pile of other impressive books, drawings and photographs. Elena is good friends with Davis's son Earl and had gotten the book as a gift. Having decided I had to have a copy, and rather than trying to wheedle one for free, (hateful practice), I did the right thing. I bought it on Amazon. One gold star for me, and another buck-fifty for Jeff Bezos.

 What strikes me having gotten a little into the text, (there's lots of text even with the multitude of reproductions), is the importance of recursion in his work. This, I take it, from the history given in the first chapter, could well have been at least influenced by his reading in philosophy, which was urged on him by his teacher, Robert Henri. Recursion, the repetition of patterns, is important in the thinking of Kant and Hegel, two philosophers I've been slowly learning more about as I  make my way through Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics and Morals.

 Henri, an Ashcan School painter, insisted that his students read philosophy and history, A good idea it seems to me, and obvious, once I see it in print, but not so, before. Thank you, writer of said chapter, Harry Cooper.

Recursion; thought for the day?  Idea of the month?  We'll have to see.

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Next day, while eating a bowl of chili for lunch, I'm leafing through a book of Saul Steinberg's, The Inspector. The first dozen or so drawings are recursive; line drawings of Steinberg characters marching with their two dimensional selves repeated with lines repeating back toward, but not to, infinity. Infinity is a separate subject, and I don't see Steinberg grappling with that. Maybe I just haven't seen it yet.

Seeing is what it's all about, as far as that goes; recursion is something that is perceived. It's a big part of what reality is made up of. You can see that at Lego Land!

Should I say that for the past year I've been sneak-peaking at Chris Langan's CTMU?  No? Too risky?

 

What am I Reading?

12/24/2017

Well I've been re-reading Robert Anton Wilson's Quantum Psychology and his Prometheus Rising.  Really kind of Intellectual candy, from my perspective. Even though he comes down on the Wrong side, politically. Anyway, he's dead, I think, so I'm not hurting his feelings.

Also, a translation of Mayakovsky poems entitled Backbone Flute.....and The World of Yesterday, by Stefan Zweig..., Introducing Logic, a Graphic Guide, by Cryan, Shatil and Mayblin;  Saint-Exupery, by Stacy Schiff....The Book of Mules, by Donna Campbell Smith;  Algebra for The Terrified, by Kenneth Williams, (and also by Kenneth Williams, his How to Really Calculate in Your Head, which improved my calculating ability so much I can hardly believe it and for which I am grateful to Mr. Williams), and a few other things that are either too quirky or too low-brow to admit to, since I'm so vain. (I suppose everything I read or do could be thought of as quirky and low-brow, but that's for another discussion..)

Also, in recent history I've read several books by Libbie Hawker, including Mercer Girls, Tidewater, and Baptism for the Dead.  Hawker is someone I discovered while trying to veer away from the NY literary Mafia.

Oh, and The Bohemians, by Ben Tarnoff, a nice book.

To Be Continued:...............

Ranting about Artists; June 23, 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know pretty much what my personal problem with artists is, which is envy mixed with anger; it started with the Oedipus complex, but then it also has to do with my general make-up which is low Chutzpah, minimal draftsmanship ability, and general Avoidance Personality Disorder, all of which are motivation for my major annoyance at the Art World..

But my main complaint concerning said World today is that I'm really unable to create new friendships with artists or to keep old ones going. And that's frustrating because I've been fascinated with the process of making art all my life, and have studied artists with fascination since, when? Day one! [ That's true, absolutely. ]

My fascination started with a dialogue with my mother, under the heading of What Makes Dad Tick.  Which is to say that it is a discourse going back before time began. It starts with having a certain awe, combined with the love of a paternalistic God. But the text was always there, to paraphrase Lacan, et. al. including Heidegger. This of course I've written about in my one book, [see; Anton Prohaska ] and will attempt to delve into in #2, should I live so long; and was best wrapped up in a nutshell by a book by the noted Psychiatrist and Analyst and friend of Artists, Dr. Daniel Schnieder, in his book Psychoanalysis and The Artist, which I perused when it was new and I was young, and re-perused, read and read again. If I'd been rich, and older, I could have gone to Schniedz, as he was called by his in-crowd of clever and fortunate and in some cases famous patients; and if such a thing had come to be, I would now be someone too successful for words, rather than this person who seems content to be Blogging about himself to an audience of three.

Of course then during the early days of my protracted adolescence, which lasted in to my early thirties, I fell in love with Henry Miller, and read everything he wrote, so that I felt I was partly him, and then of course had to read all of Anais Nin, which was all entwined with Otto Rank who was her therapist and lover, and the one who took artists apart in the most intricate and convincing way of anyone before or since; so that when I fell in love with a lady artist and quickly made a mess of it and had to leave for The Coast, where I planned to "get myself together", (it was the early seventies), the first thing I felt compelled to do after checking into a piss-in-the-sink hotel in Chinatown in San Francisco and after having a good Northern Italian meal in North Beach, was to find a good used bookstore and get a copy of Rank's Art and Artist; which meant that I needed to allow for an extended sabbatical on limited funds, and also meant that I would have to start taking notes.

And in those days, and up to that time in my life, I'd had not much trouble finding artists as friends, not just because I lived in an artist colony, but because I was a good drinking buddy. And when I got to San Francisco, while there weren't many painters around, I fell in with a group of poets, and a few Jazz musicians, without even trying. They just appeared. By the time I was in San Francisco for a month, I was being mistaken for a local. (I also became friends with a whole tribe of third generation Irish cops, firemen and Civil Service workers, but that's another story.)

My point here is, see; I changed. California, not my friends, but the larger context, began to give me the creeps. A creepy Smiley Face Fascism was rolling in like the fog. If you were sad or depressed you had to go underground. I began to be homesick for New York, and more especially, my home in Eastern Long Island. And back home, where the world was bleak, and Jimmy Carter had become President, and a new generation of artists were getting rich, I was able to bottom out on my own personal pain, while scraping by as a house painter, and at night reading Celine, and Pynchon, and going to a confused child psychologist for therapy to the point where it began to dawn on me that I didn't really like the response I got when I began to question the political motivation of the local intelligentsia. 

And so my reading became more critical; I discovered the incestuous relationship between the KGB and the CIA's Anti-Stalinist Left, and the existence of a small group of non-Communist non-Liberal sane people, who courageously were standing up to the biggest, richest Liberal cabal in history. And when I began to voice new opinions, I also began to discover, and make peace with, being a complete outcast.  And  now I live in Florida, I have very few friends, and I am as happy as a long-neck clam when the tide comes in, but I do allow myself to hate. Why shouldn't I! I mean do I have to be more saintly than the people I left back home in East Hampton who foam at the mouth with any mention of the Bush family, and are, as we speak, having some sort of a group Stroke over Trump? Wouldn't being holier than thou towards them just be some sort of hubris?  I won't bother.

Let me just say that they should take note; not one of them, not the whole insider-trading bunch of the "Arts" crowd in the "Hamptons" and Manhattan actually need their beloved "Old Left", that which seems to be their only source of nostalgia or romantic feeling, nor do they need the factitious New Left or Pelosi-Schumer and Co. Let me say it loud and clear, "You don't need it!" It's just a big blemish on your otherwise lovely mug.  xxoo

  

Murdoch and Influence

I suppose I need to say that I loved Peter J. Conradi's book, Iris Murdoch, A Life. Conradi is not completely uncritical, but he loved Iris as I do, and was her good friend for many years, and he observed her closely. He has much to say about who and what she put into her books. For instance; he mentioned that she liked those books of her youth called boy's books or young men's books, particularly those by Robert Lewis Stevenson. He points out, that in The Black Prince, Bradley says at one point well along in the story that he wishes he had written Treasure Island.* I finished re-reading it, (T.I.), yesterday.....and, for some odd reason, I've started re-reading W.H. Hudson's Green Mansions.  Now, I would say that Green Mansions is a boy's book.  If I'm wrong I'm wrong. The original came out in 1916 but the edition I have, published in 1944, was illustrated by E. McKnight Kauffer, and amounts to a great collection of period book illustration.  Kauffer, an American who lived and worked for many years in London,  [and was a friend of my father's] is more well known for his posters, a fact I just learned through Google. 

I was jogged into re-reading Hudson's book for the unlikely reason that it had some resonance for me with the Pearson character in Black Prince, in the fanciful take the two characters in each book have on young womanhood. 

I've also been working my way through A History of Structuralism, by Francois Dosse, translated by Deborah Glassman.  I've mentioned that Iris gives a nod here and there to her structuralist neighbors; she was a frequent visitor of Paris.  One such nod, I thought, was when Bradley's mistress's mother refers to him as cold, more in a historical way, ie Levi Strauss, then in an emotional way. TKTK Does she mean literally relating to L.-S. ?}  

*Treasure Island was a favorite book of mine too. My father gave me a copy that had been illustrated by his friend and mentor, N.C. Wyeth. 

The Black Prince

I decided to re-read The Black Prince for what I thought must be at least the third time. I don't doubt that I'm right about third time, but, oddly, I couldn't remember a damn thing about the book. I couldn't quite put it down to my old-age short-term memory loss either. It didn't occur to me until I started reading it though, that I was blocking it. But I certainly was.

I was given the book by a girlfriend, some 40 odd, (very odd), years ago.  I was new to the world of living sober, a subject I prefer to avoid, but here, some context is needed.  It was the first of several influential books, (influential to me), that she gave to me over our one, two, or three year relationship depending how you look at relationship.

She was a sort of a big cheese in the Art World and I was a sort of relative of a small cheese and a hanger-about in that world due to not having gone anywhere on my own and having been born there; in this particular artist's community.

I did remember that I fell in love with the book, and then with Iris, partly I suppose because I felt as though the book was about me, and partly because I was in love with the girlfriend.

The book is in a male voice, Iris's usual way, and is about two writers. The narrator is Bradley Pearson and his friend is the very successful Arnold Baffin. (Bradley is relatively unsuccessful, having published only one book.)  Bradley in fact might be a little nuts but you have the whole novel to make your decision on that. My own nutsiness, in this context, is part of my identification with Brad, and starts with this; that Bradley was my maternal grandmother's maiden name, and Pierson was my mother's maiden name. So in fact I am part Bradley and part Pierson. Not spelled the same way, but, over the years, her Pierson family have been somewhat free with the spelling of the last name. Mostly Pierson, but some went to Pearson and a few went to Peirson.

Bradley is a tortured soul and that has partly to due with the thought that he might be, as it has been intimated by some, a failed artist. (Here, we are using the term artist for novelist. This is normal for Iris. In all her novels writing equals art.)

I, until my mellowed old-age, was a tortured soul who felt that he was a failed artist. And like Bradley, that melodrama was all wrapped up in heroic fantasies of being an oh, so very serious artist, too serious to make it in this crass world; ugh. It was painful to think about but I thought about it all the time. That's why I had blocked what the book was about, and why it began to be painful re-reading the book; unwrapping the bad news one page at a time, almost afraid to go on, unblocking the block. 

The story goes from unrealistic bliss to nightmare horror and humiliation, something like life, at least as I knew it as a young man. The investment that Bradley* put into love was not dissimilar to the investment I had put in my girlfriend, the giver of the gift. Was it a gift? Or a road map of the way in which I was being caught in her flytrap? The postscripts, by several of the main characters, untie the Gordion Knot but without giving a clear diagnosis of Bradley's nutsiness, or showing any synchronic, or causal evidence.

I say synchronic I suppose to flag that I've been reading in and around Structuralism; Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Foucault, Barthes and etc. and also to say that it appears, from the way she has structured the book, that she had been watching the goings on in Paris over the decade leading up to the writing of B.P. and some of what they were up to might have rubbed off. 

P.S.  Perhaps I should add that I sound like Bradley Pierson when I write.  Wouldn't that be reason enough for someone who was way ahead of me in analysis of the Murdochian text to want to kill me?

*And Perhaps I should also add that I spent two semesters at Bradley University back in the early 1960s.