Saturday, November 27, 2004

Angle of Repose

Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose was published in 1972 and won the Pulitzer prize for that year and is still considered by many to be the best “western” book. The book is big (and tight, not rambling) and quiet. It is structurally divided into two stories, which is at first incredibly irritating. In the end, the irritatingly interrupting narrator's contemporary story is in some sense the most interesting. The narrator's story is one of old age, disability and the power of remembering and reconstructing (what is reconstructed is the life story of his grandmother, a book illustrator and artist married to a mining engineer, who spends her adult life in a variety of spare, contemplative, challenging western spaces (canyons, mesas, deserts, etc), making home after home out of nothing). Laudably, the novel refuses to be nice, about anything or anybody, any of the characters, past or present, any of the landscapes. The people in the book are wounded and unlikeable at least half of the time. Which is good. The book is both romantic and not romantic, perceptive and blind about its characters and the west. The complexity of the author's and the character's viewpoint is startlingly well done. The grandmother's story was based on A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West by Mary Halleck Foote published for the first time in 1972 from the manuscript at the Huntington. The Zodiac cottage was based on the North Star House designed by California architect Julia Morgan for the Foote's in 1905 located NE of Sacramento outside of Grass Valley. Until very recently the house was abandoned and in ruins. It is slowly being restored.

Friday, November 26, 2004

It also had to do with trying to make the thing itself less important to look at

A Wax Mold of the Knees of Five Famous Artists.

"Although it's made out of fiberglass, and they are my knees.
I couldn't decide who to get for artists, so I used my own knees. Making the impressions of the knees in a wax block was a way of having a large rectangular solid with marks on it. I didn't want just to make marks in it, so I had to follow another kind of reasoning. It also had to do with trying to make the thing itself less important to look at. That is, you had to know what it is about, too. To go and look at it was to try and thin k whether you liked to look at it, or just how involved you were in looking at art in general; that was not quite enough though, you had toknow these other things too."

---Bruce Nauman, interview with Joe Raffaele and Elizabeth Baker, 1967

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Notes from Motherwell's Art Writing

“But in any case, it is not unimportant, this thing Alexander Calder has done, in making objects of pleasure worthy of Adults.” . . . “It was Mondrian's influence which first led Calder from his earlier pleasantries and toys for children, to these marvelous object for the adult mind: “I was very much moved by Mondrian's studio, large, beautiful and irregular as it was, with the walls painted white, and divided by black lines and rectangles of bright color, like his paintings. . . and I thought at the time how fine it would be if everything there MOVED; though Mondrian himself did not approve of this idea at all.”
1944

“For the goal which lies beyond the strictly aesthetic the French artists say the “unknown” or the “new,” after Baudelaire and Rimbaud; Mondrian used to say “true reality.” “Structure” or “gestalt” may be more accurate: reality has no degrees nor is there a “super” one (surrealisme). Structures are found in the interaction of the body-mind and the external world. . . “
“The passions are a kind of thirst, inexorable and intense, for certain feelings or felt states. To find of invent “objects” which are more strictly speaking, relational structures) whose felt quality satisfies the passions---that for me is the activity of the artist, an activity which does not cease even in sleep.”
1946

“ “The Sublime I take to be the emphasis of a possible felt quality in aesthetic experience, the exalted, the novel, the lofty, “the echo of a great mind,” as the treatise formerly ascribed to Longinus phrases it.
1948

“The Miners' graveyard. Beyond, the town's ruins, burnt sienna, pink, yellow ochre---arid and clear in the distance, as the hill towns of Italy. Here silent monuments of the past rest, in white October sun, wind sweeping from the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Crystal light! Vertical personages gaping, a broken grave. Here, too, in the midst of gold and silver, there were yearnings for the word, but what confusions! Jenny Lind, the Great Patti, Mark Twain, General Tom Thumb, Uncle Tom's Cabin companies. As with French poets, desire for the sensuous “new” Dragged up the mountains from California in eight-span wagons, wood, to construct French baroque mansions. Glass chandeliers from Vienna. But the desert air is white, Mallarme's swan.
1949

“Sometimes I have an imaginary picture in mind of the poet Mallarme in his study late at night---changing, blotting, transferring, transforming each word and its relations with such care-and I think that the sustained energy for the travail must have come from the secret knowledge that each word was a link in the chain that he was forging to bind himself to the universe; . . . “

“For make no mistake, abstract art is a form of mysticism.
Well, this is not to think of the situation very subtly. To leave out consideration of what is being put into the painting, I mean. One might truthfully say that abstract art is stripped bare of other things in order to intensify it, its rhythms, spatial intervals, and color structure. Abstraction is a process of emphasis, and emphasis vivifies life, as A. N Whitehead said.”

“The need is for felt experience---intense, immediate, direct, subtle, unified, warm, vivid, rhythmic.”
1951

“Sometimes when I walk down park Avenue and regard the handsome and clean-cut Lever Brothers building, which I suppose belongs to the same “family” as the tall UN skyscraper, I think to my self how the interior walls need the sensuality and moral integrity of modern painting; but then one cannot help reflecting that what lies behind this building is not the possibility of collaboration between men on “ultimate concerns,” but instead big business, that is, a popular soap, whose need in the end will determine everything, including how its makers think about reality.”

“It is this context that one has to understand the fury of Picasso's famous statement of 1935 beginning, “Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? One loves the night flower, everything around one, without trying to understand them. while the painting everyone must understand.”
1954

“. . . the act of painting is a deep human necessity, not the production of a hand made commodity.”
1955

“to put the tendency of my thought in another way, I think that it is impossible to be deeply in touch with one's feelings and, looking at the world squarely, not to become revolutionary, not to want to change---in relation to imagined new possibilities---the areas of which one is aware.”
1960

“I take an elegy to be a funeral lamentation or funeral song for something one cared about. The 'Spanish Elegies' are not 'political' but my private insistence that a terrible death happened that should not be forgot. “
1963

“The large format, at one blow, changed the century long tendency of the French to domesticize modern painting to make it intimate. We replaced the nude girl and the French door with a modern Stonehenge, with a sense of the sublime and the tragic that had not existed since Goya and Turner.
1965

Robert Motherwell

Notes on: Robert Motherwell, with selections from the artist's writings, by Frank O'Hara. New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1965.

Frank O'Hara's monograph on Robert Motherwell portrays a man of immense personal charm, if a somewhat reticent charm compared to Jackson Pollock say. In the selections from his writings (chosen by Bill Berkson), there is talk about stubbornness, objectivity, openness, human contact and other values not that often in the forefront of artistic credos. Motherwell evidences what might be a deep knowledge of poetry and literature, philosophy and psychology. “I love Hopkins' insistence on particularization,” he says in one of his statements. It isn't the perception that Hopkins was a detailing poet of specific and material beauty, but that he is insistent about it that is the fine touch. Motherwell's work is political and big, only one of which is unusual afor an abstract expressionist.

O'Hara's writing seems a little clumsy from time to time: “With the advent of war, a heterogeneous number of American artists whose only common passion was the necessity of contemporary art's being Modern began to emerge as a movement. . .” or “Motherwell's special contribution to the American struggle for modernity was a strong aversion to provincialism. . . . “ Not very interesting and certainly beside the point? However, he does warm up as he keeps going, and has several perceptive points to make:
“Certain of the abstract expressionists seem to have burst into paint with an already emergent personal force from the very first works we know---one things particularly of Motherwell and Barnett Newman. The variety from period to period in each of these artists encompasses a broadening of technical resources. . . and moves in a steadily rising power of emotional conviction. They have had a conviction if not a style, from the beginning, more ethical than visual, which has left them free to include anything useful and has fuided them away from the peripheral.” This is a very smart point, especially in regard to Motherwell, who appears to have (or have destroyed them if he did) no early clumsy, unknowledgeable works. “The Little Spanish Prison,” (1941-44) and “Pancho Villa, Dead and Alive” (1943) are both the stunning looking and assured works of a mature painter. “The Homely Protestant” (1948) looks bold and big though it is only 4feet by 8feet big. O'Hara, with a good head for a story, tells us that the title came from Motherwell's blindly pointing to a phrase in Finnegan's Wake. The chronology by Kynaston MacShine is fun to read for a list, but there is no mention of what happened to Mrs. Motherwell number one, only a short note for 1950 : “Marries Betty Little of Washington, D. C.” The next thing you know two daughers are born and in 1957 the note “Meets Helen Frankenthaler” and in 1958 Marries Helen Frankenthaler in the Spring. There are pictures of Frankenthaler with the Motherwell daughters in 1961-62 and “Motherwell with Helen Frankenthaler in front of their house in Provincetown. . . summer, 1962.” No note tells us about the fate of Betty Little, dead or divorced, Heathcliff. The black and white illustrations don't work all that well for the paintings, but there are some great pieces of ephemera (for instance, a poster for an exhibition at Sidney Janis Gallery, 1959 with MOTH/ERW/ELL on three lines like a poem). There is an amazing one page “Catalogue for 1948-49” for The Subje t of the Artists: a new art School,” with faculty noted: William Baziotes, David Hare, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko. Barnett Newman was to join later. Can you imagine this school? Amazing. One evening a week for a term is $45. Photographs are also of some note: “Artists' session at Studio 35, an informal panel discussion on modern art recorded stenographically and printed in part in Modern Artists in America.” The photograph shows a long table split in two, one half upside down, mirror like, with everyone who was anyone sitting around the table, nearly thirty artists, including Louise Bourgeois, Max Ernst, Richard Pousette-Dart, Barnett Newman, Ad Rheinhardt Bradley Tomlin, etc. Come to think of it, it is probably two different photographs as Pousette-Dart appears in both halves. The Selective bibliography compiled by Bernie Karpel of the Museum Library is thorough and fascinating in itself (for instance, listed are a complete listing of the “Documents of Modern Art” series that Motherwell edited for Wittenborn and a Portable Gallery Robert Motherwell! This is 42 color slides and an addition of 30 slides. What a resource, what a kick. Also listed as in the MOMA Library Collection are 50 negative stirps of Photographs of Motherwell in 1957-58 given to the Library by the photographer Hans Namuth (more famous for his Life Magazine pictures of Jackson Pollack).


Friday, November 05, 2004

Afterwards

"The same war

continues.

We have breathed the grits of it in, all our lives"

Denise Levertov

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Stein on Writing Revised

Gertrude Stein on Writing: a list [in process]

1926Compositon as Explanation/Descriptions of Literature1927An Elucidation1929An Acquaintance with Description1931Saving the Sentence/Sentences and Paragraphs/Arthur, a Grammar/A Grammarian/Sentences/Regular regularly, in narrative/Finally George, a vocabulary of Thinking/Forensics1935What is English Literature/Pictures/Plays/The Gradual Making of Making of Americans/Portraits and Repetitions/Poetry & Grammar/Narration, Lectures 1-4/How Writing is Written1937Why I Like Detective Stories1940What are Masterpieces1946A transatlantic Interview1895/1949Radcliffe Themes

1
“Composition as Explanation (1926) 6pp.
[Written and delivered as a lecture at Oxford, 1926. Published
in the Dial (October 1926) and in Composition as Explanation
(Hogarth Press, 1926). Text also included in What are Masterpieces (1940), Selected Writings (1946), Writings and Lectures, 1911-1946 (1967) and in the Library of America Gertrude Stein: Writings 1903-1932 (1999).

2
“Descriptions of Literature” (1926) 8pp.
[Published as Stable Pamphlet no. 2 by George Platt Lynes and Adlai Harbeck, Englewood New Jersey, also published in transition (Summer 1928) and in Reflections on the Atom Bomb in 1973]

3
“An Elucidation” (1927) 16pp.
[Originally published in transition no. 1 (April 1927) and published in a corrected version as a pamphlet the same year, also included in A Primer for the Gradual Understanding (1971)

4
"An Acquaintance with Description" (1929)
Published and hand set by Robert Graves and Laura Riding (Mallorca, Seizin Press, 1929, and included in Library of America Gertrude Stein: Writings 1903-1932 (1999).

5
How to Write (1931)
"A difference between a noun and a verb is not seen in wishes and wishes"
[This collection originally published in Paris by her own Plain Edition Press, and later (1973) reprinted by the Something Else Press and again in 1975 by Dover.] It includes, all first published here:
“Saving the Sentence”
“Sentences and Paragraphs”
“Arthur, a Grammar”
“A grammarian”
“Sentences”
“Regular regularly, in Narrative”
“Finally, George, a vocabulary of Thinking”
“Forensics”

6
Lectures in America (1935)
"Gerty Gerty Stein is Back Home Home Back" (newspaper headline).
[These lectures were written for Stein's American lecture tour of 1934-35. She and Toklas arrived in New York City on October 24, 1934 and in the course of six months Stein delivered over 40 lectures. Stein and Toklas left for Europe on May 4, 1935].
Included in this volume and first published here, are:
“What is English Literature”
“Pictures”
“Plays”
“The Gradual Making of Making of Americans”
“Portraits and Repetitions”
“Poetry & Grammar”
[All but “Plays” are included in Writings and Lectures, 1911-1946, no. 10 below]

7
Narration (1935)
[This collection of four lectures written while on her lecture tour in 1934-35 was first published by the University of Chicago Press in 1935. The Lectures are numbered 1 through 4]
Lecture 1 “The contrast between the English daily life and the American lack of a daily life”
Lecture 2 'Narrative in prose and narrative in poetry”
Lecture 3 “History and the newspaper as narrative”
Lecture 4 “The Audience and the Novel and the Mystery Story as narrative”

8
What are Masterpieces (1940)
[First published in Los Angeles by Conference Press in 1940, this includes addresses delivered before the Cambridge and Oxford Literary Societies]
Includes:
“Composition as Explanation” [originally published in 1926, see above]
“What are Masterpieces and why are there so few of them” [first published here]

9
Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein (1946)
[Edited by Carl Van Vechten and first published by Random House in 1946 in 10,000 copies and in 1962 as Modern Library Book ML322 in 7,500 copies]
Includes:
“The Gradual Making of the Making of Americans” [originally published in Lectures in America (1935),
see above]
“Composition as Explanation” [originally published in 1926, see above]

10
Writings and Lectures, 1911-1945 (1967)
[Edited by Patricia Meyrowitz published in Londoon by Peter Owen in 1967 and reprinted by Penguin in 1971 as Look at Me Now and Here I Am]
Includes:
“Composition as Explanation”[originally published in 1926, see above]
“What is English Literature”
“The Gradual Making of the Making of Americans”
“Portraits and Repetitions”
“Poetry and Grammar”
“What are Masterpieces and why are there so few of them” [originally published in 1940, see above]
“Henry James” [originally published in Four in America (1947)]
[All but “Composition as Explanation,” “What are Masterpieces” and “Henry James” published in
Lectures in America (1935), see above]

10
A Primer for the Gradual Understanding of Gertrude Stein (1971)
[Edited by Robert Bartlett Hass and published in Los Angeles by Black Sparrow Press in 1971]
Includes:
“A Transatlantic Interview” [interview done in 1946]
"Radcliffe Themes 91895)" [originally published in Gertrude Stein: Form and Intelligibility, by Rosalind S.
Miller. Exposition Press, 1949]
“An Elucidation” [originally published in transition, April 1927 with garbled text and reissued correctly as
a pamphlet in April 1927]

11
How Writing is Written (1974)
[Edited by Robert Bartlett Hass and published by Black Sparrow Press in 1974]
Includes;
“Why I like Detective Stories” [originally published in Harper's Bazaar,November 1937]
“How Writing is Written” [originally delivered as a lecture on January 12, 1935 at Choate School and
published in Choate Literary Magazine, February 1935]

Monday, November 01, 2004

The nice are not always the good

Iris Murdoch's eleventh novel, The Nice and the Good was published in England by Chatto and Windus in 1968 and Nominated for the Booker Prize in 1969, along with The Public Image by Muriel Spark, but P. H. Newby's Something to Answer for one the prize, this the first time it was given.

What some reviews said about Iris:

Bernard Bergonzi in TNYRB, April 11, 1968 says:

“Iris Murdoch's annual novel now seems to have become an established British institution: in private it may be derided or dismissed, but in public it gets the respect customarily given to venerable traditions”

“This richly peopled novel revolves around a happily married couple, Kate and Octavian, and deals with love in its many aspects. The resonant sub-plot involves murder and black magic as the novel leads us through stress and terror to a joyous conclusion.”

Elizabeth Janeway in the NYTimes, January 14,1968

One expects complications, revelations, tricks and red herrings, invitations to guess at what is coming, echoes, jokes and clues. One gets them aplenty. And because they are so solidly introduced by the thriller opening -- that shot, that necessary investigation -- the premise of the book justifies and sustains them. this is a mystery story, says Miss Murdoch. I am simply using its conventions. But the mystery she is exploring is the universal ambiguity of living creatures in relation to each other, of good behavior and bad, of pleasure and pain, of responsibility, obligation, influence, meddling and neglect; or, if you like, of the Nice and the Good.

John Ducane, the hero, the “detective” descends to the underground, a dazzling structure of a book, including a variety of involvements, to advance the plot. But the ideas are not new…the nice are not the good….

[There are a variety of twos in this novel: two Children, Henrietta and Edward, two pets, a dog Mingo and a cat,, Two teenagers, two older men (maybe gay?), two formerly marrieds.]

“tanglings and untanglings' as John Russell says in the New York Times Feb. 22, 1990

“The pre Raphaelite painter Arthur Hughes, her equivalent in paint, “
says Anatole Broyard in the New York Times, October 5, 1986

More Broyard:

Her characters:
They have some of the grandiosity and high purpose, the heroic sense of themselves, that characters in Victorian novels had. Their lives are crammed with moral furniture and philosophical gingerbread.

Mr. Conradi, God bless him, tells us that these same people also ''toy with the sublime.'' Here are men and women I've been longing to meet. I've always wanted to know someone who toyed with the sublime. Has anyone in American fiction toyed with the sublime since Thomas Wolfe let Eugene Gant do it in ''Of Time and the River''? Some wonderful teacher - Meyer Schapiro, perhaps - ought to give a course in the subject. In the 1980's, it's hardly worthwhile being human unless you toy occasionally with the sublime.

In spite of her intelligence, she believes in happiness, which she defines as ''that deep, confiding slow relationship to time.''

and Joyce Carol Oates in The New Republic, November 18, 1998, later revised for The Boston University Journal, 1999.

There is something noble about a philosopher's quixotic assumption that he or she is the person to protect others from despair; or, indeed, that others require protection from despair. But Murdoch's sense of her mission is noble, and in an era when some of our most articulate spokesmen routinely denigrate their own efforts it is good to be told, I think plausibly, that literature provides a very real education in how to picture and comprehend the human situation, and that for both the collective and individual salvation of the race, art is more important than anything else, and literature most important of all. (See The Sovereignty of Good.)

One is left with silly inconsequential but deeply absorbing plots. Emotions that feel "genuine" and "existential" enough but are, of course, illusions, sheer phantasmagoria. One is left with other people who are, whether they acknowledge it or not, involved in the same fruitless, albeit highly engrossing, quest.

Election Day

"It is a comfortable feeling to know that you stand on your own ground. Land is about the only thing that can't fly away." (Anthony Trollope, from The Last Chronicle of Barset, 1867)