What happens when the model moves from object to subject, when she literally goes past the frame? This happens in late 19th and early 20th art, literature, music...and it starts with a shift of perception, which is integral to that shift in power, that transformation into a new mode of art. This change in perception deepens the relationship of artist to his/her medium. In literature, it's often the struggle among author, narrator, and text that triangulates change.
"One evening I sat beauty on my knees. And I found her bitter. And I insulted her." Rimbaud, A Season in Hell
Power's shifting here, too. Look at the difference between Keats' "Truth is Beauty," preserved in its museum of artifice/artificial language, and beauty's position in Rimbaud. She's dandled on a knee; she's lacking charm; she's insulted rather than revered--yet she's never ignored.
How do you deal with the beautiful in your art? (Is it Nabokovian--how beauty is destroyed/spoiled at the same time that it's created, the light/dark of an elaborate chess game? Is it Keatsian--an ideal that is eternal and an eternal goal? Is it Rimbaudian--is there snot on the nose of Venus?)
(from "Some Notes on Narration" by Pamela Johnson Parker)
(Marcel DuChamp, Nude Descending A Staircase, No. 2)
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GRATITUDE JOURNAL
1. Kings of Leon.
2. Sunshine.
3. Sleep, blessed sleep in a smooth-riding car, and not worrying if you snore or drool, because the person beside you truly doesn't care and finds you beautiful anyway.
4. Band of Horses.
5. A Saturday without worries. So unlike Friday. So looking forward to Sunday!
2 comments:
Hi Pamela
Words such as 'beautiful' denote an aesthetic hierarchy, as in they create a demarcation, a closed system which seeks to include & exclude. I like to attempt to level this dichotomy out, open the system, show how that which is denoted beautiful, or ugly, are of the same source, reflecting the same light, maybe at occasional angles & to differing effects, but intimately related.
Beauty requires its counterpart in order to exist. Any conceptualising of beauty which denies this context is for me problematic.
If by 'the beautiful' we mean the glory of essence in form, then surely all is beautiful, if we can move beyond the consensus usage of the word?
Thanks for posing the question, very thought provoking.
You take care now
Miggy x
Dear Miggy,
Thanks for your post. I do believe in an aesthetic hierarchy, which includes and excludes on the basis of beautiful and individual writing, brushstroke, musical phrasing. What's pleasing to one ear/eye/hand won't be to another, obviously.
I struggle to say what I mean in this. I think the individual, the particular, define the beautiful, and that's why all faces are beautiful, so varied, so uniquely seamed.
For me, beauty's counterpart is fungibility, because beauty is never identical, not Xeroxed or Botoxed into conformity. This is true of visual, performing and language art, as well.
I will think about what you've said; it needs careful consideration. Thanks for dropping by. Do come back.
Best,
Pamela
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