I ROBOT TALKS...

(don't lecture me... lecture series)

"Narrative logic? All logic is narrative: storys of cause-and-effect." Dr. Moriarity

 

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"Art vs. Machinery of Logic"

 

 

ART'S TWO HOSTILITIES TOWARDS NARRATIVE LOGIC.

The painter Francis Bacon and much of the art world's antagonism towards narrative art or illustrative art or art that tells stories, usually simple stories, is really two hostilities.

A. One hostility is towards artworks that depend more on the telling of stories for their significance than on their purely visual impact. In short, this bias can be voiced clearly in the following way. "An image that needs a story to tell you what you are seeing is not worth seeing." In other words, if you need a story to experience an image, the image itself was probably not much of an experience to begin with. This antagonism towards narrative art in the fine arts is a hostility against any work of visual art that needs the crutch of logic to provide an enriching experience. This hostility is directed against art that has little to offer on its own. It is hostility directed against weak art — art that is too weak to stand on its own. It is hostility towards works of art that need to be propped up by stories in order to sustain interest in them. It is hostility towards the artwork that is nothing more than a prop (or property). That is, it is hostility against the unimportant work of art, the powerless work of art, the servile work of art, that merely serves like a prop in a play or motion picture: an article or object of no power or importance ON its own, no power or importance OF its own, used mainly to tell a story OTHER than its own.

B. The other hostility is directed against all that actively stands in the way of the richly rewarding experience of good and great art. Here, art's antagonism towards narrative logic is a hostility towards the whole machinery of logic that presumptuously seeks to define the whole experience of art for the spectator even before the spectator has had a chance to experience it. It is a hostility against all that stands in the way of first-hand experience. It is a hostility against reducing the experience and significance of art to very limited concepts that horribly truncate the experiences they filter and deform. And this logical reductionism of storytelling is particularly harmful in the case of the visual arts. For logical concepts are both visually stunted and visually stunting. Why? Because: 1. concepts lack visual detail 2. concepts depend on memories lacking visual details 3. the lack of individual visual detail makes it easy to process large numbers of concepts and memories 4. concepts superimpose and impose themselves on the work of art 5. concepts superimpose and impose their lack of visual detail on the work of art 6. concepts are just as likely to blind us as they are able to help us see.

 

"Everything Ruth Duckworth has made has the same title:

'Untitled.'

'I don't like to limit what people will see,'

she explains."

 

(WSJ 1-18-2005)

 

Concepts lack visual detail. And geometry is an excellent example for seeing the visual limitations of concepts compared to the vastness of the Visual Domain. Geometric designs are great for mathematical calculations, but they are visual simplifications of the whole visual world's pictorial complexity... and can often be visually unsatisfying for those looking for the profundity offered by images possessing, exploring and revealing richer sensual, soulful depths that lead to greater emotional heights. No doubt the lack of sensual depth (and the lack of emotional turmoil or drama that may go with it) in the neat, pleasing symmetries of geometric images is a visual ideal that appeals to the theoretically and religiously inclined. But others may not be inspired by these symmetric designs, seeing only sterile, superficial, artificial neatness. And any lack of visual depth, no matter what type, no matter how messy and incongruous, limits what the Visual Domain has to offer. Here... One man's pain is another man's passion. One man's poison is another man's cure. One man's eyesore is another man's visual delight.

 

 

RECAP AND FOLLOW THROUGH

THE FIRST HOSTILITY. The first hostility is towards impoverished art—towards art that is not enough. Here, the logic of storytelling is simply a harmless way to pad a poor experience.

THE SECOND HOSTILITY. The second hostility is towards the active impoverishment of the experience of rewarding art by the logic of storytelling. Here, logic is actively limiting and destroying the experience of art—the rich emotional experience of art.

... And there is only one situation where the logic of storytelling is welcome in this way—this way that logic has of imposing restraint and control on passion and the irrational. And it is the same situation where the logic of storytelling is welcome in the world outside art. What situation is that? When does art and the world both look to storytelling logic for comfort—comfort from their own raging emotions? When logical storytelling is needed to rein in art and the world's mercilessly explosive, expansive emotional range... by imposing order upon chaos and subduing it.

THE SITUATION. Where is the logic of storytelling welcome? It is... the situation of losing control without gain... The situation of uncontrollable loss... pain... suffering... death. Wherever this occurs in both art and the world, the logic of storytelling is a wecome relief, a wecome tool, a welcome machine, for limiting the experience of loss, pain, suffering, death... and bringing them under control... making them bearable... perhaps even transforming them into something enjoyable. Thus tragedy as an art form could not survive if it were not for the logic of storytelling imposing limitations on the uncontrollable energy, expansiveness and chaos of raw emotions, on rage, on grief. In these extreme situations, story... logic... helpfully and mercifully reduce the painful impact of that which overwhelms. Story... Logic..., no matter how artificial,... is not only welcome here... but demanded. People need a Reason... to live when life appears the most unlivable.*

BLINDNESS VS. (FAR-) SIGHTEDNESS. Logic is only one solution for the unbearable. For art and the world have many other means for dealing with the unbearable. Faith and Beauty being two. Only when the artist's faith in beauty and beautiful faith, his beautiful anti-faith faith,... all fail ; does any kind of blindness to pain seem desirable in the face of pain that cannot be borne. So why not the blindness of logic? Here, the blindness of logic to unbearable pain is preferable. The blindness of logic? Yes. Because as noted above, concepts are visually stunted and visually stunting. Yet, as also noted, concepts and logic can also help us see. And if concepts or logic happen to open our eyes to unbearable pain, then we will also instinctively recoil and revolt against logic because of the pain made possible through it. We will abandon the farsightedness of logic and seek out the blindness of logic... of faith... of beauty... of love... We will seek the darkness... for blind comfort and relief.

THE STRUGGLE TO SEE MORE. However, other than in the extreme situation where pain is unbearable and any kind of blindness to this pain is desirable; the artist rebels against the blindness of logic. But it needs to be emphasized that this is a revolt against the blindness of logic, not logic's power to open our eyes... which logic also possesses. The artist intuitively rebels against all visually impoverished and visually impoverishing imagery and machinery of the mind, including the visual impoverishment of concepts or logic. The artist fights to see more. And with respect to this desire to see more, logic often winds up frustrating this desire by being a way to entrap and limit man's powers of perception and experience through the reductive function of logic. Here, the machinery of logic is rightly perceived as not primarily being used as a means to free up our perceptions and open us up to new experiences. It is rightly perceived as often being a weapon, a defense, against new perceptions and experiences. Something to shut out the world, not to let it in. Something to reduce its impact, its influence, its importance. But art cannot afford to shut out the world. Not great art. Great art is a dress rehearsal for death.

Of course, this antagonism towards the reductive function of logic is most keenly felt by the artist when its machinery is in the hands of others, and not just in the hands of the artist. For many artist, if not most artist, have no qualms about telling stories that ensnare others in their own reductive narratives about them. This Story, This Trap, here and below, is no exception. Every story is a war story. For it is a war of stories out there. But it is always better to be the hunter than the hunted. It is always better to hunt even while you are being hunted. Always better to give chase while being chased. And be assured, you are being hunted... by the stories of others. You are being chased... by hungry howling tales of importance that want to prey upon yours. Take heed, competing stories of importance... everywhere... want to devour you. Take heart, for you are on to them.

 

 

STORY 1 : IMPORTANT WORK BY AN IMPORTANT ARTIST.

No other headline, no other story, is more important for an artist. Though Bacon tried to resist telling stories in his paintings, he could not stop others from telling stories about him. And if the story they want to tell is that he and his work are important, why should he stop them. Still, the artist may not like their reasons why he and his work are important in their opinion. For usually these reasonings, these narratives, do not feel like they do the artist's own sense of importance justice. They do not feel important enough. They do not feel truthful enough,... which is important for those whose sense of importance is guided by their sense of truth. And whose is not.

 

 

STORY 2 : THE IMPORTANCE OF MUSEUMS.

Just having your work exhibited in a museum surrounds and superimposes all sorts of stories and storytellers on your artwork that you may or may not intend or approve. Some stories are obvious. Some are subtle. And some are invisible. But the most obvious story told by a museum is also the one story every artist intends and approves: the story of his own importance as expressed and embodied by the importance of his work.

 

 

STORY 3 : THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING RICH AND FAMOUS.

This is the crass commercial sequel to the story of "important work by an important artist." But it turns out to be even better than the first. And here is the sequel's synopsis: So... If all stories are reductive narratives that limit experience and entrap the mind rather than free it... and no one is free of stories... and no one is free of being imprisoned by stories,... if you could choose your story, your prison of the mind ; why not choose a storybook story? And the story of being rich and famous is one logical choice, one electric machinery of logic, one popular mythology, one primal storybook story for all ages, one fabled marriage in the public eye... of reason and the irrational, that can still make both the most outrageous and the most believable claims of being able to make anyone's prison of the mind seem the most bewitchingly... imaginary.

 

 

* "They are most happy who have no story to tell."

Competing story / theory of a dead ham by A. Trollope. The dead tell tall tales too.

 

 

The Interview

 

interviewer: "Why do you do what you do?"

artist: "Hard to say."

interviewer: " Hard to explain?"

artist: "Perhaps."

interviewer: "Perhaps it simply feels good... to do what you do?"

artist: "No. It feels important."

interviewer: "It makes you feel important?"

artist: "It makes life feel important."

interviewer: "It makes your life feel important."

artist: "It makes the whole world feel important."

interviewer: "It makes your world feel important."

artist: "Who's telling this story? You or me?"

 

Ah. And so the story begins.

The story of yet another unknown.

In this case, an unknown artist.

Ahh..."Open wide" says the doctor...

ROBOT ART ART ROBOT