Metaphor(m): Artists Create New Metaphors to Live (and Work) By

Under the inspiration of Lakoff, Johnson and Turner's Cognitive Metaphor Theory, I made the personal discovery which was the foundation of my dissertation, that artists create for themselves new metaphors to live by, which viewers can then also use to think with and live by.

 

Much of the highly imaginative work of discovering their metaphor(m)s is accomplished by artists through what Lakoff and Turner term an "image-mapping." However, these authors at first undervalued this discovery, describing image-mappings as "more fleeting metaphors."1 They assert that "the proliferation of detail in the images limits image-mappings to highly specific cases." By contrast, they find "image-schema mappings" less detailed and more useful in reasoning."2 Image schemas generally rely on an abstracted sense of space and vision, yet can also be grounded in sound, others senses or even in cross-sensory, synaesthetic perceptions. They can often be described with prepositions or simple directionality: out, inside, from, along, up-down, front-back, etc. In the arts, both these image-metaphor activities shade into one another along a vast spectrum of possibilities. Both of these authors have expanded their study of visual mapping in recent books. Notably, Lakoff has intensified his investigation of visual art in his pioneering essay "The Neuroscience of Form in Art," in the book The Artful Mind, edited by Mark Turner3. In his contribution, Lakoff reflects on Rudolf Arnheim, form as metaphor and presents the theory of "cogs" to explain this. Cogs are neural circuits, involving mirror neurons, which ordinarily perform motor control, but additionally can register and structure observation. Image schemas and force-dynamic schemas are presented as potential cognitive explanations of the application of cogs to reasoning.4 I believe image-mappings are purposefully interwoven by artists into this structure of inferences as well. Furthermore, Turner's entire conception of cognitive integration and blending offers an excellent account of how metaphor(m)s are brought into being. The principal book on that theory is The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities by Gilles Fauconnier and Turner.5

 

Because of its proliferation of details, image-mapping provides a bonanza of abundance necessary for mining new metaphors, thus making it very important in literature and visual art, more consequential than often imagined. The operation of image-mapping is simple to describe. A mental picture is projected in the mind's eye onto another "target" image. For example, envision matching the appearance of a tree to that of a woman. Her litheness as she stands slowly moving in the breeze is dramatically foregrounded in this process, brought to the reader’s attention. Creators structurally, often visually, pursue this reasoning within the confines --- or better said, using the treasury of --- their media and genre. They find potential meaning in either projecting an image onto a formal element or finding schemas adequate for use which are natural characteristics of a formal element. This is described more precisely in a following chapter, where the creative process of conceiving central tropes is delineated in detail. A few examples will suffice for now. Simply whether a sculptural form emphasizes verticality or horizontality is a rich source of possible image schemas or image-mappings. For instance, perhaps the piece is vertical and building-like. Therefore, it is more "up" than "down," linking it to all the foundational metaphors of "UP": "GOOD IS UP;" "HAPPY IS UP," etc. Depending on the composition, perhaps the piece is vertical, yet stresses its downward movement. This would elicit metaphors of "DOWN." Long, winding sentences could be seen as matching the experience of taking a leisurely journey. Image-mapping consists in conducting a kind of "sampling" of the world of experience. It does not, therefore, have to be only a visual one, although I believe it generally is. It might be based in one of the other senses, or as our culture becomes increasingly multimedial, it might be based on a combination of sensory impressions.

 

"New metaphors are mostly structural," according to Lakoff and Johnson.6 For artists, the structure of form and the structure of desired meaning (i.e., content) are functions of one another. When an image-mapping is solidly rooted in structural similarity, Lakoff and Turner refer to it as "iconic."

 

This is, in general, what iconicity in language is: a metaphorical image-mapping in which the structure of the meaning is understood in terms of the structure of the form of the language presenting that meaning. Such mappings are possible because of the existence of image-schemas, such as schemas characterizing bounded spaces (with interiors and exteriors), paths, motions along those paths, forces, parts and wholes, centers and peripheries, and so on. 7

 

Therefore, metaphor(m)s are often iconic image-mappings or image schemas raised to life- determining power, Weltanschauungen. To return to my chapter metaphor of painting, here I have reached what painters refer to as their style or approach. The second of these terms is often preferred by creators because in common use the term style has been debased, signifying nothing more than individual, characteristic forms of expression without content or thought  — habitual, unconscious quirks also referred to as tics. True style is much more than this. The linguistic field of stylistics shows how rich the concept can be. While such study has chiefly been carried out on literature in books such as The Concept of Style, it has exciting implications for the visual arts as well.8 Style is the distinctive, personal mode of production and expression of an artist which is visibly unique to his work: ones individualistic, intellectually and emotionally-charged mechanics of embodying meaning. In my own case, which is discussed below, this becomes more of a modus operandi, as the term is used by police to describe a criminal's characteristic way of committing a crime, rather than a stable series of representational choices.

 

Cognitive metaphor theory proffers a mode of thinking which can be applied to the analysis and creation of art, while accentuating the efforts of the makers of these objects. After the object-only orientation of Formalism, after the medium-only focus of deconstruction, this may lead to a feeling of liberation, of agency. Nevertheless, this is a theory which brings with it a new sense of the burden of the past. Whereas the Formalist Modernists felt free from the past and the Deconstructivist Postmodernists are endlessly tangled in an inescapable present, authors and artists as viewed through cognitive metaphor theory are directly responsible for fashioning their own tropes through the processes of extension, elaboration, composition and/or questioning. This they accomplish in and through the formal parameters of their work, with enough cultural coherence to be able to communicate, but enough originality to be significant. Important tropes cannot merely be selected from a list; they are discovered and built out of revisions of cultural possibilities, in fact, fought for and won.

 

Notes:

This article is based on several sections of my dissertation.

 

 

 

1 Lakoff and Turner, More than Cool Reason, p. 89.

2 Ibid., p. 91.

3 Lakoff, "The Neuroscience of Form in Art," in The Artful Mind: Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity, ed. Mark Turner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 153-169.

4 Ibid., pp. 160-162.

5Gilles Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities (New York: Basic Books, A Perseus Book, 2003).

6 Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, p.152.

7Ibid., pp 156-157.

8 Berel Lang, ed., The Concept of Style (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1987).

Under the inspiration of Lakoff, Johnson and Turner’s Cognitive Metaphor Theory, I made the personal discovery which was the foundation of my dissertation and our articles here, that artists create for themselves new metaphors to live by, which viewers can then also use to think with and live by. This I refer to as artists’ metaphor(m)s or central tropes.
Much of the highly imaginative work of discovering their metaphor(m)s is accomplished by artists through what Lakoff and Turner term an “image-mapping.” However, these authors at first undervalued this discovery, describing image-mappings as “more fleeting metaphors.”¹ They assert that “the proliferation of detail in the images limits image-mappings to highly specific cases.” By contrast, they find “image-schema mappings” less detailed and more useful in reasoning.² Image schemas generally rely on an abstracted sense of space and vision, yet can also be grounded in sound, others senses or even in cross-sensory, synaesthetic perceptions. They can often be described with prepositions or simple directionality: out, inside, from, along, up-down, front-back, etc. In the arts, both these image-metaphor activities shade into one another along a vast spectrum of possibilities. Both of these authors expanded their study of visual mapping in following books. Notably, Lakoff intensified his investigation of visual art in his pioneering essay “The Neuroscience of Form in Art,” in the book The Artful Mind, edited by Mark Turner.³ In his contribution, Lakoff reflects on Rudolf Arnheim, form as metaphor and presents the theory of “cogs” to explain this. Cogs are neural circuits, involving mirror neurons, which ordinarily perform motor control, but additionally can register and structure observation. Image schemas and force-dynamic schemas are presented as potential cognitive explanations of the application of cogs to reasoning.⁴ I believe image-mappings are purposefully interwoven by artists into this structure of inferences as well. Furthermore, Turner’s entire conception of cognitive integration and blending offers an excellent account of how metaphor(m)s are brought into being. The principal book on that theory is The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities by Gilles Fauconnier and Turner.⁵
Because of its proliferation of details, image-mapping provides a bonanza of abundance necessary for mining new metaphors, thus making it very important in literature and visual art, more consequential than often imagined. The operation of image-mapping is simple to describe. A mental picture is projected in the mind’s eye onto another “target” image. For example, envision matching the appearance of a tree to that of a woman. Her litheness as she stands slowly moving in the breeze is dramatically foregrounded in this process, brought to the reader’s attention. Creators structurally, often visually, pursue this reasoning within the confines—or better said, using the treasury of—their media and genre. They find potential meaning in either projecting an image onto a formal element or finding schemas adequate for use which are natural characteristics of a formal element. This is described more precisely in my dissertation, where the creative process of conceiving central tropes is delineated in detail. A few examples will suffice for now. Simply whether a sculptural form emphasizes verticality or horizontality is a rich source of possible image schemas or image-mappings. For instance, perhaps the piece is vertical and building-like. Therefore, it is more “up” than “down,” linking it to all the foundational metaphors of UP: GOOD IS UP, HAPPY IS UP, etc. Depending on the composition, perhaps the piece is vertical, yet stresses its downward movement. This would elicit metaphors of DOWN. Long, winding sentences could be seen as matching the experience of taking a leisurely journey. Image-mapping consists in conducting a kind of “sampling” of the world of experience. It does not, therefore, have to be only a visual one, although I believe it generally is. It might be based in one of the other senses, or as our culture becomes increasingly multimedial, it might be based on a combination of sensory impressions.
“New metaphors are mostly structural,” according to Lakoff and Johnson.⁶ For artists, the structure of form and the structure of desired meaning (i.e., content) are functions of one another. When an image-mapping is solidly rooted in structural similarity, Lakoff and Turner refer to it as “iconic.”
This is, in general, what iconicity in language is: a metaphorical image-mapping in which the structure of the meaning is understood in terms of the structure of the form of the language presenting that meaning. Such mappings are possible because of the existence of image-schemas, such as schemas characterizing bounded spaces (with interiors and exteriors), paths, motions along those paths, forces, parts and wholes, centers and peripheries, and so on.⁷
Therefore, metaphor(m)s are often iconic image-mappings or image schemas raised to life-determining power, Weltanschauungen. To return to my metaphor of painting, here I have reached what painters refer to as their style or approach. The second of these terms is often preferred by creators because in common use the term style has been debased, signifying nothing more than individual, characteristic forms of expression without content or thought—habitual, unconscious quirks also referred to as tics. True style is much more than this. The linguistic field of stylistics shows how rich the concept can be. While such study has chiefly been carried out on literature in books such as The Concept of Style, it has exciting implications for the visual arts as well.⁸ Style is the distinctive, personal mode of production and expression of an artist which is visibly unique to his work: ones individualistic, intellectually and emotionally-charged mechanics of embodying meaning. (In the own case of my own art this becomes more of a modus operandi, as the term is used by police to describe a criminal’s characteristic way of committing a crime, rather than a stable series of representational choices.)
Cognitive metaphor theory proffers a mode of thinking which can be applied to the analysis and creation of art, while accentuating the efforts of the makers of these objects. After the object-only orientation of Formalism, after the medium-only focus of deconstruction, this may lead to a feeling of liberation, of agency. Nevertheless, this is a theory which brings with it a new sense of the burden of the past. Whereas the Formalist Modernists felt free from the past and the Deconstructivist Postmodernists are endlessly tangled in an inescapable present, authors and artists as viewed through cognitive metaphor theory are directly responsible for fashioning their own tropes through the processes of extension, elaboration, composition and/or questioning. This they accomplish in and through the formal parameters of their work, with enough cultural coherence to be able to communicate, but enough originality to be significant. Important tropes cannot merely be selected from a list; they are discovered and built out of revisions of cultural possibilities, in fact, fought for and won.

Notes:

• This article is based on several sections of my dissertation.

1. George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989). p. 89.
2. Ibid., p. 91.
3. Lakoff, "The Neuroscience of Form in Art," in The Artful Mind: Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity, ed. Mark Turner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 153-169.
4. Ibid., pp. 160-162.
5. Gilles Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities (New York: Basic Books, A Perseus Book, 2003).
6. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980; paperback, 1981), p. 152.
7. Ibid., pp 156-157.
8. Berel Lang, ed., The Concept of Style (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1987).

- See more at: http://www.metaphorandart.com/articles/newmetaphors.html#sthash.4Pfu4Um5.dpuf

Under the inspiration of Lakoff, Johnson and Turner’s Cognitive Metaphor Theory, I made the personal discovery which was the foundation of my dissertation and our articles here, that artists create for themselves new metaphors to live by, which viewers can then also use to think with and live by. This I refer to as artists’ metaphor(m)s or central tropes.
Much of the highly imaginative work of discovering their metaphor(m)s is accomplished by artists through what Lakoff and Turner term an “image-mapping.” However, these authors at first undervalued this discovery, describing image-mappings as “more fleeting metaphors.”¹ They assert that “the proliferation of detail in the images limits image-mappings to highly specific cases.” By contrast, they find “image-schema mappings” less detailed and more useful in reasoning.² Image schemas generally rely on an abstracted sense of space and vision, yet can also be grounded in sound, others senses or even in cross-sensory, synaesthetic perceptions. They can often be described with prepositions or simple directionality: out, inside, from, along, up-down, front-back, etc. In the arts, both these image-metaphor activities shade into one another along a vast spectrum of possibilities. Both of these authors expanded their study of visual mapping in following books. Notably, Lakoff intensified his investigation of visual art in his pioneering essay “The Neuroscience of Form in Art,” in the book The Artful Mind, edited by Mark Turner.³ In his contribution, Lakoff reflects on Rudolf Arnheim, form as metaphor and presents the theory of “cogs” to explain this. Cogs are neural circuits, involving mirror neurons, which ordinarily perform motor control, but additionally can register and structure observation. Image schemas and force-dynamic schemas are presented as potential cognitive explanations of the application of cogs to reasoning.⁴ I believe image-mappings are purposefully interwoven by artists into this structure of inferences as well. Furthermore, Turner’s entire conception of cognitive integration and blending offers an excellent account of how metaphor(m)s are brought into being. The principal book on that theory is The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities by Gilles Fauconnier and Turner.⁵
Because of its proliferation of details, image-mapping provides a bonanza of abundance necessary for mining new metaphors, thus making it very important in literature and visual art, more consequential than often imagined. The operation of image-mapping is simple to describe. A mental picture is projected in the mind’s eye onto another “target” image. For example, envision matching the appearance of a tree to that of a woman. Her litheness as she stands slowly moving in the breeze is dramatically foregrounded in this process, brought to the reader’s attention. Creators structurally, often visually, pursue this reasoning within the confines—or better said, using the treasury of—their media and genre. They find potential meaning in either projecting an image onto a formal element or finding schemas adequate for use which are natural characteristics of a formal element. This is described more precisely in my dissertation, where the creative process of conceiving central tropes is delineated in detail. A few examples will suffice for now. Simply whether a sculptural form emphasizes verticality or horizontality is a rich source of possible image schemas or image-mappings. For instance, perhaps the piece is vertical and building-like. Therefore, it is more “up” than “down,” linking it to all the foundational metaphors of UP: GOOD IS UP, HAPPY IS UP, etc. Depending on the composition, perhaps the piece is vertical, yet stresses its downward movement. This would elicit metaphors of DOWN. Long, winding sentences could be seen as matching the experience of taking a leisurely journey. Image-mapping consists in conducting a kind of “sampling” of the world of experience. It does not, therefore, have to be only a visual one, although I believe it generally is. It might be based in one of the other senses, or as our culture becomes increasingly multimedial, it might be based on a combination of sensory impressions.
“New metaphors are mostly structural,” according to Lakoff and Johnson.⁶ For artists, the structure of form and the structure of desired meaning (i.e., content) are functions of one another. When an image-mapping is solidly rooted in structural similarity, Lakoff and Turner refer to it as “iconic.”
This is, in general, what iconicity in language is: a metaphorical image-mapping in which the structure of the meaning is understood in terms of the structure of the form of the language presenting that meaning. Such mappings are possible because of the existence of image-schemas, such as schemas characterizing bounded spaces (with interiors and exteriors), paths, motions along those paths, forces, parts and wholes, centers and peripheries, and so on.⁷
Therefore, metaphor(m)s are often iconic image-mappings or image schemas raised to life-determining power, Weltanschauungen. To return to my metaphor of painting, here I have reached what painters refer to as their style or approach. The second of these terms is often preferred by creators because in common use the term style has been debased, signifying nothing more than individual, characteristic forms of expression without content or thought—habitual, unconscious quirks also referred to as tics. True style is much more than this. The linguistic field of stylistics shows how rich the concept can be. While such study has chiefly been carried out on literature in books such as The Concept of Style, it has exciting implications for the visual arts as well.⁸ Style is the distinctive, personal mode of production and expression of an artist which is visibly unique to his work: ones individualistic, intellectually and emotionally-charged mechanics of embodying meaning. (In the own case of my own art this becomes more of a modus operandi, as the term is used by police to describe a criminal’s characteristic way of committing a crime, rather than a stable series of representational choices.)
Cognitive metaphor theory proffers a mode of thinking which can be applied to the analysis and creation of art, while accentuating the efforts of the makers of these objects. After the object-only orientation of Formalism, after the medium-only focus of deconstruction, this may lead to a feeling of liberation, of agency. Nevertheless, this is a theory which brings with it a new sense of the burden of the past. Whereas the Formalist Modernists felt free from the past and the Deconstructivist Postmodernists are endlessly tangled in an inescapable present, authors and artists as viewed through cognitive metaphor theory are directly responsible for fashioning their own tropes through the processes of extension, elaboration, composition and/or questioning. This they accomplish in and through the formal parameters of their work, with enough cultural coherence to be able to communicate, but enough originality to be significant. Important tropes cannot merely be selected from a list; they are discovered and built out of revisions of cultural possibilities, in fact, fought for and won.

Notes:

• This article is based on several sections of my dissertation.

1. George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989). p. 89.
2. Ibid., p. 91.
3. Lakoff, "The Neuroscience of Form in Art," in The Artful Mind: Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity, ed. Mark Turner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 153-169.
4. Ibid., pp. 160-162.
5. Gilles Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities (New York: Basic Books, A Perseus Book, 2003).
6. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980; paperback, 1981), p. 152.
7. Ibid., pp 156-157.
8. Berel Lang, ed., The Concept of Style (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1987).

- See more at: http://www.metaphorandart.com/articles/newmetaphors.html#sthash.4Pfu4Um5.dpuf

Under the inspiration of Lakoff, Johnson and Turner’s Cognitive Metaphor Theory, I made the personal discovery which was the foundation of my dissertation and our articles here, that artists create for themselves new metaphors to live by, which viewers can then also use to think with and live by. This I refer to as artists’ metaphor(m)s or central tropes.
Much of the highly imaginative work of discovering their metaphor(m)s is accomplished by artists through what Lakoff and Turner term an “image-mapping.” However, these authors at first undervalued this discovery, describing image-mappings as “more fleeting metaphors.”¹ They assert that “the proliferation of detail in the images limits image-mappings to highly specific cases.” By contrast, they find “image-schema mappings” less detailed and more useful in reasoning.² Image schemas generally rely on an abstracted sense of space and vision, yet can also be grounded in sound, others senses or even in cross-sensory, synaesthetic perceptions. They can often be described with prepositions or simple directionality: out, inside, from, along, up-down, front-back, etc. In the arts, both these image-metaphor activities shade into one another along a vast spectrum of possibilities. Both of these authors expanded their study of visual mapping in following books. Notably, Lakoff intensified his investigation of visual art in his pioneering essay “The Neuroscience of Form in Art,” in the book The Artful Mind, edited by Mark Turner.³ In his contribution, Lakoff reflects on Rudolf Arnheim, form as metaphor and presents the theory of “cogs” to explain this. Cogs are neural circuits, involving mirror neurons, which ordinarily perform motor control, but additionally can register and structure observation. Image schemas and force-dynamic schemas are presented as potential cognitive explanations of the application of cogs to reasoning.⁴ I believe image-mappings are purposefully interwoven by artists into this structure of inferences as well. Furthermore, Turner’s entire conception of cognitive integration and blending offers an excellent account of how metaphor(m)s are brought into being. The principal book on that theory is The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities by Gilles Fauconnier and Turner.⁵
Because of its proliferation of details, image-mapping provides a bonanza of abundance necessary for mining new metaphors, thus making it very important in literature and visual art, more consequential than often imagined. The operation of image-mapping is simple to describe. A mental picture is projected in the mind’s eye onto another “target” image. For example, envision matching the appearance of a tree to that of a woman. Her litheness as she stands slowly moving in the breeze is dramatically foregrounded in this process, brought to the reader’s attention. Creators structurally, often visually, pursue this reasoning within the confines—or better said, using the treasury of—their media and genre. They find potential meaning in either projecting an image onto a formal element or finding schemas adequate for use which are natural characteristics of a formal element. This is described more precisely in my dissertation, where the creative process of conceiving central tropes is delineated in detail. A few examples will suffice for now. Simply whether a sculptural form emphasizes verticality or horizontality is a rich source of possible image schemas or image-mappings. For instance, perhaps the piece is vertical and building-like. Therefore, it is more “up” than “down,” linking it to all the foundational metaphors of UP: GOOD IS UP, HAPPY IS UP, etc. Depending on the composition, perhaps the piece is vertical, yet stresses its downward movement. This would elicit metaphors of DOWN. Long, winding sentences could be seen as matching the experience of taking a leisurely journey. Image-mapping consists in conducting a kind of “sampling” of the world of experience. It does not, therefore, have to be only a visual one, although I believe it generally is. It might be based in one of the other senses, or as our culture becomes increasingly multimedial, it might be based on a combination of sensory impressions.
“New metaphors are mostly structural,” according to Lakoff and Johnson.⁶ For artists, the structure of form and the structure of desired meaning (i.e., content) are functions of one another. When an image-mapping is solidly rooted in structural similarity, Lakoff and Turner refer to it as “iconic.”
This is, in general, what iconicity in language is: a metaphorical image-mapping in which the structure of the meaning is understood in terms of the structure of the form of the language presenting that meaning. Such mappings are possible because of the existence of image-schemas, such as schemas characterizing bounded spaces (with interiors and exteriors), paths, motions along those paths, forces, parts and wholes, centers and peripheries, and so on.⁷
Therefore, metaphor(m)s are often iconic image-mappings or image schemas raised to life-determining power, Weltanschauungen. To return to my metaphor of painting, here I have reached what painters refer to as their style or approach. The second of these terms is often preferred by creators because in common use the term style has been debased, signifying nothing more than individual, characteristic forms of expression without content or thought—habitual, unconscious quirks also referred to as tics. True style is much more than this. The linguistic field of stylistics shows how rich the concept can be. While such study has chiefly been carried out on literature in books such as The Concept of Style, it has exciting implications for the visual arts as well.⁸ Style is the distinctive, personal mode of production and expression of an artist which is visibly unique to his work: ones individualistic, intellectually and emotionally-charged mechanics of embodying meaning. (In the own case of my own art this becomes more of a modus operandi, as the term is used by police to describe a criminal’s characteristic way of committing a crime, rather than a stable series of representational choices.)
Cognitive metaphor theory proffers a mode of thinking which can be applied to the analysis and creation of art, while accentuating the efforts of the makers of these objects. After the object-only orientation of Formalism, after the medium-only focus of deconstruction, this may lead to a feeling of liberation, of agency. Nevertheless, this is a theory which brings with it a new sense of the burden of the past. Whereas the Formalist Modernists felt free from the past and the Deconstructivist Postmodernists are endlessly tangled in an inescapable present, authors and artists as viewed through cognitive metaphor theory are directly responsible for fashioning their own tropes through the processes of extension, elaboration, composition and/or questioning. This they accomplish in and through the formal parameters of their work, with enough cultural coherence to be able to communicate, but enough originality to be significant. Important tropes cannot merely be selected from a list; they are discovered and built out of revisions of cultural possibilities, in fact, fought for and won.

Notes:

• This article is based on several sections of my dissertation.

1. George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989). p. 89.
2. Ibid., p. 91.
3. Lakoff, "The Neuroscience of Form in Art," in The Artful Mind: Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity, ed. Mark Turner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 153-169.
4. Ibid., pp. 160-162.
5. Gilles Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities (New York: Basic Books, A Perseus Book, 2003).
6. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980; paperback, 1981), p. 152.
7. Ibid., pp 156-157.
8. Berel Lang, ed., The Concept of Style (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1987).

- See more at: http://www.metaphorandart.com/articles/newmetaphors.html#sthash.4Pfu4Um5.dpuf

Under the inspiration of Lakoff, Johnson and Turner’s Cognitive Metaphor Theory, I made the personal discovery which was the foundation of my dissertation and our articles here, that artists create for themselves new metaphors to live by, which viewers can then also use to think with and live by. This I refer to as artists’ metaphor(m)s or central tropes.
Much of the highly imaginative work of discovering their metaphor(m)s is accomplished by artists through what Lakoff and Turner term an “image-mapping.” However, these authors at first undervalued this discovery, describing image-mappings as “more fleeting metaphors.”¹ They assert that “the proliferation of detail in the images limits image-mappings to highly specific cases.” By contrast, they find “image-schema mappings” less detailed and more useful in reasoning.² Image schemas generally rely on an abstracted sense of space and vision, yet can also be grounded in sound, others senses or even in cross-sensory, synaesthetic perceptions. They can often be described with prepositions or simple directionality: out, inside, from, along, up-down, front-back, etc. In the arts, both these image-metaphor activities shade into one another along a vast spectrum of possibilities. Both of these authors expanded their study of visual mapping in following books. Notably, Lakoff intensified his investigation of visual art in his pioneering essay “The Neuroscience of Form in Art,” in the book The Artful Mind, edited by Mark Turner.³ In his contribution, Lakoff reflects on Rudolf Arnheim, form as metaphor and presents the theory of “cogs” to explain this. Cogs are neural circuits, involving mirror neurons, which ordinarily perform motor control, but additionally can register and structure observation. Image schemas and force-dynamic schemas are presented as potential cognitive explanations of the application of cogs to reasoning.⁴ I believe image-mappings are purposefully interwoven by artists into this structure of inferences as well. Furthermore, Turner’s entire conception of cognitive integration and blending offers an excellent account of how metaphor(m)s are brought into being. The principal book on that theory is The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities by Gilles Fauconnier and Turner.⁵
Because of its proliferation of details, image-mapping provides a bonanza of abundance necessary for mining new metaphors, thus making it very important in literature and visual art, more consequential than often imagined. The operation of image-mapping is simple to describe. A mental picture is projected in the mind’s eye onto another “target” image. For example, envision matching the appearance of a tree to that of a woman. Her litheness as she stands slowly moving in the breeze is dramatically foregrounded in this process, brought to the reader’s attention. Creators structurally, often visually, pursue this reasoning within the confines—or better said, using the treasury of—their media and genre. They find potential meaning in either projecting an image onto a formal element or finding schemas adequate for use which are natural characteristics of a formal element. This is described more precisely in my dissertation, where the creative process of conceiving central tropes is delineated in detail. A few examples will suffice for now. Simply whether a sculptural form emphasizes verticality or horizontality is a rich source of possible image schemas or image-mappings. For instance, perhaps the piece is vertical and building-like. Therefore, it is more “up” than “down,” linking it to all the foundational metaphors of UP: GOOD IS UP, HAPPY IS UP, etc. Depending on the composition, perhaps the piece is vertical, yet stresses its downward movement. This would elicit metaphors of DOWN. Long, winding sentences could be seen as matching the experience of taking a leisurely journey. Image-mapping consists in conducting a kind of “sampling” of the world of experience. It does not, therefore, have to be only a visual one, although I believe it generally is. It might be based in one of the other senses, or as our culture becomes increasingly multimedial, it might be based on a combination of sensory impressions.
“New metaphors are mostly structural,” according to Lakoff and Johnson.⁶ For artists, the structure of form and the structure of desired meaning (i.e., content) are functions of one another. When an image-mapping is solidly rooted in structural similarity, Lakoff and Turner refer to it as “iconic.”
This is, in general, what iconicity in language is: a metaphorical image-mapping in which the structure of the meaning is understood in terms of the structure of the form of the language presenting that meaning. Such mappings are possible because of the existence of image-schemas, such as schemas characterizing bounded spaces (with interiors and exteriors), paths, motions along those paths, forces, parts and wholes, centers and peripheries, and so on.⁷
Therefore, metaphor(m)s are often iconic image-mappings or image schemas raised to life-determining power, Weltanschauungen. To return to my metaphor of painting, here I have reached what painters refer to as their style or approach. The second of these terms is often preferred by creators because in common use the term style has been debased, signifying nothing more than individual, characteristic forms of expression without content or thought—habitual, unconscious quirks also referred to as tics. True style is much more than this. The linguistic field of stylistics shows how rich the concept can be. While such study has chiefly been carried out on literature in books such as The Concept of Style, it has exciting implications for the visual arts as well.⁸ Style is the distinctive, personal mode of production and expression of an artist which is visibly unique to his work: ones individualistic, intellectually and emotionally-charged mechanics of embodying meaning. (In the own case of my own art this becomes more of a modus operandi, as the term is used by police to describe a criminal’s characteristic way of committing a crime, rather than a stable series of representational choices.)
Cognitive metaphor theory proffers a mode of thinking which can be applied to the analysis and creation of art, while accentuating the efforts of the makers of these objects. After the object-only orientation of Formalism, after the medium-only focus of deconstruction, this may lead to a feeling of liberation, of agency. Nevertheless, this is a theory which brings with it a new sense of the burden of the past. Whereas the Formalist Modernists felt free from the past and the Deconstructivist Postmodernists are endlessly tangled in an inescapable present, authors and artists as viewed through cognitive metaphor theory are directly responsible for fashioning their own tropes through the processes of extension, elaboration, composition and/or questioning. This they accomplish in and through the formal parameters of their work, with enough cultural coherence to be able to communicate, but enough originality to be significant. Important tropes cannot merely be selected from a list; they are discovered and built out of revisions of cultural possibilities, in fact, fought for and won.

Notes:

• This article is based on several sections of my dissertation.

1. George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989). p. 89.
2. Ibid., p. 91.
3. Lakoff, "The Neuroscience of Form in Art," in The Artful Mind: Cognitive Science and the Riddle of Human Creativity, ed. Mark Turner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 153-169.
4. Ibid., pp. 160-162.
5. Gilles Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities (New York: Basic Books, A Perseus Book, 2003).
6. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980; paperback, 1981), p. 152.
7. Ibid., pp 156-157.
8. Berel Lang, ed., The Concept of Style (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1987).

- See more at: http://www.metaphorandart.com/articles/newmetaphors.html#sthash.4Pfu4Um5.dpuf

Critic John Perreault, Excellent Once, Twice, Thrice Again

First published September 17, 2007



Recent Blog on Artopia about Editing: “Jack Kerouac, Pousette-Dart, and Me,” link

Recent Essay on “The Braid: A New Paradigm for Art” in the online journal theArtSection, Go to archive: Vol.1, No.3 (Aug.07), link.

Recent Podcast on PS1’s “Art Radio” Podcast site: link.

A taster:

In the summer of 2004 when I was teaching an introduction to contemporary art at the Anderson Ranch near Aspen, in Colorado, I came up with two ideas that I felt would help make sense of the confusion that prevails. Are we in a post-pluralist free-fall? Which direction is up? Who threw out the baby with the bath?

I was not convinced that art history and the art world were finished, yet the art world seemed at an impasse. Pluralism, long confused with anti-Leninist socialisms or, on an even deeper level, with polytheism, had been cast aside. Art was tied up in a knot, with no clear prerogatives and certainly without direction. But the term “direction” implies the dreaded Master Narrative that we have all tried to deconstruct, inadvertently letting it be replaced by…..the Market?

Perhaps it was not the end of art history, but the end of a certain restricted art history. Perhaps it was not the end of the art world, but the end of a certain kind of art world. I, of course, knew it was all rhetoric. Or as the Dadaists used to say, art is dead; long live art...........

A Neo-Conceptual Artist Fresh out of School

First published August 21, 2007

The creator’s name is Ann Shaw and she lives in Scotland. She was an exchange student from Glasgow School of Art to The School of the Art Institute, Chicago from August 1999 to May 2000. Never would have guessed, right?!!!

http://www.annshaw.net/

The Artist Project

First published August 8, 2007

MSB:
Considering the fact that I just received the invitation, via email, for applying for the next Artist Project, this post is probably too late. It appears they have made some improvements, but the discussion many artists have been having about this “project” is very interesting and should be continued.... into the realm of artist responsibility and actual inclusion of artists important and powerful ways within fairs or any art exhibition venue.
I’m posting here a LIST OF IDEAS for improving the ARTIST PROJECT. Even contradictory ones. This is / was a kind of brainstorming, aiming to increase creative proposals while whittling down less useful ones. Anybody want to help still discuss such ideas?

Here are some of the responses. Including those edited from an excellent questionaire-email Norbert Marszalek organized. The discussion was/is primarily ocusing over at Klein's site, The Art Letter. Let's pick it up here and there and everywhere and get some clear proposals.

MSB:
For me, it was a great experience ---- and YET, I agree with most of the criticisms such as those by Tony Fitzpatrick. Certain valuable complaints are about the artworld, art fairs in general, and how a project like the AP could be a prime meta-critical aspect of the fair. I do think that it would be possible to have an AP of "indy-minded" folks that kicks ass and furthers the cause of artist-power in a much more aggressive manner. Let’s start it off with the clearest and I think most important points, as made by Tony Fitzpatrick.

Tony Fitzpatrick:
My idea for the art project is that it should be open to all artists in all medias regardless of whether they are affiliated or not -- it should also be rigorously juried -- BY ARTISTS -- not dealers , not curators, not trade-show geeks....
this is my one and only idea for this and I think it is the only salient idea.

RUSTY SCRUBY:
I want more independent artists with representation there next year.

Also, what if each of the participating artists in the Artist Project voted on 5 artists that they'd like to see be there next year, and then the winner gets a free booth the following year? It would only be $20 per artist to cover the fee, that is if the Mart didn't like the idea and cover it on their own.

PAUL KLEIN:
I would like to see the Artist Project be much bigger – like 500 artists – of all walks, those represented by galleries and those not, and I still want it juried.

I like to see the litmus test be quality. Let’s create a way for artists to get a ‘participation grant’ to exhibit.

Let’s make it so big that people have to pay genuine attention to it. Let’s not have the majority of the artists be from Chicago.

Let us create some real change. Let’s empower artists and give them some momentum.

Let’s give ‘em something to talk about.

BILL DOLAN:
Make it physically part of Art Chicago to make it more accessible to serious collectors and dealers.

Accept the fact that some of the art will probably suck, especially with an expanded show and not dwell on it.

As it gains importance over the years, perhaps move it to a separate weekend.

Perhaps some cooperation with the local institutions. Shows awarded to select TAP artists.

I'm not sure how, but try to involve beginning collectors. Art competes with a lot of other collectible stuff these days (famous guitars, rare bicycles, cars, etc.). The show should promote the idea of collecting art.

Z:
I always had a vision of having another show the week after Art Chicago. The idea was to rent the walls that were already up. Not much would need to be done because everything is already in place. Think of it you could get 900 artists in there easy. Everybody has their own wall and you have plenty of space for sculpture. ... The only thing I didn't know is if all those gallery folk would hang around to check out the scene for new artists. Would the size of it keep them interested?

Norbert Marszalek:
Let's try to attract 1000 applications and jury in 350-500 artists. I wouldn't want the show to get too big...the show could end up having a wallpaper effect.

And yes, the show should always try to attract the "collector". Build it and they will come.

MSB again:
How about inclusion of a certain number of artist groups (such as the Sharkpack, etc.)? Self selected. It would probably make for some more cohesiveness, plus a form of self-jurying that might help foster quality.

Rusty Scruby:
I think the event really needs more variety to its structure overall. Such as, maybe each year, focus on a different city and have artists from that city with 5-10 booths showing together as a group; providing somewhat of a spotlight for that city.

Maybe there could be an online section.. the Virtual Artist.

Also, if there are going to be more artists coming in from out of town, possible 100s, are there ways to help artists find places to stay?

I don't think people would hang around for a second weekend. It would make it so that only people from Chicago would see it, and then it would be harder to get artists. I think it has to be the same time as Art Chicago.. Bridge, but I don't think it should be physically joined with Art Chicago. I think the AP needs to develop its own identity.

I keep wondering: The Merchandise Mart owns The Artist Project, so how much can our ideas impact things?

D. Fox:
(Rusty has) a good ambitious plan -- grouping the selected artists by city ... an international juried art fair of artists showing artists from all over.

Dougphoto
One thing I think could be real fun would be a curators artist project, where I could have a $1000 booth in which I could bring in several artists. Like a mini gallery which would only last a weekend or if it did well enough could launch a new gallery.

Z
I hope that the focus of the Artist Project will be Chicago. There’s lots going on here that deserves to be noticed. It’s a shame that there are only 50 spots in that show and to fill them with all out of town artists is really a "kick in the brushes" to artists here. Rusty Scruby:
the Mart needs to clearly define:

unaffiliated / independent / represented
and
Chicago / national / international


I'd like to know what the mission statement of the AP is.

Bill Dolan:
I think that there should be a part of the site where show visitors can purchase the work of artists after the show.

Tony Fitzpatrick's The Wonder

First published July 1, 2007

Kevin Nance’s excellent review of Tony Fitzpatrick’s first book, The Wonder: Portraits of a Remembered City -- The Dream City, from the Sun-Times, August 2, 2006, is no longer available on-line. Or at least very difficult to find, as most newspapers tend to delete archives of art articles after a relatively short time. I was able to find it at FindArticles.com, a great resource, which may not exist forever, considering the current, often oppressive, use and interpretation of copyright laws. I think Nance’s article should be readily available to read for individual research. So here it is. Just use it for your own intellectual delectation and study, don’t make any money from it, etc. Fitzpatrick’s books, both volumes, are true delights. Get them!

Calling out the ghosts: In 'The Wonder,' Tony Fitzpatrick turns memory into works of art

Chicago Sun-Times, Aug 2, 2006 by Kevin Nance

The world of Tony Fitzpatrick's art is a man's world -- a Chicago workingman with a couple of bucks in his pocket, bumming around town in a beat-up car with the Sox game eternally on the radio, chewing a cigar and humming a fragment of a tune he once heard a beautiful woman sing in a smoky South Side bar, repeating it over and over. He drives past the long-gone Stockyards and the Coliseum, seeing them clear as day. Past sunset, he stops off at the corner tavern for a lonely beer; past midnight, he takes in an "all-girl revue" that cheers him up, as far as it goes. Finally he's standing on the street, looking at the stars and thinking of his father, that half- remembered melody still stuck in his head.

That's the haunted and haunting world of The Wonder: Portraits of a Remembered City -- The Dream City (Last Gasp/La Luz de Jesus Press, $26.95), the extraordinary second volume of Fitzpatrick's projected trilogy of collections of drawing-collages. It offers both an affordable substitute for his original pieces (which now go for upward of $15,000 each) and the latest chapter in a sort of dream diary of the ex-boxer, poet, actor and all-around man's man who has emerged in the past decade as the quintessential Chicago artist. It's also the latest installment in his mythic narrative of the city as America's great working-class metropolis, a project that began as a tribute to his dad, a traveling burial-vault salesman who ferried his son around town for years before dying of cancer in 1998. Even more than in the songs sung by the bards who came before him (Sandburg, Algren, Terkel), Fitzpatrick's Chicago is as soulful and magical as it is gritty and bruising, with a heart as big as its shoulders.

Although the collages are small in scale, rarely measuring more than 15 by 12 inches, their ambition is epic: to convey what it was to live in Chicago in the mid-20th century as a sort of clear- eyed romantic, finding hope and pathos in the mercantile and mundane.

Most feature a drawn central image -- a human figure, a flower, an animal -- orbited by dozens of found images culled from matchbook covers, postcards and local newspapers and magazines, most from the 1930s through the '70s. Chief among these last are naively chipper ads for cocktail lounges ("Ask for Nectar Premium Beer -- It's a Honey of a Beer") and eateries ("Shangri-La -- World's Most Romantic Restaurant"), but you'll also find reminders of every kind of product or amenity a red-blooded American male could have asked for: booze and cigarettes, racetracks and razor blades, barber shops and bowling alleys.

Every kind of woman, too. As you might expect, strippers, prostitutes and Playboy bunnies proliferate here -- bodacious and matter-of-fact in fishnet stockings or nothing at all, or desperately stealing soap in Gold Coast hotel rooms -- but so do hardworking waitresses dreaming of Vegas, bathing beauties at Edgewater Beach, Bronzeville dancing queens and even a singing South Side mermaid, "pretty as a star inside a star."

Those words, tumbling down the side of the image like one of Chicago's classic vertical theater marquees, come from an element in Fitzpatrick's work that aligns it more with the city's literary and musical traditions than its visual arts heritage. Most of the collages feature poems that elegize the city in a bluesy, tough-and- tender idiom that feels like a collision of Pablo Neruda and Tom Waits. "Holy/smoke/unfurls/in/front/of/your/eyes," goes a line in "Chicago Sky #1." "It is a/lingering/kiss/from/the/tip/of a/no-name/ cigar./It is:/taxi-cab/semaphore,/calling out/ the/ghosts."

Aside from their discreet excellence, these moody, ambient poems also serve as the thematic glue that holds his visual tropes together in a strategy that feels like that of good bebop. The words direct us to each collage's central image as the melody, while the secondary images bounce off it as ornament and counterpoint, everything working together in an organic -- it's tempting to say symphonic -- system of meaning.

No, you can't always connect all the dots in a Fitzpatrick collage, whose juxtaposition of elements can sometimes seem obscure, but what of it? You can't always follow the free association in Joseph Cornell's boxes or Robert Rauschenberg's "combines" (whose playful Americana feels closely related to Fitzpatrick's), any more than you can chase every key change in Charlie Parker.

But even what seems like the purely decorative elements in Fitzpatrick's work -- such as the ubiquitous flowers, especially poppies -- often turn out to have personal significance to the artist. "I had once had a relationship with the poppy," Fitzpatrick, who has been sober for 23 years, told me last week. "It's part of my history."

History, not nostalgia, is what Fitzpatrick is after here; while some of his memories of the city are suffused with romance, others are clearer and harsher. He hits hard at the dominant political culture, lampooning a Chicago Democrat shaking hands and kissing babies "while/the/faithful/blow/idiot/whistles/and/ point/his/way." (A Chicago Republican is no better, his party "lost/in/the/ yesterday/ music/of/virtue/peddlers/ and/frozen-/hearted/cheats.")

Buy it now. At the publisher, Last Gasp.

Or here, at Barnes and Noble.

And volume 2 is also at B & N.

Your “New York Age”

First published June 27, 2007



I don’t know what this proves, but at this link you can take Time Out New York magazine's new quiz: "What's your New York age?" According to it, my own New York "age" is 28. And I’m 52. I think that upsets me. Am I too childish or something?

Lucie Schenker Drawings

First published June 5, 2007

I recently did a podcast on an important “midcareer” artist in Switzerland, Lucie Schenker. My contribution had such terrible sound that I am putting a transcript of my discussion here, for those who don’t want the pain of listening to my feedback-backgrounded, tinny broadcast.

This is Mark Staff Brandl, the central European Bureau for Bad At Sports as well as the EuroShark. I hope this comes out well, as I am having some feedback problems on my computer and bad sound on my digital recorder. I appear to be audio-challenged. It was great to have met all you Chicagoans and to have participated in your artworld during ArtChicago. You have the beginnings of a great scene, the best yet in Chicago, one to challenge LA, London and so on. So don’t blow it by self-destructing or conducting another little junta-takeover like in the late 80s Neo-Con crap one. I wrote a post on my adventures at the fair over on Sharkforum.org. Go check it out.

This week I’m quickly covering a beautiful little show of drawings and one sculpture by one of the best Swiss sculptors. Her name is Lucie Schenker. Lucie SHOULD be having a retrospective at the St.Gallen Museum due to her quality and extensive career (she is just turning 65 although she doesn’t look it at all, and although I hate to name ages in this ageist artworld).

She is drastically underappreciated here, another example of a self-concocted, provincial problem due to the Malinchismo of a local consensus curatorial clique. Oh well. Anyway. Schenker has this show in Kathrinen, an ex-monastery once on the edge of the town of St. Gallen, but now in the very middle, behind the local McDonalds, actually. It is a beautiful room off to one side of the central courtyard; one that is almost too nice for art. Schenker has mastered this well with a show of 38 works in graphite on white drafting vellum. I tried to tape a version of my contribution live, but the acoustics of the space and my ineptitude made for terrible sound. Too bad because I did it with an art class of mine and with Lucie there --- and we spoke a mish-mash of languages which can be one of the most fun parts of life in Switzerland.



Schenker is know for her sculptures, installations and public works created using “Gitter,” that is metal-grid material including screening and chain-link fencing and the like. Often these works were painted only on the inside, creating pleasingly buoyant takes on minimalism. Her excellent installation at the Kunsthalle Arbon just a few years ago summed up this period. She also created many subtle stone lithographs based on the overlapping grids seen in her sculptures, printed at the shop of the world-renowned master printer Urban Stoob, with whom I also print (and who does far more famous artists like Tapies, Tony Craig, Gunther Uecker, Motherwell, and many more. He deserves a show on BAS all his own.)

Recently Lucie has broken through into an entirely new realm of pneumatic works --- air-filled plastic or latex tubes, usually higher than a human, which snake in and around architecture, filling entire rooms and hallways, filtering light, casting amazing shadows and even sometimes moving before your eyes.

As a sidelight to these works, she began a series of representational drawings --- something she hadn’t done in a long time. They are done in precisely blended graphite on white vellum sheets. The sheets are raised from the backboard in the frames allowing the drawings to also glow slightly with ambient reflected light --- much like her pneumatic sculptures.

I said representational, but you don’t register that always at first. They can appear to be quite abstract, almost Arp-like. Schenker takes areas of the human body, sometimes based on remembrances of poses from art history, drapes or wraps the areas in plastic or the like and then draws them. They are well-chosen, “closed” areas of detail, that is, they do not have that typical appearance of chopped off parts that seems so common in art (mostly by men) when it features details of the body. This is also what tends to make them appear abstract, rounded organic forms which could be stones, or textiles or landscape elements. Sometimes, though, they are quite blatant --- a belly and a breast, two hands much like those of Mona Lisa, but with rubber gloves on (one female student joked that maybe she had to do the dishes after posing for Leonardo).



The sculpture is made of flesh-colored latex and is a skin-like full-body suit which could be worn. Lucie has hung it open, upside-down, suspended under tension between the ceiling and the floor. It was both delicate and scary --- like a flayed human skin. It reminded me of the skin of St. Bartholomew is holding in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel (often thought to be a self-portrait by the artist --- the skin is, that is, not the saint), and of Titian’s portrayal of the Flaying of Marsyas, a satyr, who was flayed alive for daring to challenge Apollo (here). The reference to the body made it a wonderful addition to the show and suggested a bridge between the drawings and her inflated-plastic installation works.

These drawings are genuinely a high point of her career. The drawings are objects, strike one as sculptural. They are masterfully technically drawn (not shitty-drawing style work here), yet are not simply displays of competence. The works, in a variety of sizes but averaging about 3 ft high by 2 feet wide, cover two walls of the space arranged freely on the wall in a frieze-like block, but not aligned or in rows. They unite delicacy with strength, atmosphere with solidity and the human with the sculptural. Great work.

I hope to talk at you soon again from Europe ---and see you soon again in Chicago. Bye.

The podcast is at Bad at Sports here

Where’s the Artist Here?:"Vermittlung," Curation, Usurpation and Power

First published May 23, 2007

I just received yet another invitation to a symposium (the preferred form of communication in the Consensoriat) concerning the Role of Exhibition Development in the Contemporary Artworld. I have a proposal.

In these set pieces, usually curators lecture the audience on their own importance, pretend to field a few polite questions from the public (who usually consists of artists wishing to get the attention of the Powermakers Present).

Never even once have I seen one of these endless self-congratulatory symposiums / multi-day panel-discussions wherein anyone speaks who is CRITICAL of the contemporary power structure favoring curators over artists. (As an aside — as much as I disagree with his book, we need a Tom Wolfe-like Painted Word attack on this situation.)

Therefore, I am (not so) humbly offering my services. Whenever anyone reading this is part of the planning process of such a symposium or panel discussion, I will gladly present an entertaining, informative, hard-hitting critique of the current situation – and most of all its self-delusions – in a speech I tentatively title “Where’s the Artist Here?: “Vermittlung,” Curation, Usurpation and Power.” Fly me in. I’m certain I can generate real discussion. And it is drastically needed.

Perreault on Why Art History Needs A Re-Write

First published May 14, 2007

Artist and critic John Perreault uses the recent exhibition High Times /Hard Times to examine amnesia in art. I have discussed this exhibition here several times; furthermore the topic has also disturbed me for some time. I did one of my Covers paintings about it in 2003, which is the title image here. Perreault’s Artopia art diary blog is usually insightful, but this is one of his best posts yet.

Here’s an excerpt as a tempting taste. then go read the whole piece. It is well worth your time. Link.

We may still look at Pat Steir and Linda Benglis, but they and others who, according to curator Katy Siegel, attempted to expand painting in an anti-painting period (I agree with that designation) are apparently no longer part of the master narrative that has been taken over by post-modern conceptualism. This track is not my master narrative and probably not yours. It is the strictly academic narrative. On the other hand, nowhere in the catalog do I see proof that po-mo is indeed in control. If so, it's funny that the ruins of the modernist master-narrative were quickly filled in, appropriated by postmodernist, antipainting photography. Somebody somewhere must really need a master narrative to make sense of art.

On the other hand, winners are now defined by sales figures. Goodbye, serious critical tomes. Goodbye, museums as gatekeepers. We are becoming an art world where only bad artists have galleries, only bad artists sell.

By the way, Perreault’s Toothpaste