On 1/23/06, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> And Max Jacob reading at parties of artists and writers.
>
> Poets tend to be driven by visual images at least as much as by text,
> except in the limited case of langpo and its cousins.
>
> But I think what truth there is to the observation has to do with
> younger generations of visual and literary artists, often trained in
> programs that separate them from each other, and products, in the US,
> at least, of a culture that facilitates ignorance not only of other
> arts but of other cultures and classes and anything but the very recent past.
>
> Most of the visual artists that I know, at least among my
> contemporaries, are profoundly literate. On the other hand, I
> remember seeing the work of one of my friends when I first met her,
> during her expressionist phase. "There's a lot of Munch in these," I
> said. She didn't know who I was talking about. She held an MFA from a
> prestigious academy.
>
> I design books and occasionally do pastels or paint or take pictures.
> I also build furniture for myself and care what it looks like.
>
> What does "a series of etchings direct to copper plate" mean?
> Etchings are always done on copper or zinc plates.
>
> Mark
If I remember correctly, Freud used the copper plate as his canvas
almost, there wasn't much preparation or retouching. The exhibition
compared and contrasted etchings from his youth, which were precise,
stylised, architectural almost against his later ones were the
opposite.
I agree my statement, taken out of context as answer to Stephen
Vincent's posting does seem pretty wild. However, Stephen seemed to me
to be saying that Artists should be literate: if they are involved in,
say, hills, they should be up on the latest theory/reading on hills,
whatever that might be. I'm saying the reverse: at any point, an
artist could take whatever media they have in hand and start doing
whatever it is they want to do without recourse to text, and they
*usually do. For example, and this is only half-joking, say some papal
nob comes up to Caravaggio and says, "in return for a pardon, paint me
a picture of Goliath being slain." If it was me, I wouldn't spend a
second longer than neccessary... The fertile modern period that you
cite might seem, in retrospect, to be the acme of collaboration
between these disciplines.
I'm not disputing that artists and poets have collaborated in wildly
successful ways - although did poets really start collage? Burroughs
wasn't a poet. And there were a heck of a lot of visual collages
around and before it. My sense - and it is only a wild guess - is that
poets were responding to artists, as Mark says. It seemed to me that
when I was working with Beverley, text was the poorer partner, the
secondary cousin.
I share Stephen's disappointment that Richard Long didn't seem to be
that well-read. Well, that's Richard Long's practice. I'm not even
sure what you do to turn it around.
Roger
>
> At 08:47 AM 1/23/2006, you wrote:
> >On 23/1/06 10:59 PM, "Roger Day" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > > People - particularly visual
> > > artists, have rubbed along without recourse to other disciplines quite
> > > happily for a long time now as far as I can see. There's a whole
> > > history of it. Read any biog of the major artists, look at photographs
> > > of them in their studios, their homes. I think you'll search a long
> > > time before you find evidence of books in those photos.
> >
> >Gosh. I'm thinking of Eluard naming Miro's paintings, and how he counted
> >Dali and Tanguy among his close friends; Appollinaire and Chagall; Frank
> >O'Hara and the New York school of artists, the whole history of collage
> >(which comes from poets) and Breton and surrealism...then theatre and dance
> >and the visual artists and writers who participated in those art forms
> >(Giacommeti designing the tree in Waiting for Godot, Balanchine and
> >Chagall), Kiefer, who has worked so much off the poetry of Celan, or people
> >like Cocteau, who seemed to do everything...
> >
> >It's late here and I feel a bit incoherent, but this seems an amazing
> >statement, Roger.
> >
> >Best
> >
> >A
> >
> >
> >Alison Croggon
> >
> >Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> >Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
> >Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
>
--
http://www.badstep.net/
http://www.cb1poetry.org.uk/
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