On Sun, 31 May 1998, Pete Smith & Lyn Richards Wool wrote:
> is he more of a culture hero (if he's becoming that) because of his
> battles with beaurocracies?
- dodgy to paraphrase, put words in his mouth, but I guess his own view wd
be that he's not a culture hero 'cos (he feels) no-one pays any attention
to what he does - yet, on the other hand, so obviously, his battles are
undertaken in a "heroic" mode (little sparta).
> does he engage at all with postmodernism?
- I'd've thot the whole "participative" nature of F's work - the
collaborations of its making, the collaborations of its discovery and
reading, combined with the textual multiplicities and - to say the least -
plural readings were "postmodern" as I understand it, without signing up
to any particular branch cadre or faction.
> are his interests in classicism, the French Revolution & the design &
> architecture of the Third Reich attempts to create art by pure
> aesthetics or demands for a closer look at the ideas of heroics &
> villainy, for a more subtle modulation of our ability to register, in
> other people & ourselves, the capacities for good & evil?
- Strikes me that he either takes classical form and then writes on it, or
takes text, fact, whatever, and injects it into a mould of classicism.
Either way the classicism is rarely "neat", always has some kind of tail
stuck on it, as does his use of, frinstance, US aircraft carriers. OSISTM.
> A personal favourite, exemplifying for me his wit, is the inscription:
> "Small Is Quite Beautiful."
> Would love to visit Stonypath & see those works in situ.
- & when one does, one finds the place embodies the text you quote: most
of the works you've seen in pics are smaller, more gathered than as
imagined from the photos. So that the photos, the drawings, are of course
more than just "spinoffs", they become tellings in their own right. More
collaboration, more rejection of the finite-ness of any one text.
I've a few copies left of the nice "wee" leaflet & poster of the Finlay
piece "Foxglove" we have in our botanic gardens here, btw, watercolour by
Ron Costley, essaylet by Harry Gilonis. Offer to Britpo Folk: Send a
stamped A4 envelope with your address on it and they're yours while stocks
last. Offshore Britpos: send something which I can properly deem to have
covered postal costs.
___________________________________________________________
Richard Caddel
Durham University Library, Stockton Rd., Durham DH1 3LY, UK
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Phone: +44 (0)191 374 3044 Fax: +44 (0)191 374 7481
WWW: http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dul0ric
"Words! Pens are too light. Take a chisel to write."
- Basil Bunting
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