Christmas Buddha

Poetry

Truly fine poetry must be read aloud. A good poem does not allow itself to be read in a low voice or silently. If we can read it silently, it is not a valid poem: a poem demands pronunciation. Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song. (Borges)

Untitled

The hand of the day opens
Three clouds
And these few words
(Octavio Paz)

Impasse/In the Veil 2001

Seduction of a Blossom

Faust is an alchemical drama from beginning to end, claims C.G. Jung. Goethe worked for most of his life on this masterwork. The original figure in the Faust legend was a seeker of forbidden knowledge. His true identity is not known, but he claimed to be an astrologer, expert in magic, and an alchemist. This legend attracted Christopher Marlowe, who offered in his play a psychological study of the battle between good and evil. Marlowe's drama ends with the protagonist's damnation. Faust's lust for knowledge is limitless and he makes a contract with Mephistopheles. Faust wants to enjoy his highest moment in this life. In Goethe’s version the blind Faust is finally satisfied. However, Mephistopheles loses his victory, when angels take Faust to heaven.

“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies!
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven be in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.” (Marlowe)

One of the play's central themes is the clash between the medieval world and the world of the emerging Renaissance. The medieval world placed God at the center of existence and shunted aside man and the natural world. The Renaissance was a movement that began in Italy in the fifteenth century and soon spread throughout Europe, carrying with it a new emphasis on the individual, on classical learning, and on scientific inquiry into the nature of the world. In the medieval academy, theology was the queen of the sciences. In the Renaissance, though, secular matters took center stage. Faustus, despite being a magician rather than a scientist explicitly rejects the medieval model. He resolves, in full Renaissance spirit, to accept no limits, traditions, or authorities in his quest for knowledge, wealth, and power. It is tempting to see in Faustus—as many readers have—a hero of the new modern world, a world free of God, religion, and the limits that these imposed on humanity. Faustus may pay a medieval price, but his successors will go further than he and suffer less, as we have in modern times. On the other hand, the disappointment and mediocrity that follow Faustus's pact with the devil, as he descends from grand ambitions to petty conjuring tricks, might suggest a contrasting interpretation. Marlowe may be suggesting that the new, modern spirit, though ambitious and glittering, will lead only to a Faustian dead end.

Ruskin

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one. ( John Ruskin)

Robert Gober

Magritte

I painted Flight #1 and 2 to look like the dome was not only floating against the cloudy background but in front of the painting in the physical space, viewer's space, just like floating objects in some Margritte paintings.













(Flight #1, 2008)

Fountain, 1996

Redon

If the artist compares himself with others in order to judge them, it is only by a very awkward and difficult operation-- the more difficult because he must remove his own eyeglasses in order to see clearly the work of others, and yet does not have the benefit of theirs. He can speak well only of himself, his own adventures, of his unique situation, joyous or tragic, in which destiny has placed him.
For myself, I believe that I have produced an expressive, suggestive, and indeterminate art. Suggestive art is the irradiation of sublime plastic elements, drawn together and combined with the purpose of evoking visions which it illuminates and exalts, meanwhile inciting thought. (Odilon Redon)

"Return of the Native"

Rock, juniper, and wind,
And seagull sitting still--
All these of one mind.
He who finds will
To come home
Will surely find old faith made new again,
And lavish welcome.
(Marsden Hartley)

Shelter from the Storm, 2008

Dylan's "Shelter from the Storm"

Flying Dome

still from flash animation Flying Dome,
exhibit Shelter from the Storm

Like a Hurricane

Chess and Art

The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.
(Marcel Duchamp)

Stella(r) #6

The subject matter for the Dome and Tent paintings is a dysfunctional architectural form.
Chrome paintings are DeLorian, futuristic, shiny, protected against decay and corrosion. Their geodesic tent subject matter is now a constellation. Once groundless is now celestial as we look on through the portholes of our vessel.
(HK Zamani, November 2007)

Don't look at your form, however ugly or beautiful.
Look at love and at the aim of your quest. ...
O you whose lips are parched, keep looking for water.
Those parched lips are proof that eventually you will reach the source."
(Rumi)

Famous Blue Raincoat

Patty Faure, 2005

Voltaic Pile

A voltaic pile is a set of individual Galvanic cells placed in series. The voltaic pile, invented by Alessandro Volta in 1800, was the first electric battery. Building on Galvani's 1780s discovery of how a circuit of two metals and a frog's leg can cause the frog's leg to respond, in 1791 Volta demonstrated that when two metals and brine-soaked cloth or cardboard are arranged in a circuit they produce an electric current. In 1800 Volta literally piled up several pairs of alternating copper (or silver) and zinc discs (electrodes) separated by cloth or cardboard soaked in brine (electrolyte) to increase the electrolyte conductivity. When the top and bottom contacts were connected by a wire, an electric current flowed through the voltaic pile and the connecting wire. The strength of the pile is expressed in terms of its electromotive force, or emf, given in volts. Volta characterized the emf of a pair of metals in terms of the difference in their voltages, which he could measure. His theory of contact tension considered that the emf, which drives the electric current through a circuit containing a voltaic cell, occurs at the contact between the two metals.

The Lounge Lizards

The Lounge Lizards (Berlin 1981) - Dutch Schultz

Take Five

Koan

Koan is a story, dialogue, question, or statement in the history and lore of Chan (Zen) Buddhism, generally containing aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding, yet may be accessible to intuition. A famous Koan is: "two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?" (Oral tradition, attributed to Hakuin Ekadu, 1685-1768, considered a reviver of the Koan traditon in Japan).

The Uses of Not

The Taoist philosopher Lao Tse wrote extensively on  the concept of "Ma" including his poem "The Uses of Not":

Thirty spokes meet in the hub,

but the empty spaces between them

is the essence of the wheel.

Pots are formed from clay,

but the empty between it

is the essence of the pot.

Walls with windows and doors form the house,

but the empty space within it

is the essence of the house.

Elements

Elements can nurture us, and can destroy us. It's their inherent power and their dichotomy that intrigues me: fire for its conflagration, earth for its solidity and water for its fluidity.

Conflict seems to be an essential component of our lives. Without it and its resolution growth is an impossibility. 

The more specific a film is, the more universal it becomes.

(Deepa Mehta)

Kant to Adorno

We must move from Kant to Adorno, where we find the subject/spectator standing not outside the work, but deeply embedded within it, and therefore as incapable of a detached emotional response to the work as artists are of producing it in a detached way. (Beuys)

The unsolved antagonisms of reality return in artworks as immanent problems of form. (Adorno)

Work on understanding the issues affecting the making of artworks and you will reinvent society. (Beuys)

Change

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
(The more things change, the more they stay the same.)

Vesicle in Collusion with Vehicle

Both

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.

We are tasting the taste this minute of eternity. We are pain

and what cures pain, both. We are

the sweet cold water and the jar that pours it. (Rumi)

Form First

The work is more responsive to its form-making than to anything else. It has to be inventive as form first; form generates its own meaning and doesn't need the application of other attributes. (Richard Serra)

In the Lodi Gardens

The black, pensive, dense
domes of the mausoleums
suddenly shot birds
into the unanimous blue
(Octavio Paz)

Ice Cream

Seven Breaths

In the words of the ancients, one should make his decisions within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break right through the other side. (from Ghost Dog)

Notes from Schlemmer

To Avoid to much socialization I choose isolation. Artist creates out of disbelief, doubt that leads to or elicits production. Artists are gripped by the spontaneity with which children express themselves. (Oskar Schlemmer)

Miriam Makeba

May she rest in peace.

Between

"Tout est entre." (Jean-Luc Godard) -- Everything is between.
"... N'etre qu'entre..." (Camille Bryen) -- Only between.
"At certain times I have preferred walking that is to say walking with my feet to talking that is to say walking with my mouth--but at the end it's the same thing." (Serge Daney in Perseverance)

"Ma"

In Japanese there were (are) no words for Time or Space—there is only “Ma.” The direct meaning of “Ma” is the in-between, the space between object and object, and at the same time the silence between sound and sound.