Jacques Derrida II

What I really like about Derrida's approach to philosophy is that I've always got the notion that he takes me on a journey. Thereby considering all the diversions possible.

There is that lecture on Van Gogh, Heidegger and Meyer Schapiro included in the  compilation "The Truth in Painting". What really stuck in my mind - it's been in the 1990s that I read it and Raimund still has my copy of the book - is how Derrida shows that Van Gogh's actual painting of a pair of shoes had been taken hostage by both, Heidegger and Meyer Schapiro, in their fight over ideologies. On the one hand there is Heidegger making them out to be a peasant's pair of shoes, which of course is tainted by  Nazi ideology. On the other hand Meyer Schapiro, realising this flaw, reclaims them to be an industrial worker's, thereby fitting them to a socialist world view. In the end I was asking myself - and I feel that Derrida implied it- whose flaw is greater, the one's, who is obviously infatuated with an ideology, or the one's, who sees somebody else being infatuated with some ideology and only goes and substitutes one for the other. As far as I recall Meyer Schapiro was present, when Derrida presented it.

Jacques Derrida

This smile I seem to come across a lot...

This time it belongs to Jacques Derrida, who is asked which philosopher he would like to be his mother (concerning the father, he has made his choice btw).





What I love about Derrida that at this point he is contemplating to be his own mother or even stranger giving birth to his own mother. And even stranger I sort of do relate.

The distinction between (male) philosophy and (female) thinking made me think of the fairy tale of  The Peasant's Wise Daughter.

Blindness

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,

Looking on darkness which the blind do see:

Save that my soul's imaginary sight

Presents their shadow to my sightless view,

 

Sonnet 27, William Shakespeare

 

In the catalogue to the exhibition Jacques Derrida curated at the Louvre entitled  "Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and other Ruins"/"Memoires d'Aveugle.L'Autoportrait et autres Ruines", he took me on a journey into blindness, setting off with all the blind men in literature, whether poets themselves or all the blind(ed) men in the bible. Yet soon the passage would take a quite different turn and it surely made me discover the sort of blindness he refers to at the end myself. And to this day I still wonder how he knew?! I would highly recommend reading it and joining the voyage ;)

Spur - Trace(s) II

Always travel light

What is poetry?

... Thus the dream of learning by heart arises in you.

Of letting your heart be traversed by the dictated

dictation. In a single trait - and that's the impos-

sible, that's the poematic experience. You did not

yet know the heart, you learn it thus. From this

experience and from this expression. I call a poem

that very thing that teaches the heart, invents the

heart, that which, finally, the word heart seems to

mean and which, in my language, I cannot easily

discern from the word itself. Heart, in the poem

'learn by heart'  (to be learned by heart), no longer names only pure interiority, independent

spontaneity, the freedom to affect oneself ac-

tively by reproducing the beloved trace... (Jacques Derrida, What is poetry?)

Nightwatching VII

or where is the place of the artist?

As for the social status of the artist there is an interesting point raised in this movie, when first of all Rembrandt is confronted with  his (humble) origins as a miller's son from Leiden, but yet more interestingly yet, when socially higher ranking people (his orderers) imply that he has dirty hands - though he proves to them that at that moment and in this situation they actually are as clean as theirs.

In a consequence the artist falls inbetween the working classes, having to live of their hands' work, and the ruling classes, who do not get their hands "dirty" and rather living of their prestige and intellectual/ financial background. I surely love the idea that the artist is the one, who by his own choice does not distinguish between those two possible attitudes/ ways of living, but he is the one incorporating both, thereby living what Derrida would call the "and/or" rather than the "either/or".

Novelty and Art II

I wonder when the artistic vision was substituted by mere ideas, in a sort of Platonic fashion. I wonder but if Raimund would consider handing me back "Die Wahrheit in der  Malerei/ Truth in Painting" by Jacques Derrida after more than a decade, I could again study this book a bit closer ( more on Derrida is yet to come), for I do remember that there Derrida discusses the term parergon, which as far as I remember he interprets as the framework. Maybe just, maybe to focus this aspect is the great novelty of 20th century art, eg Marcel Duchamp or "The White Cube" in the 1990s.
Yet I have seen a very interesting exhibition in the late 1990s, where the artist has endeavored to examine the phenomenon vice versa. There were photographs on display which documented a quite different exhibition. The artist - I'm sorry I cannot remember the name - had taken facsimiles of paintings that were on display at the local museum, the Capodimonte, in Naples and had put them in an every-day context, eg there was laundry hanging somewhere and inbetween one would get glimpses of a painting or there was a painting attached to a staircase somewhere in the city of Naples and people were passing by, yet always noticing the paintings. To me the outcome was that great art does not need a framework, a parergon, it just shines out even in the quite ordinary daily life.And this would be something to achieve ;). BTW about movies I do feel the same, the best directed, greatest styled movie would become dull for me if content and acting are bad, yet give me a marvellous performance and even a bad script and grainy cinematography I would not even notice.

Memoires d'Aveugle

Il Faut Bien Manger

Il faut bien manger - Well, one has to eat - Man muß wohl essen.

Jacques Derrida

Nightwatching - Truth in Painting

Like I've mentioned before I do not believe that movies could ever picture the historical facts, nor do I believe that it was predominantly intented in Nightwatching. To me the whole plot tells a story
 that might have been approximately like this or not.

Yet this does not imply that the movie is not telling the truth about its subject, ie Rembrandt and the story of the creation of a work of art. To me the historical murder story is just a subplot, a parergon, that enables Greenaway to discuss deeper relationships, eg between life and art or sexual desire and art or art and the art market, art and money. Maybe even down to the question if the artist is only just a craftsman and that he sometimes lacks intellectual capacities.

 Some of the really telling scenes are the opening scene, the scene when Rembrandt is asked to show his hands, and the ones  that touched me personally the most Saskia's death and the mating with Hendrikje, there is a feeling of apotheosis to this one, very delicate and very beautiful indeed.

Nightwatching material III

My personal copy of Jacques Derrida's Aufzeichnungen eines Blinden and the two drawings by Rembrandt that have been exhibited.

Tobias restoring his father's eyesight , only ascribed !

Jacob's dream

Überdacht und ent-deckt, ja es ist da

I've been thinking and studying the image. Like Derrida mentioned drawing has something to do with being blind. Your fingers, your charcoal, your pencil recreates something that is beyond vision, yet though this drawing as a whole appears oddly uneven to me, I've found the thing I had been blind about before and yes it is there, I've caught it and here is it:

Frankly I cannot believe that it was hidden in there... And it has this element of coincidence as well as it was the fixative spray that made it eventually happen. The lines are natural, which is the best one may achive. OMG

C'est la différance, Daniela, c' est la différance

Running down a narrow hidden staircase and being greeted by the words: "C'est la différance, Daniela, c'est la différance!" by the person running up. Well, I know, for unlike you I prefer JD to Vilém Flusser and of course you were infinitely aware of this :-)! - There are still some books you have to return to me, but never mind, as long as you read in them and also read my silly comments and look at my drawings from time to time...
Anyway oddly enough I was thinking about some of the thoughts that are referred to in this video this night and as a reminder got aware of it this morning. My assumption this night was that   art constitutes itself within a "rest" a "surplus" that the artist adds to his work and I will elaborate a little bit more in future posts. For the time being I forward this panel, a transcript and a translation.

 

Transcript: Die kunsthistorischen Termini des "Linearen" und des "Malerischen", des eben mehr Konzeptuellen und des eher Spontanen. (Arrows link "Linearen" with Konzeptuellen, "Malerischen" with Spontanen). Konzeptuellen -> vordenkbar -> Muß dies noch ausgeführt werden? oder: Brauchen wir zum Nachvollzug egentlich Originale?; Spontanen -> unvordenklich

 Translation: The art historical terms of the "linear"(better "design") and the "pictoral", of the more conceptual and the more spontaneous (arrows link "linear"/"design" with conceptual, "pictoral" with spontaneous).

conceptual-> predestined -> Is there any real need to perform it? or: Do we need an original to understand it?; 

spontanenous -> unpredictable

Fatto a Mano - Thomas the Apostle, Concept Art and Walter Benjamin

The other day I came across an article on the Guardian's theatreblog , somehow this issue has been lurking around for some time - maybe even back to the days when I was still studying art and concept art was so en vogue. I could never ever imagine that it would satisfy me - also erotical btw - to simply tell somebody how to act, what to do and then leave it all to him or her.

There is deep inside of me the desire to be there, to do it, to get myself knee-deep into the mud, to grasp it. And if you wonder what this "it" is, well life, presence, here and now.
Why among other artefacts are the first representations by the cave dwellers impressions of their hands?!

Just like Thomas the Apostle, there is this urge to understand by literally grasping whatever subject, in German "begreifen".

Yet it is "modern" to be virtual, just like this here btw :-), and if Walter Benjamin's predictions  are correct, the aura of the original has been so far neglected by now that it has disappeared.

Yet if one is daring and reverses the reading of Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, this becomes a strong advocate in favour of  the aura of the original, for Walter Benjamin himself did still observe it and express it (and thereby preserve it inside his text as a possibility). There is this wonderful allusion Jacques Derrida reads in his forename "Walter", he links it to the German verb "walten"/ to rule, which  in German implies the gentle rule of some divine power.

Waterproof oder die Archäologie einer unmöglichen Möglichkeit mit dank an Gerhard!

Dies hier sind gestern wieder aufgetauchte Fragmente eines Beitrags für ein Buch für den Salon Verlag Köln von Gerhard Theewen, das niemals erschienen ist. Tatsächlich sollte es eine Lektüre für die Badewanne mit entsprechendem wasserabweisenden Cover mit dem Titel "Waterproof" sein. Wie in den meisten Fällen von archäologischen (Ööcher: arschäologisch!) Entdeckungen besteht es leider aus Fragmenten, hier sollte der Leser sich selber einen Reim machen. Die nur schwer entzifferbare Handschrift ist transkribiert, außerdem gibt es noch ein paar Fotografien dieser Aktion, deren Echtheit von prominenter Stelle bezweifelt wird.

 

 

 

* physikalische Definition von Feuchte, bitte selber nachschauen, Hoheslied 6, 6 lautet:

deine Zähne blinken wie eine Herde von Mutterschafen, 

die frisch aus der Schwemme steigen 

(Für Jacques Derrida ist das Hohelied ein Beispiel für erhabene Kunst, cf Die Wahrheit in der Malerei)

 

Transkript eins: Das Feuchte als Urzustand, dieser Zustand zwischen vollkommener Trockenheit und radikaler Nässe, das Erfrischende. Das sogenannte türkische Bad, ein Dampfbad. Visionen von nackten Leibern, die sich lasziv der heißen, tropischen Luft hingeben. Diese schwülen Nächte, in denen man nicht schlafen kann, Im sogenannten türkischen Bad... Erquicklicher und anregender ...Was machte Susannah im Bade? War sie in dem Moment der Entdeckung/ Beobachtung tatsächlich die auf keusche Reinlichkeit bedachte Frau? Was sahen die beiden Alten? Bin ich nicht Susannah? Vielleicht währenddessen im Bade und spüre die leichten Tröpfchen von Feuchtigkeit auf meiner Haut, die es ermöglichen, meinen Körper wahrzunehmen. Diese leichte Last, die meine feinen Nerven erregt... Das Feuchte reinigt und giert doch nach Berührung eines anderen, des anderen Körpers. Klamm liegt auf der Haut, den angepreßten Härchen und dringt ein.

Transkript 2: Das zweite Hohelied entführt in den Orient, die Welt der Bibel. Feuchte bedeutet für den, der die Wüste durchwandert, Leben und Fruchtbarkeit. Sofort taucht das türkische Bad auf, desssen feucht-schwüle Atmosphäre mit der europäischen Feucht-fröhlichkeit so wunderbar kontrastiert. Benebelt sich das Abendland mit Geist, so genießt (schärft sich) das Morgenland mit allen (die) Sinne, die Sinnlichkeit ist hier zu finden (Hause). In feucht schwülen Nächten liege ich oft wach und kann nicht schlafen, schlaflose Nächte, unerträglich fruchtbare Atmosphäre*. Susannah, Susannah, was machst du eigentlich im Bade? - Oder bin nicht ich Susannah
* weiblich, erschreckend, fruchtbar für die Pflanzen, totbringend für Kreislaufkranke

Feuchtsavannen, die Königin von Saba kam aus Äthiopien

Kann denn Liebe Sünde sein? - Dürer was right

As Peter Brook pointed out, there was an air of sadness, I'd rather say melancholy, prevailing in Love is My Sin, thus Dürer is right in calling melancholy the humour of the artist. And yet there is a deeper meaning to this melancholy and both Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida hint at it. Is it any wonder btw that Peter Brook was also talking of deconstruction?! I would very much recommend reading the wonderful essay "Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and other Ruins"/"Memoires d'Aveugle.L'Autoportrait et autres Ruines" by Derrida, in fact it is contained in a catalogue of an exhibition curated by Derrida and apart from the text, this book also offers reproductions of great works of art. Oddly this essay seems to be reflected in these lines from Sonnet 27:

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,

Looking on darkness which the blind do see:

Save that my soul's imaginary sight

Presents their shadow to my sightless view,

which was part of the selection performed...

The next lines of the poem means, though unknown before, a lot to me and for that reason almost blew my mind ;-)

Which like a jewel hung in ghastly night

Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.