L.H.O.O.Q.

 

L.H.O.O.Q.

"I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste." Duchamp's quote which graces the wall in the current MoMA show, sounds a bit like an artist trying to punch his way out of a paper bag. One admires the cleverness of his famed vandalizing of the "Mona Lisa," which sets the state for Rauschenberg's erasing of de Kooning and later guerrilla art such as Banksy. However, to complete the circle and in a Duchampian way turn Duchamp upside down,  can the Dadaist enterprise compete with great art "works?" Compare the experience of "View of Delft," "The Night Watch" and, yes, the "Mona Lisa" to any number of conceptual strategies--that seek to redefine the nature of beauty and art, and you may find you may feel shortchanged. 

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Le Dereglement de tous les sens

 

"Le dereglement de tous les sens” is both a call to arms and ars poetica from Arthur Rimbaud. It's also an expression used by the playwright Antonin Artaud, famed for his "Theater of Cruelty. Is it akin to the 60s where people dropped acid? Is it a loosening of the bonds of mimesis or reason? Certainly, the idea more related to content than style, relates to the emotion within the mind of the creator. From your mouth to God’s ears goes the old saw. Ghosting is when you don’t get back to someone. However, the state Rimbaud refers to emanates from an extreme out of body experience, similar to that of someone who has just seen a ghost.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Stimulation

"Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe" (Manet, 1863)

What makes for stimulation. Neurologists point to serotonin flow between synapses, but that relates to a result. It’s similar to discussions about consciousness by Daniel Dennett and others who create theory. Is consciousness a biological process akin to digestion? Or does Cartesian dualism still hold sway? In any case you are left with theorems for which proof is offered. But, where does the feeling of excitement originate in art as well as sex? Sexual fantasy, for example, is a form of preconception--fulfillment a matter of the shoe fitting the foot. “Le Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe” is an idyll about which there’s a consensus. It’s one of the most beautiful paintings in the canon of proto-modernism. But how to account for interstice between art and mind, between the eye and the emotion that looking produces?

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Patience

Patience is arithmetic, building slowly as one after another particular expectations are or are not met. Impatience is exponential with waiting akin to a fireworks factory going up in smoke. A person who is calm in the face of uncertainty is a practiced juggler who can take things as they come simply--though sometimes it's just because they're wise enough to not have too many balls in the air. Of course the act can be spiced up by doing it on a high wire or bike or both. That’s why it’s called a circus. Impatience doesn’t usually occur under the big top—as it's not a bona fide high wire act.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Letter From An Unknown Woman

If you remember back to high school, equations with two unknowns led to the notion of graphs and coordinates. Speaking of unknowns, think about Sargent’s mysterious "Madame X" in her majestic black gown or Max Ophul's classic romance Letter From an Unknown Woman. Part of the mystery of the algebra itself derived from the fact that the math became visual, numbers created lines. Mirrors and the notion of the virtual image would soon be introduced in physics. Actually the notion of "x" and "y" are hard to swallow at first. It's easy to disregard their mystery and cachet. You have to get on with your life, so you mechanically finish the assignment. However, without knowing it, you have been introduced to the world of math. 

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

The Trial

Everybody needs a witness at their trial, someone who can testify to their character but also, in a world of indifference, a judge,a person who keeps a close eye, perhaps even a closer eye than they themselves can about their motives. Joseph K is actually your average Joe. No one who has his back. There's no Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers) who stops George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) from jumping to his death.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

No Exit

Hubert Selby: "I was sitting at home and had a profound experience. I experienced, in all of my Being, that someday I was going to die, and it wouldn't be like it had been happening, almost dying but somehow staying alive, but I would just die! And two things would happen right before I died: I would regret my entire life; I would want to live it over again. This terrified me. The thought that I would live my entire life, look at it and realize I blew it forced me to do something with my life."

Among the numerous other indignities of the present war between good and evil is the attack on interiority. 

Thank God for Howard Jacobson whose most recent broadsheet/novel about "the war" (aka chthonic battle between medieval notions of good and evil) is titled Howl.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star