Originally emailed November 29th, 2007
Subject : one of these snacks is not like the other
there are three snackies in this giant grab bag. i'm not sure how they're related, but somehow i feel a connection. munch on them as you will!
Snack One: Ambiguity
"The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won...man's condition is ambiguous that he seeks, through failure and outrageousness, to save his existence...So it is with any activity; faillure and success are two aspects of reality which at the start are not perceptible. That is what makes criticism so easy and art so difficult: the critic is always in a good position to show the limits that every artist gives himself in choosing himself; painting is not given completely either in Giotta or Titan or Cezanne; it is sought through the centuries and is never finished; a painting in which all pictorial problems are resolved is really inconceivable; painting itself is this movement toward its own reality; it is not the vain displacement of a millstone turning in the void; it concretes itself on each canvas as an absolute existence. Art and science do not establish themselves despite failure but through it; which does not prevent there being truths and errors, masterpieces and lemons, depending upon whether the discovery or the painting has or has not known how to win the adherence of human consciousness; this amounts to saying that failure, always ineluctable, is in certain cases spared and others not.It is interesting to pursure this comparison; not that we are likening action to a work of art or a scientific theory, but because in any case human transcendance most cope with the same problem: it has to found itself, though it is prohibited from ever fulfilling itself. Now, we know that neither science nor art ever leaves it up to the future to justify its existence. In no age does art consider itself as something which is paving the way for Art...it has, however, always wanted to be a total expression of the world, and it is in its totality that in each age it again raises the question of its own validity. There we have an example of how a man must, in any event, assume his finiteness: not by treating his existence as transitory or relative but by reflecting the infinite within it, that is, by treating it as absolute. There is an art only because at every moment art has willed itself absolutely; likewise there is a liberation of man only if, in aiming at itself, freedom is achieved absolutely in the very fact of aiming at itself. This requires that each action be considered as a finished form whose different moments, instead of fleeing toward the future in order to find there their justification, reflect and confirm one another so well that there is no longer a sharp justification between present and future, between means and ends."
-Simone de Beauvoir, "The Ethics of Ambiguity"
Snack Two: Ambivalence
"There has been a thunder-storm; the ground, as far as they eye can reach, is covered with white hail; the clouds are gone, and overhead a deep blue sky is showing; far off a great rainbow rests on the white earth. We, standing in a window to look, feel the cool, unspeakably sweet wind bloiwing in on us, and a feeling of longing comes over us-- unutterable longing, we cannot tell for what. We are so small, our head only reaches as high as the first three panes. We look at the white earth, and the rainbow, and the blue sky; and oh, we want it, we want-- we do not know what. We cry as though our heart is broken. When one lifts our little body from the window we cannot tell what ails us. We run away to play.So looks the first year."
-Olive Schreiner, "The Story of an African Farm"
Snack Three: Audacity?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikOWQ9YIb-A&
- Destiny's Child, "Eight Days of Christmas"
Subject : one of these snacks is not like the other
there are three snackies in this giant grab bag. i'm not sure how they're related, but somehow i feel a connection. munch on them as you will!
Snack One: Ambiguity
"The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won...man's condition is ambiguous that he seeks, through failure and outrageousness, to save his existence...So it is with any activity; faillure and success are two aspects of reality which at the start are not perceptible. That is what makes criticism so easy and art so difficult: the critic is always in a good position to show the limits that every artist gives himself in choosing himself; painting is not given completely either in Giotta or Titan or Cezanne; it is sought through the centuries and is never finished; a painting in which all pictorial problems are resolved is really inconceivable; painting itself is this movement toward its own reality; it is not the vain displacement of a millstone turning in the void; it concretes itself on each canvas as an absolute existence. Art and science do not establish themselves despite failure but through it; which does not prevent there being truths and errors, masterpieces and lemons, depending upon whether the discovery or the painting has or has not known how to win the adherence of human consciousness; this amounts to saying that failure, always ineluctable, is in certain cases spared and others not.It is interesting to pursure this comparison; not that we are likening action to a work of art or a scientific theory, but because in any case human transcendance most cope with the same problem: it has to found itself, though it is prohibited from ever fulfilling itself. Now, we know that neither science nor art ever leaves it up to the future to justify its existence. In no age does art consider itself as something which is paving the way for Art...it has, however, always wanted to be a total expression of the world, and it is in its totality that in each age it again raises the question of its own validity. There we have an example of how a man must, in any event, assume his finiteness: not by treating his existence as transitory or relative but by reflecting the infinite within it, that is, by treating it as absolute. There is an art only because at every moment art has willed itself absolutely; likewise there is a liberation of man only if, in aiming at itself, freedom is achieved absolutely in the very fact of aiming at itself. This requires that each action be considered as a finished form whose different moments, instead of fleeing toward the future in order to find there their justification, reflect and confirm one another so well that there is no longer a sharp justification between present and future, between means and ends."
-Simone de Beauvoir, "The Ethics of Ambiguity"
Snack Two: Ambivalence
"There has been a thunder-storm; the ground, as far as they eye can reach, is covered with white hail; the clouds are gone, and overhead a deep blue sky is showing; far off a great rainbow rests on the white earth. We, standing in a window to look, feel the cool, unspeakably sweet wind bloiwing in on us, and a feeling of longing comes over us-- unutterable longing, we cannot tell for what. We are so small, our head only reaches as high as the first three panes. We look at the white earth, and the rainbow, and the blue sky; and oh, we want it, we want-- we do not know what. We cry as though our heart is broken. When one lifts our little body from the window we cannot tell what ails us. We run away to play.So looks the first year."
-Olive Schreiner, "The Story of an African Farm"
Snack Three: Audacity?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikOWQ9YIb-A&
- Destiny's Child, "Eight Days of Christmas"
No comments:
Post a Comment