Reminder: “In a New Key”

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, art stuff, exs notebook

early form of finding meanings … sharing with students still finding their way across the quad.

in mind of the philosopher Susanne K. Langer and her book Problems of Art, published in 1957. In a chapter titled “Expressiveness,” Langer differentiates between “the expression of feeling in a work of art” and self-expression. For Langer, expressiveness is experience given shape and vitality through the artist’s realization of form. “What [the artist] expresses,” she writes, “is … not his own actual feelings, but what he knows about human feeling.” The jumble of life, then, is not explicated but made recognizable and whole. Langer adds that this “knowledge may actually exceed his entire personal experience.” In contrast, she brusquely likens self-expression to a crying baby. Giving precedence to the artist’s psychological disposition, self-expression surrenders the artwork’s structural logic. That such logic reinforces the aesthetic—and, yes, emotive— capabilities of a work of art is lost on those who make self-expression their métier. Cézanne, for example, may have been a cold fish, but could anyone dispute the “expressiveness” of his paintings?

Moving through the bookshelf … one book often leads to another. Too often, during lectures, I’d jump without proper attribution; without enough time between quotes, images, anything .. moving too fast for most students to move at. That was always okay to me. I slowed during techtalk, not during the important things; ideas move at the speed of art … trying for sideways meaning.

it is a peculiar fact that every major advance in thinking every epic making me new insight springs from a new type of symbolic transformation higher level of thought is primarily a new activity its course
...

Every mode of thought is bestowed on us like a gift with some new principal of symbolic expression .. Langer

EXS Bibliography:

  • Empson: ambiguity and the New Criticism.
  • Richards: rhetoric and the scientific study of literary meaning
  • Goodman
  • Langer: her exploration of symbolic logic and aesthetics in  Philosophy in a New Key [and others]

Adams, Hazard, “Langer’s New Key.” Philosophy of the Literary Symbolic. Tallahassee: UP of Florida, 1983. 221-232.Schultz, William, Cassirer and Langer on Myth, 2000.

Click to access Langer_Susanne_K_Philosophy_in_a_New_Key.pdf

Adal, Past Tense

Posted on Posted in A Symbol Life, about, creativity, on photographersTagged

from the past. He has ended, as I continue. Death is a reminder. To some it calls up life, while to others it calls up fears.

Adál Alberto Maldonado (November 1, 1948 – December 9, 2020), styled as ADÁL, was a photographer who lived and worked in New York City and Puerto Rico. (wikipedia)

Seems so brief. Just a ripple.

making the caption carry meaning across the boundary.

“Draw from your personal experience. Whether it’s a search for an identity, the celebration of beauty, a concern with correcting chaos in the world, or the simple entertainment of a thought experiment, what will set you apart and original will be how you see the world filtered through your personal experience.” Adal

Adal, dropped his last name and his darkroom manipulations after Lisette Modal’s visit to SFAI.

We were, for a few years, known to each other; grad students at San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). After leaving the art institute I went to Syracuse, to EXS as a teacher. Light Work/ Community Darkroom was still installing equipment; still generating self-awareness; coming to define a role. I brought a mailing list of several hundred names and addresses of mostly West Coast, young unknowns.

I gave the entire list to Tom and Phil. And, the list of my “must show these people” … fewer than ten people. Adal was number three on that list.

Teachers, then:

Jerry Burchard. Linda Connor. Henry Wessel. John Collier. Margery Mann. Fred Martin (his class was one of the few required courses; grad students across all programs attended.)

Some Fellow Students:

Ingeborg Gerdes. Bill Arnold. Harry Bowers. Mike Mandel. Larry Sultan.

Light Work

https://webionaire.com/2017/06/23/getting-here-out-of-art-school/(opens in a new tab)

From my 1971 notebook:

the only thing
left to photograph is air. 
smell.

====
misprints are the key. as key to 
time -- fade -- light
(adal) wessel (difference is time, or space place light)
motion --- light dark
outlier -- misprint.

It has taken me too many delays, too many re-writes to get this posted. While that doesn’t (shouldn’t) matter to you, it does bother me. When good artists die, we miss more than anther life.

Remembering isn’t rebirth. Not even for an optimist like Adal.