Just Another Cultural Visionary: Recent Comments

Comment on denial dialectics

2010-03-19T23:22:34Z

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Let's see if I can do this without sounding snarky.

Yes, I've explained this elsewhere (and in quite a few places). Don't ask me to point to the specific posts, since I tend to mix things up as I go; and the whole is developmental.

The addiction to self is the universal condition of self-awareness - an inevitability. What precedes self-awareness is only immediate - animal or infant awareness. Therefore self-awareness is both addictive and preclusive, since it also 'covers' the immediacy with the reflective interpretation - 'conscious' time, space, objects, concepts and, above all, 'self'.

The reason self-addiction is undesirable is because it precludes our actual nature - not simply the 'immediate' consciousness that grounds our awareness, but the structure of reflection as well. Only a conscious knowledge of self-awareness - arrived at only by breaking the addiction - allows us to understand the 'inner nature' of both self and world - insofar as we can understand them. And it is the sole access to the mirroring 'humanform' which is the true basis of the ethical.

Presumably, breaking the addiction is not only the first step on the path of the sage, it is an active principle essential to sage wisdom or gnosis.

This is not only the self knowledge of which Socrates spoke, it stands at the center of all the serious religions that I have been able to analyze, including the western.

But the thrust of your questions, then, is deflective. What this post is about is how something which is as old as human self-awareness - presumably tens of thousands of years old, if we go by the history of art - has more or less suddenly become the all-pervading vortex or black hole that swallows all conscious culture. Historically, the addiction to self explains human hypocrisy, and therefore tends to hold us in the periphery of our experience. But it has never before become the touchstone for 'culture'. What has turned culture inside out, leaving only the void nature of denial? And why have we, collectively, bought into this pervasive denial function as if it were a positive, and not the obvious negative that it is?

Comment on denial dialectics

2010-03-19T13:06:54Z

Perhaps you've already explained it elsewhere -- but what's wrong with being addicted to self? And can you offer an example of someone who was not?

(please forgive me -- but it does seem that I am addicted to making trouble on the internet!)

Comment on Freemansburg, winter, 2010, 30x36

2010-03-17T12:56:16Z

Thanks for the kind comment Chris. I painted this inside the house, prote ted form the harsh elements, from a digital photo I took a few weeks earlier. I took the photo for the purpose of a painting...not plein air tho, still had a lot of enjoyment in the painting.

Comment on Freemansburg, winter, 2010, 30x36

2010-03-17T01:29:58Z

nice work i can just feel the cold air. i bought a house on the Gultch sign on friday the 19 don't know how i feel about it just yet

Comment on Freemansburg, winter, 2010, 30x36

2010-03-16T17:13:15Z

Wow! Your fingers must have turned blue on this one.

The snow has a curious way of winding the clock back about 80 years.

This is my favorite painting, so far, on the site.

Comment on classicism

2010-03-12T00:20:04Z

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Definitely appreciate your comment. Enjoyed tracking down Smith as far as I could online. Will have to read his book. Also enjoyed tracking back through your sites. I remember laughing at a Daoist painting, 'Four immortals looking at a frog' in the Fenellosa-Weld collection at Boston 30 plus years ago, prompting the the running appearance of a guard in the empty rooms.

Again, thanks.

Comment on classicism

2010-03-11T16:07:48Z

I'm so glad my search for Antonio Salemme led me to this site!

And it's quite possible that I would agree with your above essay if I had studied more Greek philosophy.

I'm currently reading "Here I Stand" - a bit of historical revisionism about the Renaissance by Norris Kelly Smith -and I'm guessing you would find it congenial.

best wishes,
Chris

Comment on the bathroom murals, neo-modernism, Basquiat, patron saint of true art

2010-03-10T10:11:30Z

Nice blog! I am enjoying your thoughts about the soul-eating city. Plus, really like the bathroom murals. That is in Bisbee? Cool. Kind of an interesting place - pretty laid-back in a way that is somewhere between inspiring and scary - no carpet in the bathrooms there! Anyway, being right on the border and so isolated as it is, I imagine it IS a good place to find your soul. Take care, and keep up the great work! PS Warhol was an idiot, you're right.

Comment on the bathroom murals, neo-modernism, Basquiat, patron saint of true art

2010-03-10T02:23:42Z

Thanks for the attention and kind comments, and for getting me back here to take another look. Well, I enjoy this painting. I had a good time doing it. It is kind of like jammng in the music...It did take some time but it was based in what I call the Aesthetics of Spontaneity. Basically, this is an impressionist/post impressionist discipline/joy. The process of the artist is revealed in the finished work. Thanks again for the attention.

Comment on the bathroom murals, neo-modernism, Basquiat, patron saint of true art

2010-03-08T08:00:31Z

There’s some great artwork here. Nice use of colours. Can’t begin to imagine how long they take from start to finish. Where do you get your inspiration and ideas from?