Writings by Pat Hartman.
My main claim to fame is the zine Salon: A Journal of Aesthetics, 25 issues published from 1988 to 1998. My book, Call Someplace Paradise, can be found here.
Visit http://www.VirtualVenice.info, my site about Venice, California.
email me
04/01/2002 - 04/30/2002
05/01/2002 - 05/31/2002
06/01/2002 - 06/30/2002
07/01/2002 - 07/31/2002
08/01/2002 - 08/31/2002
09/01/2002 - 09/30/2002
10/01/2002 - 10/31/2002
11/01/2002 - 11/30/2002
12/01/2002 - 12/31/2002
01/01/2003 - 01/31/2003
03/01/2003 - 03/31/2003
04/01/2003 - 04/30/2003
05/01/2003 - 05/31/2003
06/01/2003 - 06/30/2003
09/01/2003 - 09/30/2003
11/01/2004 - 11/30/2004
02/01/2006 - 02/28/2006
03/01/2006 - 03/31/2006
01/01/2007 - 01/31/2007
02/01/2007 - 02/28/2007
Graphics:
Ann-S-Thesia
Dingbat Fonts:
The Dingbatcave
Fine Art:
Eyebalm
Powered by
Blogger
Blog Reads
Ornamental Illness
DawgBlawg
Moving Target
Wednesday, June 26, 2002
 |
Topic: Augustus John
Augustus John (1878-1961) was one of the painters who gave artists their stereotypical wild and crazy reputation. Not content to merely be "Bohemian," John actually lived and traveled with Gypsies at various stages of his life. He did one conventional thing, which was to marry a woman named Ida. In 1903, after a short interlude of wedded bliss, he met an artists' model named Dorelia and began an affair with her.
"He presented Ida with the fact of his new love," says biographer Michael Holroyd, "and he left her to decide what should be done." Surprisingly, Ida liked Dorelia, and was not totally averse to the idea of sharing her husband. But Dorelia had other fish to fry - she took off to travel and paint in Europe. After eight months with no Dorelia, with Augustus moping around in a funk, Ida urged him to go after his new love and bring her back. "She is ours and she knows it," Ida wrote to a friend. "By God I will haunt her till she comes back!"
Ida kept writing to Dorelia, urging her to return - "I crave for you to come here" - and threatening to hang herself. She sent Augustus off to Paris with firm instructions not to come back without Dorelia. Giving in to this barrage of attention, Dorelia finally left the man she'd been staying with and returned to England with Augustus.
Dorelia moved in with the couple and became pregnant. In the ensuing period of menage a trois, Ida admitted that she had her bad times - "but those times are the devil and not the truth of light." There were emotional storms: first Augustus and Ida against Dorelia, then Augustus telling Ida to leave, then threatening that he would leave. Dorelia was willing to help with the domestic chores and the care of Ida's children, but then Augustus would criticize Ida for letting her help - "treating her like a servant." Ida would renew her talk of suicide. Dorelia wanted to leave, and Augustus again blamed Ida. But Dorelia confided to Ida the source of her pain, that Augustus never mentioned the baby she was carrying. Ida once more became tender and concerned, growing into a sisterhood with Dorelia. When Dorelia's baby was born, Augustus's affection seemed to return to Ida again. Then he went off on his own, to follow his Muse and incidentally a few human relationships on the side, while the two main women in his life remained in the same household. The bond between them deepened.
Ida and Dorelia decided to move to Paris. Ida's family gave her hell, but she defended her chosen lifestyle. Augustus was rounded up and all three of them moved to Paris, where Ida's fourth son was born soon after. Augustus upset the applecart again by taking up with model Alick Schepeler, proposing to add her and her girlfriend to the harem. This was too much for Dorelia, who made up her mind to leave, and for Ida, who wished she could leave but had no escape route. Dorelia found her own place and a woman to watch the kids, and returned to modeling. Ida gave birth to another child and died of puerperal fever and peritonitis. At least Augustus spent the last days at her bedside. Meanwhile Dorelia, who had returned to take care of Ida's other children during her hospitalization, was showing her own current pregnancy.
For Augustus, the years after Ida's death were packed with many other adventures both amorous and otherwise, but somehow he and Dorelia managed to stay more or less together until advanced age, and the respectability that automatically comes with it, caught up with them.
posted by Pat on 9:47 PM |
Sunday, June 23, 2002
|
Qualities of an object that constitute its appearance are first received and dealt with by the eye. Thus even in its most literal, down-to-earth definition, we are tipped off right away that vision has as much to do with the seer as with the seen: the eye itself is only a mediator, a middleman. An eye with no brain behind it, either organic or otherwise, might as well be blind. But when eye and brain collaborate, as they must, we are apparently then doomed never to know where the objective leaves off and the subjective begins. As Elspeth Huxley says, "How much does one imagine, how much observe? One can no more separate these functions than divide light from air or wetness from water." Or as Buckminster Fuller puts it, everything we see is inside our own heads. And hell, I might as well quote Robert Anton Wilson, too: "Hypnotized subjects shown a green circle and told that it is red will see it as red. This is because we see with brain-plus-eye." As Annie Dillard reminds us, only the simplest animals see the universe as it is. This means an amoeba knows more than a rocket scientist about the true nature of reality.
In Wim Wenders's hallucinatory film Until the End of the World, a character invents a camera that can record visuals for the blind. It's more than a camera, because it also records the experience: how the user's individual brain reacts. It records the bio-chemical event of seeing, and therefore does not "divide light from air or wetness from water."
We see what we learn to see. In Magical Child, Joseph Chilton Pearce describes how a kitten, if kept for the first few weeks of life in a chamber with vertically striped walls, will grow up able to see only up-and-down lines. It will avoid running into the vertical legs of a chair, but will bump into the horizontal rungs.
Oliver Sacks writes about a patient who had been able to see for the first ten years of his life but was then blinded by cataracts. At age fifty, successful surgery removed the cataracts, but his restored vision was not in good working order. With practice, Sacks' patient became able to maneuver around the house with the approximate skill of a sighted person after some practice with a blindfold. He bought toy objects such as cars and buildings, to familiarize himself with how the shapes felt to the touch, which would enable him to recognize their life-size counterparts. People in this situation need to learn to make sense out of the incoming visual stimuli, and it's a gradual process. The Gospel of Mark includes the story of a blind man's sight restored. He then sees "men as trees, walking."
posted by Pat on 10:37 PM |
Thursday, June 13, 2002
|
Category: Soap Operas of the Great and Famous
Once upon a time in England there flourished a group of friends whose influence on the arts is still felt. They not only wrote and painted innumerable works both famous and obscure, but introduced the British public to the Post-Impressionists and were instrumental in acquiring the works of Degas, Cezanne, and other major French painters for England. They gathered to enjoy each others' company in the Novel Club, the Memoir Club, Thursday Evenings, and the Friday Club. For fun they put on performances, costume parties, and creative theatricals. For profit they started the Omega Workshops and Hogarth Press. Collectively, they were known as the Bloomsbury Group.
The Bloomsbury philosophy was based on the thought of G.E. Moore, author of the landmark work Principia Ethica. Individual members varied of course, but by and large the attitude was one of seriousness about art, and a tendency toward pacifism, socialism, feminism and agnosticism. The Bloomsbury hierarchy of values was such that it could be debated endlessly whether the pinnacle represented human relationships or creativity; but such qualities as materialism, aggression and intolerance were definitely at the bottom. Self-importance and pomposity were reviled, as were sham and hypocrisy. Most of the Bloomsbury set traveled extensively and lived for long periods in other lands, concerning themselves much more with the values, talent and intelligence of friends, than with their national allegiances.
The artists and writers of Bloomsbury were tireless in observing and describing each other - sometimes lovingly, sometimes not - but in every case they very well deserved to be paid such close attention. They brought what we call "networking" to an art in itself, unfailingly aiding each other in their numerous projects and bring to public attention the young, foreign, or overlooked creative figures whose work they admired.
Humor was an essential ingredient of Bloomsbury - the best minds of a generation were willing to play the clown to please a child or amuse a friend. They never grew old, but retained the qualities of youth: passion, idealism, open-mindedness, imagination, and optimism. They conducted relationships with a creative and pioneering spirit, realizing that a marriage or a friendship can be customized like a car or a suit, since the only people a relationship needs to please are the ones involved in it. Their affairs of the heart were an integral part of life, the private soap operas carried out in a civilized manner and with maximum style. Art critic Roger Fry and painter Vanessa Bell, for instance, enjoyed a brief liaison that was ended by her, but the two remained intensely devoted lifelong friends, colleagues, and traveling companions.
Three Bloomsbury Love Stories
Vita Sackville-West was a best-selling poet and novelist, renowned gardening authority, and mistress of one of the most fabulous of the stately homes of England. She married diplomat Harold Nicholson and they had two sons, one of who grew up to write Portrait of a Marriage about his parents. The remarkable aspect of this union was that Vita liked women and Harold liked men, and they lived quite satisfying separate existences, often in different countries, while enjoying one of the happiest marriages on record. Things got out of hand only once, when Vita, whose androgynous appearance attracted almost everyone, ran away to France with Violet Trefussis, intending to live out her life as a man. Their husbands got together and travelled to Europe to find the women and talk sense into them. Years later when Violet wrote to propose a meeting, Vita declined, referring to a current news story about the leftover munitions from the war the kept turning up, and blowing up. "You," she told Violet, "are the unexploded bomb in my life."
Vanessa Stephen (Virginia Woolf's sister) was a painter who married Clive Bell, author of books about aesthetics. They had two sons but not much else in common. Then Vanessa became attached to painter Duncan Grant and established a household with him. They were lovers for only a short time, as Duncan had always been partial to men and soon returned to his major interest. Thought she remained legally wed to Clive, a frequent visitor and staunch friend, Vanessa lived with Duncan until her death at a ripe old age.
Writer Lytton Strachey was a totally committed homosexual, but artist Dora Carrington (she went by her last name only) was devoted to him. They set up housekeeping and lived quite happily, then Ralph Partridge entered the scene and things really got interesting. Ralph was in love with Carrington, who barely tolerated him for Lytton's sake - because Lytton was in love with Ralph. In order to keep Ralph, Carrington consented to marry him, and the household was reformatted in a new configuration. Eventually Ralph became unsatisfied with the arrangement and fell in love with Frances Marshall, but would not divorce Carrington for fear that Lytton would then withdraw from the relationship. Instead of breaking up the triangle they merely added to it, with Ralph and Frances living in London during the week and in the country with the others on weekends. So no one lost his or her beloved, and this solution worked for five years until Lytton's death. A few days later, Carrington shot herself. She botched the job and suffered for several hours, but did manage to die eventually.
posted by Pat on 8:40 PM |
Thursday, June 06, 2002
|
Literal vision, having to do with the physical eyes of living creatures, supports a vast field of study and speculation. Various animals can see at night, or operate in areas of the spectrum where we can't see at all, or swivel their eyes around and look backward.
Animals show a close to infinite variety of evolutionary tricks involving combinations of eye and brain that range from brilliant to droll. What about those fish that start life with normal eye placement, namely one on each side of the head? Then they lie on one side on the bottom and spend the rest of their lives there, and the downward-looking eye migrates up to the top. This is taking adaptability to extremes.
Why do squirrels, who seem so spry and quick, get hit by cars? Because they literally can't see them, explains Joel Achenbach in his syndicated column. "The motion of the car is so bizarre, compared to other things in nature, that the squirrel's brain can't even register it." I can dig it. A squirrel is built low to the ground, and the horizon isn't very far away. Probably the oncoming car manifests itself as a rapidly growing dark area in the squirrel's field of vision, somewhat like a cloud that quickly grows and envelops the critter. The sensation would be akin to a sudden swarm of angry biting insects, or driving at excessive MPH into a thick fog or a cloud of dense black smoke, or a wall for that matter. Before you can begin to figure out what it is or where it came from, it's all over you.
According to R. Wayne Anderson, there are "five basic failures of the human eye, and in all these failures photography can replay the event in a form that the eye can see."
The five are, not being able to see things too large at once (aerial photography is the answer) or too small (photomicrography saves us). We can't see things that move too fast or too slow, but changing the speed of the camera's recording of images can fix that. We can't see things outside our particular range in the electromagnetic spectrum, but film can capture images in the infrared, ultraviolet, and gamma ranges.
Even a normal human can, however, distinguish approximately twenty thousand colors. Once in a while a freak is born who can see infrared with one eye and ultraviolet with the other, or detect movement at an astonishing distance, or see very tiny objects. Archaeologist Arthur Evans, who dug up the Minoan remains, is said to have had "microscopic eyesight" that allowed him to make sense of intricate inscriptions and appreciate the tiny seals that would lead to his greatest discoveries.
The Vision lab at MIT is involved in a project that will ultimately let a computer see like a human, recognizing people and things in any setting, almost instantaneously. Although slower than the eye-brain combination, in other respects the Connection Machine sees better. It has, for example, the capability to visualize the molecular structure of a substance in three dimensions. A microscope with lenses can help the human eye to see things that are awfully small, but this invention can "see" even better without using vision at all.
At the time when Impressionism was the latest rage in the art world, critics made derogatory remarks about how these painters all had eyestrain or some kind of visual disease or defect. Actually in some cases this was true. Monet had cataracts for the last 20 years of his life, Pissarro had a problem requiring long periods of bandaged eyes. Leading Impressionist painter Edgar Degas, says art historian Richard Kendall, probably suffered from irregular astigmatism, a condition which causes the image to be hazy and the field of vision distorted. The evidence offered for this is that he squinted, and Degas did say in one letter written at 43 that his vision was cloudy. To make things worse, it seems he had already lost the use of his right eye early in his career.
Many great writers have had iritis or other serious eye conditions, including Tom Robbins, D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley and James Joyce.
I'd like a CD ROM that would show many kinds of scenes in alternative visual modes, for instance the designs on flowers like airport runway markings, detectable only in Bee-O-Vision. It would be enlightening to see how things look to people with various eye problems, and it would be a great idea for medics and others in the helping professions to have that kind of experience. I'd like to see how things would look if chlorophyll had been purple instead of green. These are genuine parallel universes.
Ninety percent of what we humans know about the world comes into us through our eyes, and an entire one-third of the brain's power is devoted to the processing and utilization of this information. Even language and reasoning skills do not tap such a large share of the brain's total resources.
posted by Pat on 10:18 PM |
Graphics and design by Ann Stretton ©2001
