skandalon

art painting painter portrait biography body light lucian_freud lost naked bare corpse affect figure subject individuation

✖ Via Artchive: “Reflection (self portrait)” by Lucian Freud, oil on canvas, 56.2 x 51.2 cm, 1985

Freud, Lucian (1922- ). German-born British painter. He was born in Berlin, a grandson of Sigmund Freud, came to England with his parents in 1931, and acquired British nationality in 1939. His earliest love was drawing, and he began to work full time as an artist after being invalided out of the Merchant Navy in 1942. In 1951 his Interior at Paddington (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) won a prize at the Festival of Britain, and since then he has built up a formidable reputation as one of the most powerful contemporary figurative painters. Portraits and nudes are his specialities, often observed in arresting close-up. His early work was meticulously painted, so he has sometimes been described as a `Realist’ (or rather absurdly as a Superrealist), but the subjectivity and intensity of his work has always set him apart from the sober tradition characteristic of most British figurative art since the Second World War. In his later work (from the late 1950s) his handling became much broader. (WebMuseum)

MoMA’s exhibition: “Lucian Freud: The Painter’s Etchings” (December 16, 2007–March 10, 2008)
TATE’s exhibition: “Lucian Freud” (June 20th-September 22 2002)
Centre Pompidou’s exhibition: “Lucian Freud. L’Atelier” (March 10 - July 19 2010)
The Independent: “Lucian Freud: Portrait of the artist as a happy man” a profile by John Spurling, December 13th, 2008
The Guardian: “Lucian Freud: Art without the feel-good factor” by Jonathan Jones, August 28, 2008

• Sep 19, 2010 link notes tagged: art painting painter portrait biography body light Lucian Freud lost naked bare corpse affect figure subject individuation

We have only to speak of an object to think that we are being objective. But, because we chose it in the first place, the object reveals more about us than we do about it. What we consider to be our fundamental ideas concerning the world are often indications of the immaturity of our minds. Sometimes we stand in wonder before a chosen object; we build up hypotheses and reveries; in this way we form convictions which have all the appearance of true knowledge. But the initial source is impure: the first impression is not fundamental truth. In point of fact, scientific objectivity is possible only if one has broken first with the immediate object, if one has refused to yield to seduction of the initial choice, if one has checked and contradicted the thoughts which arise from one’s first observation.

✖ Via Psychanlyse of Fire by Gaston Bachelard, tr. A. C. Ross, Beacon Press, [1938]1987, p. 1

Here’s the original French text:

Il suffit que nous parlions d’un objet pour nous croire objectifs. Mais par notre premier choix, l’objet nous désigne plus que nous le désignons et ce que nous croyons nos pensées fondamentales sur le monde sont souvent des confidences sur la jeunesse de notre esprit. Parfois nous nous émerveillons devant un objet élu; nous accumulons les hypothèses et les rêveries; nous formons ainsi des convictions qui ont l’apparence du savoir. Mais la source initiale est l’impure: l’évidence première n’est pas une vérité fondamentale. En fait, l’objectivité scientifique n’est possible que si l’on a d’abord rompu avec l’objet immédiat, si l’on a refusé la séduction du premier choix, si l’on a arrêté et contredit les pensées qui naissent de la première observation. (éd. Gallimard, coll. Idées, Paris, [1938]1949, p. 9)

Gaston Bachelard was a French epistemologist. Learn more on Wikipedia.

• Jul 26, 2010 link notes tagged: communication epistemology objectivity knowledge separation relation perception idea world reality Bachelard understand stand object subject impression truth science philosophy poetry psychoanalysis fire Prometheus mediation media immediate observation contradiction

The things that made him who he was could hardly be identified much less converted to data, the things that lived and milled in his body, everywhere, random, riotous, billions of trillions, in the neurons and peptides, the throbbing temple vein, in the veer of his libidinous intellect. So much come and gone, this is who he was, the lost taste of milk licked from his mother’s breast, the stuff he sneezes when he sneezes, this is him, and how a person becomes the reflections he sees in a dusty window when he walks by. He’d come to know himself, untranslatably, through his pain. He felt so tired now. His hard-gotten grip on the world, material things, great things, his memories true and false, the vague malaise of winter twilights, untransferable, the pale nights when his identity flattens for lack of sleep, the small wart he feels on his thigh every time he showers, all him, and how the soap he uses, the smell and feel of the concave bar make him who he is because he names the fragrance, amandine, and the hang of his cock, untransferable, and his strangely achy knee, the click in his knee when he bends it, all him, and so much else that’s not convertible to some high sublime, the technology of mind-without-end.

✖ Via Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo, New York: Scribner, 2003, p. 207-208

Let’s say for the moment that this quote relate to the general problem of the representation of the self: of the innumerable and diverse experiences I had, in my lifetime, how and under which conditions am I able to elaborate a stable representation of myself. Or, to put it in other words : How did I came up with a sense of my own identity?

Compare it with David Hume’s thoughts on mankind, Derrida’s view on the grammar of dreams (after Freud), who Pablo Neruda think he is (along with an excerpt from Paul Valery’s Mr. Teste), Quadrophenia, and finally the problem of translation from the perspective of media theorist Friedrich A. Kittler.

Previously on Skandalon: Don DeLillo

• Jun 18, 2010 link notes tagged: author book novel art technology communication translation computer machine DeLillo Cosmopolis identity self network event effect reality life subject subjectivity apparatus node

When it was up, the club was described as “The place to be if you think Kimveer Gill was a hero.

✖ Via The Gazette: “Kimveer Gill fan club pulled from Facebook” by Philip Authier, Jan 30, 2010

• Jan 30, 2010 link notes [via] tagged: technology communication news hero loser subject lost Facebook murderer revolution

I’m not afraid to compete. It’s just the opposite. Don’t you see that? I’m afraid I will compete―that’s what scares me. That’s why I quit the Theater Department. Just because I’m so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else’s values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn’t make it right. I’m ashamed of it. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I’m sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.

✖ Via The New Yorker, “Franny” by J.D. Salinger, Jan 29, 1955, pp. 34-35

• Jan 30, 2010 link notes tagged: art author story loser lost nobody nothing dissatisfaction life fame celebrity subject philosophy

technology game vintage tetris fps humor subject perspectivism

✖ Via First-Person Tetris

Try and rotate the blocks.

First-Person Tetris is a non-commercial project. There’s a contact link for inquiries.

• Jan 29, 2010 link notes tagged: technology game vintage Tetris FPS humor subject perspectivism

Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.
They are lost to me under the cover of clothing
They have departed for another city.

When everything seems to be set
to show me off as a man of intelligence,
the fool I keep concealed on my person
takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.

On other occasions, I am dozing in the midst
of people of some distinction,
and when I summon my courageous self,
a coward completely unknown to me
swaddles my poor skeleton
in a thousand tiny reservations.

When a stately home bursts into flames,
instead of the fireman I summon,
an arsonist bursts on the scene,
and he is I. There is nothing I can do.
What must I do to distinguish myself?
How can I put myself together?

All the books I read
lionize dazzling hero figures,
brimming with self-assurance.
I die with envy of them;
and, in films where bullets fly on the wind,
I am left in envy of the cowboys,
left admiring even the horses.

But when I call upon my dashing being,
out comes the same old lazy self,
and so I never know just who I am,
nor how many I am, nor who we will be being.
I would like to be able to touch a bell
and call up my real self, the truly me,
because if I really need my proper self,
I must not allow myself to disappear.

While I am writing, I am far away;
and when I come back, I have already left.
I should like to see if the same thing happens
to other people as it does to me,
to see if as many people are as I am,
and if they seem the same way to themselves.
When this problem has been thoroughly explored,
I am going to school myself so well in things
that, when I try to explain my problems,
I shall speak, not of self, but of geography.

✖ Via “We Are Many” by Pablo Neruda, in We Are Many (poems), translated by Alastair Reid, Cape Goliard Press, 1967, Grossman (New York, NY), 1968.

More of Neruda’s poems online over at PoemHunter.com

Compare with An Evening With Mr. Teste by Paul Valery (French poet, essayist and philosopher):

“Stupidity is not my strong point. I have seen many persons; I have visited several nation; I have taken part in divers enterprises without affecting them; I have eaten nearly everyday; I have tampered with women. I now recall several hundred faces, two or three great events, and perhaps the substance of twenty books. I have not retained the best nor the worst of these things. What could stick, did.
This bit of arithmetic spares me surprise at getting old. I could also add up the victorious moments of my mind, and imagine them joined and soldered, composing a happy life… But I think I have always been a good judge of myself. I have rarely lost sight of myself; I have detested, and adored myself―and so, we have grown old together.

(from the Selected Writings of Paul Valery, tr. byJackson Mathews, New Directions Publishing, 1964, p. 236)

See also The Who’s album Quadrophenia

• Jan 24, 2010 link notes tagged: art experience identity individu individuation life philosophy poem poet self subject representation

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance (naturaliter maiorennes), nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me.

✖ Via KANT, Immanuel (1784). “Answering the Question: What is Enlightenment?”.

• Dec 01, 2009 link notes tagged: communication philosophy author power subject freedom reason power autonomy critic history