A list of books, authors and videos on globalisation, the global economy and the New World Order.
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Paul Grignon
Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated presentation of "Money as Debt" tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created
Money As Debt (5 parts)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFb26u9g8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sanOXoWl0kc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTv1fo6sKmo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qicabStQkc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kpSbkaD4tM
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American Casino
American Casino /Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VdqiUzKW-c
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Noam Chomsky
Books
Hegemony or Survival : America's Quest for Global Dominance
Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh7ps1KWl_M
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Michael Rowbotham
Book
The Grip of Death: A Study of Modern Money, Debt Slavery and Destructive Economics
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Ellen Hodgson Brown
Book
The Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System And How We Can Break Free
Video
Web of Debt - Ellen Brown - (5 parts)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU0XiklHPMc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_ZbEVfKJ1w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2EY6enOz74
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPmPLmtreAU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHm_rtTwNYA
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Free Documentaries
http://freedocumentaries.org/index.php
At Freedocumentaries.org, you can stream interesting and provocative documentary films for free
AMERICA: FREEDOM TO FASCISM
Join Aaron Russo as he explores the connection between income tax collection and the erosion of civil liberties in America.
http://freedocumentaries.org/theatre.php?filmid=199&id=1111&wh=1000x720
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Michel Chossudovsky
Book
The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order
Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYcYaVs1-aM
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Research / News
http://globalresearch.ca/
The Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG) is an independent research organization and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists.
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Michael Hudson
Book
Super Imperialism - New Edition: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance
Video
michael hudson America: Host or Parasite?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ertii-36Rzs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pwAFohWBL4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAVy9F95kNg
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Gerald Celente
Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46MEqEgdLTg
obamageddon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_18t2_XvZRA
4 parts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDkxwVBbUV4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_QmRphWw0Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuPUojH965s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpk7SDJ47MI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjQ-854uBUc
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Ward Churchill
Books
On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Consequences of American Conquest and Carnage
A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present
Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5nba4_x-J8
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Howard Zinn
Book
A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present
Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arn3lF5XSUg
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Michael Parenti
Book
Democracy for the Few
Video (9 parts)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a9VnxZEHGg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_97_EHQBVgg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdiPnvYLvWM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-D24ZEae5o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ir3WKY4pJE4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEEdcDWFr_0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_kl5qUA0LM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjr2A3zea7A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo-5PoipGnA
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United States public debt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt
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William Engdahl
Books
A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order
Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order
Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
Video
http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLuJNYW6AtU
Economic crisis ten years of hell?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsmzfDKPzMs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuNZCt4HtiI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVhVr3jU2NM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Toz0n9l-WDg
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Anthony Sutton
Books
WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/index.html
WALL STREET AND THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION
http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/bolshevik_revolution/index.html
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Democracy Now
http://www.democracynow.org/
A daily TV/radio news program, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, airing on nearly 800 stations, pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the U.S.
Subprime Loan Officer
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/28/former_wells_fargo_subprime_loan_officer
Former Wells Fargo Subprime Loan Officer: Bank Targeted Black Churches as Part of Predatory Subprime Lending Scheme
Jacobson-web
Up until two years ago, Elizabeth Jacobson was the top producing loan officer in the subprime division at Wells Fargo. Today she is speaking out against the practices of her former company. Earlier this summer, she filed a sworn affidavit with a federal court in support of the city of Baltimore’s lawsuit against Wells Fargo for pushing high-interest, subprime loans onto African Americans in Baltimore and the Maryland suburbs, leading hundreds into foreclosure.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Dream Scene - Gangs of New York
While watching Gangs of New York a few nights ago I noticed an extraordinary mise-en-scène shot that really struck me for its compact way of creating a mini narrative within the framework of the main narrative. In one long shot the story of many Irish men was told, from their arrival in America to their tragic end in the land that they had hoped would fulfil all their hopes and dreams.
Gangs of New York is a 2002 American historical crime film set in the mid-19th century in the Five Points district of New York City. It was directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan. The film is loosely inspired by Herbert Asbury's 1928 nonfiction book The Gangs of New York. It was distributed by Miramax Films and was nominated for numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Picture. (wikipedia.org)
The film begins in 1846 and quickly jumps to the early 1860s. The two principal issues of the era in New York were Irish immigration to the city and the Federal government's execution of the Civil War. The story follows Bill "The Butcher" Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis) in his roles as crime boss and political kingmaker under the helm of Boss Tweed (Jim Broadbent). The film culminates in a confrontation between Cutting and his mob with the protagonist Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his immigrant allies, which coincides with the New York Draft Riots of 1863. (wikipedia.org)
An extraordinary mise-en-scène shot that almost serves as a mini film within the film tells the story of the fate of many new arrivals into New York in a time of civil war in America.
Mise-en-scène is an expression used in the theatre and film worlds to describe the design aspects of a production. Stemming from the theater, the French term mise en scène literally means "putting on stage." When applied to the cinema, mise-en-scène refers to everything that appears before the camera and its arrangement – sets, props, actors, costumes, and lighting. Recently, the term has come to represent a style of conveying the information of a scene primarily through a single shot – often accompanied by camera movement. It is to be contrasted with montage-style filmmaking – multiple angles pieced together through editing. Overall, mise-en-scène is used when the director wishes to give an impression of the characters or situation without vocally articulating it through the framework of spoken dialogue, and typically does not represent a realistic setting. (wikipedia.org)
The scene starts with Bill and Amsterdam turning their backs as Bill responds, “Not our future” to the Boss Tweed who has just claimed that they were turning their backs on the future i.e. the political and economic potential of the new immigrants. The camera then pans to the left as the new Irish immigrants who have just got off one ship from Ireland are queuing up at the recruiters harbour table where they are sworn in to the army.
Army Recruiter: That document makes you a citizen, and this one makes you a private in the Union army. Now go fight for your country.
A song is overlaid on the scene sung by a woman with the following lyrics:
Irish Singer: [singing] Well, meself and a hundred more, to America sailed o'er, with our fortunes to be made, so we were thinkin' / When we got to Yankee land, they shoved a gun into our hands / Saying "Paddy, you must go and fight for Lincoln."/ There is nothing here but war, where the murderin' cannons roar, and I wish I was back home in dear old Dublin.
The camera pans following the new recruits as they move on up to one who is changing his Irish cap for a soldiers cap. Others are getting into the uniform in assembly line fashion as another recruiter puts a gun into their hands. They then get into another line fully kitted out moving slowly towards another gangway for the ship that will take them to the war. Two soldiers can be heard conversing:
Irish Immigrant: Where we goin'?
Another Immigrant: I heard Tennessee.
Irish Immigrant: Where's that?
The camera then slowly pans along the new recruits as family members, possibly his wife and daughter, run up to one new soldier. A girl with red hair talks to a another worried- looking soldier. As they start up the gangway another soldier asks:
Irish Soldier: Do they feed us now do you think?
[Earlier in the film new recruits were promised three square meals a day if they joined up]. As they move slowly up the gangway the camera cranes up higher and we can see soldiers sitting around on the ship waiting. Just then a coffin comes into view [with the number 61 stuck to it] as it is lifted with ropes by a crane in the direction of the quays. The coffin flies over the heads of the line of recruits and more coffins come into view for the first time. Soon we see two rows of 10 coffins each neatly laid out and being inspected by soldiers. Two workers carry one of the coffins past the line of new recruits [who don’t seem to notice it] and up the quay presumably to a graveyard. At this point there is a cut to a presentation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
This whole mise-en-scène shot lasts one minute and eight seconds.
Historical and political ironies
Of the many ironies in this scene two stand out. In a slightly earlier scene the politician says:
Boss Tweed: That's the building of our country right there, Mr. Cutting. Americans aborning.
They may be new American citizens but the scene on the docks starts with the idea of birth and ends with death symbolised by the rows of coffins revealing the way many immigrants were seen as cannon fodder for a war they knew nothing about. Their basic desires for acceptance and food led them to a fate they were scarcely aware of.
Continuing the above dialogue, Bill, a Protestant, states his view of the Irish bluntly:
Bill: I don't see no Americans. I see trespassers, Irish harps. Do a job for a nickel what a nigger does for a dime and a white man used to get a quarter for. What have they done? Name one thing they've contributed.
Boss Tweed: Votes.
Bill: Votes, you say? They vote how the archbishop tells them, and who tells the archbishop? Their king in the pointy hat what sits on his throne in Rome.
The second irony here is that Bill sees them in religious terms and feels no solidarity or empathy for their plight as victims of British colonial policy back in Ireland despite the fact that Bill’s own father also suffered at the hands of the British:
Bill: My father gave his life, making this country what it is. Murdered by the British with all of his men on the twenty fifth of July, Anno Domini, 1814. Do you think I'm going to help you befoul his legacy, by giving this country over to them, what's had no hand in the fighting for it? Why, because they come off a boat crawling with lice and begging you for soup.
Another irony here is that the Irish immigrants were queuing up to fight and die for their new home despite not knowing very much about the issues involved and had just come off a boat ‘crawling with lice’ and begging for soup. Their lack of awareness is emphasised by the fact that they don’t seem to notice or question the array of coffins on the quay that they are walking past. They seem blissfully unaware that they have jumped from the frying pan into the fire in their relief and excitement of having finally arrived in America.
Of course, Bill was right when he said that the immigrants were not part of his future as the reign of gangs in New York was eventually overtaken by a unified state and built up on the backs of the many immigrants who would pour in for many years to come.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Thinking spaces
In the last week I have come across two examples of ‘thinking spaces’ while reading Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and while watching Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. In the former it appears as the Diogenes Club and in the latter as the Zone.
The Diogenes Club
The Diogenes Club is a fictional gentleman's club created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and featured in several Sherlock Holmes stories, most notably "The Greek Interpreter". It seems to have been named after Diogenes the Cynic (although this is never expanded upon in the original stories) and was co-founded by Sherlock's indolent older brother, Mycroft Holmes.
The section reads as follows:
There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offences, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere. – The Greek Interpreter
Diogenes "the Cynic", Greek philosopher, was born in Sinope (modern day Sinop, Turkey) about 412 BC (according to other sources 404 BC), and died in 323 BC, at Corinth. Diogenes, a beggar who made his home in the streets of Athens, made a virtue of extreme poverty. He is said to have lived in a large tub, rather than a house.
One could describe Diogenes as a bit of a performance artist:
He used to stroll about in full daylight with a lamp; when asked what he was doing, he would answer, "I am just looking for a human being."
When Plato gave Socrates' definition of man as "featherless bipeds" and was much praised for the definition, Diogenes plucked a chicken and brought it into Plato's Academy, saying, "Behold! I've brought you a man." After this incident, "with broad flat nails" was added to Plato's definition.
Alexander found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, "I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave."
Diogenes seems to have led quite a solitary life, thinking, begging and working on ways to make his life ever more simple.
The Zone
Stalker is a 1979 science fiction film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, and loosely based on the novel Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. It depicts an expedition led by the Stalker (guide) Alexander Kaidanovsky to bring his two clients, the Writer and the Professor, to a site known as "the Zone", which has the supposed potential to fulfill a person's innermost desires.
In an interview on the MK2 DVD, production designer Rashit Safiullin, describes the Zone as a space in which humans can live without the trappings of society, and can speak about the most important things freely. (Wikipedia.org)
Thinking space
The interesting thing about these two variations on a thinking space is the idea of personal fulfillment that can only be achieved by a level of isolation and peace. The difficult part is escaping the trappings of society. In the Diogenes Club this is achieved by setting up a restricted space, a club, and imposing rules of silence. The Zone is only found after running the gamut of military machine gun fire and following the directions of the Stalker. The idea of a thinking space has a lot of significance today with the all-pervading sounds of television and pop radio in every public space, even in banks which in the past were as hallowed as churches.
Not that personal fulfillment is necessarily a selfish idea in relation to society in general. Even Karl Marx had to go the British Library for some peace and quiet to work out his ideas for Kapital. There are many distractions in the world today and having a space to work in without the constant ringing of the phone or the doorbell is a difficult achievement. However, by ignoring the phone and taking the batteries out of the doorbell one can enjoy a certain level of peace and quiet to get down to some real work. It can take some time to calm down and concentrate on the job in hand. One reason for this is that painting, like writing or composing is an intensely intellectual process. Artists are so often portrayed as over-emotional beings who are like wild animals splashing and throwing paint on enormous canvases and mystically ingesting the results before getting into another rage and attacking the canvas with another implement like a roller to achieve the perfect visual representation of their own personal catharsis. (See Woody Allen’s film Vicky Cristina Barcelona for an excellent example)
However, while a certain amount of painting involves dynamic bodily exertions, much of the work consists of imagining what one wants the finished work to look like and then setting out to achieve that through tone, composition and choice of colour. And this is where the concentration comes in, the importance of peace and quiet to think about which colour or tone is more suitable for different sections of the work in progress. Will there be an overall flattening of the tones or will there be depth? Will I emphasise some elements of the design to bring them forward or send them back? Will I break down and abstract some of the elements or keep a level of realism? What am I trying to achieve with the symbols I have chosen to use? How do I use line and brushstroke to retain a level of dynamism without deadening the whole movement of the composition? Eventually the picture starts to take shape and it becomes easier to see where it is going and push it along to its final destination. Having said that, knowing when to stop is of extreme importance too otherwise the fine balance of looking dynamic or muddy is upset.
Philip Guston described the process thus:
Usually I am on a work for a long stretch, until a moment arrives when the air of the arbitrary vanishes, and the paint falls into positions that feel destined.
By giving ourselves the time and space to think out our ideas we achieve a level of self-fulfillment while at the same time allowing us to go back out into society with renewed desire for debate and action in society itself.
The Diogenes Club
The Diogenes Club is a fictional gentleman's club created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and featured in several Sherlock Holmes stories, most notably "The Greek Interpreter". It seems to have been named after Diogenes the Cynic (although this is never expanded upon in the original stories) and was co-founded by Sherlock's indolent older brother, Mycroft Holmes.
The section reads as follows:
There are many men in London, you know, who, some from shyness, some from misanthropy, have no wish for the company of their fellows. Yet they are not averse to comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals. It is for the convenience of these that the Diogenes Club was started, and it now contains the most unsociable and unclubable men in town. No member is permitted to take the least notice of any other one. Save in the Stranger's Room, no talking is, under any circumstances, allowed, and three offences, if brought to the notice of the committee, render the talker liable to expulsion. My brother was one of the founders, and I have myself found it a very soothing atmosphere. – The Greek Interpreter
Diogenes "the Cynic", Greek philosopher, was born in Sinope (modern day Sinop, Turkey) about 412 BC (according to other sources 404 BC), and died in 323 BC, at Corinth. Diogenes, a beggar who made his home in the streets of Athens, made a virtue of extreme poverty. He is said to have lived in a large tub, rather than a house.
One could describe Diogenes as a bit of a performance artist:
He used to stroll about in full daylight with a lamp; when asked what he was doing, he would answer, "I am just looking for a human being."
When Plato gave Socrates' definition of man as "featherless bipeds" and was much praised for the definition, Diogenes plucked a chicken and brought it into Plato's Academy, saying, "Behold! I've brought you a man." After this incident, "with broad flat nails" was added to Plato's definition.
Alexander found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained, "I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave."
Diogenes seems to have led quite a solitary life, thinking, begging and working on ways to make his life ever more simple.
The Zone
Stalker is a 1979 science fiction film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, and loosely based on the novel Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. It depicts an expedition led by the Stalker (guide) Alexander Kaidanovsky to bring his two clients, the Writer and the Professor, to a site known as "the Zone", which has the supposed potential to fulfill a person's innermost desires.
In an interview on the MK2 DVD, production designer Rashit Safiullin, describes the Zone as a space in which humans can live without the trappings of society, and can speak about the most important things freely. (Wikipedia.org)
Thinking space
The interesting thing about these two variations on a thinking space is the idea of personal fulfillment that can only be achieved by a level of isolation and peace. The difficult part is escaping the trappings of society. In the Diogenes Club this is achieved by setting up a restricted space, a club, and imposing rules of silence. The Zone is only found after running the gamut of military machine gun fire and following the directions of the Stalker. The idea of a thinking space has a lot of significance today with the all-pervading sounds of television and pop radio in every public space, even in banks which in the past were as hallowed as churches.
Not that personal fulfillment is necessarily a selfish idea in relation to society in general. Even Karl Marx had to go the British Library for some peace and quiet to work out his ideas for Kapital. There are many distractions in the world today and having a space to work in without the constant ringing of the phone or the doorbell is a difficult achievement. However, by ignoring the phone and taking the batteries out of the doorbell one can enjoy a certain level of peace and quiet to get down to some real work. It can take some time to calm down and concentrate on the job in hand. One reason for this is that painting, like writing or composing is an intensely intellectual process. Artists are so often portrayed as over-emotional beings who are like wild animals splashing and throwing paint on enormous canvases and mystically ingesting the results before getting into another rage and attacking the canvas with another implement like a roller to achieve the perfect visual representation of their own personal catharsis. (See Woody Allen’s film Vicky Cristina Barcelona for an excellent example)
However, while a certain amount of painting involves dynamic bodily exertions, much of the work consists of imagining what one wants the finished work to look like and then setting out to achieve that through tone, composition and choice of colour. And this is where the concentration comes in, the importance of peace and quiet to think about which colour or tone is more suitable for different sections of the work in progress. Will there be an overall flattening of the tones or will there be depth? Will I emphasise some elements of the design to bring them forward or send them back? Will I break down and abstract some of the elements or keep a level of realism? What am I trying to achieve with the symbols I have chosen to use? How do I use line and brushstroke to retain a level of dynamism without deadening the whole movement of the composition? Eventually the picture starts to take shape and it becomes easier to see where it is going and push it along to its final destination. Having said that, knowing when to stop is of extreme importance too otherwise the fine balance of looking dynamic or muddy is upset.
Philip Guston described the process thus:
Usually I am on a work for a long stretch, until a moment arrives when the air of the arbitrary vanishes, and the paint falls into positions that feel destined.
By giving ourselves the time and space to think out our ideas we achieve a level of self-fulfillment while at the same time allowing us to go back out into society with renewed desire for debate and action in society itself.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Art and identity
Sometimes I see art as a kind of scientific research - experimenting with the same idea over and over again i.e. the cityscape. And rather than being boring it gets more interesting, a visual exploration, a way of seeing. The changes or differences are more subtle but the viewer can see them. What also happens is that you create a world i.e. the picture stops being a picture and suddenly becomes 3 dimensional like you are looking through a window, or a kind of periscope allowing you to look over the wall and turn around to see what is going on. In this way the life of the city can be observed, and so we move a long way from the 'picture' towards the realm of the documentary film.
A comment on my Dublin cityscapes from a writer living in China:
"I get to know more from the city from your works. It reminds me those Cuban paintings about those old cars and old buildings. I also noticed you like the color blue. Is that because the sunlight in Dublin is not very strong so it gives everything there a bit touch of blue?"
In a way the more local you become the more global you become. Think of a particular famous cheese in Italy or wine in France. We, the world, think it is brilliant not because it is global, but because we see it as so local. If art is about 'anything' then it becomes subject to cosmopolitan strictures which in turn becomes like international airports - they all look the same.
Dublin is near me, I grew up here. I know it well. It contains the endeavors of many Irish people through the centuries. Every local has global implications because of common or shared human experience.
Does the artist need to stay in one place where s/he is born to produce artworks?
James Joyce, for example, lived in Trieste, Italy and Zürich in Switzerland most of his life yet he wrote mainly about Dublin in his major novels written outside Dublin, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.
Joyce wrote -
'The image, it is clear, must be set between the mind or senses of the artist himself and the mind or senses of others. If you bear this in memory you will see that art necessarily divides itself into three forms progressing from one to the next. These forms are: the lyrical form, the form wherein the artist presents his image in immediate relation to himself; the epical form, the form wherein he presents his image in mediate relation to himself and to others; the dramatic form, the form wherein he presents his image in immediate relation to others.'
[James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]
According to Joyce, art that is basically self-observation fits into 'artist presents his image in immediate relation to himself'. This would be the first stage of Joyce's model. He believes you mature to then presenting yourself in relation to others, and then to basically standing above your art as a commentator in an objective sense where you subtract yourself yet leaving an imprint of yourself in the way that you re-present the world instead. A Joycean novel is Joycean by its style of writing even though it is based on his experience of Dublin. He is not in it, but everywhere in it at the same time. Maybe this is true art. He wrote ' “I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the Earth, it could be reconstructed out of my book.”
But if you take the documentary model then you could live abroad and be an observer of life in Spain for example without upsetting that idea too much. Again human experience is much the same everywhere.
For example the artist Doménicos Theotokópoulos, El Greco ("The Greek", 1541 – April 7 1614).
'El Greco was born in Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the centre of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before travelling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done. In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance. In 1577 he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. [...] Modern scholarly research emphasizes the importance of Toledo for the complete development of El Greco's mature style and stresses the painter's ability to adjust his style in accordance with his surroundings. Harold Wethey asserts that "although Greek by descent and Italian by artistic preparation, the artist became so immersed in the religious environment of Spain that he became the most vital visual representative of Spanish mysticism". ' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Greco]
Does the content by itself give my artwork a distinctive style?
The problem for me regarding most art is that style is predominant and not content. This like citing the right bands you like to be allowed to join a band so that you will continue producing more and more of that same style. Art for art's sake has become style for style's sake. Great songwriters write about life around them, style comes second.
When I thought back through my work back to my college work I realised that trying to get movement into a single fixed 2D image has been a consistent feature.
Maybe there is something psychological there that the Fauvists and the Expressionists also tried to tap into.
There are also elements that are abstracted that have a different appeal, evoking an atmosphere rather than the real, like Rauschenberg's mixture of pure mark-making and screened images.
What ever it is, it seems to be a way of looking at things rather than the specific content itself.
I have always tried to make art that related to people - social, cultural, psychological, political and historical. Tying the two - content and form - together has been the challenge. I have endeavored to re-present what is all around us but we don't see or are tired of looking at, in an interesting way to inspire a new interest and awareness of its importance in our lives. To re-create that awareness we have of something that we only seem to get when we are very far from it or it is gone forever.
A comment on my Dublin cityscapes from a writer living in China:
"I get to know more from the city from your works. It reminds me those Cuban paintings about those old cars and old buildings. I also noticed you like the color blue. Is that because the sunlight in Dublin is not very strong so it gives everything there a bit touch of blue?"
In a way the more local you become the more global you become. Think of a particular famous cheese in Italy or wine in France. We, the world, think it is brilliant not because it is global, but because we see it as so local. If art is about 'anything' then it becomes subject to cosmopolitan strictures which in turn becomes like international airports - they all look the same.
Dublin is near me, I grew up here. I know it well. It contains the endeavors of many Irish people through the centuries. Every local has global implications because of common or shared human experience.
Does the artist need to stay in one place where s/he is born to produce artworks?
James Joyce, for example, lived in Trieste, Italy and Zürich in Switzerland most of his life yet he wrote mainly about Dublin in his major novels written outside Dublin, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.
Joyce wrote -
'The image, it is clear, must be set between the mind or senses of the artist himself and the mind or senses of others. If you bear this in memory you will see that art necessarily divides itself into three forms progressing from one to the next. These forms are: the lyrical form, the form wherein the artist presents his image in immediate relation to himself; the epical form, the form wherein he presents his image in mediate relation to himself and to others; the dramatic form, the form wherein he presents his image in immediate relation to others.'
[James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]
According to Joyce, art that is basically self-observation fits into 'artist presents his image in immediate relation to himself'. This would be the first stage of Joyce's model. He believes you mature to then presenting yourself in relation to others, and then to basically standing above your art as a commentator in an objective sense where you subtract yourself yet leaving an imprint of yourself in the way that you re-present the world instead. A Joycean novel is Joycean by its style of writing even though it is based on his experience of Dublin. He is not in it, but everywhere in it at the same time. Maybe this is true art. He wrote ' “I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the Earth, it could be reconstructed out of my book.”
But if you take the documentary model then you could live abroad and be an observer of life in Spain for example without upsetting that idea too much. Again human experience is much the same everywhere.
For example the artist Doménicos Theotokópoulos, El Greco ("The Greek", 1541 – April 7 1614).
'El Greco was born in Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the centre of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before travelling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done. In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance. In 1577 he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. [...] Modern scholarly research emphasizes the importance of Toledo for the complete development of El Greco's mature style and stresses the painter's ability to adjust his style in accordance with his surroundings. Harold Wethey asserts that "although Greek by descent and Italian by artistic preparation, the artist became so immersed in the religious environment of Spain that he became the most vital visual representative of Spanish mysticism". ' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Greco]
Does the content by itself give my artwork a distinctive style?
The problem for me regarding most art is that style is predominant and not content. This like citing the right bands you like to be allowed to join a band so that you will continue producing more and more of that same style. Art for art's sake has become style for style's sake. Great songwriters write about life around them, style comes second.
When I thought back through my work back to my college work I realised that trying to get movement into a single fixed 2D image has been a consistent feature.
Maybe there is something psychological there that the Fauvists and the Expressionists also tried to tap into.
There are also elements that are abstracted that have a different appeal, evoking an atmosphere rather than the real, like Rauschenberg's mixture of pure mark-making and screened images.
What ever it is, it seems to be a way of looking at things rather than the specific content itself.
I have always tried to make art that related to people - social, cultural, psychological, political and historical. Tying the two - content and form - together has been the challenge. I have endeavored to re-present what is all around us but we don't see or are tired of looking at, in an interesting way to inspire a new interest and awareness of its importance in our lives. To re-create that awareness we have of something that we only seem to get when we are very far from it or it is gone forever.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
The Myth of the Golem
Rabbi Loew's Golem
(wikipedia.org)
The Golem in Jewish folklore
In Jewish folklore, a golem (גולם, sometimes, as in Yiddish, pronounced goilem) is an animated being created entirely from inanimate matter. The word golem is used in the Bible to refer to an embryonic or incomplete substance: Psalm 139:16 uses the word "gal'mi", meaning "my unshaped form" (in Hebrew, words are derived by adding vowels to triconsonantal roots, here, g-l-m). The earliest stories of golems date to early Judaism. Adam is described in the Talmud (Tractate Sanhedrin 38b) as initially created as a golem when his dust was "kneaded into a shapeless hunk". Like Adam, all golems are created from mud. They were a creation of those who were very holy and close to God. Early on, the notion developed that the main disability of the golem was its inability to speak. It is said that if a golem were made able to speak, that would give it a soul, and—because a golem cannot be made perfectly—that ability could make it very dangerous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem
The Golem paradox
There is, then, a profound paradox in the basic attitude to the Golem in so far as he is made in the image of man who is himself made in the image of God. Accordingly, the Golem both resembles his human creator and yet fundamentally lacks his creative power (that is, the yetser which expresses itself in imaginative projects, speech and sexual desire). The Golem is incapable of producing more Golems.
Richard Kearney The Wake of Imagination (p 58)
The myth of the Golem is a good example of anti-nature ideology. The project to usurp the role of mother symbolically was a failure. Since the Golem is 'made in the image of man who is himself made in the image of [a patriarchal] God', i.e. not born of woman, it is not surprising that it cannot speak [no soul] and lacked sexual desire. Even though it was made from mud the golem held a privileged position over female creations [e.g. Adam was created as a golem (made from the dust of the ground which in Hebrew is adamah), Eve was made from a rib taken out of Adam]. A standard feature of golems in popular culture is that of uncontrollable violence and killing its creator. Thus the golem becomes violence purified, a figure that is not human, therefore having no empathy with humans. Frankenstein could be considered a modern version of the Golem, a criticism of the negative or anti-human aspects of modern science and technology and its potentially disastrous consequences for the whole human race.
Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus
Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by the British author Mary Shelley. Shelley wrote the novel when she was 19 years old. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley's name appears on the revised third edition, published in 1831. The title of the novel refers to a scientist who learns how to reanimate flesh and creates a being in the likeness of man out of body parts taken from the dead. In modern popular culture, people have tended to refer to the Creature as "Frankenstein" (especially in films since 1931). Frankenstein is a novel infused with some elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement. It was also a warning against the "over-reaching" of modern man and the Industrial Revolution, alluded to in the novel's subtitle, The Modern Prometheus. The story has had an influence across literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories and films. The novel raises many issues that can be linked to today's culture. These issues include the evolution of man and whether technical progress can be self-destructive. Frankenstein is in some ways allegorical. The novel was conceived and written during an early phase of the Industrial Revolution, at a time of dramatic advances in science and technology. That the creation rebels against its creator can be seen as a warning that the application of science can lead to unintended consequences.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein
The Paradox of Tradition
Driving past an old thatched cottage on the way to Skerries, north Co Dublin, I noticed it had been recently re-thatched. That seemed like a strange paradox. Here was an example of our traditional vernacular architecture, what we hold up as a surviving sample of our history, yet the thatch was not old – it was brand new. How could we see it as an old house when a good portion of it was brand new?
In Swords, also in north Co Dublin, where I grew up, there is a castle which is being renovated at the moment. It is a very slow process. In March 1995, a plan for the phased restoration of the castle was approved by Fingal County Council. In 1996, work commenced on the restoration of the Constable's Tower, and this was completed in 1998. The castle was falling apart as stones became rotten and then loose, eventually creating holes in the walls which would soon collapse. The walls are being restored with new stone in a slow yet exquisitely professional manner. The windows have been finished in newly carved sandstone and a wooden replica roof has been put on the Constable's Tower and the chapel. Again following the example above, there are many new features on an old building.
In Skerries Mills, again in Skerries, much of the material in the mechanisms had rotted. Many parts had to be recreated and rebuilt with old craft skills. The mill is now functioning as before with two windmills and a watermill. Yet, in all of these cases, without constant maintenance these buildings would be a pile of rubble and rotting thatch.
Constable's Tower before renovation
(Photo: Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)
Constable's Tower after renovation
(Photo: Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)
In Swords, also in north Co Dublin, where I grew up, there is a castle which is being renovated at the moment. It is a very slow process. In March 1995, a plan for the phased restoration of the castle was approved by Fingal County Council. In 1996, work commenced on the restoration of the Constable's Tower, and this was completed in 1998. The castle was falling apart as stones became rotten and then loose, eventually creating holes in the walls which would soon collapse. The walls are being restored with new stone in a slow yet exquisitely professional manner. The windows have been finished in newly carved sandstone and a wooden replica roof has been put on the Constable's Tower and the chapel. Again following the example above, there are many new features on an old building.
New chapel roof
(Photo: Michael Killen)
One of five heads commissioned by Fingal County Council
for the refurbishment programme being undertaken at Swords Castle.
Each head is authentically dressed according to research into the
clothing popularly worn within Ireland’s Medieval Norman
community in the late 12 th and early 13 th centuries.
Sculpture by Michael Killen (http://www.michaelkillen.ie)
(Photo: Michael Killen)
Our past and its traditions are constantly being renewed in the present. Assuming that this process will also continue on into the future, then both the past and the future collapse into a continuous present. The maintenance of the building also requires the constant learning of the skills needed to keep them in good shape and in working order. This knowledge is as important as bio-diversity in that we do not know when in the future such skills and knowledge may become absolutely relevant again, for example the use of new windmill technology for the production of eco-friendly electricity or using wood and straw again to offset the greenhouse gas producing cement and concrete industry.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Plato and total war on art
(wikipedia.org)
But you will know that the only poetry that should be allowed in a state is hymns to the gods and paeans in praise of good men; once you go beyond that and admit the sweet lyric or epic muse, pleasure and pain become your rulers instead of law and the rational principles commonly accepted as best. [...] Our defence, then, when we are reminded that we banished poetry from our state, must be that its character was such as to give us good grounds for so doing and that our argument required it.
Plato The Republic
Plato The Republic
With Plato Nature is turned upside down: the things of nature are themselves no more than copies of the Ideas rather than the other way around i.e. that Ideas are actually copies of things.
Thus the artist through imagination (1) works from the real and makes it into an idea and (2) challenges the right of the Father to form and shape the world. He only 'imitates' what God and the craftsman have 'made' and is therefore a liar.
Thus the artist through imagination (1) works from the real and makes it into an idea and (2) challenges the right of the Father to form and shape the world. He only 'imitates' what God and the craftsman have 'made' and is therefore a liar.
God is as good as possible and remains in his own form without variation forever ... So we cannot have any poet saying that the gods disguise themselves in every kind of shape ... We must stop all stories of this kind and stop mothers being misled by them and scaring children by perversion of the myths ...
Plato The Republic
Thus the artists must be banned from the Republic as they would refuse to conform to the dominant ideology of absolute being and pursue what was possibly a counter-culture or remnants of polytheism and survivals of an earlier knowledge and ideas. This is Plato's all-out war against difference by denial and censorship, yet, at the same time, carried out in the name of rational knowledge and truth.
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