Limitless Fire

HISTORY OF HISTORY: IDEA IS HISTORY

History (from Greek historia, meaning “inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation”) is the study of the human past. It is a field of research, which uses a narrative to examine and analyze the sequence of events, and it sometimes attempts to investigate objectively the patterns of cause and effect that determine events. This discipline of history can be used as an end in itself and as a way of providing “perspective” on the problems of the present.

Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English histoire, historie, from Anglo-French estoire, histoire, from Latin historia, from Greek, inquiry, history, knowing, learned; akin to Greek eidenai to know
1 tale: story
2 a: a chronological record of significant events often including an explanation of their causes
2 b: a treatise presenting systematically related natural phenomena
2 c: an established record
3 branch of knowledge that records and explains past events
4 a: events that form the subject matter of a history
4 b: events of the past
4 c: one that is finished or done for
4 d: previous treatment, handling, or experience

Extant Pronunciation: \_ek-st_nt; ek-_stant, _ek-_\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin exstant-, exstans, present participle of exstare to stand out, be in existence, from ex- + stare to stand
1 archaic: standing out or above
2 a: currently or actually existing 2 b: still existing: not destroyed or lost

Archaeologists to identify and recognize cultural and social customs from ancient historic periods use extant examples.

Scientists use various mechanisms to examine the past, using the geologic record, and the data contained within rock formations to understand forces working at specific times, and geographic regions. Astrophysicists and astronomers use telescopes, spectrometers, and other machines to examine the physical universe. This data allows the scientist to look back through history in order to identify cosmic circumstances, ultimately to know how the universe formed, when things happened, and how the dynamics of celestial mechanics continues in the present, predicting future developments.

Extant artifacts define Art history. These objects and ideas allow us to speculate and re-create a social history of any specific time. It is necessary to clearly understand that art history is an actual history only defined by the continuing presence of the idea. Some cultures maintain an oral tradition carrying significant icons into future generations through the transmission of the word and idea. Many examples exist in the historical record of painting, sculpture, architecture, and print offering a glimpse into what people thought, and in effectively maintaining the idea as a living entity. Ideas are sometimes lost, destroyed, or fail to be cared for. These ideas then depart from the historical record.

Artists engage the historical record through the creation, capture, and maintenance of ideas. Properly maintained ideas live well into the future as ideas flow through dialogue. The persistence of history is the key element to preserving truly human pursuits. How, who, why, and what ideas are maintained determine the course of human history evidenced by the ideas themselves.

Thomas More, remembered for Utopia published in 1516 was canonized by the Catholic Church in 1935. More was a practising lawyer, statesman, Lord Chancellor, and was beheaded in 1535 for treason. Thomas More failed to acknowledge that King Henry VIII was the supreme head of the Church of England.

In Utopia, More describes a society lacking private property, prescribing religious tolerance, and the recognition of order and discipline as necessary elements for the well being of the society.

Thomas More failed to recognize the King as the true spiritual leader of the Church of England, and it is this premise that lead to his demise by beheading. More brought into question the relation between temporal and spiritual power, concepts that are difficult to quantify, even though they persist in contemporary society.

In order to maintain power and authority bureaucracies typically utilize a hierarchical structure. This methodology uses stratification where power is concentrated in specific modules. These modules dictate, or disseminate power as necessary to maintain the organization. Most hierarchical bureaucracies utilize strict controls in order to preserve the power structure, ultimately retaining control and authority of the organization. Some bureaucracies utilize a collegiate hierarchy where individual input is encouraged, allowing individuals a voice in the decision-making and creative process. Altruistic bureaucracies exist, as evidenced in the hierarchical structure of the honeybee. Bees utilize a social structure, sacrificing sexual dominance in favor of a focus on the maintenance of the queen, recognizing the hive as a single organism. Bees function so well within their chosen social organization as to be able to control the temperature of the hive. Rudolf Steiner lectured extensively about the social order of bees in 1925.

The power to dissent can bring with it severe punishment if the dissent is recognized by those in positions of power to threaten the structure of the bureaucratic hierarchy. Thomas More gave his life, and his head in order to maintain his beliefs about the distribution, and distinction between temporal and spiritual power.

http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=575576:distracted-by-the-gaze&catid=443:noted

OBSERVATION: This URL connects to the Summer 2010 issue of NY Arts Magazine, and the essay written by Abraham Lubelski.

http://www.artandreligion.de/data/index.php?idcatside=35

At the URL listed above Friedhelm Mennekes has collected insights regarding Joseph Beuys, and his work Manresa (Ignatius of Loyola). Mennekes has described the relation between art and religion found not just in the work of Beuys, but in other art as well. In 2002 Mennekes was awarded the Wilhelm-Hausenstein-Medal of the Bavarian Academy of the Fine Arts, Munich, “for his outstanding achievement in the field of promoting visual arts“.

Mennekes has been engaged in many discussions with artists through exhibitions and lectures that address this vital relationship of creative expression and experienced religion. These encounters are documented in print in a multitude of catalogue contributions, essays and monographs that discuss individuals such as Donald Baechler, Joseph Beuys, Christian Boltanski, James Brown, James Lee Byars, Francis Bacon, Eduardo Chillida, Marlene Dumas, Jenny Holzer, Anish Kapoor, Barbara Kruger, Arnulf Rainer, David Salle, Cindy Sherman, Antoni Tàpies, Rosemarie Trockel, and Bill Viola among others. Mennekes poses systematic questions, addressing individual works and also their vital relationship to the broader world of contemporary culture. He seeks structural correspondences and parallels that address our experience of faith and doubts in organized religion, as well as the secular world. Above all, however, he shows through over one hundred interviews with artists that their work is not simply dealing with private convictions of a personal nature, but with large issues that relate to all kinds of people striving to live a meaningful life.

OBSERVATION: It is necessary to understand that art may contain insight and meaning beyond the mundane. Many artists have worked to demonstrate the potential of human thought and action.
The potential (action), that we find in the work of Joseph Beuys, is the path that leads to full participation in the mystery of humanity.

“As the man who acts must, according to Goethe, be without a conscience, he must also be without knowledge; he forgets everything in order to be able to do something; he is unfair toward what lies behind and knows only one right, the right of what is now coming into being as the result of his own action.”

OBSERVATION: This quote was extracted from a piece done by Joseph Kosuth. In the context of the art, Kosuth also quoted a newspaper cartoon describing commercialization in art, free thinking and how it is necessary to sometimes sacrifice integrity and values in order to participate in the system where art is simplified in order to be better suited for mass consumption.

There have been times in art history when artists led the pursuit of social responsibility, and freedom of intellect. The lines of art, and commercial production have become blurred in recent years, where the production of art has been centered on the prevailing attitude of conspicuous consumption. Each artist must recognize the purpose of their individual direction, follow that path, and ultimately reap the reward for that personal responsibility: Nietzsche: “the result of his own action”.

ARISTOTLE (384 BC), PLATO (427 BC), SOCRATES (470 BC), AESCHYLUS, LEONARDO DA VINCI (1452), MICHELANGELO BUONAROTTI, GIOVANNI BELLINI, RAPHAEL, ALBRECHT DURER, J ROBERT OPPENHEIMER, ENRICO FERMI, PTOLEMY (90), EDWARD TELLER, ALBERT EINSTEIN (1879), STEPHEN HAWKING (1942), PYTHAGORAS (570 BC), DEMOCRITUS (460 BC), NICOLAUS COPERNICUS (1473), FRANCIS BACON (1561), NIKOLA TESLA ( ), GALILEO GALILEI (1564), THOMAS HOBBES (1588), SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1642), RENE DESCARTES (1596), VOLTAIRE (1694), GEORGE BERKELEY (1685), WALTER BENJAMIN, CHARLES DARWIN (1809), KARL MARX (1818), SIGMUND FREUD (1856), EMILE DURKHEIM (1858), VLADIMIR LENIN (1870), CARL JUNG (1875), BERTRAND RUSSELL (1872), NOAM CHOMSKY ( 1928), ARCHIMEDES (287 BC), JOHANNES KEPLER (1571), ROBERT BOYLE (1627), BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706), JAMES WATT (1736), CHARLES DARWIN (1809), LOUIS PASTEUR (1822) ALFRED NOBEL (1833), ALEXANDER BELL (1847), THE WRIGHT BROTHERS (1867/71), ALEXANDER FLEMING (1881), CARL SAGAN (1934), ALEXANDER THE GREAT (356 BC), RAMESES, JULIUS CAESAR (100 BC), CONSTANTINE THE GREAT (280), LOUIS XIV (1638), PETER THE GREAT (1672), CATHERINE THE GREAT (1729), GEORGE WASHINGTON (1732), THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743), NAPOLEON BONAPARTE (1769), ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809), MAHATMA GANDHI (1869), WINSTON CHURCHILL (1874), FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT (1882), CHARLES DE GAULLE (1890), NELSON MANDELA (1918), MATRIN LUTHER KING JR (1929), ADAM, NOAH, ABRAHAM, MOSES, CONFUCIUS, SIDHARTHA GAUTAMA, JESUS CHRIST, PATANJALI, DHARMAKIRTI, TSONG KHA PA, MUHAMMAD, BAHA’U'LLAH, JALAL AL-DIN RUMI, MARTIN LUTHER, JOSEPH SMITH, PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA, KASYAPA, MILAREPA, DINNAGA, CHANDRAKIRTI, ST FRANCIS OF ASSISI, JOHN CALVIN, POPE JOHN PAUL II, DALAI LAMA, NEALE DONALD WALSCH, BUCKMINSTER FULLER, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, VITRUVIUS, ARTHUR C CLARKE, LINUS PAULING, LAWRENCE KOHLBERG, HOWARD BLOOM, TEILHARD DE CHARDIN, JOHANN CARL FRIEDRICH GAUSS (1777), EDWIN HUBBLE, MARIE CURIE, JEAN PIAGET, FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, PIERRE DE FERMAT, MAX PLANCK, IVAN PAVLOV, GOTTFRIED LIEBNIZ, ST THOMAS AQUINAS, IMMANUEL KANT, B F SKINNER, AND ………

OBSERVATION: Attempting to list all of the great minds who have contributed to the developments of human capability is an exercise of limitless proportion. In the process of contemplating the great thinkers throughout human history, it is necessary to include names of those who contributed intellectual, human, and technological awareness, as well, as to recognize anonymous individuals who contributed ideas without recognition. This being the case, it may not be possible to include all people who should be included in this list of great thinkers. As new revelations come about the list will be updated!

Following are press releases describing the upcoming Beuys/Kastner show to be held at: Ico Gallery, 606 West 26th Street, NY, NY 10001,

5-28 August, 2010, Opening Reception: Friday August 13, 2010.

For further information regarding dates and times for the exhibition, please contact Skylor Brummans at Ico Gallery: 1.212.966.3897, or contact David Kastner directly @ www.davidkastner.com

http://worldbookandnews.com/entertainment/art-a-artists/69984-Joseph-Beuys-and-David-Kastner-Distraction-at-Ico-Gallery.html

http://www.dailyfinance.com/article/joseph-beuys-and-david-kastner/1120761/

http://newsblaze.com/story/2010061613040200001.pnw/topstory.html

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/joseph-beuys-david-kastner-distraction-ico-gallery/

http://www.worldmarketmedia.com/1876/section.aspx/1688026/joseph-beuys-and-david-kastner-distraction-at-ico-gallery

http://www.cnbc.com/id/37738618

John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Ch. 8, Sec. 7-26, 1690.

“Whatsoever the mind perceives in itself, or is the immediate object of perception, thought, or understanding, that I call idea; and the power to produce any idea in our mind, I call quality of the subject wherein that power is. Thus a snowball having the power to produce in us the ideas of white, cold, and round,–the power to produce those ideas in us, as they are in the snowball, I call qualities; and as they are sensations or perceptions in our understandings, I call them ideas; which ideas, if I speak of sometimes as in the things themselves, I would be understood to mean those qualities in the objects which produce them in us.”

OBSERVATION: It is always necessary to understand the relation between mind, perception, that being perceived, and the abstraction formed through conscious behavior. It is interesting to note how thinkers throughout human history have observed the dynamics of the mind’s relation to the tangible world, very often attempting to describe that contact.

Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Siva, New York, 1985.

AK Coomaraswamy (1877-1947)

…..”The question follows: What is the essential element in poetry? According to some authors this consists in style and figures, or in suggestion (vyanjana, to which we shall recur in discussing the varieties of poetry). But the greater writers refute these views and are agreed that the one essential element in poetry is what they term Rasa, or Flavour. With this term, which is the equivalent of Beauty or Aesthetic Emotion in the strict sense of the philosopher, must be considered the derivative adjective rasavant, ‘having rasa’, applied to a work of art, and the derivative substantive rasika, one who enjoys rasa, a connoisseur or lover, and finally rasasvadana, the tasting of rasa, i.e., aesthetic contemplation.

What, then is Beauty, what is rasa, what is it that entitles us to speak of divers works as beautiful or rasavant? What is this sole quality which the most dissimilar works of art possess in common? Let us recall the history of a work of art. There is (1) an asethetic institution on the part of the original artist, –the poet or creator; then (2) the internal expression of this intuition, –the true creation or vision of beauty (3) the indication of this by external signs (language) for the purpose of communication, –the technical activity; and finally (4) the resulting stimulation of the critic or rasika to reproduction of the original intuition, or of some approximation of it.

…The true critic (rasika) perceives the beauty of which the artist has exhibited the signs. It is not necessary that the critic should appreciate the artist’s meaning–every work or art is a kamadhenu, yielding many meanings–for he knows without reasoning whether or not the work is beautiful, before the mind begins to question what it is ‘about’. Hindu writers say that the capacity to feel beauty (to taste rasa) cannot be acquired by study, but is the reward of merit gained in a past life; for many good men and would-be historians of art have never perceived it. The poet is born, not made; but so also is the rasika, whose genius differs in degree, not in kind, from that of the original artist. In western phraseology we should express this by saying that experience can only be bought by experience; opinions must be earned. We gain and feel nothing merely when we take it on authority that any works are beautiful. It is far better to be honest, and to admit that perhaps we cannot see their beauty. A day may come when we shall be better prepared.”

OBSERVATION: Rasa, or flavor represents the essential fluid, energy, dynamic, and mystery that defines art. Necessary aspects of art are found in the artist as generator of the art, and the rasika, the connoisseur or lover of rasa; aesthetic contemplation. It is this mutually symbiotic relationship between artist and participant that maintains the liveliness of the idea; rasa; flavor. Participation is necessary for a successful marriage between intuition, artist, participant, and ultimately the active component: rasasvadana .

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Activation of Energy, Editions du Seuil, 1963.

page 361…”In a way that is somehow paralleled by the dominance in the fields of pure thought of the ens of the metaphysicians, the energy of the phycisist operates as something against which there is no appeal in the domain of experience: energy, the prime, multiform stuff of all phenomena; and energy, again, the standard by which is measured what is, or is not, achievable in practice.

‘A priori, says the philosopher, ‘only that can exist which is thinkable’.
‘A priori’, says the scientist, ‘only that can appear which is in conformity with energy’….
But the scientist, too, in his own way and on his own level, recognizes that he is capable of deciding, even in advance, under what conditions an event is possible–and in what general direction, once it has been initiated, the course of things must inevitably develop. And this, moreover, applies in all departments of the real; because, running through the rigorous laws of physiology and production, for example the decrees of thermodynamics extend even into zones as apparently ’spiritual’ as the psychology of the individual and of society.”

OBSERVATION: Arguments persist about the fundamental truth of science relative to art. Chardin points to the question as to whether science and art are relative, and whether they mutually exchange characteristics, behaviors, or actions. At one level mathematics appears to represent pure logic, rationality, and yet in an abstract sense mathematics can represent a fluid representation of nature and phenomena. Far from being a definition of straightforward logic, mathematics approaches, or is identical to any definition of the creative and intuitive found in art.