Limitless Fire

http://www.museu.gulbenkian.pt/main.asp?lang=en

OBSERVATION: Collectors, and their legacy help maintain art as history. The Gulbenkian collection in Lisbon contains a variety of art forms, and of particular interest is a selection of the work of Rene Lalique, that many feel is the best collection of Lalique’s work in the world.

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.

Harold Rosenberg, The De-Definition of Art, MacMillan, 1972.

page 223. “The artist today is offered a catalogue of styles and invited to choose. He knows, however, that the latest edition of the style book is already out of date. Everything that has been done in art opens another door, but the door faces a blank wall. To the
artist, once someone else has made a move there is no use repeating it. In effect, therefore, each invention plugs up another avenue in advance. Thus, having cancelled or submerged traditional modes of art, the new has reached the point of cancelling itself. All advanced styles are simultaneously legitimized on the ground that they reflect present realities, and discredited on the ground that they belong to the past.”

OBSERVATION: Since the beginning of the twentieth century many schools and styles of art have appeared in the world. Manifestos have proliferated describing new intentions and directions, with artists hoping to make a mark inviting viewers to ponder ideas in a new light. As remarked by Rosenberg, new insights can be either legitimized or discredited relative to the observer’s position.

The historical sources of art found in new art can provide artists with rich soil for the imagination. While there are times in the history of art when artists have specifically tried to undo previous styles and philosophical directions, there are also times when earlier art has provided fertile ground for the proliferaiton of new ideas, dependent on previous insight. If it were not for Roman sculptors who copied earlier Greek sculpture, we, in the present, would not know, and have access to the iconography of much Greek sculpture. It is only through observing Roman copies of Greek sculpture that we have a historical document (albeit copied) of this earlier Greek period.

The history of art is rich with instances where artists attempt to be the advance guard, sometimes reacting to previous art, and at other times trying to work freely in an effort to open the doors of possibility. Certainly, we can look to mathematics as a correlary, where mathematicians in the contemporary world have benefited from the explorations of earlier minds. Science demonstrates a continuing evolution of knowledge. There was a time when people believed the earth was flat.

Perhaps more than anything it is importnat to recognize the contributions made by artists throughout time, for it is in the world of art where we see many spectacular achievements of the human imagination. Personalities reflect themselves in the art, and it is this demonstration, or concretion of ideas where we as partipants in the esthetic experience benefit from the thoughts, actions, and marks left by artists.

Kubler, The Shape of Time, Yale, 1962.

page 84: “Time has categorical varieties: each gravitational field in the cosmos has a different time varying according to mass. On earth at the same instant of celestial time, no two spots really have the same relation to the sun despite our useful convention of time-zones regulating the regional concordance of clocks. When we define duration by span, the lives of men and the lives of other creatures obey different durations, and the durations of artifacts differ from those of coral reefs or chalk cliffs, by occupying different systems of intervals and periods. The conventions of language nevertheless give us only the solar year and its multiples or divisions to describe all these kinds of duration.

St. Thomas Aquinas speculated in the thirteenth century upon the nature of the time of angels, and, following a neo-Platonist tradition,1 he revived the old notion of the aevum as the duration of human souls and other divine beings. This duration was intermediate beitween time and eternity, having a beginning but no end. The conception is not appropriate for the duration of many kinds of artifacts–so durable that they antedate every living creature on earth, so indestructible that their survivial may, for all we know, ultimately approach infinity.”

1 Duhem, “Le temps selon les philosophes hellenes,” Revue de philosophie (1911).

OBSERVATION: ETERNITY: INFINITY: Pondering the concepts of time and space allow the human imagination to wander through territory well beyond the touch of conventional reality. In considering the idea of aevum, or infinity, it is possible to understand time and space beyond the individual physical presence of the self. Astrophysicists using mathematics, physics, and contemporary technologies explore the possiblity of looking back in time, actually seeing events occurring historically. The ideas of art, imagination, insight, intuition, creativity, and all these things represent clearly point to a potential of the human mind for vast exploration.

INVINCIBLE BOX 2009: MEMORY OF 1963

Past, Present, Future: It all exists. Materials can be organized to contain ideas relevant to history, relevant to contemporary culture, and all related to how human beings think and react to organized stimuli. The language of idea and material is moved from outside oneself, recognized by sensing systems, where data is transferred and processed by the higher functions of the brain. The aesthetic experience takes action, coming alive within the conceptual framework of the participant, connecting neural networks, forming new pathways to the yet unknown.

‘THE EUCHARIST INCLUDES THE RELATIONS OF MEANING WHICH THE ELEMENTS GENERATE IN THE MINDS OF THOSE WHO EAT THEM’

Fuller, Beyond the Crisis in Art, Writers and Readers, 1980.

p. 221 “I have to take you into the relations existing between ideology and perception, because it is here that I find my own critical criteria.
The consciousness of men and women, of which their ‘ways of seeing’ form a part, is self-evidently subejct to continuous change and development…..Since it would be absurd to assume that modifications in ways of seeing were solely the product of the inexorably slow biological evolution of the human perceptual apparatus, I conclude that the dominant mode of peception–the way in which objects are seen–at a given historical moment, and also those modes which oppose themselves to that which is dominant, are themselves determined by historical forces.
Let me give a single example. In the seventeenth century, soon after the discovery of the microscope, scientists began to study human spermatazoa beneath the lens. Within each individual sperm, they reported seeing a homunculus, that is a diminutive but fully formed little man, within whom, they claimed, was another homunculus, and so on, ad infinitum…..It is not, and I would stress this, a question of saying that their ideology pervaded and distorted what they thought about what they saw. The distinction between perception and cognition had vanished….their perception itself was forced to conform to an elaborate degree with their pre-existing framework of prejudices. If this is sometimes (and perhaps more often than is usually admitted) true of scientists, actively trying to identify the attributes of objects, we may readily understand how much more true it is of perception exercised within the territory of aesthetics; here, we find that what people see is very often simply swarming with homunculi, as the art columns of our Sunday newspapers demonstrate week after week.”

OBSERVATION: Bias, and subjectivity actively form personal opinion. The statement ‘anything can be art’, is an interesting entry point for examining what art is. Is everything art? Can anything be art? Perhaps anything and everything can be art, though we might observe that not everything is art. Every standard, definition, context, and connotation of the word (art) must be held under severe scrutiny in order to fully comprehend a genuine meaning. The base of knowledge and experience brought to the aesthetic encounter determines the level, or levels of cognitive and perceptual contact activated by such an encounter. What one sees, and what one perceives in an aesthetic encounter result from accumulated life experience, sensory capability, and the ability for every person to participate fully in such an experience.

Kant and Tolstoy both spent time writing about the definition of art. Tolstoy wrote, What is Art?, serving as his attempt to define the subject. Art is an evolving complex of ideas and expressions requiring study, lecture, dialogue, and creation. Art is not a single subject, but is a collection of diverse material requiring engagement of ideas, and absorption of the aesthetic encounter.

Search Google Books URL for Tolstoy’s, What is Art?:

http://books.google.com/