Bergson: Mind, matter and memory

"Thereby also some light may be thrown upon the problem toward which all our enquiries converge, that of the union of body and soul. The obscurity of this problem, on the dualistic hypothesis, comes from the double fact that matter is considered as essentially divisible and every state of the soul as rigorously inextensive, so that from the outset the communication between the two terms is severed. ... But if these two postulates involve a common error, if there is a gradual passage from the idea to the image and from the image to the sensation; if, in the measure in which it evolves toward actuality, that is to say, towards action, the mental state draws nearer to extension; if, finally, this extension once attained remains undivided and therefore is not out of harmony with the unity of the soul; we can understand that spirit can rest upon matter and, consequently, unite with it in the act of pure perception, yet nevertheless be radically distinct from it. It is distinct from matter in that it is, even then, memory, that is to say, a synthesis of past and present with a view to the future, in that it contracts the moments of this matter in order to use them and to manifest itself by actions which are the final aim of its unison with the body. We were right, then, when we said, at the beginning of this book, that the distinction between body and mind must be established in terms not of space but of time."

Bergson, Matter and Memory, p.220

(with thanks to Alise Piebalga for the reference)

Ruskin's definition of imitation

"Whenever anything looks like what it is not, the resemblance being so great as nearly to deceive, we feel a kind of pleasurable surprise, an agreeable excitement of mind, exactly the same in its nature as that which we receive from juggling. Whenever we perceive this in something produced by art, that is to say, whenever the work is seen to resemble something which we know it is not, we receive what I call an idea of imitation. Why such ideas are pleasing, it would be out of our present purpose to enquire; we only know that there is no man who does not feel pleasure in his animal nature from gentle surprise, and that such surprise can be excited in no more distinct manner that by the evidence that a thing is not what it appears to be. Now two things are requisite to our complete and most pleasurable perception of this: first, that the resemblance be so perfect as to amount to a deception; secondly, that there be some means of proving at the same moment it is a deception. The most perfect ideas and pleasures of imitation are, therefore, when one sense is contradicted by another, both bearing as positive evidence on the subject as each is capable of alone; as when the eye says a thing is round, and the finger says it is flat; they are, therefore, never felt in so high a degree as in painting, where appearances of projection, roughness, hair, velvet, &c. are given with a smooth surface, or in wax-work, where the first evidence of the senses is perpetually contradicted by their experience; but the moment we come to marble, our definition checks us, for a marble figure does not look like what it is not: it looks like marble, and like the form of a man, but then it is marble, and it is the form of a man. It does not look like a man, which it is not, but like the form of a man, which it is. Form is form, bonâ fide and actual, whether in marble or in flesh — not an imitation or resemblance of form, but real form. The chalk outline of the bough of a tree on paper, is not an imitation, it looks like chalk and paper — not like wood, and that which it suggests to the mind is not properly said to be like the form of a bough, it is the form of a bough. ...
...Whenever...I speak of ideas of imitation, I wish to be understood to mean the immediate and present perception that something produced by art is not what it seems to be. I prefer saying "that it is not what it seems to be," to saying, "that it seems to be what it is not," because we perceive at once what it seems to be, and the idea of imitation, and the consequent pleasure, result from the subsequent perception of its being something else — flat, for instance, when we thought it was round."

Ruskin, ibid. p. 24

Painting as perception

"To gaze upon the clouds of autumn, a soaring exaltation in the soul; to feel the spring breeze stirring wild exultant thoughts; — what is there in the possession of gold and jewels to compare with delights like these? And then, to unroll the portfolio and spread the silk, and to transfer to it the glories of flood and fell, the green forest, the blowing winds, the white water of the rushing cascade, as with a turn of the hand a divine influence descends upon the scene. These are the joys of painting."

Wang Wei (Chinese, fifth century), in The Mind of the Artist Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art by F. R. Stockton.

Ruskin on great art and ideas

"But I say that the art is greatest, which conveys to the mind of the spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest number of the greatest ideas, and I call an idea great in proportion as it is received by a higher faculty of the mind, and as it more fully occupies, and in occupying, exercises and exalts, the faculty by which it is received."

John Ruskin, Modern Painters, I, II, p. 11

Cobra: indeterminate forms in painting

Tegn, Christian Dotremont, 1971

"The forms which appear to us today as the most valuable, as much through their formal arrangement as by their expressive intensity, are not properly speaking either abstract or figurative. They participate precisely in these cosmic powers of metamorphosis where the true adventure is located. (From where there arise forms which are themselves and something other than themselves, birds and cacti, abstraction and new figuration.)"

Jean-Michel Atlan, 'Abstraction Adventure in Contemporary Art', Cobra, 1950

Metaphysics and regress

The goal of metaphysics is not just to try and understand why we exist but why we know we do and why we ask about it, and then why we want to ask why, and so on. This evokes the potential of an upwardly spiralling regress.

A mind composed of contradictory beliefs

As I am drifting off to sleep I repeatedly hold two opposing thoughts: first, that as each day passes I grow a day older, and that this process extends indefinitely, and second, a belief that cuts across the first, that this process will definitely stop at some point, and I will cease to grow a day older each day.

Each belief is strongly held, despite the contradiction, and this seems to me to offer support for a view of the mind that is not unified — in the sense of consistent and harmoniously ordered — but fragmented and contradictory.

Bush and the Presidential portrait

George Bush confronts his Presidential portrait

Seeing yourself as another person, seen from both the point of view of others and yourself; to see yourself as others see you at the same time as seeing yourself as yourself, but also separate from you. All this must take place at the moment you see your portrait.

Light-heavy stone

The stone feels heavy next to the pebble but light next to the boulder. Is the stone heavy or light?

Dialethism and truth

If there is a concern that sympathy for dialethic position (in which something is true and false at the same time) undermines the value of truth, then it should be borne in mind that it may be true that something is both true and false; if so, dialethism upholds the value of truth.

The measure of the universe

We do not measure the universe in itself but our capacity to behold it, which is really a measure of our capacity to behold ourselves, and our own extent.

KUBism

Enamel sign for KUB Bouillon, photographed at L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue antiques market, France, Summer 2008.

The summer of 1912 was a very productive period in the development of cubism. Picasso was living in the town of Sorgues, north of Avignon where Braque would join him. A common sight would have been the advertisements for KUB bouillon, a popular brand of seasoning. The opportunities for punning this presented did not escape the artists, and Picasso directly referenced KUB in a painting that year, which some have seen as an example of proto-Pop art :

Picasso, Landscape with Posters, 1912

Richardson (A Life of Picasso, Vol. 2, p. 352) recounts that the Germanic-sounding KUB came under suspicion at the start of WWI as Maggi, the corporation owning the brand, erected signs and posters across France carrying "code numbers of purely administrative significance." Fearing these were enemy signals the authorities ordered them removed or defaced. This caused Picasso, with his connections to German dealers, some anxiety as to whether his own references to KUB might come under similar suspicion.

Georges Braque, L'Affiche de Kubelick (Le Violon), 1912

Valuing painting

How can you put a price on a painting? — it's either worth nothing or everything.

The point of doing art

Surely the point of doing art is to make work unlike that being made by your contemporaries. If not, then what?

Shchukin and the psychological shock

"If a picture gives you a psychological shock, buy it. It’s a good one." Sergei Shchukin

Deirdre, Fernand. 2008. The lost picture show. The Sunday Times magazine, January 13 2008, p34.

(with thanks for Florence Martellini for the reference)

Rembrandt as a painter of experience

"Rembrandt’s paintings are not an image of the world but an interpretation of the experience of the world."

Jean François Chevrier, Museum of Seattle, “Craigie Horsfield”, p20

(with thanks to Florence Martellini for the reference)

Qualities imply what they are not

It seems true that no quality can exist of itself, that is, 'up-ness' cannot exist apart from 'down-ness', or 'red-ness' apart from 'green-ness'. Each quality possesses within itself something of all the qualities it is not, and this is especially so of opposites, which seem to announce their absent partner each time they are cited: the closed door is also not open, the heavy weight is also not light. It was Heraclitus who pointed out that the path up the hill is also the path down.

Artists and rational argument

"The creative artist, like the philosopher, is fully committed to a truth-seeking activity, trying to see below the surface of things and acquire a deeper understanding of human experience, however, he [sic] publishes, or publicly presents, his insights in a different form from the philosopher, a form that relies on direct perception and intuition rather than on rational argument."

Bryan Magee, The Story of Philosophy, 2001

As a generalisation this is probably unobjectionable, but as a rule it is dubious. Putting aside the question of whether 'truth' is the main objective in either activity (one can imagine both art and philosophy being practiced for reasons other than the search for truth), and the quibble about gender assignment, what remains doubtful is the opposition of 'direct perception' and 'intuition' versus 'rational argument'. It's possible to think of philosophical arguments that appeal to direct perception and intuition (especially in the eastern tradition — through the direct contemplation of nature, the elliptical remark, or koan form) as well as artistic statements that are the result of a reasoned, logical process (some of Sol LeWitt's 'structures' spring to mind, as well as other constructivists and process-based artists). This may be over-loading Magee's generalist claim, but it is worth resisting the easy separation of art and philosophy.

Where is the music?

If I hear a piece of music that I know but haven't heard for years, it can seem both new and familiar at the same time — some parts I recognise and some I don't. Where in this process is the music? It cannot be entirely external to me ('on the radio') since part of my experience of hearing it is determined by what I recover from memory, which presumably is internal to me (including the thoughts I associate with the music, which are not in the music itself)? Yet it cannot be entirely internal to me ('in my head') as there are sections I seem to have no memory recall for. These seem to be delivered 'fresh in' from the world — I hear but don't recognise.

The question of where the music is is not entirely clear, or more precisely the question of where my experience of the music originates is not clear. The common-sense answer that the music is playing outside of me but I experience it inside of me doesn't suffice since it makes just as much common sense to say the playing and the experience, to me at least, are one in the same. For there's no experience without the playing, and the playing is nothing without the experience.

Interdependence of the (post)human

"If I am to enter into a consideration of 'posthuman understanding,' as promised in the subtitle of this book, I must come clean. And I write 'interdependent, interrelated, interaction,' for I would submit that whether the imperious and imperialistic Western mind knows it or not, and whether it likes it or not, we have always been interdependently, interrelatedly in interaction with the entirety of our world.

This is to say that in the posthuman sense, there is no all-or-nothing demarcation between humans and other humans, or between humans and other organisms, or between organisms and the world, or between life and non-life."

Floyd Merrell, Sensing Corporeally: Toward a Posthuman Understanding, University of Toronto Press, 2003

Things as words ("artificial converse")

...The other, was a Scheme for entirely abolishing all Words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great Advantage in Point of Health as well as Brevity. For it is plain, that every Word we speak is in some Degree a Diminution of our Lungs by Corrosion, and consequently contributes to the shortning of our Lives. An Expedient was therefore offered, that since Words are only Names for Things, it would be more convenient for all Men to carry about them, such Things as were necessary to express the particular Business they are to discourse on. And this Invention would certainly have taken Place, to the great Ease as well as Health of the Subject, if the Women in conjunction with the Vulgar and Illiterate had not threatned to raise a Rebellion, unless they might be allowed the Liberty to speak with their Tongues, after the manner of their Ancestors; such constant irreconcilable Enemies to Science are the common People. However, many of the most Learned and Wise adhere to the New Scheme of expressing themselves by Things, which hath only this Inconvenience attending it, that if a Man's Business be very great, and of various kinds, he must be obliged in Proportion to carry a greater bundle of Things upon his Back, unless he can afford one or two strong Servants to attend him. I have often beheld two of those Sages almost sinking under the Weight of their Packs, like Pedlars among us; who, when they met in the Streets, would lay down their Loads, open their Sacks, and hold Conversation for an Hour together; then put up their Implements, help each other to resume their Burthens, and take their Leave.

But for short Conversations a Man may carry Implements in his Pockets and under his Arms, enough to supply him, and in his House he cannot be at a loss: Therefore the Room where Company meet who practise this Art, is full of all Things ready at Hand, requisite to furnish Matter for this kind of artificial Converse.

Another great Advantage proposed by this Invention, was that it would serve as a Universal Language to be understood in all civilized Nations, whose Goods and Utensils are generally of the same kind, or nearly resembling, so that their Uses might easily be comprehended. And thus Embassadors would be qualified to treat with foreign Princes or Ministers of State to whose Tongues they were utter Strangers...

Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift, Part III, Ch. 5, (1726)

(with thanks to Jon Clarkson for the reference)

The size of a thought

Will it be possible to measure the physical space occupied by a thought? If a physicalist theory of mind is accepted then it should be possible in principle.

But if we wanted to measure the physical space occupied by, say, the direct perception of a window, would we be able to do this without including the physical space occupied by the window, and the space between the window and the perceiver?

Deep Art Manifesto

...

1. Artists should operate at the extreme frontier of ideas.

2. Artists must respond to ideas emerging from science, technology, philosophy and to wider social change.

3. Artists should be concerned with the global history of art, not just its recent past or local context.

4. The economic imperatives of the art market and the cultural imperatives of the art institutions are acknowledged, but not prioritised.

5. It is recognised that the art of tomorrow will appear quite different from that of today, and will require different kinds of understanding.

6. Art cannot be understood or appreciated without the application of knowledge, thought and effort; but if applied these should be rewarded.

7. Making art transforms materials that in turn have the potential to transform human thought and experience. Art does change the world.

8. To be avoided as ‘thin’ art: that which perpetuates the routine orthodoxies of current art practice; the sterility of art that refers exclusively to its own modes of production; work that is parasitic on art’s historic reputation for profundity without making any significant contribution of its own; work that is readily assimilated into the contemporary art establishment because that is its sole ambition; work that is over-reliant on the apparatus of art institutions for its existence and validation.

9. Artworks should be complex in resonance and compelling in execution, profoundly disruptive rather than superficially shocking, and if beautiful then also not.

10. The primary significance of art lies in the intent and activity of the artist, of which the artwork is only the echo.

11. Artists should pioneer the novel synthesis of the improbable.

12. Art should extend human thought and experience beyond what is conceivable.

Art-philosophy

Art-philosophy is a kind of 'concrete thinking' that makes the art object into a philosophical idea and the philosophical idea into an art object.

(The philosophical idea should not explain the art object, and the art object should not illustrate the philosophical idea. Neither should exhaust the other.)

Artistic awareness

To have a heightened sensitivity to the experienced world and the ability to translate it into something other than itself.

Multiple realities of an image

Wartime public information poster (1940s UK )

The shoe form in the image exists as both a shoe and the horse's body, simultaneously and separately. The image is a poster designed to attract attention, the dual existence of the shoe form serves to induce a conceptual frisson because of its doubled function. But there are other levels of interpretation required: there is the level of pixels constructing an image (on the computer screen); the ink and the paper, interpretable as an image as a whole; the level in which it reads as a wartime poster, an object of historical and nostalgic interest; an example of a certain style of graphic art; an attempt to make light of an often grueling and inconvenient condition of wartime living; the intimation of different modes of getting about, one aided and another not; the shoe leather serving also as horse's coat, as the lace acts also as rein. It's less that these multiple realities unite in one image than the single image exists in multiple, distinct states. It's actually doubtful that this really is a 'single' image, in the sense that it consists in just one thing.

Deletion oblivion

What happens to the things that get deleted?

Dilemmas

How do you know when you're:

a. Seeing both sides of a finely balanced argument, or b. dithering?

Or, how do you know when you're:

a. Acting boldly and decisively, or b. acting in haste?

Bocs show

To be and knot to be

(Oil on circular panel with rope, 2008)

In 1912 Picasso made a famous cubist collage, Still life with chair caning, that used a piece of rope as a frame. This painting is often cited as a significant moment in the development of modern art because of the inclusion of extraneous materials into the painted object. However, 18th and 19th century artists like J M W Turner had framed paintings in rope, and during this time it was quite common to frame nautical paintings using a piece of rope taken from a vessel depicted in the work.

Suspicion

(Oil on panel, 2008)

In the movie Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock, 1941) we see the world from the viewpoint of a wife who suspects her husband may be a cheat and a murderer. But when two police inspectors come to call, and add to her doubts about her husband’s behaviour, we momentarily see the world from another point of view. One of the inspectors is startled by the Picassoesque reproduction he sees on her wall, and we are supposed to share his confusion about a painting that epitomises the incomprehensible way in which modernist artists chose to depict reality.

Portrait of a man painting his self-portrait

(Oil on panel and easel, 2008)

This work is based on a portrait painted by Baciccio in 1665 of the sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Bernini was one of the key figures in the Baroque period of European art, and is perhaps best known for sculpting the Ecstasy of St Theresa in Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. He also made a famous sculpture of David, which is said to contain his own facial features.

Young woman painting her own reflection

(Oil on panel with easel and cloth, 2008)

This work is based on a painting by Nicholas Renieri (1590-1667) of a young woman at a mirror, which is housed in the Museé des Beaux Arts in Lyon. It is a painting of vanity, and in order to be vain — to love ourselves — we must see ourselves as something in the world, that is, as an object to be looked upon. This is why the image of the mirror occurs so frequently as a symbol of self-love; the mirror turns her from just being a subject that looks out at the world into also being an object that can be looked upon.

Thirteen small paintings

(Oil on panels, various sizes, 2008)

Drip paintings 1 and 2

(Oil on panels in gilt frames with infusion stands and diluted pigment in bags, 2008)

We tend to think of objects, like paintings, as inanimate and lifeless, perhaps even as dead. But is it so simple? If we think of other objects as separate from us, as something quite distinct, then we overlook how they form part of our own lived experience. Other things we experience are really an extension of our living selves. In hospitals, IV drips are often administered to sustain life on the edge of death, and here they remind us that as we experience the paintings they come into our life. They are both lifeless and life.

With thanks to SGD (UK) Ltd. for generously supplying IV bags and sets

Portrait of itself

(Oil on panel with mirror, 2008)

When I look in the mirror to paint myself I see the reverse of how others see me. When I see my self-portrait reflected in a mirror I see myself the same way round as others see me. When I look in the mirror, do I see me or a reflection of me? Are not the reflection I and the same? If so then I am doubled, in two places at once: where I stand as I paint and where I appear in the mirror.

I am a brain

(Life-size model of a human brain in resin and metal, 2008)

I am a brain,
I can’t see,
I can’t smell,
I can’t hear,
I can’t touch,
I don’t know where I am.

‘I don’t know where I am’

Paintings and objects by Robert Pepperell

UWIC Gallery, 1st floor, Capitol Centre, Cardiff

“I don’t know where I am. What I mean is that I’m not certain where my physical boundaries are because I believe all boundaries, whether belonging to animate or inanimate objects, are fuzzy and blurry; nothing has fixed or precise edges. The consequence is that things we normally consider to be located in a defined place are actually spread across space. So while I know roughly where I am in the world I can only know this with a limited degree of precision. This is especially so when it comes to specifying the location of my mind, which (to some extent) is present in this document you are reading and in the works on show in this gallery.”