Gober 'Untitled' 1990

Gober Untitled 1990 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The conceptual surprise in this piece comes from the co-presence in one place of two distinct objects: a bag and a torso. The fact that the bag is made of beeswax carries connotations of waxy skin. The hair (which is human) is being both hair and representing hair at the same time, while the painted nipples consist in paint being both itself and nipples at the same time. The creases appear as part of the torso and the bag, and one is also reminded of the idea of the 'body bag'.

All these overlapping and multiple associations co-exist in this fairly simple object. We are aware of them to varying degrees, some more than others, and each contributes to the richness of the overall experience.

In this work the process of conceptual organisation being done by the object recognition systems is somewhat perplexed and confounded. The object has many of the perceptual characteristics of a body, but it is not a body. Likewise, it has many of the perceptual characteristics of a bag, but it is not a bag. Gober is directly interfering with these perceptual processes in order to generate the psychic affect of the work.

Warhol 'National Velvet' 1963

Warhol National Velvet 1963 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

This Warhol poses a dilemma: in one respect, we have a series of dispassionately, almost cynically, presented frames positioned in a happenstance way across the surface, reproducing an image of a fleeting cinematic moment as though with little care. But in another respect the image betrays the artist's personal fascination with fame, celebrity and film glamour, obsessively grasping a present but lost moment through repetition. National Velvet is both detached replication and indulgent celebration.

Matisse 'Woman in a hat' 1905

Matisse Femme au Chapeau 1905, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

This is clearly a provocation. The hat is vague and incoherent and topples awkwardly on her head, almost burying it; the skin is ghoulish and transparent, barely distinct from the background. The body is skewed, her right arm gauche and her left arm a loosely placed stump. Colours jut up against each other, seemingly present for their own sakes rather than in service to what they represent (the slab of orange neck).

Yet the picture as a whole has a unity, like a many-coloured map that describes the regions of a single nation. And amidst it all is evidence of the presence of a living person transposed into paint by the action of the artist. It is an uncannily real face, sketched with a directness that belies a greater concern for the act of looking that the faithfulness of the recording.

But for all its attempts to provoke, and for all the upset and hilarity it caused, its underlying structure is that of a rather conventional fin-de-siècle portrait of an elegant, modish Mademoiselle.

Art and the conscious mind

Much of our experience of an artwork is unconscious or semi-conscious. We are aware of aspects of its form or meaning that are not necessarily the subject of our immediate attention; they may be vaguely felt or sensed 'in the background'. Yet they often contribute in some way to the overall impression we have of a work, feeding into the more present aspects of what we call the 'conscious' mind. This conscious mind is that within which our experience feels contained or centered, and holds all the components of thought to which we have immediate access.

A major component of this is the artwork itself, its visible presence (if a visual piece), its localised context, the knowledge we bring to it, and so on. All these in some way combine to create the global effect of viewing the artwork, and can be subject to varying degrees of attention depending on the unfolding of our thoughts.

During this process it is possible that impressions hitherto confined to the unconscious aspect of mind can come to the fore, and the significance of some hidden quality can be grasped. Then the sum total of thoughts available to the conscious mind is expanded, enriching the experience of the artwork and expanding the content of the mind in question.

This process of enrichment rarely occurs immediately, depending often on prolonged contemplation to reach its fullest state. During this process the interaction between the mind and the object can become generative; new connections between parts of the work are created, a process that can be extended longer the richer the work of art is.

Here the conscious mind becomes increasingly attuned to the form of the work, growing in capacity, sensitivity and complexity — engaging in what is normally termed the 'aesthetic experience.'

Lichtenstein 'Rouen Cathedral Set V [center]' 1969

Lichtenstein Rouen Cathedral Set V [center] 1969 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The Ben Day dots simultaneously sustain and interfere with our perception of the cathedral. A close inspection is almost giddying, physically unsettling, as though one were looking through the punctured white screen masking a duochrome image behind, whereas in fact the duochrome image lies on top of the white ground. I am aware of several things at once: the cathedral, the dots, the Monet, the Lichtenstein, the High Modernist aesthetic of the museum — at no time do these settle into an an undifferentiated whole. I am looking at many layers of image, just as I am looking at many dots.

Giacometti 'Bust of Diego' 1957

Giacometti, 1957, Bust of Diego, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

There is no reality aside from that perceived — a perception that is in itself real. Certain artworks address this perceptual reality, rather than some conjectural external reality to which we could have no access. Works such as this Giacometti deal with perceptual reality — the level at which we experience the real — by showing the world is mutable, unstable, and dependent upon the position and the action of the viewer. There is nothing fixed or self contained to be observed. Vision, movement, memory, knowledge all go to make up the world. Reality lies in the act of perceiving and not in the object itself.

Miro 'Painting' 1926

Miro Peinture (Painting) [formerly Dark Brown and White Oval] 1926 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The soft brown space is misty and suggestive — almost suffocating, like a smoke cloud — and segmented by diagrammatic dotted black lines, creating a transparent cubic depth. Into this are placed the objects that float freely both in depth and across the flat surface. The white oval is a jokey face, moon-like and childish, the other blob a yin-yang symbol or half-lit planet. One mass is tethered to a solid black weight, the other in unsupported orbit.

This simple composition generates multiple oppositions: The vague brown area, dimensionless and boundless, is trisected by the Euclidian space of the dotted lines along the traditional three fixed axes; the happy white face-balloon, which floats upward, is restrained by the sombre black mass which gravity pulls downward; dark and light meet with large and small, solid and vaporous, occupied left and almost empty right, white full moon and black crescent moon. The complexity of the painting, which is not immediately registered, emerges only through study.

The contradictions allied to the ambiguities give the painting a delicate weight.

Against being 'in' the world

It doesn't seem right to say we are beings 'in' the world, as if the world were a container within which we exist as a component or resident — as if we are in the world as we are in a house or room. The implication is that the world/room is something pregiven around us that we are not so much a part of than a part within, and that that world/room would continue in the same way if we were not there. It seems better to say we are beings 'as' the world, and that that world is a condition of our being there, as much 'in' us as we are in it.

Claims about truth

If a claim is made that the nature of truth consists in having attribute y, then that claim must itself have the same attribute y (if it is to be true) in which case it is potentially recursive.

If the attribute y must apply prior to the condition of truth in order to substantiate the claim then the attribute y requires a further prior condition of truthfulness — and so to infinite regress.

Claims about the nature of truth are vulnerable to recursion and regression, and therefore unsustainable by conventional logical standards.

(By analogy: If I need confirmation that a particular object is exactly one metre in length I can apply a ruler and measure it. The truthfulness of the claim about the length depends of the veracity of the metre length I compare it to, and the veracity of this claim depends on comparison to a prior metre length, and so on. And although numerous attempts have been made to eradicate the uncertainty over the exact length of one metre, from the eighteenth century to the present day, there remains a degree of uncertainty (now at the sub-atomic level).

That the length of one metre is established by convention is not in doubt. What remains doubtful is how long one metre is. Therefore, the truthfulness about the claim that a certain object is one metre long refers only to other claims about the length of a metre. There is no final fact to establish the truth.)

By example: If I make the claim that the nature of truth lies in there being a correspondence between a state of affairs in my mind and a state of affairs in the world, then that claim must itself be subject to the same conditions of truth, such that there must be a correspondence between the nature of truth (being a correspondence between mind and world) and something else. What would that something else be? If it is something in the mind or the world then we risk self reference and regression. If it is something not in the mind or world then where would it be?

Note: This is not to argue that no truthful claims can be made, but that claims about the nature of truth cannot be made (at least not without recursion or regress).

Other Dimensions: Paintings by Robert Pepperell

28 September - 9 October 2009

St John the Baptist Crypt, Nelson Street, Bristol, BS1 2EZ

Other Dimensions includes a selection of paintings by the artist and writer Robert Pepperell. The work investigates the idea that, despite what is widely believed, our everyday world is not made up the standard three dimensions of space and one of time. Between these lie other dimensions of indeterminate value, where objects are neither flat nor deep, or perhaps both flat and deep.

Other Dimensions: Various paintings

Various paintings (2009. Various media, various sizes)

A selection of smaller paintings that study the interplay between the image, its interpretation and its surface.

Other Dimensions: Fixing

Fixing (2009. Oil on canvas, 123 x 123 cm)

We sometimes talk about ‘fixing the eye’ on something in an effort to be more certain about what it is we are seeing. This painting offers a scene in which nothing can be fixed, except the objects within it that themselves are designed to fix.

Other Dimensions: Triangles in red, black and mauve

Triangles in red, black and mauve (2009, Triptych. Oil on constructed panels, 123 x 246 cm)

Viewing the painting from a distance of about three meters, and by concentrating on the middle point of the central panel, a shifting arrangement of shapes can be perceived. These shapes have a sense of depth, and cannot be regarded as entirely flat.

Other Dimensions: Still life with flowers and paintings

Still life with flowers and paintings (2009, Triptych. Oil on constructed panels, 130 x 173 cm)

The paintings depict everyday objects arranged in such a way that they are not immediately recognizable. The spaces occupied by the objects do not necessarily coincide with spaces in which they are represented.

Other Dimensions: The Deposition

The Deposition (2009, Triptych. Oil on constructed panels, 180 x 360 cm)

The design of this triptych is loosely based on a classical biblical scene, overlaid with more contemporary images. The point at which the surface of the image meets the eye is never really fixed.

Rightness/wrongness

Just the right sort of wrongness is needed.

Colour as subject

Sometimes the colour is the subject

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Merleau-Ponty: Cézanne's suicide

Cezanne, Portrait of Gustave Geffroy, 1895

"He stated that he wanted to make of impressionism "something solid like the art in the museums." His painting was paradoxical: he was pursuing reality without giving up the sensuous surface, with no other guide than the immediate impression of nature, without following the contours, with no outline to enclose the color, with no perspectival or pictorial arrangement. This is what Bernard called Cezanne's suicide: aiming for reality while denying himself the means to attain it. This is the reason for his difficulties and for the distortions one finds in his pictures between 1870 and 1890. Cups and saucers on a table seen from the side should be elliptical, but Cezanne paints the two ends of the ellipse swollen and expanded. The work table in his portrait of Gustave Geffroy stretches, contrary to the laws of perspective, into the lower part of picture. In giving up the outline Cezanne was abandoning himself to chaos of sensation, which would upset the objects and constantly suggest illusions, as, for example, the illusion we have when we move our heads that objects themselves are moving—if our judgment did not constantly set these appearances straight. According to Bernard, Cezanne "submerged his painting in ignorance and his mind in shadows." But one cannot really judge his painting in this way except by closing one's mind to half of what he said and one's eyes to what he painted.

It is clear from his conversations with Emile Bernard that Cezanne was always seeking to avoid the ready-made alternatives suggested to him: sensation versus judgment; the painter who sees against the painter who thinks; nature versus composition; primitivism as opposed to tradition. "We have to develop an optics," Cezanne said, "by which I mean a logical vision—that is, one with no element of the absurd." "Are you speaking of our nature?" asked Bernard. Cezanne: "It has to do with both." "But aren't nature and art different?" "I want to make them the same. Art is a personal apperception, which I embody in sensations and which I ask the understanding to organize into a painting."' But even these formulas put too much emphasis on the ordinary notions of "sensitivity" or "sensations" and "understanding"—which is why Cezanne could not convince by his arguments and preferred to paint instead. Rather than apply to his work dichotomies more appropriate to those who sustain traditions than to those—philosophers or painters—who found them, we would do better to sensitize ourselves to his painting’s own, specific meaning, which is to challenge those dichotomies. Cezanne did not think he had to choose between feeling and thought, as if he were deciding between chaos and order. He did not want to separate the stable things which we see and the shifting way in which they appear. He wanted to depict matter as it takes on form, the birth of order through spontaneous organization. He makes a basic distinction not between "the senses" and "the understanding" but rather between the spontaneous organization of the things we perceive and the human organization of ideas and sciences. We see things; we agree about them; we are anchored in them; and it is with "nature" as our base that we construct our sciences. Cezanne wanted to paint this primordial world, and his pictures therefore seem to show nature pure, while photographs of the same landscapes suggest man's works, conveniences, and imminent presence. Cezanne never wished to "paint like a savage." He wanted to put intelligence, ideas, sciences, perspective, and tradition back in touch with the world of nature which they were intended to comprehend. He wished, as he said, to confront the sciences with the nature "from which they came.""

Merleau-Ponty, Cézanne's Doubt

Bacon: Contradiction and suggestion

Bacon, Three studies for a crucifixion, 1962

Bacon: I want a very ordered image, but I want it to have come about by chance.
Sylvester: It's a matter of reconciling opposites I suppose; of making the thing be contradictory things at once.
Bacon: Well, isn't this that one wants a thing to be as factual as possible and at the same time as deeply suggestive, or deeply unlocking of areas of sensations other than simple illustration of the object that you set out to do? Isn't that what all art is about?

Francis Bacon in conversation with David Sylvester, 1966

Redon on titles of drawings

Odilon Redon, Roger and Angelica, Pastel, 1910

"The title that occasionally identifies my drawings can be superfluous. It is justified only when it is vague, indeterminate, and even equivocal. My drawings inspire and cannot be defined. They do not determine anything. They place us as music does in the world of the ambiguous and the indeterminate."

Odilon Redon, "Confessions d'artiste", Soi-même. Journal (1867-1915) in Henri Dorra, Symbolist Art Theories, University of California Press, 1995, p. 55.

Knowing ingorance

I increasingly find the act of writing is merely a process of skirting around my own ignorance.

Essence of mind/Chords of reality

Internal and external

Pencil and crayon on paper

Touch and sight

Pencil on paper

Head/World Paradox

1. We experience the external world outside the head.

2. The head contains all experience, including that of the external world.

3. We experience the external world inside the head.

Mind/Reality Paradox

1. We can distinguish between internal subjective experience and external objective reality.

2. The distinction between internal experience and external reality occurs within internal subjective experience.

3. We cannot distinguish between internal subjective experience and external objective reality.

Portrait

Ink and oil pastel on paper, 2009

Objects and appearance/Mind and reality

If we separate the object (the 'thing in itself') from its appearance ('in our senses') then we have created the problem of how the object and its appearance are related. One solution might be to remove the separation. Without this the object and the way it appears to us are identical (aspects of the same), and so the realms of the ideal and the real are merged (aspects of the same).

One could point out that there are many cases where the mind departs from reality (dreams, hallucinations, misperceptions, etc.), and that these cases strongly suggest a disparity between the appearance and the objectivity of the world. In such cases, though, the subject concerned is still having a real experience, i.e. the world as it appears to them at that time is veridical. But their understanding of that experience (say, a dream) at a later point may in retrospect change when compared to the norm.

This is in essence no different from misapprehensions, such as the person who thinks it is Friday and then realises it is actually Saturday. At the time it was in force the experience of it being Friday was entirely real. It only appears as unreal in comparison with a subsequent understanding. Likewise, our dreams appear unreal on waking, but utterly real while being dreamed.

A constituent of realness is the mental activity required to perceive it

We could say that objects in the world do exist; they have objective properties like colours, shapes, sounds, tastes, etc. that (by any reasonable definition) are real. But their realness occurs only by virtue of the activity of a certain kind of mental apparatus, and this activity cannot be disentangled from the realness that the objects have. This on the grounds that if the operation of the mental activity is altered (through intoxication, through training, by surgery or lesion to the brain, as examples) the nature of the reality experienced can vary from the norm.

To answer the question, then, does an object x exist when we cease to pay attention to it (either by perception or conception) we can say that it does not, on the grounds that the quality of realness that any particular object has consists in part of the mental activity in play when the realness is experienced. Without that mental activity the realness, as such, is not in play. When we experience realness it is, quite literally, an experience, which is to say the experiental aspect is central to the condition.

Nature and divisibility

Nature (or reality) is is neither continuous nor discontinuous. When we are analysing natural phenomena it's fine to decide that a distinction can be applied here, or a separation there, as long as it is understood that in doing so one is creating a distinction that exists only by virtue of the act of creating it. To believe then that the distinction is an aspect of reality existing quite separately from the person who supposes it to be there is fallacy. It must also be accepted that in creating the distinction one is immediately presented with the problem of how the separated parts are related (a problem that could be resolved by the removal of the distinction).

It should not be inferred from this, however, that the distinction has no place in reality, since the mind is part of the world it perceives, and insofar as reality exists at all it exists in the mind of the person who is themselves a constituent of that reality. Mind and reality become identical, and include all the forms reality takes consequent on the mind that creates it.

Realism and anthropocentrism

Any version of realism that assumes the world as it appears to humans is equivalent to the world 'as it is' must be dubious. Because the world appears to humans in one sort of way does not means it appears that way to all creatures. Nor need it necessarily have always appeared to humans as it appears now. Different perceptual systems, different understandings of natural events, will give rise to different kinds of realities. How do we determine which is the 'real' reality? Is it not more likely that the nature of reality is conditional on the nature of the perceiving agent? In which case reality is an observer-dependent phenomena.

Smiling in photographs

When did people start smiling in photographs?

Art and consciousness

Patrick Caulfield, Interior with a picture, 1986

Art training consists in large part in cultivating perceptual awareness, particularly visual awareness. Artists are especially sensitive to visual phenomena and, referring continuously to examples provided by other artists, their potential for transcription into art. Often when we experience an artwork we are invited to share in the artists' heightened sensitivity in a way that heightens our own. If there are degrees of intensity in conscious experience then art can induce a greater degree than other kinds of stimulant.

The variety of beliefs

For every idea or opinion held exists the potential for another that opposes it, however delusional, irrational or trivial the contradiction might appear. Every occurrence of the ugly has the potential to be regarded as beautiful, and something beautiful could just as well seem pretty or empty.

This does not deny there are truths, or occurrences of beautiful or ugly things, but rather that they are not intrinsically, universally, or eternally so. Values or qualities depend on associations that extend beyond the item in question.

Painting and conscious awareness

Philip Nicol, Sun Shower, oil on canvas

This painting depicts a scene that I have never seen in actuality. It may be something the artist never actually saw either. But this creates no problems for me in recognising what I see. I am able to 'remember' not only each object but the way they appear subject to the peculiar lighting conditions in play.

It depicts a scene — a collection of objects — I have seen countless times in various configurations and under numerous lighting conditions, but perhaps rarely paid attention to.

So there is a strong sense of familiarity without there being an equally precise sense of actual location.

What this painting, and others like it, seem to do is bring to the front of my conscious awareness a visual experience that I have experienced but not appreciated. It directs my attention towards, for example, the coloured puddles each reflecting a different part of the space above. There is a delight in remembering these that comes from seeing them as puddles and patches of paint at the same time.

Since my attention is on the painting, and not the scene it depicts (as it would be in actuality), I give consideration to what I might otherwise overlook. My immediate conscious awareness is populated by both a vividly present arrangement of marks and something more remote in my memory. It makes me conscious of my own mind.

(With thanks to Philip Nicol for permission to reproduce the painting)

Perception and world

The world generated by perception is not the world 'as it is'.
The world 'as it is' is infinite, the world as perceived is finite.
What we perceive is a fragment of an infinite potential; the world in entirety is not perceptible.
Yet we are also part of the world in entirety.
And what we perceive is the world as it is, since we are the world as it is.

Ruskin on Science, Art and Literature

"In science, you must not talk before you know. In art, you must not talk before you do. In literature, you must not talk before you think...

Science: The knowledge of things, whether Ideal or Substantial.
Art: The modification of Substantial things by our Substantial Power.
Literature: The modification of Ideal things by our Ideal Power."

John Ruskin, Deucalion - King of the Golden River and the Eagle's Nest, 1872, p. 303

The brain and reality

The function of the brain is not to represent reality but to generate it.

Perception and the appearance of reality

Studies of animal vision suggest that different species have very different visual experiences of the world. Cats and dogs, for example, are red-green colour blind, although they see more in the periphery and at night, while snakes can 'see' infrared frequencies at night although not things that keep still. Horses, with eyes at each side of the head, see a greater panorama than humans, while insects like flies and bees have compound eyes which make up a mosaic-like image composed of many individual units. Some insects, like butterflies, see more colours than us, while others, like bees, see less but can see in the ultraviolet spectrum.

What appears to humans, with our particular perceptual apparatus, as reality will appear quite different to another species. Something that is an object to us may not be to a fly, and vice versa. This tells us that the way the world is divided up according to human perception is not the only way it can be divided up, and that in fact what constitutes reality is something of a moveable feast depending on the structure of the perceptual systems being used. Reality is subjective.

Clare Chapman

Clare Chapman, Dusk #2, 2008, oil on canvas, 100×140cm

Plato's Indeterminate Dyad and the division of the unlimited

"We assume that the 'Indeterminate Dyad' is a straight line or distance, not to be interpreted as a unit distance, or as having yet been measured at all. We assume that a point (limit, monas, 'One') is placed successively in such positions that it divides the Dyad according to the ratio 1 : n, for any natural number n. Then we can describe the 'generation' of the numbers that follows. For n = 1, the Dyad is divided into two parts whose ratio is 1 : 1. This may interpreted as the 'generation' of Twoness out of Oneness (1 : 1 = 1) and the Dyad, since we have divided the Dyad into two equal parts. Having thus 'generated' the number 2, we can divide the Dyad according to the ratio 1 : 2 (and the larger of the ensuing sections, as before, according to the ratio 1 : 1), thus generating three equal parts and the number 3; generally, the 'generation' of a number n gives rise to a division of the Dyad in the ration 1 : n, and with this, to the 'generation' of the number n + 1. (And in each stage the 'One' intervenes afresh as he point which introduces a limit or form or measure into the otherwise 'indeterminate' Dyad to create a new number...

Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, (Routledge, p. 122, n. 35)

About writing

Writing is really re-writing.