tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post1700557560820989764..comments2024-02-12T23:25:09.583-08:00Comments on Overweening Generalist: Drippy Jackson Pollock Theories: Art and Mathematics!michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-27218042347429820842012-11-21T12:12:29.558-08:002012-11-21T12:12:29.558-08:00Thanks, will definitely check all of that (books a...Thanks, will definitely check all of that (books and interview) out as soon as I can.<br /><br />Amazing the guy found the time to write such informed books on artistic-philosopical-scientific matters while working as a damn surgeon. Inspiring, certainly.<br /><br />I'm struggling to balance my studies/writing with a 30-hour a week accounting gig.PQhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14491626995530401441noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-72157044502960355282012-11-21T02:19:36.564-08:002012-11-21T02:19:36.564-08:00Thanks, PQ. RAW liked Shlain's The Alphabet Vs...Thanks, PQ. RAW liked Shlain's The Alphabet Vs. The Goddess, which greatly appealed to that part of him that was fascinated with McLuhan and the book also seemed to be in the vein of/an elaboration of RAW's Ishtar Rising, in some respects.<br /><br />Shlain also wrote Sex, Time and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution, which I found to be another fantastic Generalist's book. Specialists in History ignored it or gave it bad reviews; I read a few good reviews in far-flung places by erudite writers who are not specialists.<br /><br />I think TAvsTG is vastly underrated. Art and Physics was thoroughly engaging. Shlain was an amazing guy, and near the end of his life he pushed the new techniques of laparoscopic surgery: when the surgeon does his work in a sort of video game-like theater. He was an old guy, trained in the old ways, and yet he was at the leading edge of the new techniques. He was interested in everything.<br /><br />Here's an hourlong interview with Shlain, and I doubt if he had 3 yrs left to live by the time it was recorded:<br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fch7PhBJBFcmichaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-27057175521702296432012-11-20T14:13:37.356-08:002012-11-20T14:13:37.356-08:00Great stuff. Most interesting thing I've read ...Great stuff. Most interesting thing I've read today.<br /><br />And I've been meaning to read Shlain's "Art & Physics" for months now. Can't wait to dig into it.PQhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14491626995530401441noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-75785314539439054282012-11-17T00:59:57.930-08:002012-11-17T00:59:57.930-08:00I do think fractals are everywhere; I want to find...I do think fractals are everywhere; I want to find out why they're NOT in certain places. As far as the man-made level: we all grew up in a world that assumed straight lines and Euclid. Most of us grew up in box-like houses. It's something we simply took for granted. And yet only by the late 19th c. did the technical intelligentsia start to question this Platonic assumption. By Mandelbrot's breakthrough we seem forced to look at the Pythagorean world of smooth circles, 90 degree angles, etc, and wonder about Nature's forms, how She? It did it. <br /><br />I consider Bucky Fuller halfway between Mandelbrot and Euclid, but giving the nod to Nature...<br /><br />I recently read a line in Nietzsche: "Mathematics would certainly have not come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was no exactly straight line, no actual circle, no absolute magnitude." I think this is one reason RAW is on the side of the non-Platonists regarding math; in one piece RAW called math "pure fiction." <br /><br />Linking RAW back to the history of math pre-Mandelbrot, see pp.343-345 of the SCT omnibus ed, for how subtle Euclidean-based metaphors have inhibited our conscious evolution. From the "Galactic Archives," looking back at our Epoch: "They knew that they were made of subatomic particles, which were expressions in space-time of quantum probability matrices. This knowledge, alas, was so recent that it had never been integrated into their philosophies, or into their social games, like religions, politics, economics, etc. Their whole social reality-tunnel was based on prequantum superstition and ignorance. The sociological nexus was Euclidean-Aristotelian-Newtonian; even Maxwell and Einstein had only been digested by a few."<br /><br />I like your line about revealing fractals "as a general principle of form." And just once I'd like to render a transparency to illumination...<br /><br />I agree about Dali: he's a trip, I love him, but ultimately it seems pretty dark.The infl of Freud's ideas can't be underestimated there... Dr. Seuss books always evoke my past "Being" as open-curious, laffing child. And I think a lot of us feel that way, which is why I'll end with this:<br /><br />I recently heard the comedian Patton Oswalt (who I like a lot) go off into a surreal bit, where Seuss is trying to pick up young women in a bar, and they're "icing him out," and Seuss is getting frustrated: "Give me that napkin," and Seuss sketches some characters from his books. "This is who you're DEALING WITH! I made YOUR CHILDHOOD!" The crowd (it's a live bit) is cracking up, and Oswalt ends by saying, "Yep: Dr. Seuss on an angry pussy hunt. Strap in."<br /><br />So: to sum up: We've gone from Pythagoras to Seuss being iced-out in a bar. michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-1765964913374958532012-11-16T09:31:12.132-08:002012-11-16T09:31:12.132-08:00I do indeed mean framed prints, though it occurs t...I do indeed mean framed prints, though it occurs to me I'd do better to lean more towards buying original works from living artists rather than glorified photocopies of famous images. (I do get a kick outta them dogs playing poker though!)<br /><br />I don't think it takes away from Pollock's technique that maybe people only find fractals in his work bc fractals are everywhere (If I rightly took your meaning) As McKenna pointed out, if we take the sacred geometry of fractals seriously, we shd expect to find everything included within these infinite self similar iterations.<br /><br />By my reckoning the better artistic accomplishment isn't to create fractal patterns, but to reveal them as a general principal of form. The great task of art, IMO, being to render a transparency to illumination.<br /><br />I think what it is about Dali that I wouldn't want to deal w/ on a daily basis is the rupture of the mundane plane w/out sufficient hilaritas. I'd love a crazy sprawling info dense Dr. Suess print, complete w/ every oddity imaginable, because the emotional vibe that emanates from that world is joyous. Dali is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there!Bobby Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03809136879430277243noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-47169404416102645532012-11-15T13:29:08.212-08:002012-11-15T13:29:08.212-08:00Do you mean you're getting nice prints of Klee...Do you mean you're getting nice prints of Klee and Pollock, or are you the heir to the Rockefellers and are deciding whether to hang an actual $30million Klee up?<br /><br />Yea, I love Dali, but he's full of INFORMATION that seems quite involving, eh? You can hang him and either notice the weird stuff going on as you walk by, but not get involved (sorta like driving to an appointment and you suddenly see three people in scary clown suits playing an oboe, a cello and a harp on a street corner, with what looks like 4 writhing blue-painted possibly naked girls on yoga mats...and a monkey hopping up and down and clapping...do you pull over and check it out, or go on to your appointment, wondering WTF that was all about?)...the abstract works, while less involving intellectually, can become involving upon contemplation. Until then, the forms and colors and their optical mixes seem to impart an emotional vibe to the entire room.<br /><br />Or at least that's how I "see" it. <---(see what I did there? I made a PUN!)<br /><br />Without any real formal schooling - except for a yearlong Art History class with a GREAT teacher in college - I've always liked Pollock's drip stuff, never being able to explain WHY. I became aware of the fractals-in-Pollock story around 2000, so this story/blog post is not exactly "timely," but when I immersed myself in the ideas for a few days, I just kept finding wonderful things there.<br /><br />One thing I didn't mention in the blog: it could be that physicists/math geeks are in an epoch that Heidegger talked about: the quantification/mathematicization of EVERYTHING. They could be convincing themselves they've decoded abstract painting with their advanced entropic dimensions in fractal dynamics or fluid dynamics. Heidegger seemed to think this was a period which we must move through before some sort of new metaphysics of quality comes to the fore. <br /><br />But the post was already BLOATED.michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-52169235928633806742012-11-15T10:56:59.817-08:002012-11-15T10:56:59.817-08:00Excellent! You've actually made Jackson Polloc...Excellent! You've actually made Jackson Pollock cool and interesting. He seems to be way more so iconic as the poster boy for the backlash against modern art than as a talented visionary. I don't know that I've ever even encountered a pro-drip POV until now.<br /><br />I had actually briefly persuaded some of his works just the night before reading this, as I'm finally decorating the walls of my house. A fascinating exercise in which I'm becoming aware of the distinction between works and artists I respect and those I wish to walk past every day.<br /><br />All due genuflection to Salvador Dali and his awe inspiring works, but I'll be damned if I want to contend w/ all of that on my way to the bathroom! It's Paul Klee for me please!<br /><br />A Pollock for the bedroom, I now think.Bobby Campbellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03809136879430277243noreply@blogger.com