Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2001 16:09:42 +0100
From: artefact-AT-t-online.de (Michael Eldred)
Subject: Re: Art and Life


Cologne 20-Jan-2001

edwin ruda schrieb  Wed, 17 Jan 2001 08:32:23 -0500:

> Michael,
>
>         I was most gratified to see the response to the subject art/life, by
> yourself and others.
>
> Cologne 15-Jan-2001
> Michael Eldred wrote:
>
> > Ed,
> > I agree that the word and concept 'abstraction' is problematic as a
> > description for the kind of painting normally termed so, including the
> > Abstract Expressionism emerging in New York in the fifties.
> >
> > The word 'abstract' as a verb means "to draw off or away" (the cream
> > from the milk, the gist of an article from the text), akin to 'extract',
> > "to draw out" (say, metal from an ore). Historically, 'abstract
> > painting' refers to the gradual process by which colours and forms were
> > drawn off the identifiable, sensuously given things depicted in a
> > painting, resulting in non-representational or non-mimetic paintings.
> > The sensuously identifiable beings then serve as a kind of origin for
> > the abstract painting.
> >
> > Such a process of abstraction is akin to the _diairesis_, or
> > taking-apart, practised in gaining access to beings in their truth
> > through the _logos_, through words. The sensuously given is then
> > transposed to the words that allow the sensuously perceptible being to
> > presence in the medium of the _logos_. For cubism, a diairetic
> > taking-apart seems to be an apt description of the transformation which
> > a sensuously identifiable thing (say, a guitar, a nude descending the
> > stairs...) goes through, but it hardly seems adequate as a description
> > for a painting by Pollock or Barnett Newman. The paintings of such
> > painters show no sensuously perceptible origin from which they were
> > drawn off.
>
> Michael,
>
> I quite agree re: your distinction between the "origins" of representational
> painting and abstract painting. Heidegger as far as I know, never
> singled out particular paintings for discussion. There's a photo of him
> with Georges Braque
> but no comment on Braque's abstract works.

Ed,
There is, of course, the famous interpretation of Van Gogh's Old Shoes painting in
'The Origin of the Work of Art', about which Derrida has written in "The Truth in
Painting". And Heidegger says something about Cezanne.

> Had Heidegger pursued the
> matter of "abstraction vs. representation", I wonder if he would have
> followed the course taken by Maurice Blanchot. Using Heidegger's own
> projections of our rapport
> with things in their "equipmental context" of signification and functionality,
> Blanchot observes that we only acquire an IMAGE of a tool (e.g., hammer)
> when it
> breaks down or needs repair, and not when it functions normally, as
> being
> used.

Heidegger says in this context, in SuZ, that we "stare at" it when it breaks down.

> Thus, "the image is not of the world." It precedes world - the world
> of objectifiable, useful beings, that is - rather than being derived
> from it.

I'd say that it is posterior, not prior, to world, since it arises in the stare
when the world breaks down at a point and something becomes conspicuous.
The useful beings in their usefulness are not objects, i.e. they do not come to
stand over against us, but rather are absorbed in their usefulness as long as they
_are being_ used. They proffer themselves disclosingly as a possibility for
Dasein's existing.

> Thus, the "work-less" artistic or literary image opens a world in place
> of merely
> re-presenting it, a neat way of accommodating abstract painting, in my view.

Abstract painting is work-less in the sense of being separate from the world of
work. But does abstract painting present an image? Are those images we see when
viewing a work by Jackson Pollock or Clyfford Still? They are certainly not images
of something. Something can only be seen in coming to stand within its defining
boundaries. Its outline offers an image of itself which is understood _as_
such-and-such. But the painted tears in Clyfford Still's works are not images of
something. They are, rather, torn colour intruding into the painted canvas. Is
that an image?

> I would say that most abstract painters admire past representational painting
> to the extent that it abstracts (withdraws from) meaningful,
> identifiable,literal content, for the sake of its visible-sensible
> relations. The "how" or "way"
> over the "what."

Such a 'how' evokes a mood, an atmosphere scarcely definable in words, a sphere of
vapour (Gr. _atmos_) encompassing the things depicted in the re-presentations. It
is as if it has always been known that painting lives from what cannot be confined
to the definitions of what is depicted. There is always a musical dimension of
resonance with the atmosphere emanating from a painting. Bad paintings have no
resonance; they are just dead paint on canvas, even when the colours are vivid.

Michael
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