Author: herbeaton

Finally a good week!  No weird interjections or convoluted animal forms, just a lovely week on the prairie.  The sky is a robust cerulean occasionally dappled with slightly violet mist edges, responding to a fresh wind.  A happy day for those of us who have been working with the reunion of enfant terribles.  Work on the tent is largely finished and some exhibition equipment has arrived, the ear-corn crib is being cleaned and rebuilt.  Happiness reigns!

The beavers are busy, fish are swimming, birds are nesting, offspring are frolicking, the light and the temperature are perfect for working outside.   The unicorns and centaurs have something of a truce as they busily poop on the fields.  Poop, manure, is the energy of the land; it allows the soil to work.  Ages of pachyderms and bison, deer, whatever walked the prairie after the glacier retreated pooped so the grasses could grow.

As anachronistic events might go, right now is really good, a lot of the early pleine aire artists have shown up.  Given the present conditions they are quite at ease.  The have transported their easels, paints (pots and tubes), brushes, and some vin ordinaire and some “green mist”.  As they set up and open their box of graphite and charcoal stumps and consider the need to draw, models appear.  Some ladies, still retaining an artistic romanticism, disrobe and sit in leafy glades just at the sight of a box of colors and brushes. It is too nice outside on the sweet grass to discuss narcissism, but worth considering, sometime.

All nature, and even enfant terrible artists, get to work; it is early summer, fresh, alive. Anticipation and patience seem allied as nature, and our gathering, proceed; hopeful.

Whatever hopes one might mount, you seldom reach the heights necessary for vertigo.

Some hang over chaos without a guard-rail. Others don’t pursue the rising or the mystery; they just want chump change: equal to the value of a pick-up truck (to hold the hammers, chains, and bombs),  and a cold beer.

Roust-a-bouts, layers of muscle added young, building tree stump arms; until the fluids no longer flow, and the joints don’t pivot.  Stake-drivers for circus tent erection, and finally on this site. Itinerants answer, “who is going to do it?”, for us.

Finally the construction of our tent to show ART has commenced. The Temporary Museum of Enfant Terrible Culture will soon host emotive revolutionaries in shows valued by anarchists, avant-garde,  and moneyed collectors.  They will, no doubt,  declaim in agit-prop content meant to transform opinions and increase value: much a sacrilegious negation of romantic attachments to useful images, for laborers.   They will validate the art world’s hierarchal tabulation, voting either form or content, never use.

The support stakes driven: hundreds of blunt interconnected rhythms, strong arms, backs, swinging hammers; a plainness of repeated labors.  A summer job extended into the tired body’s incessant tension in the entrapping diligence to chores.

What are the possible meanings of hammer strikes?  These aren’t art gestures, no matter how filled with emotion.  The work is, after all, outside and preliminary.  Would the strikes mean anger, subservience, fear, a war dance?

The roust-a-bouts are not part of universal suffrage, they just keep moving and emoting.  Venting in sports road-bars. Weary violence, and “woulds”, and “coulds”, and “…THEY shoulds!…”. But roust-a-bouts have no acquaintance with “…THEYS…”.

And yet for a place to celebrate our elevated Art; they, the laborers, drive the stakes.

Happiness may be in the offing, rejoin us …next Saturday.

“Farewell…those that make ambition virtue!…Farewell this neighing steed, the shrill trump…”, Yorick emphatically grumbles the words of his creator: upon smelling the arrival of…unicorns.

Unicorns, or so they seem, pawing the prairie.   Unicorns, galloping pure intentionists with emotive tendencies; proffering cheap (and very symmetrical) gods, myths, and art.  Purists, purist avant-gardeists, purists enfant terribles; noodling towards obnoxious as once the typical, mythical unicorns,  sniffed to find a virgin.

Encroaching the pasture (to poop) claimed by centaurs, unicorns begin each conversation with a recapitulation and refutation of both men and centaur.  Obviously they are philosophically construed or at least given to wordy rationalized incoherency.  As it is, their plastic ivory horns lack the rigidity suitable to puncture reality to the root: in hopes of probing theories that lack error.  These purist enfant-terribles convolute esoteric systems to control art’s logic, in endless disempathetic word creations.  By size, bluster, and righteous attitude (enforced with copious miniature bomblets), self-made unicorns demand a place at the reunion of  imperfect artists.  But, it is asked, have they made anything other than showy ribbons and bows?

Purists need syncopates and servants, maybe virgin-dream bidden, maybe coerced by the caprice of the mounted mendacity. Also, having associated celebrity is a much sought after condition, and the probable reason for processing with a unicorn.

“How number thee?  The quantity of Unicorns?  When compared with the genius of honorable men.”, Yorick ponders while pacing the land once walked by the Emancipator’s mule.

“10 to 1, 50 to 1, 1000 to 1?”,  we try to answer Yorick but find it a false compare: which part is Myth, and which part is simply feared… not seen.

Unicorns who find virgins have a peculiar appetite.

With any luck, the tent starts to rise…next Saturday.

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The dome, it is nice here on the prairie.  The dome, the sky, it is highly varied and expansive in depth and width.  The dome, the heavens if you will, is home to weather little moderated by ocean or mountains, we are just to far away.  The dome mixes the swirling vortices in seasonal disharmonies and frequent gorgeous crepuscular melodies.  The dome height is articulated by cloud layers rising into the dimensionless.

Dome, the Latin root starts lots of words about mastery and home.  The dome, it is always about above and below.

Mastering height is obviously an advantage.  However, gaining audacious oversight in the absence of high ground requires equipment.  A number of the emotive types gathering here have decided on the expedient of stilts.  Stilt walking is a skill practiced in the circus by clowns and acrobats, it balances them up into the dome above the mundane and sawdust.  Our enfant terribles also value a dominant position, some brag they could dominate a “season or two” in the art world: if they were just noticed.  Maybe not illuminating the world, just shattering it into imaginary but very glittering pieces. So the stilts; from which to throw their emotive bombs.

The stilts construction is from scrap lumber and metal, a financial imperative; but introduces instability. The awkwardness in body mechanics necessary to throw a bomb while perched on stilts probably wasn’t considered.  The momentary, but fatal, lack of skill is a possibility but accepted.

Many of the skillful, or lucky, elevated emotive types claim they see farther from their constructions. It is more than the honor of being looked up to against the dome, and being master of those below.  We on the unstilted pedestrian plane, notice craters and the countenance of our time. Perhaps willing to credit the anarchists with valor if they showed more mastery up in the dome.

Suspended, maybe, from a trapeze of their lofty and cloudy emotions.

Please rejoin us when we consider…Pointed Issues…next Saturday.

Discomfort, it is what a thicket is.  Not a place for delicacy.  There may have been some time in ancient myth when delicate clothing was suitable, spider webs perhaps, some supple skin of a young delicate beast.  But bounding upon the veldt or here on the prairie where innumerable thorny thickets and scratchy patches of burrs and bramble grow luxuriant; is sure to cause discomfort, even if one is clothed.  Clothing expresses always but seldom comfortable.  The more delicate the expression, the more easily snagged (interacting with the real if you will), and maybe ruined.

She, your female docent when the Temporary Museum of Enfant Terrible Culture opens, is decidedly given to diaphanous gowns and veils.  Tasteful and possessing a sense of  the civilized, excellent for her job.  She is a believer in simplicity, elegance (even in a thicket), and prefers the conservative tastes of rural ancients.  She is sensuously articulated even if not nude; somewhat more modest, even humble, than her partner, He.  There is a certain undatable quality to her manners and attire.   There must be discomfort dressed as she is, it gets cold here; but colored fiction may be protective.

She is given to possessions, but quite few.  Some eating and drinking accouterments, her little bombs, and a casket; seldom seen.  The contents of which are mysterious, if only because we simply don’t know.  Due to the laxity of development of the reunion and museum She has a bit of time to ponder, as do we.  It would be nice if the casket was removed from it’s hiding among the thickets, roses, and barbed wire: and opened.

It might be a bit of her discomfort, carefully sealed.

Discomfort, it is what nakedness is.  Clothes, shoes, sensible hats, they are there to protect us banishing discomfort.  Our ancient ancestors  skinned animals and wove reeds to get rid of discomfort.  Fleas, lice, gnats, ticks liked the comfort and the readily available blood, close and warm.  The ancients kept the clothes, even with the itching, lesser discomfort than ice and sun and rain.  Now we have brilliantly colored fabrics to express our emotional states that very few bugs find habitable and digestible.  A year passes, and we discard those antique clothes and replace them with newer patterns to protect us from sartorial discomfort.

He, your male docent when the Temporary Museum of Enfant Terrible Culture opens, doesn’t suffer much from fashion discomfort.  He is an exposed artistic type ready to risk all and accept the embarrassment of either nakedness or nudity. Nakedness is about the discomfort; sun-burn, shivering, inappropriateness, scratches, indelicacies, bug-bites.  Nudity is about comfort in the glory of a body without cultural clothing; the body’s ancient timelessness, the clothes soon outdated.

He is unfortunately a part of a geography where being without clothes is social and meteorological folly.  A nude, forthright and unadorned, is one way of showing the soul in art; wholesome, strong, rational, glowing.  He however lacks the necessaries to develop an exposable soul unadorned by costume.  And so He wears fancy hats of his own construction, twisting and pulling tendrils from his head. Occasionally self-made wings are cuffed and chained to his less-than-aviary arms.  Various masks and torso wraps remove the discomfort in social situations but indicate nakedness to all. And, embarrassing, the nude has imperfections.  The imperfections, discomfort, of He.

He may know the folly of his hats, wings, loin cloths, and lit bombs; but the discomfort hasn’t found a way to leave or an appropriate covering.

Were the utilitarian and money problems solved, there would still await:  language.  Although many have left the reunion site, those that remain are a cross-section of living and artists from legend and myth.  We gathered a meeting for a round-table concerning descriptive categories on didactic panels and labeling to be used in the museum, whenever that gets done.

It was about language and so everyone brought a bomb.

As no one took notes, this is the story as we would tell it…

A number of the “legend” (dead) artists objected to the term “living” when referring to artist who still cast a shadow, suggesting that “pre-dead” was more accurate.  They noted that “dead” implies a negative while “living” has a positive denotation.  The “living” artists countered that they had already conceded “legend” in place of “dead” so as to avoid a non-inclusive attitude assuming “dead” would mean “legend”art was unimportant today.  Changing “living” wouldn’t do any good for the “dead” but would remove the present vitality the “living” need to attract curatorial attention.  Further, the “living” (pre-dead) pointed out that the “legends” (dead) attract to much of the money which they (living/pre-dead) would like to have now while there is still flesh on their bones and bills to pay.

Yorick, arguing against the “legends”, pointed out that “pre-dead” doesn’t have the comic clarity of “living” when used with “dead”.  He remarked that when alive he needed the language, but it was going to die anyhow, so now his work is just generic 15th century Danish jokes played as lawn entertainment at medieval festivals.  Sort of “living”.

To throw another bomb in, some of the “living” artists of the cooler more esoteric conceptual variety said they wanted to be known as “pre-dead”.  They point out that “per-dead” removes a lot of the flowery cuteness that comes from being a “living” member of the “artsy” type in a pre-dead to dying culture.  They then added insolently that the “legends” should go back to their cemetery statuary and stay dead.

And, He and She took opposite positions.

We tabled this until somebody can work on it.

Other issues…next Saturday

Some things arrive just blown in the wind while other things as if conjured.  Both take their part in the “Big Story”, the myths that guide us and art is made of.  We have tried to make this reunion inclusive of all enfant terrible artists, even legendary ones.  And so we are happy to see that He and She have been helpful in using the crib to give old artists; muse, models, and lovers, a place to rekindle their story.

As most of the well-taught avant-garde types have left, it is nice that old-school artists have a place.

But outside a verbal confrontation is ensuing between Yorick and a Centaur.   The issue is that the subjects of artworks are not invited as participants in the reunion, subjects, even done by breakthrough artist, are the works of an artist’s hands.  We recognize the truth of Centaurs through artistic evidence from ancients and the renaissance and their underrepresention in modern art, but there is no evidence that Centaurs ever studied art or made any art.  And yet here they are, big rumped hybrid emotives and armed.

The combination of power and dexterity available in a Centaur is envied by soldiers and sculptors.  But they only prance around, verbalize their emotions (from equine sized lungs), throw bombs and shoot arrows (indiscriminately), flaunt their tails and manes, and swoosh and sway their rumps(disgusting). All to no value or understanding or use in modern culture.

The rumps serve for bumper stickers (the negative effects of editing complex thoughts) with unbuffered out of context logos and slogans emphatically displayed.

The Centaur addressing Yorick claims that the displays are “conceptual pop-art manifestos” and therefore demands space at the reunion.

We note the uninformed artlessness of their activity but acquiesce to their belligerence.  The drop of horse pokey and snort of Centaur muffles Yorick’s declamation,

“Ye murk of sumps with greedy rump, werest man, I’d pair thee with…”

More language problems …next Saturday

Your idled docents He and She returned from their walk by the river with their tender, mystical, tyrannical needs, somewhat resolved.  Probably anxieties that outlasted their usefulness.  Back at the field they find the tent dismantled, moved, and partially reerected near an old ear-corn crib sitting on a small rise where the farmstead had been.

A few things on this landscape have the illusion of permanence.  This old crib has a hand-mixed concrete pad and foundation and a stout and minimal structure to hold the weight of corn drying on the cob, food for cattle.  Now outdated.  The simple sturdy and massive building was just utilitarian.  However, with a minimalist plinth and a mechanical contraption tower sweeping up from the roof, and the good fortune not to be in a tornado’s path or burnt in the volunteer fire department’s training when they torched the house and barn; it has unintended monumentality.  Alone on the vasty fields,  awaiting the erection of the even larger,  but temporary, tent and a new purpose.

Monumentality, it goes best with sculpture and architecture, it needs scale.  Placement and proportions bottom to top, and hopefully a purpose; it’s better bigger than you.  But lots of things are bigger than you, fears past their usefulness, for example. Monuments signify people or large ideas to be everlasting in our memory,  many recalling events using bombs.  Which brings up, you probably realize that a monument and an anarchists reunion is absurd.  Anarchists diminish or destroy monuments clearing a place for their version of the realm of folly.

The gathering here has dwindled to a few.  Most of the early arrivers, recent avant-garde types, found little completed and left  because there was nothing that fit memorable art writings, their emotive bombs inapproriately used. We were informed that the reunion plan, a reunion of the enfant terribles, may not be probable even if it is possible.

He and She are awaiting you in the crib…next Saturday.

You may have unraveled a reasonable understanding to last week’s post.  Thankfully there is a blessed limit to some folly.  Intertwining, whether cultural or biological, or even astronomical or romantic, usually interlaces turbulence among the smooth and harmonious.

As the weather is getting better He and She have taken their problems out for a walk.  A cumbersome search for the right spot.  Maybe the river, a small prairie stream nearby,  it helped in the past to simplify.

We noticed that they are without their bombs, unusual.  They still hold things, but not hands.  And so for the honorable curiosity of this blog we will follow them.  Staying a respectful distance we only have their actions to understand what is going on.  Their words might better inform us,  but then we would need to tell the background story that leads us to the phrases they utter.  With that we would need an exposition of the initial causes then some layering of the consequences.   Interjections of all the wonder and horror of two intertwined lives acting out their turbulence.

Things should go smoothly, as the placid waters flowing in the river demonstrate this day.    This little river is to be considered a backwater, an insignificant stream, when compared with rivers draining a more voluptuous collection of hills and valleys.  Various little eddies, deposits of sand, logs, dead leaves and an occasional flood that quickly recedes, demonstrate centripetal and centrifugal forces, waves that bump into things; kinks in the  geology and human skill.  Gravity and turbulence and humans compiling distractions into a whole.

Mathematics could potentially explain the river.  The story of He and She should probably be observed, at a respectable distance, and be passed over in silent analysis.

April, and minds, and plans, change.  Come back to the prairie …next Saturday