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theohonohan · 4 months

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It would take a village

A review of Building-in-Time: From Giotto to Alberti and Modern Oblivion by Marvin Trachtenberg (Yale University Press, 2010)

This is a book about how great buildings were constructed over very long timescales in the medieval and Renaissance periods. It’s a fairly stuffy, overblown book, and the idea is that Trachtenberg has discovered the hidden system behind medieval and Renaissance architecture. This system was supposedly responsible for making such architecture into a living phenomenon that exists in time rather than an ideal formal abstraction that tries to remain outside time—the latter being the author’s characterisation of modern architecture, embodied by the doctrines of Alberti.

One reviewer, noting the book’s 420 double-columned pages of text, said that it would “take a village” to review properly. They were presumably alluding to the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child”, and indeed, Marvin Trachtenberg’s boyish enthusiasm for architecture, and for his own ideas, makes for an overwhelming work, much in need of assessment and critical analysis. By the point in his career when this book was published, he had evidently earned the right to produce a magnum opus. But, despite stating the fact that the book is “large in scope and deep in its implications”, another reviewer felt the need to reassure the potential audience that “even when it does not entirely convince, it is interesting.” Clearly, we are supposed to patiently entertain Trachtenberg’s grand disquisition.

Of the five reviews of the book that I found online, four were by women. Only the fifth review, written by a man (Carroll William Westfall), dares to characterize Trachtenberg’s writing as “often turgid” and to call into question the profundity of the central argument. For that reviewer, the phenomenon of Building-in-Time is merely “the workings of tradition in architecture”, rather than the elaborate but unspoken methodology Trachtenberg claims to have discerned. For Westfall, it is Trachtenberg’s interpretative engagement with specific works of architecture (his “keen observations”) that redeems the book. In other words, Trachtenberg's talents are more suited to ekphrasis than to theory building.

The review by the gentle and astute Cammy Brothers shows signs of sympathy (rather than admiration) for the author as well. She writes “Essentially, Trachtenberg seems to warm to whatever subject he is immediately discussing, so that Alberti sounds rich and deep in the chapters about him, rigid and narrow in the others.” It’s easier to accept this aspect of Trachtenberg’s style as something endearing than it is to identify it as an admirable scholarly practice.

In a recent Zoom presentation, eleven years after the book’s publication, Trachtenberg began his slideshow on Building-in-Time by showing his own photographs of the Grand Canyon. We’re given to understand that extreme slowness is constitutive of the canyon’s grandeur. Likewise, the long duration of the construction of a building is presumed to contribute to its value. Never mind that geological time (millions of years to billions of years) is qualitatively different from the time of architecture (tens of years to hundreds of years): geological features are genuinely immemorial, while medieval and Renaissance buildings are part of a built record that we recognize as part of human culture. In a move which feels characteristic of contemporary scholarship, Trachtenberg claims that time itself has agency, which is manifest in the creation of both the Grand Canyon and (for example) the Duomo in Florence.

Trachtenberg wants to find order and system in the building practices of the Renaissance. He wants to to place the building process which produced (for example) the Duomo, or St Peter's, on a rational basis. In other words, he wants to find an enduring, abstract structure at the level of practices (traditions), while simultaneously decrying such durable abstractions on the level of specific design as "Albertianism". He calls this regime Building-in-Time. He fails to observe the distinction between fact and theory, frequently referring to his theory as if it were a fact—a methodology that actually guided practice rather than an analytical framework suitable for use by historians. His contention is that the system of Building-in-Time is actually immanent in the process that created the architecture.

So, Trachtenberg's revisionist mission, as a historian, is “to discover a program of temporal order in a premodern building process that has always been considered haphazard and unprincipled”. Rather than understanding a work of architecture as an ideal, immutable object existing in an atemporal bubble outside time, he claims to discern instead a regime (a word which has both political and scientific connotations) that produced the building as a concrete entity within time:

This methodology comprised a comprehensive set of principles, an interlocking range of strategies which were theoretically sophisticated and imaginatively nuanced in application. The strongest evidence for this operational structure is in its explanatory power, that is, its power of clarification as it transforms seemingly muddled contemporary practice into what legitimately qualifies as theoretically disciplined, closely guided praxis. It enables us now to overcome the epistemological impasse and to understand in plausible terms just how the regime was able to produce formally powerful and cohesive works with an inherently fluid design and building process through long spans of time and change.

Intentionally or not, Trachtenberg consistently blurs the distinction between Building-in-Time as theory and Building-in-Time as historical fact. This allows him to get away with describing it not only as sophisticated and nuanced but also as “subtle” and “formidable” (among other laudatory adjectives). If we substitute the phrase "The way things were done back then" for "Building-in-Time", it becomes obviously inappropriate to use these terms.

Building-in-Time is described as a set of principles and a methodology, but consistently contrasted with the doctrine of the architect as author, which Trachtenberg attributes to Alberti. For him, the techniques of architectural authorship reflect rigidity and fear of change: "chronophobia".

The grandiose scope of his intellectual project is made clear when he writes “I came to regard my ‘relativity theory of architecture and time’ as a potentially new basis of understanding the way architecture generally behaves in time, and time operates in architecture with respect to its coming into being.”

The book is a long one, so to address every point made is impractical. What is more, Trachtenberg’s vocabulary ranges widely, so that almost any conceivably relevant word is found somewhere in the text. In this way he gives the impression of covering every base. He is not a particularly serious user of language, coining words like “transsocial” and “unplanning” to use them once and never mention them again. This becomes a real problem when he describes his own theory as “incrementalist” or “temporalist”—each word used just once en passant. "Gradualist" is used five times, as is "authoricity" (two of the occurrences are in scare quotes). The reader is left wondering whether these labels have any content beyond sounding theoretical.

The scientific connotations of the word regime seem to me to hold the key to Trachtenberg’s way of thinking. Building-in-Time is a regime in the sense that it is a persistent state of affairs in which certain rules seem to apply. In a scientific dynamical system, the conditions which determine the regime currently in effect might be things like temperature, pressure, humidity or viscosity.

The formation of structure in a particular physical regime might be exemplified (my metaphor, not Trachtenberg's) by the growth of a snowflake. At any moment, the snowflake grows (or shrinks) in a way that is determined by temperature and humidity, but the unchanging structure of ice crystals means that it retains a near-perfect sixfold symmetry throughout. What is happening in the growth of a snowflake is that a certain atmospheric regime combines with the unchanging physics of ice to produce particular structures. As an individual snowflake forms, it moves through bodies of air with varying properties—but the rules of crystallization don't change.

In the case of Building-in-Time, the role of the physical parameters of temperature and humidity is played by the changing social conditions (what Trachtenberg calls the lifeworld) and the laws of physics (and the structure of every ice crystal) correspond to the unspoken principles of building. (I should remark that this application of the term has a confusing relationship to the scientific idea of a regime—what the author intends is really something more absolute, like a political regime or the laws of nature.)

Trachtenberg states four principles of Building-in-Time: continuous redesign, myopic progression, concatenation and retrosynthesis. In my opinion, it’s not worth spilling too much ink discussing these in any detail, as they merely describe an iterative, incremental design process in which the building serves as its own record. What is worth noting is the general atmosphere of mid-20th century technology that surrounds the theory. Myopic progression, for example, is described as a "guidance system", and Trachtenberg flirts with describing the system of Building-in-Time as "self-propelled". Retrosynthesis apparently "required that planning always be synoptic", and I can't help thinking that this form of words is intended to summon up the image of Allied generals using a synoptic weather chart to prepare for the Normandy landings in 1944. It's to be expected that Trachtenberg is a product of his time—the post war Pax Americana—but from 2024, the positivistic, mechanised, military overtones of his terminology are striking.

The author claims that the four uncodified principles are “unmistakably present in silent patterns of practice that have been overlooked by historians and generally misconstrued as disorder”. The game here, for Trachtenberg, is to determine the “laws of physics” that are at work in the building process; laws that remain constant while other circumstances change. In his theory, the building develops harmoniously, like a snowflake (again, this is my analogy), because of the presence of these laws. Building-in-Time is a name for the hidden regularity that gave rise to perfect architecture without the control of an Albertian architect-author. (There’s no way to establish whether Trachtenberg's principles are sufficient to guarantee a harmonious result: it certainly doesn’t seem to me that they fully specify how design and construction work should be carried out. Indeed, the supposed methodology of Building-in-Time can seem almost entirely vaporous at times.)

Competing with this picture of hidden regularity, which arguably merely transposes the notion of immutable, ideal form from the building into the process which gave rise to it, is the notion that historical continuity was required to preserve the coherence of a building over a long period of construction. Now, Trachtenberg does use the word “continuity” a few times, almost always in a spatial sense. He also notes that it is mentioned as among the techniques of Albertian “Building-against-Time” (as discussed by Burns, who inspired this book). But Trachtenberg doesn't seem to assign much importance to temporal continuity. To my mind temporal continuity, in a broad sense, is an essential prerequisite for the phenomena described by his theory of Building-in-Time. Indeed, for a building project to be perpetuated over a period of decades, stylistic traditions and building technology must have changed slowly enough for it to remain structurally legible, suitable for its intended purpose, and aesthetically acceptable. As Westfall puts it in his review, “the [consistent] workings of tradition” create the bottom line which allows a building to be brought to completion over such a long time.

It is preferable to draw attention to an architectural tradition (however immature) than to try to determine aesthetic or methodological “laws of physics” which govern the building process. 20th Century theoretical concepts such as the autonomy of architecture, and its historicity, capture the internal consistency of architectural style and building techniques. In light of the continuity of architectural tradition, there’s no need to hypothesize a methodology beyond this: that each successive builder/architect would have approached the work in the same way that a painter would approach an unfinished painting, or a sculptor would approach an unfinished sculpture. The coherence of the result would depend on the builder/architect’s continuity of sensibility with the people who had come before, and their ability to appreciate and extend the work that had already been completed.

Trachtenberg quotes the architectural historian James Ackerman, writing in 1954:

Perhaps the character of Renaissance architecture owes much to the fact that its monuments started not from a complete idea ... but from flexible impressions constantly susceptible to change. The ultimate statement, like that of the sculptor, evolved in the process of creating the mass itself. This way of conceiving architecture explains also the peculiarly biological character of Italian Renaissance building. The large monuments that took more than a decade to complete seldom followed an original conception, but evolved like a living organism in their growth.

The notion of tradition as a living organism—never entirely broken off or created from scratch, but always diversifying in a continuous way, is compatible with the certainty of architecture’s historicity. In other words, we know that architecture evolved over time and is inherently bound up with its historical period, and this understanding encompasses the possibility for change over time. An awareness of this fact is much more satisfying than being forced to think with Trachtenberg’s pseudo-scientific methodology, his very modern "system" which seemingly has no past, a highly questionable positivistic flavour of immutable order, and which has, as its actual content, little more than the familiar ideas of incremental construction and iterative design. The 1995 paper that inspired the book (in a loose sense), Howard Burns' "Building Against Time: Renaissance Strategies to Secure Large Churches Against Changes in Their Design" was a more modest and focused discussion of exactly what tactics were available to Renaissance architects to shore their designs against changes by their successors in the construction process. The issue there is which thing matters: is it the finished building, or the architect as auteur, capable of delineating the entire design in advance? Trachtenberg it seems to me, unwisely inflates this well-defined topic into a jeremiad against the modern profession of architecture, which he refers to as Albertianism, but the development of which could also be credited to Boullée, who declared, reasonably, that "in order to execute, it is first necessary to conceive". Of course, a more nuanced and accurate portrayal of the activity of architects would defeat the dramatic false dichotomy Trachtenberg proposes between design that happens during the execution of a building projects (revisions to the original plan, made between stages) and design that happens at the project's conception.

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saharaagelblogs · 5 months

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Manifesto

I chose the word ‘Effervescent’ to describe my manifesto because to be described as effervescent is to be a person that is full of life. During this course I have had the opportunity to analyze many works of art. As I participated with all the works of art, I realized that the works that appeal to me the most are the ones that make me feel alive, remind me that I am alive, or make me appreciate the life that I have been given. The music that I chose during the “Your Musical theme” assignment were all works that not only made me feel love but how others receive. The painting that I chose during our “Ekphrasis” assignment reminded me of a time when I felt alive. And the picture and theme that I chose for our “Photographers Eye” were when I really felt happiness through my own feelings or through other people .

It is often said that music can release dopamine in the brain, which elevates our moods while we are listening. It is also said that you can gain a specific emotion after participating with a musical piece. The textbook The Humanities Through the arts states that, "No art reaches into our life of feeling more deeply than music” (Jacobus). During the “Your Musical theme” assignment, I wrote a post titled “Love”. For this assignment I chose songs that made me feel love. Having love from others can greatly affect your way of thinking. When you feel secure about your love for someone, you can really open up new opportunities for life now and the future.

In the “Photographer's Eye” assignment, I chose pictures from multiple days where I felt happiest. Whether it be happy alone, with friends or for others. I have gained a realization that what I did for most of my life, and what I thought made me happy was actually bringing me down. At 25 I realized that staying home and not making new friends was not what I was supposed to do, I probably missed out on a bunch of stuff that would’ve made me a different person in both good ways and bad.

I feel as though I am more drawn to happier and brighter topics because I used to be in a dark place growing up and now I am seeing the light.. It is important to talk about these things because some people may think that what they are happy about doesn’t mean much to others but what they need to realize it doesn’t matter what people think, if it makes them happy then that's all that matters. There is not much positive that is shown on social media or the news. I feel we need to be talking about the bad things that are going on around the world of course but there should be some good news as well. If the news is talking about a bank getting robbed then they should also be talking about good things going on in nature or if a new school has opened. There are many ways to show love and happiness. You can write songs like Taylor Swift, she writes both happy and sad songs. There are others who only write sad songs and others who write happy songs. The same thing goes for paintings, movies and books. The different forms of media expands how my theme can be reached.

Finally, I say, listen up: the call to make love and happiness our essence is loud and clear. The ability to overcome obstacles, discover underlying abilities, and carve out a unique route to happiness is contained in its passionate embark. Join me in kindling the fires of inspiration in one another and in the world at large, so that our shared dreams may shine brightly. Being passionate about something not only helps us find our true selves, but it also reveals our limitless potential.

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shadowysharktidalwave · 10 months

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A Starry Night

I know that his isn't really the most niche peice to choose for theis interpretation, and that this has been done and said before. So I want to make this Ekphrasis a bit more personal.

I was drawn to this piece at first due to it colors. I live in a heavily light polluted area nowadays, however that wasn't always the case. Back when I was growing up (I still and growing up) and was very easily engaged, we lived far out in the country where there not only wasn't much to do, but there wasn't much light pollution. This coupled with what I now know to be insomnia, led to me often looking up above at the great beyond, getting lost not only in my own thoughts, but also getting lost among the stars.

I found comfort up there, not only in our own physical world, but the virtual one as well. Some of the most influential games that i grew up playing also took place here. The notable difference despite conveying a similar atmosphere was the color palette. These piece's often used a wide array of colors not typically found in the night sky to really make it feel like something special was out there.

And the Piece 'A Starry Night" By Van Goh uses a similar strategy .By using a sharp combinations of warm and cool colors, he creates a sense of warming intrigue within the night sky that he has created. The city below ends up feeling small dark, and quite frankly, cold. By actually being small compared to the symphony of stars above, as well as being cast in dark cool colors near exclusively, the city gets to convey a sort of stillness as if though everyone is asleep. This makes the sky full of bright elegant stars above feeling like something special, like something you're not really supposed to see.

You are not supposed to be here. And yet, it calls to you and welcomes you. You know that you should be asleep. You know you have to wake up early tomorrows and deal with your responsibilities. And yet, the sky continues to draw you in with it's warm safe colors. It's as if though it's saying, It's ok, you can rest now. Nothing else matters in this moment but enjoying the perfectly orchestrated symphony above. The city is still and quiet. There are no responsibilities right now but to reflect.

This piece made me feel just as i did all those years ago looking up at the sky, and I thank it for reminding me to stop, and enjoy the stars again.

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theviruseye · 11 months

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Ekphrasis Reflection

From D.S. Waldman’s panel, I learned about ekphrasis and how it could be applied to art. Stated at the panel, Waldman believes in art and art making. His works are supported by SDSU, and he presented us with an exercise at the start of the lecture. It was a “seeing and writing meditation,” as Waldman would call it. The painting that Waldman introduces is one curated by Georges Braque, and titled Violin and Candlestick (1910). He asked us to describe what you saw in 3 words. In my notes, I wrote down that the art he is showing us seems shattered, unorganized, broken, and distorted. I thought of the painting as a broken mirror, as it was the first thought that came to my mind when viewing the work. I saw this painting to be an allusion to Cataract Blues by Roger Rosenblatt and Jules Feiffer. In Cataract Blues, the author, Roger Rosenblatt, feels broken, shattered, and devastated by the loss of his daughter. This idea contributes to the blues and feeling of the blues in the book. I feel like if Roger was an artist, he would make something along the lines of the painting that Waldman showed us. It would be an allegory to how he is left in pieces after he tragically loses his daughter, while still holding strong and being connected. While analyzing the painting, Waldman asked us to write down something that you regret. I made a connection to Everything Is An Emergency by Jason Katzenstein. Towards the end of the book, Jason regrets how he didn’t take enough time to face his fears earlier, and how he didn’t attend E.R.P. as much as he needed to. His realizations on pages 196 and 197 shows us how he regrets overreacting over every aspect of life. The feeling of regret hits hard, and I think that Waldman wanted his audience to remember the impacts that regret has on our lives. The next work that Waldman showed is Untitled by Mark Rothko. Waldman stated that he resonated with Rothko’s work because it represented the smoldering of himself. This idea can return back to Jason Katzenstein with how his OCD smoldered him whole, and how he had daily battles with his OCD. Going back to Waldman’s lecture, one point that stood out to me was how Waldman stated that he believes everyone has a unique perspective with art. I like to think of that saying as a pure fact, because it is true. I think that art is subjective in a way that it offers experience through what you think and what your perceptions are. Different perceptions and thoughts result in a different experience, and I believe that is what Waldman was saying. Your experience with a work of art will probably be different than someone else's. This is an overall theme to Waldman’s panel. One of Waldman’s biggest inspirations is poet John Ashbery. Waldman reviews one of Ashbery’s works’ titled Some Trees. From the reading, Waldman explains how the trees from the title become a lyrical connection to speech. The word evolved down the page. I thought this was fascinating. The fact that written words can be considered as lyrics seems like a wild thought, but comes to life with the words of Ashbery. This allows for an associative relationship as a reader, and allows for the introduction of ekphrasis to be present within words. Towards the end of Waldman’s lecture, I noticed that Waldman spoke in a relatively monotone, yet articulated fashion. I feel like the way he spoke fits in right with how the poems are supposed to be read. It definitely enhances the reading experience. In addition to Ashbery being a main inspiration, Ben Lerner is another standout poet that Waldman favors. It is safe to say that there were role models for Waldman, and they impacted his own works. One saying that Waldman said in his lecture was, “If you learn the traditional form you can learn to push against it.” This quote presents the idea of reciprocation, essentially saying that once you learn something, you can work from the opposite perspective. I think reciprocation is an important skill for people to have, and I believe that Waldman wanted to see his audience push the boundaries. Waldman goes on to state that if you’re not being vulnerable, the reader doesn’t really seem to care about you in the context of art. This goes to show that meaning and purpose should always be an aspect in the mind of a curator. Waldman also thinks that specificity is essential to written works, which ties back in with the importance of meaning in works. Overall, attending Waldman’s lecture made me open to the concept of ekphrasis, and opened my eyes to language as an art form.

#submissionVIRUSeye #VIRUSeye

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poetryfoundation-potd · 2 years

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Ekphrasis on Nude Selfie as Portrait of Saint Sebastian

By torrin a. greathouse

Suppose they made martyrs

out of bodies like ours. Found

faith in all our petty miracles.

You woke this morning, drew

breath like a blade from a sheath.

As a child, I learned to never draw

a knife without intending to draw

blood, when my grandfather made me

draw my own. My love, I can’t think

of your body, waking, & not recall

how the morning sky lit up our sheets

in waves of faded red & neither of us

were emptied. By our hands or

a stranger’s. Suppose we might

be made holy & never imagined

ghosts. An iPhone photo’s flicker—

your bare chest held in the dim

bathroom glow, pierced by arrows

of nothing but mirror-spread light.

Bead of biopsied scar, the tender

entrance of a blade. Around your

damp hair wound a rough halo

of pixels. One hand twisting as if

dragged toward a common faith.

Lack of sleep bruising deep

hollows beneath your eyes,

the pale yellow of pollen

-stained lips, like mine when,

as a child, I bit through

flowers, believing anything

beautiful enough—when

swallowed—might stay. The way,

seeing you, I wished I might hold

your mouth, against mine, like

the last embers of the evening sky—

a broken-in Bic lighter’s clear

flame & the sport we made

of holding it to our wrists until

our fear sparked a hotter blaze.

A kind of irony halfway

to faith, all winter I whispered

psalms under my breath through

empty streets. Then, come spring,

I fell for you to the melody of

a Green Day song praising

the messiah of a suburban youth

neither of us had. But goddamn,

the way that one lyric, I’m the son

of rage & love, felt so familiar to

both our mouths—like a bitten

cheek’s fresh copper sting. Here,

your body, always shaking—now on

-screen frozen, poised, just so—how

could I not see, in you, this first

gay saint? Sin of our imagination.

Saint of Soldiers. Patron Saint

of Sickness Healed. Saint of Archer’s

bows bent like boughs mid-storm.

Martyred, slain, & made a prayer

to that which, still living, would

have seen him buried. & isn’t this

the queerest thing about him?

The very pliancy of his legacy?

How a myth glances at the edge

of history, like feeble bulbs burning

feints toward the sun, renders

the body—something between

portraiture & flesh. I kneel before

your image; your ribs curled like

seraph’s wings, stomach cleft by

a flash of pale curls. I whet my lips

to speak your name. To kiss your

hands, curling into the posture

of prayer, they could almost have

been carved from stone. I swear:

If idolatry was my only sin, then

it’s because god wasn’t watching.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/158814/ekphrasis-on-nude-selfie-as-portrait-of-saint-sebastian

Audio available

#english #poetry foundation #poetry #nonbinary

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transgenderer · 2 years

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the door ekphrasis slaps. sometimes i reread just that chapter

hmm. thats really weird! he just talks about a door for ages! and the worst part is like, i cant even picture the door? his description of three lines, each with their paws on the next ones butt, like. totally stymied me, i keep thinking about it. are the lions...like, looped around the central column? it doesnt say so. also, i cant picture how the central column is supposed to fit in here. i feel like if you describe a door in that much detail i should understand the door. maybe include a diagram

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strawberriestyles · 7 years

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Prologue

(Banner made by the loveliest @harry-nofookingway-styles)

Harry X OFC (AU)

In which Melody is reacquainted with an old classmate named Harry, and must keep afloat in the violent, criminal lifestyle of an underground boxer.

Author’s Note: Hello, everyone! This is just a little something. Harry doesn’t even appear in the prologue efnskjfbas. We’ll see if I can come up with a schedule for posting. I’ll probably go back and forth between this and Beneath the Tide. I’ve cast AnnaSophia Robb as Melody (the main character)! I hope y’all are ready for this fic because even I’m not. Anyways, I hope you enjoy! As per usual, any and all feedback is sincerely appreciated. Xx

The human mind is a jumble of abstractions. Melody Rhoden supposed that’s why she had a love-hate relationship with her poetry class. Her professor had always said the same thing: “Cut abstractions from your writing.” As though they could make a poem any less meaningful. As though it was impossible for them to evoke a deep feeling all on their own.

Almost every art form contains its own uniquely integrated abstractions. The painting Melody was staring at, for example, was composed entirely of them. Abstract art is beautiful in its own right, completely moldable to the viewer’s interpretation. She thought writing was justified in sporting that same beauty. Let readers feel the abstractions in their own unique knowledge and experiences. Not everything needs to be told.

“Lovely.”

The voice came from her right shoulder. She found a man there. Light, scarce stubble, dark, intruding brown eyes. He glanced briefly at the painting and then turned back to her.

“Yeah, it is.”

He chuckled light-heartedly and shook his head.

“Oh, no. I was talking about you.”

Melody contributed a breathy half-laugh and looked back at the painting. Cheesy pick-up lines had never been successful with her. And regardless, she was there for a reason.

“Cute. But I’m here for an assignment, so if you’ll excuse me.”

He caught her elbow as she turned away. The touch was gentle and brief. His arm dropped back to his side where it came from, almost immediately.

“Assignment? What for?”

She assessed him—his pressed pants, wrinkled dress shirt, one cuff unbuttoned. It was a bit endearing, the dorky, mismatched way of his apparel. His hair was lightly windblown, wavy and fluffed at the ends. He pushed a troublesome lock from his temple and chuckled again.

“I’m Cooper, by the way.”

“Melody,” she informed him in a quick, impulsive decision. He smiled at her, perfect top teeth, crooked bottom row.

“Pretty.”

“Thanks.” She turned again to move to the next piece of art. Cooper followed behind and stopped next to her, elbow just barely brushing her bicep. “I have to write a poem.”

“That’s your assignment?”

“Yes. It has to be inspired by a piece of art. It’s called an ekphrasis.”

“So, you’re a poet?”

The picture in front of them was unnerving. It looked to be from a war, the colors faded into black and white. A girl stood in the foreground, coated in grime, clothing torn. She was small, couldn’t even be eight-years-old. She seemed to be running toward the camera, arms outstretched. Melody looked away and turned her attention to Cooper.

“Not really. I’d rather write stories, but the poetry class is required. It doesn’t matter, anyways. Nothing I’ve written has seen daylight.”

“Well, it could someday.” He grinned at her again. His fingers splayed out against his thighs and then he rubbed his hands over his pants, like he was wiping the sweat from them. “Do you, maybe, wanna go out sometime?”

His proposal was cute, and he seemed charming in his own way. Melody couldn’t help the small smile that crept onto her face. Her eyes fell to the floor. She hadn’t been on a date in nearly a year. School took up almost all of her time. When she wasn’t at class, she was studying or writing—or attempting to write, anyway. Her mind had felt entirely blank for months now.

Maybe this was what she needed. She’d been so stuck in her routines that she hadn’t had any new experiences. Maybe a date could bring some inspiration. Maybe it would even kickstart her love life.

“Yes.”

Cooper smiled even wider and pulled his phone from the pocket of his pants. His fingers fumbled with the lock button and then the device vibrated twice as his clammy thumb attempted and failed to input his print. He sighed frustratedly and manually punched in the passcode before passing it to Melody, opened up to his contacts. She contemplated giving him the wrong number, just slipping up and changing a “2” to a “3”, but that would defeat the entire purpose of her saying yes. She typed her information in, placing an emoji of a painting next to her name, and handed Cooper his phone.

“Thanks,” he said with a softer smile now, slipping the phone back into his pocket and shoving his hand into the other one.

“Can we do it tomorrow?” Melody asked. “I have midterms coming up.”

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” he spluttered, nodding enthusiastically. She was reassured, whether by his excitement or his goofy, awkward vibe, she wasn’t sure.

He kept standing there, smiling, watching her. She found it in her to laugh softly before raising an eyebrow.

“Cooper?”

“Oh, right.” He chuckled nervously, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.” He walked away then, glancing back at her once. She smiled at him. The high-school-type romance was refreshing, a large contrast to what frat guys considered to do the trick.

With Cooper gone, Melody turned back to the task at hand, moving on to the next photograph. She only looked at the landscape briefly before pulling out her phone to snap a quick picture. She took pictures of the next four artworks, her pre-midterm exhaustion settling on her shoulders all at once. She yawned as she turned toward the exit of the gallery. Maybe it was lucky that she came tonight instead of tomorrow. Maybe she would have the time to confidently complete her assignment, and maybe she would actually succeed in obtaining some sort of inspiration from tomorrow’s date. Maybe the writer’s block that had been eating away at her would cease. But then, maybe nothing would come of any of it.

Chapter 1

#harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fan fiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fan fic #harry styles writing #harry styles imagine #imagine harry styles #harry styles angst #harry styles fluff #harry styles smut #harry styles brutality

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authentic-poetry-blog · 7 years

Text

ekphrasis

me: "what is this painting suppose to be?"

michael: "well, what do you see?"

me:

"brown skin on a midnight blue canvas.

naked but not sexualized in her essence

a white flower covered her flower, a sign of purity.

the purest form of an african woman until gazed upon by sky blue eyes.

her presence was more than her body.

she floated on pink clouds basking in happiness above the purple residue of royalty.

her afro bright as a lightbulb's shine-the main attraction in this image.

her intelligence was outer-space.

space that was meant for her and no one else,

space that came from African soil and sweat,

space that was meant for color and the absence of whiteness.

a reflection of a woman before society tells her to conform.

brilliant,

independent,

woman.

she was the essence of life and space.

a star astronomers could not define.

she was rare in between the sun and every planet at every place at the same time.

space revolved around her, she was a goddess.

not trying to be more than God himself, but she was God like.

her presence was more than words can describe.

she knew she was powerful in the eyes of viewers, yet she had no eyes to view her.

she knew her worth long before she was a creation.

We knew her name,

Yet she was nameless.

painting by instagram: @scoflair

#ekphrasis #poetry #artspired #dopeartsells #artinspired

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mrcaneteblogposts · 7 years

Text

The Pavilion of Artists and Books is, without any doubt, this Biennale’s main curatorial statement and aims at discussing the place of the artist in today’s society. Taking place at the Central Pavilion in the Giardini, these artists’ works coalesce around the idea of ‘artistic practice’ as a professional one. To inject gravitas into these works and, probably, to insert contemporary artists into a several thousand years’ long art history, Chief Curator, Christine Macel felt compelled to link the Ancient Roman notion of ‘otium’ (firstly coined by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History where he linked the idea of retreating to a Villa with that of creating enough space and time to cultivate oneself in nature) with that of ‘creativity’. Although she states very clearly that ‘otium’ does not equate ‘idleness’, the visual evidence says otherwise.

It does not come as a surprise, then, that the show opens with Franz West’s Otium (1998) which is a videocassette tape covered with papier maché on a signed wooden base, all this on a plinth. In the film, screened in the following room, the artist appears in the lotus position levitating in front of an invisible audience with whom he discusses very simple concepts in complex terms. In the next room there is a 1973 photo by Friedl Kubelka of West, lying beneath a wall with his early drawings. At this point, the viewer is led to visually associate ‘having a rest’ with ‘being creative’. Franz West’s works are compelling and can hold themselves through their wit precisely because he never seems to take himself too seriously and proof of that are the pastel colours chosen and the humorous stance (with laughter included) that he adopts in his recorded performances. But this is not the case with the work of the younger artists placed nearby by Macel.

Almost mirroring the aforementioned photograph, we find a painted inkjet print by Frances Stark titled ‘Behold Man!’ (2013) where the artist is shown on a sofa, allegedly, alluding to Ingres’ Turkish Bath (whatever!). All through the exhibition, under the badge with the name of the artist and the work’s title there are bilingual explanations of the work by the chief curator which are not only badly written but quickly prove to be misleading in a way that contradicts the ‘professional’ goals of the show. The tone of the aforementioned text is as follows: ‘Frances Stark has since the 1990’s developed a personal style full of humour and frankness. She tackles private issues like her sex life, her neuroses as well maternity’ (sic). Worryingly, by saying this, Macel is unconsciously separating the private from the public spheres. She makes us feel that instead of allowing us to have a look into the artist’s moments of private self absortion without showing us that it is her job to do that, she is making the artist comes across as if she is deciding to pose (as a person with a life) in front of us. There is an inversion of priorities here and, at this point, I am struggling to understand what is the point of art for Christine Macel (and this artist, in particular). Is it an opportunity to fill a position from where value is automatically created (just because her jobtitle is that of ‘artist’)? If what I am shown are people sleeping, what is the point of me wasting my time and money here?

Well, the following pieces are just bad. Katherine Nuñez and Issay Rodriguez’s ‘In Between the Lines 2.0’, according to the explanatory text: ‘show how there is still a place for disused practices in contemporary life’. Seriously? A number of useless products are carelessly placed on shelves and from that we are asked to believe that this junk ‘is invested with symbolic value drawing on the current Zeitgeist’. At this point, the show insults the viewer’s intelligence by being pompous and silly but that silliness is conveyed thorugh the work and also through Macel’s explanations.

Next there is an artist bed by Yelena Vorobyeva and Viktor Vorobyev (‘The Artist is Asleep’, 1996) that does not seem to acknowledge Tracy Emin’s seminal work on this topic which shockingly is not here. At this point, the visual evidence diverted the discussion from ‘otium’ to laziness without even trying to be ironic about it. In front of our very eyes, the artist studio has been transformed into a bed and his ethos into a succession of pretentious lies.

But let’s remember that this Pavilion is not only dedicated to artists but also to…books! Besides, Christine Macel has invited the artists both in this exhibition and in the National Pavilions to host their Tavola Aperte (Open Tables) where they can discuss further the explanations of their work. It is as if discourse has displaced the visual evidence that artists are supposed to provide. If anything, artists and curators love to blah blah blah in VIVA ARTE VIVA but when silence is required, the images do not say very much. Similarly, Christine Macel’s pompose project titled ‘Unpacking My Library’, allegedly, inspired by Walter Benjamin’s essay published in 1931 ‘allows the artists to compile a list of their favourite books. This is both a way to get to know the artists better and a source of inspiration for the public’ (sic). This book will be ‘available’ at the Stirling Pavilion and one cannot but ask oneself what’s the point of this messy approach to books.

Well, in John Latham and Geng Jianyi’s room, they use books as physical material for a series of objects which are hung from walls, ceilings and displayed in minimalistic vitrines. It is with Abdullah Al Saadi’s Diaries that books and the artistic profession seem to collapse with a clinical display of tins filled with texts which, according to the explanatory text: ‘comprise 150 notebooks containing aphorisms and meditations, artistic projects and sketches written on rolls in homage to the discovery, in 1847, of the Dead Sea Scrolls’. Am I out of place if I politely ask myself: WTF? Unmoved, curator Christine Macel says: ‘Like the Dead Sea Scrolls, the artist’s journals evoke a memory that has not disappeared and becomes eternal’. I insist…WTF?

Next is the place of the literal and Macel, who has committed to show us visual proof of the problem of ‘artists’ and books decides to groundbreakingly include (of course, I am being ironic) paintings of books. Thus we have Liu Ye’s ‘Books on books’ (2007) which are charming mediocre trompl’oeils that find too much inspiration in Ed Ruscha analogous series.

In the next room, there is Ciprian Mureśan from Rumania and his self-explanatory ‘All Images from a Book on Tretyakov gallery’ and ‘All images from a Book of Giotto’ (2015). But why are we talking about books? Is Macel exploring the link between word and image? If that is the case, her explanatory texts are not doing her any favours.

Taus Makhacheva’s Tightrope (2015) video of a tightroper carrying 61 art works copied from a Dagestani museum between two mountain pics from open air to a black structure reminiscent of a black storage is next. Instead of (as the curator writes) ‘exploring the tensions between tradition and modernity, local and global pre-soviet and post-soviet times’, this choreography (?) comes across as an allegory of the fragility of show which is as pointless as handling art between two peaks. And if of pointlessness we are talking about, Philippe Parreño’s post-minimalist Cloud Oktas (2017) has no room in the curating script and belongs to a different show. Although it is interesting, I felt like I was in a different show.

From there we get to a room with works by Raymond Hains including three supermarket trolleys with computer monitors. This is the first time that the issue of the book is being questioned in today’s world without forcing the viewer to accept its materiality as enough justification. But it is far too late to be able to bring some sense into it all. Macel has asked far too much from the viewer and he wants to leave.

After that, everything goes downwards and the experience starts becoming annoying when we find a rather uninformed mega-installation by Hassan Sharif titled ‘Hassan Sharif Studio’ (Supermarket). In a way, it mirrors Hains’ Duchampian and Pop deployment of ready mades reflecting on the way art objects get commodified and allegedly put that ‘victim’ called artist in a compromised position.

At this point, it must be remembered that Christine Macel conceived this year’s Biennale as a book unfolding in 9 chapters. This first one places the issue of language at the very core of the exhibition not from the point of view of the relationship between text and image which might take us to the Ancient Roman discussion of ‘Ut Pictura Poesis’ or to Greek ‘ekphrasis’ but instead reduces text (and books) to the position of the explanatory device needed to understand the allegories that those ‘professional practitioners’ called ‘artists’ placed there for us to decode. It does not come as a surprise that preparing those text is the job of that self perpetuating bureaucracy called ‘curators’. J A T

EXPLANATORY TEXTS DISPLACE ARTWORKS AS THE RELEVANT OBJECT TO BE DISPLAYED AT THIS YEAR’S VENICE BIENNALE’S FIRST ‘CHAPTER’ REMINDING US OF THE NEED TO HAIL THE WORK OF THAT SELF PERPETUATING BUREAUCRACY CALLED CURATORS The Pavilion of Artists and Books is, without any doubt, this Biennale’s main curatorial statement and aims at discussing the place of the artist in today’s society.

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miriadonline · 8 years

Text

CFP: Between Image and Text (Mexico City, 2-4 Oct 17)

Mexico City, October 2 - 04, 2017

Deadline: Apr 28, 2017

Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas (UNAM)

XLI International Colloquium on Art History Between Image and Text

The relations between images and texts are one of the most important problems for the history of the arts, because they concern precisely their plurality and their significance. That is why they have captured the attention of artists, theorists and critics of art and literature since classical antiquity. For Western art, perhaps the simile of Horacio ut pictura poesis is the one that best expresses the relation between twin arts, giving rise to reflections that were crucial for the European culture and that led to the ideas of Lessing. But even after Lessing's effort to separate each art in different fields, the interrelation between words and images, graphics and figurations did not cease, neither in artistic production nor in iconographic, historiographic and semiotic studies. New studies of images have endorsed the interest to understand the passages, permeability and transit between words and images.

This is just one of the genealogies of this problem, which extends beyond the limits of linguistics, hermeneutics and semiotics. Under a conception developed in different semiotic perspectives, the interest in text, as a significant fabric, allows us to think of different dynamics for the analysis of images and languages. The decoding of the visual elements is not linear, for it is open to hesitations, regressions, choices and accidents, to a similar degree with respect to the writings. The supposed linearity of the written text is determined by the reading order and the syntax of the language it represents, but this is not to be understood either in a strict or unbreakable sense, since the graphic and permanent presence of signs allows the reader to return and reread the text if he wishes to.

In this way, intermediality — as has been called the collaboration between written texts, images and notations — supports the study of works of art, as well as many other forms of visual, textual and sound expression. Therefore, the Colloquium seeks to weave different genealogies and problematics of different disciplines around the articulations and interstices between images and texts (visual, verbal or sonorous, among others).

This edition of the Colloquium proposes to gather the discussion in the following panels, which can be reformulated according to the proposals received:

a) The debate on the boundaries between writing and image Disciplinary or interdisciplinary theoretical reflections and/or case studies: history of art, grammatology, historiography, semiotics, anthropology, linguistics, philology, aesthetics, iconography, tratadistics.

b) Writing itself as part of visual culture Beyond its strict value of reading, the graphemes of the writing systems are important components of design and visuality, that can be approached from formal points of view: calligraphy, typography, paleography. Writing and other systems of notation: storyboarding, musical, stage and/or dance notation, quipus, graphs, codes, etcetera.

c) Iconotext, ekphrasis and intermediation Theoretical reflections and/or case studies on collaboration and opposition between texts and images: titles and works, captions, texts within images, images within texts, illustration and activation; phylacteries, text bubbles, cartouches and highlights. Story and description.

Guidelines 1. Proposals must be submitted in either English or Spanish, must have a tentative title and also include a summary, not exceeding 500 words, on the paper to be developed. Only one proposal per author will be accepted.

2. Proposals must briefly explain why you wish to participate on a given panel. Please attach a résumé of not more than 150 words, highlighting your main academic work and your academic affiliation.

3. Deadline for submitting proposals is Friday, April 28, 2017.

4. Proposals will be evaluated by a Committee made up of members of the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas and other institutions, who will select them based on criteria of quality and thematic relevance.

5. The Committee's decision will be announced no later than Friday, May 26, 2017 and will be final.

6. Once the papers are accepted, the text’s requirements are: 3000 words or 12 pages, double spaced, to be read in 25 minutes. Speakers must complete the form attached regarding the copyrights of the paper and its images. Those papers that are not delivered in time will not be accepted and will be removed from the definite program.

7. The paper to be presented should be delivered before Friday, September 8, 2017, in order for the commentators to prepare their interventions. Papers received afterwards will not be accepted and will be omitted from the final program.

8. Papers accepted and presented at the Colloquium will be submitted for arbitration for the digital publication of the Colloquium memories. The Committee will determine which papers will be included in the digital book. The authors will be notified no later than Tuesday, October 24, 2017.

Final versions must comply with the following characteristics: a maximum of 25 pages (8 000 words using Chicago referencing system) and 8 images. Authors must obtain their image reproduction permits. The IIE will or will not publish them in terms of their cost.

The deadline to submit the papers is Friday, December 8, 2017. After this date no papers will be accepted.

Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico City, January, 2017.

Please send your proposal to the following address:

Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, UNAM Circuito Maestro Mario de la Cueva s/n Zona Cultural, Ciudad Universitaria Coyoacán, 04510, Ciudad de México Phones (52 55) 5662 7250, (52 55) 5662 6999 E-mails: [email protected]

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theviruseye · 11 months

Text

Analysis With Ekphrasis

Chase Koffler

ECL 157

The Stripped Spirits

The next work that Waldman showed is Untitled by Mark Rothko. Walman stated that he resonated with Rothko’s work because it represented the smoldering of himself. This idea can return back to Jason Katzenstein with how his OCD smoldered him whole, and how he had daily battles with his OCD. Going back to Waldman’s lecture, one point that stood out to me was how Waldman stated that he believes everyone has a unique perspective with art. I like to think of that saying as a pure fact, because it is true. I think that art is subjective in a way that it offers experience through what you think and what your perceptions are. Different perceptions and thoughts result in a different experience, and I believe that is what Waldman was saying. Your experience with a work of art will probably be different than someone else's. This is an overall theme to Waldman’s panel. One of Waldman’s biggest inspirations is poet John Ashbery. Waldman reviews one of Ashbery’s works’ titled Some Trees. From the reading, Waldman explains how the trees from the title become a lyrical connection to speech. The word evolved down the page. I thought this was fascinating. The fact that written words can be considered as lyrics seems like a wild thought, but comes to life with the words of Ashbery. This allows for an associative relationship as a reader, and allows for the introduction of ekphrasis to be present within words. Towards the end of Waldman’s lecture, I noticed that Waldman spoke in a relatively monotone, yet articulated fashion. I feel like the way he spoke fits in right with how the poems are supposed to be read. It definitely enhances the reading experience. In addition to Ashbery being a main inspiration, Ben Lerner is another standout poet that Waldman favors. It is safe to say that there were role models for Waldman, and they impacted his own works. One saying that Waldman said in his lecture was, “If you learn the traditional form you can learn to push against it.” This quote presents the idea of reciprocation, essentially saying that once you learn something, you can work from the opposite perspective. I think reciprocation is an important skill for people to have, and I believe that Waldman wanted to see his audience push the boundaries. Waldman goes on to state that if you’re not being vulnerable, the reader doesn’t really seem to care about you in the context of art. This goes to show that meaning and purpose should always be an aspect in the mind of a curator. Waldman also thinks that specificity is essential to written works, which ties back in with the importance of meaning in works. Overall, attending Waldman’s lecture made me open to the concept of ekphrasis, and opened my eyes to language as an art form.

#submissionVIRUSeye #VIRUSeye

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