when awkwardness arrives through drawing...

"drawing is immediate, requires little technological assistance. just making a mark. some primitive intention here. pre-linguistic maybe. but the drawing mark lies close to the linguistic sign. and drawing is a kind of sign making to be sure. but what kind of sign is the question that arises with every drawing mark that is always more than just a mark. and for me language is often also there, written on the page beside the non-linguistic marks. two different but inseparable kinds of marks/signs. only linguistic beings seem to make drawing marks (the apes that now make them are induced to do so by humans). getting out the sheet of paper and the stuff to make the marks means opening up a space that is both mental and physical. maybe in this space i get as close as i can to erasing, for a brief time, the mind/body problem, which is really not so much of a "problem" as a kind of awkwardness that arrives in the form of linguistic confusion."

text: robert morris, interview from "from mnemosyne to clio: the miror to the labyrinth"
images: robert morris, blind time drawings (some of my most favorite drawings in the world)

the grain of sand which will be my world...

"my ear - whose ear? - harks to the rustle, the grating shriek and whistle of the moving sea - the solid liquid sea of the numberless grains of sand. but i - i am under the sand; seeded way in some still cell of my body, like the grain of the desert, biding my time. i am still and wait to enter the drop of water, the grain of sand which will be my world, my universe. from the center of me within the grain, i shall shoot up one bursting letter written in that air which is nothing until i write it."

brion gysin, unpublished text, 1960 - 63.

brion gysin comes from a long line of writers, who also spent a serious amount of time exploring drawing and painting (his doppelganger is probably henri michaux - both explored painting as writing under the influence of some serious hallucinogenics).

like most of the writers (and composers) who explored the visual arts, gysin's visual works are vastly underrated, and are generally mistakenly viewed as secondary to his writing. if you look at the things he made and the ideas he worked with, it wouldn't do his oeuvre justice to simply call him a writer. gysin was working within his own complex universe, where he continually experimented with writing, recording, painting, drawing, and light (with the dream machine). in some ways, the visual works developed more depth over time, than any other aspect of his work.

the small ink drawing above (which i managed to snare from a used book dealer ages ago), seems to encompass so many of gysin's ideas and approaches; but mainly i love how it connects with the short text above. the little rows of fragmented brush strokes are so evocative as fragments of other worlds, and seem to suggest that if one looks at them, and listens to them, long enough - they might contain an entire universe.

multi-purpose chairs...

images from a 1943 article in architectural forum about the "recent" designs of frederick kiesler for peggy guggenheim's art of this century gallery. kiesler was a wonderfully inventive architect whose projects such as the conceptual endless house; and his only built structure, the shrine of the book at the israel museum, are clearly the work of a visionary.

his ideas regarding the display of artworks were somewhat nuts and definitely over the top (and probably pissed off a number of artists); but the idea of sacrificing the integrity of the single object towards an interactive spatial installation in many ways pre-figures the thinking behind much installation art from the 70's by at least 30 years.

the drawings above are for "the multi-purpose chair"; which was not only a beautiful organic form, but part of a larger project where single objects/structures could have multiple uses. the drawings, which suggest numerous uses, are certainly reminiscent of corb's modular drawings...

lines and lines...

about fifteen years ago i pasted the bottom image of a philip guston drawing into my image archive... yesterday, i pasted in the top photo from a recent architecture magazine, of the restoration of an old building...