More on Robert Irwin and “Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees”
For Robert Irwin, the California artist I mentioned in an earlier blog, at a certain point in his career following his curiosity became more important than his ambition, and according to Lawrence Weschler whose interviews are the “meat” of this book, Irwin has continued on that path.
In the 1960s, he encountered so many questions in his work and these questions drove him in his investigations of painting. He realized that our culture is geared toward answers, not questions, and it is performance that counts. As he said, “I find it very precarious for a culture only to be able to measure performance and never to be able to credit the questions themselves.” (page 90) Irwin pursued answers to his questions in painting and when he made a discovery he moved on to something else, to the frustration of his dealer who had to educate his public all over again when Irwin’s painting changed dramatically.
Over the years, periodically Irwin took a break from the world, and by all appearances spent time doing “nothing,” but the way I see it, he was allowing his whole being to reconstitute. He seemed to be really good at knowing what he needed to do at any given time.
I’m skipping huge swaths of his career, but eventually Irwin realized that he did not want his painting to be a metaphor for something. He did not want viewers to look at it and say, oh, that reminds me of a tree or a this or a that. He wanted his work to be IT, to be a presence for the viewer, and not a metaphor for a presence. He began working in empty rooms, and worked meticulously on the surfaces of the walls, creating spaces that reacted to light in certain ways. He used natural light, electric light and/or scrim as a medium to create a certain kind of atmosphere and light. Many people would go into these spaces, and turn around and come out because they thought the room was empty. For the people who could actually “see” and not just “look,” these rooms became an experience in perception of something they had not experienced before.
Eventually Irwin began making proposals for installations and works in public spaces. If the photos in this book are an accurate indication, one of the most spectacular of his works is the Central Garden at the Getty Center in California. He chose hundreds of grasses, flowers, shrubs, trees and ground covers to sculpt a landscape that included paths and water running down a slope to a pool at the bottom. It was enormous undertaking, but he was not content to simply design this garden, but he was present daily to work with the people doing all the landscaping and planting.
The people in charge of the Getty wanted to put up a plaque, and Irwin resisted. In the end, he agreed to the following inscribed on a pair of little stones: “Ever present, never twice the same” and on the other side of the stone “Ever changing, never less than whole” along with his name and date - Robert Irwin December 1997.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
International Festival of Authors
The annual International Festival of Authors at Toronto’s Harbourfront is such a splendid source of pleasure and inspiration, whether you are a reader of books or a writer.
I attended four of the “Round Tables” of the festival, groups of writers talking about the writing process and their own books. I particularly enjoyed sitting in on the conversation between three authors who wrote books in Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians series, edited by John Ralston Saul: Mark Kingwell (biography of Glenn Gould), Daniel Poliquin (biography of René Levesque) and Jane Urquhart (biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery). The conversation was moderated by Charlotte Gray who wrote a biography of Nellie McClung for the series.
It was fascinating to see how different each of the people were who were the subjects of the books. What they all had in common, however, is a struggle with a religious heritage, which had an impact in their emotional life and in their relationships with people close to them. This Penguin series is making a contribution to the discourse on Canada as a nation made up of people who are full of contradictions and care about contributing to the world through self-fulfillment.
The most memorable part of the ten-day festival for me was the opening night, a PEN Canada Benefit, a conversation between Diana Athill and Alice Munro, moderated by CBC host Bill Richardson, who I think has the funniest sense of humour on this earth. Athill (age 92) and Munro (age 78) had never met until last week, as they admired each other from afar.
Athill began working with André Deutsch when he founded his publishing house in the 1950s until the company ceased operation in the 1980s. She was the editor for such writers as Philip Roth, Jean Rhys and Mordecai Richler. She has written several novels, but during the last years she wrote her memoirs. Her “Somewhere Towards the End” is a brilliant book that does not shy away from what it is like to be old. She is sharp-witted and has the ability to marvel at what life brings to an individual, and yet sense how enormous is the whole of humanity on this planet.
Alice Munro, the eminent short story writer, once said that there is no such thing as an ordinary person, that everyone is fascinating. Even the most boring person is interesting if you are able to really see her or him.
Hearing these two women talk to each other, I felt I was in the presence of great wisdom, even though they both claimed that in their old age they do not feel wiser, but calmer.
The annual International Festival of Authors at Toronto’s Harbourfront is such a splendid source of pleasure and inspiration, whether you are a reader of books or a writer.
I attended four of the “Round Tables” of the festival, groups of writers talking about the writing process and their own books. I particularly enjoyed sitting in on the conversation between three authors who wrote books in Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians series, edited by John Ralston Saul: Mark Kingwell (biography of Glenn Gould), Daniel Poliquin (biography of René Levesque) and Jane Urquhart (biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery). The conversation was moderated by Charlotte Gray who wrote a biography of Nellie McClung for the series.
It was fascinating to see how different each of the people were who were the subjects of the books. What they all had in common, however, is a struggle with a religious heritage, which had an impact in their emotional life and in their relationships with people close to them. This Penguin series is making a contribution to the discourse on Canada as a nation made up of people who are full of contradictions and care about contributing to the world through self-fulfillment.
The most memorable part of the ten-day festival for me was the opening night, a PEN Canada Benefit, a conversation between Diana Athill and Alice Munro, moderated by CBC host Bill Richardson, who I think has the funniest sense of humour on this earth. Athill (age 92) and Munro (age 78) had never met until last week, as they admired each other from afar.
Athill began working with André Deutsch when he founded his publishing house in the 1950s until the company ceased operation in the 1980s. She was the editor for such writers as Philip Roth, Jean Rhys and Mordecai Richler. She has written several novels, but during the last years she wrote her memoirs. Her “Somewhere Towards the End” is a brilliant book that does not shy away from what it is like to be old. She is sharp-witted and has the ability to marvel at what life brings to an individual, and yet sense how enormous is the whole of humanity on this planet.
Alice Munro, the eminent short story writer, once said that there is no such thing as an ordinary person, that everyone is fascinating. Even the most boring person is interesting if you are able to really see her or him.
Hearing these two women talk to each other, I felt I was in the presence of great wisdom, even though they both claimed that in their old age they do not feel wiser, but calmer.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
ON ROBERT IRWIN, CALIFORNIA ARTIST
I am reading a wonderful book called "seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees - Over Thirty years of Conversations with Robert Irwin" by Lawrence Weschler. Irwin is a California artist whose early work in Abstract Expressionism attracted the attention of art critics and galleries.
During his high school years he was fascinated with cars, and worked on cars with a Zen-like intensity. He would finish and refinish small sections that no one would ever see. Later, he pointed back to these years as the beginning of the care he put into his paintings as a mature artist. When he was young,he travelled around Europe for a time and ended up on Ibiza, a small island on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. There he spent eight months living alone in a small cabin, not talking to anyone.
He described what happened on Ibiza, saying that usually when you get bored “you plug yourself in somewhere: you call somebody up, you pick up a magazine, a book, you go to a movie, anything.” These things help to form your identity and the sense that you are alive. But he did none of that, and as he put it, he pulled out all the usual plugs and at first it was painful, having none of those distractions. But when he got all the plugs pulled out, it became “serene, it’s terrific. It just becomes really pleasant, because you’re out, you’re all the way out.” He was no longer thinking about things in the usual sense, but his thoughts became pure ideas, “stripped of any worldly ambitions or motives.”
After this experience, Irwin went back to his normal life in California, got married and continued making art and building up his reputation. In 1957, at the age of twenty-nine, he had a show at the prestigious Felix Landau gallery in Los Angeles and he had a chance to have a good look at what he had been doing. When he saw all his work hanging, he realized the paintings did not hold up. The opening was painful because the people who came told him how wonderful the show was, but he knew in his heart his paintings were worthless to himself. He stopped doing what he had been doing. That was the beginning, he said, of his real education.
It took ten or twenty year before Irwin absorbed what happened to him on Ibiza. He began following his curiosity with an intensity and persistence that he has continued to this day. The way I read Irwin, it seems to me that grappling with “root questions” about ”basic relationships of the three or four primary aspects of existence in the world: being-in-time, for example, space, presence” freed him so that he was able to push way past where he had gone with his art in the past.
I’m only a third of the way through this book, but one of the pleasures of it is discovering how this artist thinks. He is so articulate and clear about himself and his work that he is able to let us in on how he evolved from when he first started working as an artist to the present, though I have not yet read to the point in the book that goes into his later work. I like the format of the book, the way Lawrence Weschler ties together the long quotes by the artist. I had expected the book would be in an interview format, but Weschler is adept at tying together and illuminating Irwin’s accounts of his life and work. More about this book as I continue to read.
I am reading a wonderful book called "seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees - Over Thirty years of Conversations with Robert Irwin" by Lawrence Weschler. Irwin is a California artist whose early work in Abstract Expressionism attracted the attention of art critics and galleries.
During his high school years he was fascinated with cars, and worked on cars with a Zen-like intensity. He would finish and refinish small sections that no one would ever see. Later, he pointed back to these years as the beginning of the care he put into his paintings as a mature artist. When he was young,he travelled around Europe for a time and ended up on Ibiza, a small island on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. There he spent eight months living alone in a small cabin, not talking to anyone.
He described what happened on Ibiza, saying that usually when you get bored “you plug yourself in somewhere: you call somebody up, you pick up a magazine, a book, you go to a movie, anything.” These things help to form your identity and the sense that you are alive. But he did none of that, and as he put it, he pulled out all the usual plugs and at first it was painful, having none of those distractions. But when he got all the plugs pulled out, it became “serene, it’s terrific. It just becomes really pleasant, because you’re out, you’re all the way out.” He was no longer thinking about things in the usual sense, but his thoughts became pure ideas, “stripped of any worldly ambitions or motives.”
After this experience, Irwin went back to his normal life in California, got married and continued making art and building up his reputation. In 1957, at the age of twenty-nine, he had a show at the prestigious Felix Landau gallery in Los Angeles and he had a chance to have a good look at what he had been doing. When he saw all his work hanging, he realized the paintings did not hold up. The opening was painful because the people who came told him how wonderful the show was, but he knew in his heart his paintings were worthless to himself. He stopped doing what he had been doing. That was the beginning, he said, of his real education.
It took ten or twenty year before Irwin absorbed what happened to him on Ibiza. He began following his curiosity with an intensity and persistence that he has continued to this day. The way I read Irwin, it seems to me that grappling with “root questions” about ”basic relationships of the three or four primary aspects of existence in the world: being-in-time, for example, space, presence” freed him so that he was able to push way past where he had gone with his art in the past.
I’m only a third of the way through this book, but one of the pleasures of it is discovering how this artist thinks. He is so articulate and clear about himself and his work that he is able to let us in on how he evolved from when he first started working as an artist to the present, though I have not yet read to the point in the book that goes into his later work. I like the format of the book, the way Lawrence Weschler ties together the long quotes by the artist. I had expected the book would be in an interview format, but Weschler is adept at tying together and illuminating Irwin’s accounts of his life and work. More about this book as I continue to read.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Mary Meigs
Mary Meigs was an American-born Montreal painter and writer, who died in 2002. She wrote as though she were painting;in her books she delineated her own character and those of the people with whom she had close relationships. I am really taken by her her journals and autobiographical writings.
I’ve just finished reading her "The Medusa Head", an autobiographical work that focuses on herself, her partner Marie-Claire Blais and another woman she calls “Andrée” with whom they had a brief relationship. Her understanding of herself and her two lovers is astounding and she writes with an openness that I admire. Meigs was very wise, and I am happy that she left behind for us at least some of what she discovered. Here is a short excerpt, an example of how she articulated one aspect of being an artist.
“One is perpetually walking the tightrope between selfishness and generosity, the generosity that comes from a state of awareness of others, and an artist’s selfishness - the holding together of the conditions necessary to be an artist.” (p. 105 The Medusa Head)
Mary Meigs was an American-born Montreal painter and writer, who died in 2002. She wrote as though she were painting;in her books she delineated her own character and those of the people with whom she had close relationships. I am really taken by her her journals and autobiographical writings.
I’ve just finished reading her "The Medusa Head", an autobiographical work that focuses on herself, her partner Marie-Claire Blais and another woman she calls “Andrée” with whom they had a brief relationship. Her understanding of herself and her two lovers is astounding and she writes with an openness that I admire. Meigs was very wise, and I am happy that she left behind for us at least some of what she discovered. Here is a short excerpt, an example of how she articulated one aspect of being an artist.
“One is perpetually walking the tightrope between selfishness and generosity, the generosity that comes from a state of awareness of others, and an artist’s selfishness - the holding together of the conditions necessary to be an artist.” (p. 105 The Medusa Head)
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Too Fast
Deborah Windsor, the Executive Director of the Writers’ Union of Canada, wrote a short article in the Union’s magazine, “Write,” about the difficulties of adapting to the new technologies. She said she likes the old way of doing things, and she admitted that’s a problem. I’m with her - I still like paper and the old ways of putting a book together. At the same time, I see the huge advantage technology has brought us. For myself, I would like technology to slow down.(But don't take away my computer!)
Around the same time I read Deborah’s little article, I heard a feature on CBC about the rapidity of developments in the field of technology. In the past, there was a greater time lapse between major inventions. Now, time between the invention of each piece of technology is much shorter. I’m curious how this pace of change will affect the human race over the long haul.
Sometimes when I am flying, I think that human beings weren’t “made” to move this quickly, and weren’t meant to be hundreds of feet off the ground. I’m more earth-bound than most, perhaps. It’s not for nothing that earth day and my birthday are the same date!
Deborah Windsor, the Executive Director of the Writers’ Union of Canada, wrote a short article in the Union’s magazine, “Write,” about the difficulties of adapting to the new technologies. She said she likes the old way of doing things, and she admitted that’s a problem. I’m with her - I still like paper and the old ways of putting a book together. At the same time, I see the huge advantage technology has brought us. For myself, I would like technology to slow down.(But don't take away my computer!)
Around the same time I read Deborah’s little article, I heard a feature on CBC about the rapidity of developments in the field of technology. In the past, there was a greater time lapse between major inventions. Now, time between the invention of each piece of technology is much shorter. I’m curious how this pace of change will affect the human race over the long haul.
Sometimes when I am flying, I think that human beings weren’t “made” to move this quickly, and weren’t meant to be hundreds of feet off the ground. I’m more earth-bound than most, perhaps. It’s not for nothing that earth day and my birthday are the same date!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
On Putting a Book Together
16 September, 2009
I spent yesterday afternoon at Cormorant Books working with the production manager, Barry Jowett on the placement of images for "Perfect Red," my biography on Paraskeva Clark. Because of budgetary constraints, the photos and paintings will be in three sixteen-page signatures in the book, which means the images will not appear with related text, but they will be gathered into sections (signatures) inserted at certain places in the book. Placing images in signatures instead of scattering them throughout the text costs as much as $15 per book more to produce because heavier paper must be used throughout, not just on pages where images appear. Heavier paper is used for the signatures and lighter, less expensive paper is used in the rest of the book. Would you pay $15 more for "Perfect Red" to avoid having to flip back to another part of the book to look at a painting about which you are reading? I doubt it, but I wish you would.
A book on art and artists is so much more satisfying, more beautiful and so much more unified when the paintings and photos appear within the text where they belong.
I understand that publishers must stay within their budgets to keep down the prices on books or they won’t sell, but I can’t avoid feeling frustrated with yesterday's process. The three sixteen-page signatures, a total of forty-eight pages, do not give us enough space for all the paintings and photos that must be included in the book. I came away desperately wanting another signature for the rest of the paintings, but I am not sure it will be possible to add another signature because of the additional cost. If not, Barry and I will have to go back through the whole process again to place the images, and many will have to be much smaller. I don’t like these compromises.
All this makes me feel like railing against the values in our culture: art, which feeds the spirit, is not seen as an essential part of our lives so artists and writers constantly are stymied in the process of giving what is their to give to society. The dominant attitude in our consumer culture is that if something isn’t cheap, well, it should be cheaper. What does this generalization have to do with my work yesterday? Think about it and let me know.
I spent yesterday afternoon at Cormorant Books working with the production manager, Barry Jowett on the placement of images for "Perfect Red," my biography on Paraskeva Clark. Because of budgetary constraints, the photos and paintings will be in three sixteen-page signatures in the book, which means the images will not appear with related text, but they will be gathered into sections (signatures) inserted at certain places in the book. Placing images in signatures instead of scattering them throughout the text costs as much as $15 per book more to produce because heavier paper must be used throughout, not just on pages where images appear. Heavier paper is used for the signatures and lighter, less expensive paper is used in the rest of the book. Would you pay $15 more for "Perfect Red" to avoid having to flip back to another part of the book to look at a painting about which you are reading? I doubt it, but I wish you would.
A book on art and artists is so much more satisfying, more beautiful and so much more unified when the paintings and photos appear within the text where they belong.
I understand that publishers must stay within their budgets to keep down the prices on books or they won’t sell, but I can’t avoid feeling frustrated with yesterday's process. The three sixteen-page signatures, a total of forty-eight pages, do not give us enough space for all the paintings and photos that must be included in the book. I came away desperately wanting another signature for the rest of the paintings, but I am not sure it will be possible to add another signature because of the additional cost. If not, Barry and I will have to go back through the whole process again to place the images, and many will have to be much smaller. I don’t like these compromises.
All this makes me feel like railing against the values in our culture: art, which feeds the spirit, is not seen as an essential part of our lives so artists and writers constantly are stymied in the process of giving what is their to give to society. The dominant attitude in our consumer culture is that if something isn’t cheap, well, it should be cheaper. What does this generalization have to do with my work yesterday? Think about it and let me know.
Monday, September 7, 2009
On the Credit River in the energetic little town of Erin, Ontario sits the Porcupine’s Quill, an equally energetic press where Elke and Tim Inkster live and work. These two people, recipients of the Order of Canada on Canada Day 2008, spend long hours typesetting, and printing and binding the books they publish. (An aside here: how does it happen that someone with the name of “Inkster” becomes a publisher who prints books?)
When I visited the Inksters last week with the purpose of checking over my Joyce Wieland: Writings and Drawings 1952-1971, which they are publishing later this year (date not yet set), Tim gave me a tour. I was astounded how tidy the whole establishment is. In my many years as a freelance book editor, I’ve been in and out of publishing houses countless times and I cannot remember any publishing house this tidy. In fact, what I remember is general chaos in many offices. Not Porcupine’s Quill! When I commented on this to Tim and Elke, they told me that when you are small everything must have its place.
Perhaps PQ is small, but its award-winning history is admirable, as is its commitment to careful production of its books. The books are printed on a Heidelberg Press that is nearly forty years old, using only high-grade paper. The Inksters put the books together with sewn bindings - now rarely used in publishing fiction - as opposed to glueing, which is not nearly as durable. They have a 1907 model Smyth national book sewing machine that appears to be in great shape, much older than it looks.
That the proprietors of Porcupine’s Quill publish books because they love them is obvious. So today I write in praise of publishers who love books.
When I visited the Inksters last week with the purpose of checking over my Joyce Wieland: Writings and Drawings 1952-1971, which they are publishing later this year (date not yet set), Tim gave me a tour. I was astounded how tidy the whole establishment is. In my many years as a freelance book editor, I’ve been in and out of publishing houses countless times and I cannot remember any publishing house this tidy. In fact, what I remember is general chaos in many offices. Not Porcupine’s Quill! When I commented on this to Tim and Elke, they told me that when you are small everything must have its place.
Perhaps PQ is small, but its award-winning history is admirable, as is its commitment to careful production of its books. The books are printed on a Heidelberg Press that is nearly forty years old, using only high-grade paper. The Inksters put the books together with sewn bindings - now rarely used in publishing fiction - as opposed to glueing, which is not nearly as durable. They have a 1907 model Smyth national book sewing machine that appears to be in great shape, much older than it looks.
That the proprietors of Porcupine’s Quill publish books because they love them is obvious. So today I write in praise of publishers who love books.
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