okayjustgo: mfa and other unspecified things of the same class

Vicki Putz

Advisor: Cesare Pietroiusti

June 4, 2014

Summary of Semester

What I accomplished

The first period was full of experiments into the relationship of the audience (how much can the audience be aware of that relationship, what happens with more awareness and is the art experience enriched when the relationship between artist and audience is made explicit and especially if the work of meaning-making is overtly shared) to the artist, using manipulatable material (text and images) representing how the artist thinks (or thinks she thinks) about her identity (conscious-centered) and how or what the artist thinks (unconscious-centered). An attempt was made to follow the proposed format of three 30-day stages of work but was never fully realized as new threads were taken up.

In the first line of exploration about identity several meaningful projects were proposed. All seemed worthy projects elucidating more keenly the position one takes in relationship to others and the impact of positioning oneself, e.g. in feeling connected or detached, in joining or in displacing others. My willingness to reveal myself was left an open question (inasmuch as some things are more safe and appealing while others are risky– unpleasant or even repellent to others) and ultimately the identity work became tangential to the more immediately present and lively visual work. (One crossover project is continuing: the random distribution of a postcard soliciting personal information (e.g., "inches to closest person" and "sum of breaths") in the form of numbers with the promise of a response in the form of a work of art. While not explicitly a project of identity, it hopes to explore the degree to which connection can be born from the sharing of an interior identity, an imagined or dream-like picture of who we believe or think we are, and in view of our willingness to engage in associative play with another's mind- a thread from the second line of work.

In the second line of exploration, drawn/painted abstract imagery (relatively automatic) was translated into three dimensions (on the six sides of four inch by six inch blocks, three-fourths inch thick) to facilitate greater potential for manipulation and engagement (with the artist's offered fragments from her mind). Mentor Kate McNamara, Director and Chief Curator, Boston University Art Gallery, posited that the three-dimensional wood pieces brought a sense of organization to the work. Inasmuch as their weight and structure is sculptural, foundational (a foundation for building(s)), and unified, they are much less in need of 'reading' and sorting then my paper images, though the painted/drawn imagery (she argued) remains evocative and available as abstract material. And the blocks can more readily be consumed as a whole, a single statement of image, just as they are positioned in any combination of stacks, rows, or flat arrangements. As such, first-residency questions of audience entry and comprehension found partial answers in this new three-dimensional world.

The next stages of work focused on building an archive of blocks, or "continuously-painted objects." On second review, McNamara offered that the growing profusion of four-inch by six-inch blocks (or objects)– with their individual marks, gestures, and abstractions– were a form of "call and response." She saw the material as beckoning to the viewer's own associations, dreams, and thoughts, and cultivating a distinctive idiomatic engagement with each viewer, driven to respond with his/her manipulation of one or more blocks (or non-manipulation). She suggested the artwork was "giving" and "gift-like" inasmuch as I presented fragments of my mind without expectation, or obligation and I, as an artist, took obvious pleasure in cultivating an atmosphere of freedom to do what one wishes with what is given.

The curatorial aspect of the work was a constant focus. Would the viewer feel the arrangement of blocks was too sacred to disturb? What artifacts of the museum's authoritative position, and the knowing artist's 'careful' arrangement would get in the way of playful interaction? What arrangement of blocks would the artist make and what meaning would each have? Would there be material on the walls, in particular text (which remained a consistent line of entry for the viewer, whether printed on the block or in poems and other text written tangentially, laterally, crosswise)?

Contemplating the problem of incorporating of text along with the curatorial issue, I developed the idea of writing a letter to accompany each block. With this project, I proposed that the participant selects a block and proceeds to a docent for the accompanying letter. Private spaces for opening and reading the letter, ideally separate small rooms, would be part of this exhibit. In addition, writing and drawing materials would be provided so the participant could respond if desired. With this proposal, I began to think more and more about the participant, only an imaginary person at this point, but one (and many) that comes alive in my mind and with whom a longing-for develops, and ultimately a dreamed-up relationship but one rooted in the reality of a greater universe and faith in shared experience.

And from this jumping-off point, recursive participatory projects were conceived: 1) the above mentioned block/letter exhibit with photographs taken at regular intervals, and sound recordings made; 2) a second exhibit with a single block and artist's text of imagined participants, accompanied by sound recordings; participants may request a viewing of the full archive in another room; 3) display of photographs of the objects as they are handled and rearranged, sound recordings, exhibit of artists' letters not opened, and letters or visual material received in response.

Returning to the topic of thought, and in regard to questions posed in my study plan about the relationship of experience to thinking, and who shall have the freedom, responsibility and authority to do the thinking:

In some ways I am giving over thinking substantially, in offering fragmentary unarticulated material from my unconscious, and at the same time less so– in the manner of dreaming up the other, and also offering an increasingly large archive from which patterns, themes, connections can be derived. From readings on Lacan, it becomes important (in the rituals of my practice) to simply acknowledge that verbal thought and experience are intertwined and give over the question to observations of whether the connections between experience (here as both the material itself and as represented by the material) and verbal thought (and language) can be expanded, taken apart, reformed, discovered anew (what comes before and what comes after as in the signified and signifier). In the final paper, I propose the idea that intersubjectivity or mutually constructed meaning and experience, is a way out of arguments about authorship and a territory of interest (Jo Baer, perhaps being one artist to consider this initially).

Readings on participatory art has fueled two threads already intrinsic: 1) fear and doubt about not leveraging art to impact the greater good (this interests me in that the smallness and helplessness of our humanity warrants consideration and is an increasingly shared problematic experience, and a very personal one) and 2) increasing desire to break down the compartmentalization of artist and audience (or in Jessica Benjamin's schema, the doer and done-to) or the polarization of nonparticipatory art and participatory art (as is also related to intersubjectivity).

Evaluation

The semester successfully facilitated a concentrated period of discovery and narrowing of the subject/problem/questions of interest to this artist. Numerous questions raised in the study plan were unpacked and better understood, with varying degrees of resolution (i.e., those of entry, comprehensibility, and authority) while new ones were raised (i.e., how is intersubjectivity facilitated, what occurs with increasing attention on how the artist's mind constructs/imagines the audience and her relationship to him/her and when the process is made transparent or the audience member put up to a mirror).

A substantial amount of work was produced. 91 blocks have been completed to date, with a goal of 100 by the June residency.

I question the success of my drawing/painting style and whether a focused period of technical study is warranted. Mentor, Kate McNamara, did not share my concern (though improvements are always worthwhile, she acknowledged) and advised continued focus on the curatorial and performative aspects of the work (as is her bent).

McNamara also posited that the earlier identity explorations were embedded in the final body of painted/drawn works, through artifacts of who I am, what I think about and how, in the nature of my imaginary musings, speculations and dreams about participants. Since this might be said about any work and given my original considerations on identity, how I would like to position myself and how visible remains in need of more understanding. One caveat: a feminine subjectivity (in the interest in touch, intimacy and connection) may be more readily experienced at a manifest level, but also remains relatively unexamined. And any one of the original experiments could be expanded on.

I have been reluctant with the development of literary and textual elements then would fulfill the promise or expectation of the study plan.

I did much toe-dipping into art and literature as outlined in the study plan and as described in papers (along with museum visits). My over inclusive nature is persistently a less-than-satisfactory experience, and the degree to which this needs to be constrained can be discussed.

Plan

In view of the focus on production this semester, I propose deepening my exploration of the intrapsychic and interpsychic dimensions of this work with explicit dedication to reading, writing and reflective activities. Practically speaking, this may include assignments or exercises honing thinking and analytic skills and aimed at building a writing (and thinking) practice. In addition, the role of writing or text in proposed creative efforts will be further clarified. And ultimately, I would like to consider the overlap with my psychology practice (is this in the shape of shared meaning-making frameworks, or might I think more about the process, experiential material, and so on?)

Mentors under consideration for their curatorial and performative experience: Sandrine Schaefer, Boston-based artist, writer, independent curator, co-founder of The Present Tense, and MEME, Cambridge, MA; and Dina Deitsch, Curator of Contemporary Art at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.

Artist Statement

I offer fragments and bits of my mind so that you may converse with them, cannot help but converse with them even in your silence. We are a couple now. Before you arrived, I already had a sense you were coming and I held you in mind as I made these forms. If you wish, you will touch them, handle them and rearrange them knowing this. Or you may forget or not understand or not care. You will have your own thoughts and dreams about me, or perhaps about others or something or nothing at all.

Bibliography

Art and Its Significance. Ed. Stephen David Ross. Albany: State of University of New York Press. 1994. Print.

Beebe, Beatrice, Judith Rustin, Dorienne Sorter, and Steven Knoblauch. "An Expanded View of Intersubjectivity in Infancy and its Application to Psychoanalysis." Psychoanalytic Dialogues. 13.6 (2003): 805-841. Print.

Bishop, Claire. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London: Verso. 2012. Print.

Breton, Andrè. Nadja. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Grove Press, 1960. Print.

Burgin, Victor. Between, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Limited. 1986. Print.

Dickie, George. Evaluating Art. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988. Print.

Ferry, Jean. The Conductor and Other Tales. Trans. Edward Gauvin. Cambridge: Wakefield Press, 2013. Print.

Fink, Bruce. A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1997. Print.

Foster, Hal. "Chat Rooms." Ed. Claire Bishop. Participation: Documents of Contemporary Art. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006. 190-195. Print.

Fried, Michael. "Art and Objecthood." Artforum 5 June 1967: 12-23. Print.

Hyde, Lewis. The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. New York: Vintage Books. 2007. Print.

James, Robin. "In but not of, of but not in: On Taste, Hipness, and White Embodiment." Contemporary Aesthetics (2009): n. pag. Web. 9 Feb. 2014.

Kelly, Patricia. "Jo Baer, Modernism, and Painting on the Edge." Art Journal. 68.3 (2009): 52-67. Print.

Koch, Sigmund. Psychology in Human Context: Essays in Dissidence and Reconstruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1999. Print.

Krugman, David. "Empathy's Romantic Dialectic: Self Psychology, Intersubjectivity and Imagination." Psychoanalytic Psychology. 18.4 (2001): 684-704. Print.

Kuspit, Donald. The End of Art. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Kuspit, Donald. Interview by Emmet Cole. "Book Review: The End of Art." The Modern World. n.p. Web. 28 May 2004.

Lee, Nikki S. "Blinded by the white: art and history at the limits of whiteness." Art Journal 60.4 (2001): 38-67. Print.

Mitchell, W.J. Thomas. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1994. Print.

Morris, Catherine, and Bonin, Victor. Six Years: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art. Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum. 2012. Print.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Bend Sinister. Trans. New York: Random House, 1947. Print.

Nagel, Thomas. The View from Nowhere. New York: Oxford University Press. 1986. Print.

Ogden, Thomas. "The Analytic Third: Implications for Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique." The Psychoanalytic Quarterly. LXXIII.1 (2004): 167-195. Print.

Oldenburg, Claes. "I am for an art....(1961/1967). Artists, Critics, Context: readings in and around American Art since 1945. Ed. Paul F. Fabozzi. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc. 2002. 56-59. Print.

Participation. Ed. Claire Bishop. Cambridge: The MIT Press. 2006. Print.

Phillips, Adam. Terrors and Experts. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1995. Print.

Saroyan, Aram. Complete Minimal Poems. 2nd ed. New York: Ugly Duckling Presse. 2013. Print.

Sarup, Madran. An Introductory Guide to Post-Structualism and Postmodernism. 2nd ed. Athens: The University of Georgia Press. 1993. Print.

Staniszewski, Mary Anne. Believeing is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art. New York. Penguin Books. 1995. Print.

Syminton, Neville, and Symington, Joan. The Clinical Thinking of Wilfred Bion. New York: Routledge. 1996. Print.

Exhibitions Viewed

Whitney Biennial

DeCordova Biennial

MOMA- Alibis: Sigmar Polke

ICA- Expanding the Field of Painting

ICA- William Kentridge: The Refusal of Time

Intersubjectivity as a Way of Considering Aesthetic Experience

The four-inch by six-inch blocks I am painting have transformed themselves into objects, perhaps in the night, perhaps while awake, with all the connotations of objects: fetishes, tokens, relics, totems, bibelots....objects of design, of desire and objects of the self, and in relationship, object-relations.

A woman shall enter a museum and pick one up, a child in tow–maybe two–glad for a day without thinking about her pending desposition with a litigious ex-husband and a cheater, and possibly accompanied by a friend (male? handsome?). The child will walk around the display of blocks, distracted by his impulses and propensities, for several minutes and then decide (because it looks quite deliberate) to push and poke, while she is distracted herself, gladly, by the interest of her lover (or her female friend who laughs at her fantasies dared spoken aloud of boiling her ex-husband in oil). And the child will delight in the clamor of the blocks falling onto the white pedestal, an unspoiled plinth, though he won't notice its hallowedness at all but will only be curious as to whether his mother glances at him. She does not. But the flurry of his activity in the peripheral of her eye–like a fly, or maybe a gnat–and perhaps the brooding attention of other diverse, first-class folks will coerce her into picking one up or maybe it makes more sense that she snatches the block from her child's hands (he is clutching it with both) and embraces it in the palm of her hand so much larger than his, manicured in the manner of someone not meaning to be pretentious but just in an effort to care for herself in some small way, beautiful blush tulips at the tips of her fingers, with her digits–organs of operation and feeling–wrapping around the edges, in hands not yet distinguished by solar lentigines. She does not so much look at it, as hold it. Loosely. The block is allowed to move mindlessly, but just a little, cuddled, fussed over, caressed by her fingers. And she realizes, suddenly, that, she has, not really, held anything, anything of her very own, quietly, thoughtfully, for a long time. She is more struck by this grief then anything else and puts the block down somewhat embarrassed– perhaps others notice her grief–and returns to laughing–or flirting with her friend. She will go home and make dinner or he will take them out to dinner and the one son will need his teeth pulled but will grow up and get married, and the second child we can't know much about, really. Perhaps all will simply go well.

In the late 1960s, Jo Baer began making paintings that spread beyond the confined edges of the picture frame. Her work deliberately challenged the traditionally rooted position of the viewer square-on the canvas by situating parts of the image out of, or beyond, the center property of the canvas. She painted the edges of canvases that she had made deeper than the traditional stucture, and positioned her work close to the floor, effectively involving the surrounding space as an extension of the painted image. Thus the viewer has to move his or her body to see the entire work. The viewer's experience becomes an embodied experience in this engagement, that Baer describes as "a form of seeing grounded in material reality and rooted in the body as much as the eye" (58). Baer amplified the fact of the viewer's participation by giving it a temporal quality–time is required to move about her paintings–and by implementing optical techniques- e.g., the use of light and luminosity that made her abstractions even more illusionary and the nature of the pictoral reality ambiguous. Through activity, the viewer is compelled to call upon his or her subjective experience to reconcile material reality and perception, to constitute meaning to be found in Baer's paintings.

Kelly writes that Baer's work "promised the disinterested spectator participatory engagement" (52). A promise "means to commit oneself by a promise to do or give"[1] as opposed to 'to tell' as might be read in the intellectual focus of the work of her contemporaries. Perhaps this is making too much of a word, yet it is worth considering to what degree thinking about art has and could move into a realm of thinking of it as an exchange. And as an exchange that is doing and giving in the present moment. In Baer's paintings, a line drawn around the edges of the canvas is an invitation to look and specifically to change one's position to look, in the present, in real time. That the viewer may shift his or her position back again creates a kind of mutual and reciprocal process between the material present and what the viewer makes of that material in a particular moment. Experience is thus formed in reiterative sequences of sense experiences (that Bion termed Beta elements). These sense experiences arise from the material offered and are turned into meaningful thoughts or structures of thoughts (Nagel) that invite further investigation of the material, seen anew.

As a representative of the artist's experience, the material (particularly abstraction) could be considered a second subjective entity in this scenario. The interaction, now of two subjects, becomes an intersubjective one. An intersubjective viewpoint contends that more than one person (in psychology, usually two) contributes to the discernment of reality in a reciprocal and mutual process. Such a process is beyond dialogue, or the concrete passing back and forth of ideas, like a basketball. It involves all the senses to arouse an imaginative experience of another person that resonates and reverberates between the experiences and perceptions of both persons. In psychology, this ranges from the early experiences of mother and infant in balance (Beebe) to the analytic third that comes into being between two persons engaged in trying to understand each other (Ogden). According to Krugman in his text on the role of the imagination in empathy, it is a kind of affective connection and intellectual understanding at the same time or a swishing back and forth between emotion and intellect, that operates in the realm outside any thing (either person). Krugman cites the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge to make a philosophical case for "things without us" (693) as in the idea of material that is formed between two people, an exploration outside the scope of this paper.

An intersubjective viewpoint moves beyond arguments asking who is the author (see Barthes) or to whom the subjective experience belongs. Intersubjectivity is a relational activity, in which the overlapping contexts of the artist and the viewer are both relevant and vital to the finding or forming meaning. In Baer's work the choice to consider the embodied and intuitive experience of the viewer is a markedly female one, and a rejoinder to the intellectual amphitheater erected by male predecessors and contemporaries (based also on keen notions of autonomy and individuation). Similarly, when I paint or draw on one of my blocks, I am always holding the intention of another person. I feel as if I am gazing out from my mind in search of a meeting with another mind. And I wish to elicit his or her touch, and to own the desire for corporeal contact along with the pleasure of a shared affective and imaginative mental space. The expression of desire and yearning for connection is a feminist one, as is the latter awareness that 'owning' desire and pleasure can be a complicated and political activity (but the subject of another paper).

It will rain on a weekday and no one will come in. And what will it be like for the objects to sit (or stand) still, perfectly positioned, tall even spaces between each, not a quiver, not a sound except maybe a creaking noise as the plaster settles on the newly constructed wall of the museum, in formation as if to move though they never would on their own (how I wish I had a tin drum). The light turning bluer in the trite way it does every night, most nights, then blue gray or purplish and dark slowly. Unlike time, it seems to me you can sometimes see light change. And maybe the sun had come out before twilight so the shadows get long and longer and you see them grow majestically like in a stop-motion film from your childhood- or of your childhood (what was your childhood like, dear reader, so different than mine?)- until there is only a glimmer, precious cut and matching, on the edge of each and every single block, four-inch by six-inch each of 1000 and then it is dark. I will worry about them, alone, until dawn.

Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. "The Death of the Author." Aspen. (1967): 5-6.

Kelly, Patricia. "Jo Baer, Modernism, and Painting on the Edge." Art Journal. 68.3 (2009): 52-67. Print.

Krugman, David. "Empathy's Romantic Dialectic: Self Psychology, Intersubjectivity and Imagination." Psychoanalytic Psychology. 18.4 (2001): 684-704. Print.

Nagel, Thomas. The View from Nowhere. New York: Oxford University Press. 1986. Print.

Ogden, Thomas. "The Analytic Third: Implications for Psychoanalytic Theory and Technique." The Psychoanalytic Quarterly. LXXIII.1 (2004): 167-195. Print.

Syminton, Neville, and Symington, Joan. The Clinical Thinking of Wilfred Bion. New York: Routledge. 1996. Print.

[1] Wikipedia contributors. "Promise." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 26 Apr. 2014. Web. 9 May. 2014.

Advisor Cesare Pietroiusti

January 28, 2014

An Act of Reflecting on Something

Scrolled through long list of typefaces to get to Times New Roman. Haven't yet set format. Collected books from around the house. I am sure this is not all of them. Some still in luggage from the weekend away and other places. Many lost, returned, shared, donated, shelved, stacked, slid under the bed and into bags, boxes; bone yards of paper, ink, but also of thoughts.

I have read numerous books and articles, or parts thereof. It seems to have become a bit of a triumph among peers to read a certain number of texts that represents a lot. One such person asserted that five was it, especially in view of the fact that he or she planned to read many more.[1]

Modern artists are repeating themselves (Staniszewksi). The critics are noting the repetitions and scavenger birds are quite happy to make away with the scraps. I am for art that brings one to her senses, to the rotting smell of what dark interior is left after the birds have gone, or the lingering taste of sex, pleasure, communion.[2]

Poem on/for/about the[3] history of art: Venus is a lover a prostitute a whore and a good-looking one. Olympia too.

But what to do about things read: Adrian Piper[4] and Lucy Lippard[5], postmodernism, feminism (and white identity[6]), relational art and the end of painting (or not), concrete poetry[7] and useless pataphysics, surrealist manifestos against moral preoccupation, the concept of O[8], science that is not science and how language is not very helpful, really, not much, ever except to make us feel certain and smart, and certain about being smart, and therefore comfortable being ourselves while not being someone else, ever, and glad you are you and not some other.

While also knowing that Theresa Hak Kyung Cha was raped and killed by a serial rapist at a rather young age. I have ordered her book.

Taken all together, theory and established knowledge about art makes a good case for art that reflects on itself (history and methods) and reveals something fresh (new, original, an advance of thought), and that takes into account really reaching people (other than those within the art world or its institutions). So far so good. There also seems to be some worry over the lack of formal criteria for evaluating form but this is generally not fussed over a great deal, in lieu of the value of analysis and/or interpretation (see any art criticism outline, for example, along with the assigned readings). Sometimes going so far as to apply psychoanalytic theory, Freudian generally and frequently.

Most psychology practitioners have moved beyond Sigmund Freud (and Melanie Klein), and it seems more than nonsensical to continue to apply his theories to art (and artists). I could expound on a more apt theory (i.e., self psychology) to elucidate (nonpathologically) the meaning of creative acts, their contents and the role of the viewer, but this is mostly a rant to get out of the way. The point I want to make is the degree to which theory itself seems unable to take in its own lessons about getting to the gist of things so we can all understand.

Some 20 years ago, W.J.T. Mitchell heralded Robert Morris' work for pointing to the inadequacy of both text and image to get at meaning in any real (actual, tangible, material, verifiable, not artificial, sincere) way[9]. Mitchell uses words such as "entwine", "slither", "coil", "pulsate," "devouring," "loquacious," "prim," and "chaste" (272) to reference the images that stalk Morris (in his dreams and his work) but turns these into writing about meaning and experience rather than anything substantially meaningful in and of itself, that is into experience and particularly his experience. While also noting Morris' protests, on the other hand, of the experience of being written about– in this excerpt from his dream journal:

"The wall label disturbed my sleep. It grew to threatening proportions, entwined itself around me, babbled in my ear, wrapped itself over my eyes. It was a tangled, suffocating shroud of seething words in my dream. But in dreams begin responsibility, as the insomniac poet said. Have I had a dream of warning? I get up edgy." (242)

Too bad for me. The soot from the words hatched up in your rage last night on me. And you are not in the mood for sex, or even coffee. I went to bed feeling some confidence to tackle writing today but now feel I must go to the health clinic, get vaccinated and return home to sleep it off.

Mitchell tries to resist contextualizing, analyzing Morris by positing the temptation to do so and its problems. But he fails to let questions like "What can objects labeled 'Slab,' 'Beam,' and 'Box' say to us?" and "what can we possibly say about them?" sit. But, of course, what would it mean to let them sit?

Me: Paper.

You: Nothing.

Me: Shove (or a stronger word) paper.

Taken from one random reading, granted (and Kuspit not really explored[10]). But if the reader will indulge me: what I am trying to get at is whether it is possible to stand in front of a work of art and be moved. And to ask whether the feeling of that can be significant enough to stand for something. Then we might ask ourselves, and only then, whether art can know anything meaningful about itself and break away from its elitist institution(s).

To this point: it is easy to gloss over Mary Anne Staniszewski's mention of loss associated with the images on the cave walls at of Lascaux, while observing all the other smart and important ideas she posits. She scolds us, "we should respect this loss and the unfathomable remoteness of their history" (56) and not assert we know something about the artist, the images and their purposes– or even that they are in fact art. But the main point here is her powerful statement about the feeling experience of the images sans an analysis. How markedly different to ponder loss and remoteness, the helpless inability to know these ancestors, anything much at all about their experience of the world, whether when how they laughed and cried, if they knew hope and what hope or wish or want they held out in making the images on the wall and so on.

Can art, like the other in Winnicott's vision (and as expanded on by the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips), help us know to what degree our feelings of loss, helplessness, terror, rage, hate, disgust, love, and longing are real or fantasy by offering something back that is solid, resilient, and shared? And is there a place for theory to hazard this with us?

Notes

[1] I suffer from an inability to know what is enough to read (along with many other things). Sometimes I am compelled to start at the beginning, meaning I feel the need to read the Bible, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kant, Sartre, Freud– only for example and an ignorant one in terms of being an arbitrary recollection from a fairly incomplete and random life– before approaching texts written after the turn of the twentieth Century. Instantaneous contradictory thoughts plague me–infinite antinomalties (Koch 408) not just the four named by Nietzsche, namely space, time, God and free will (Koch 403)– along with self-doubt, forgetting, blocked thinking, distraction (see also Koch on meaningful versus ameaningful thought (236) and his personal experience with it). While at the same time I can feel it is indubitable that language and knowledge best serve defensiveness against uncertainty, helplessness and insecurity (not a victimless crime, see Phillips), that meaning is created in the successive accumulation of words (Derrida or was it Lacan?), history isn't linear (Foucault), and so on with the many feminist thinkers who have led the way in our understanding of the myriads of factors that contribute to constructions of reality, self and other (Sarup).

[2] Homage to Claes Oldenburg's interest in the left-out elements and experiences of an increasingly decorous American society.

[3] 'The' is a masculine article and indicates something clear, definite, categorical.

[4] Much to still be learned from Piper but is it worth noting that my cursory survey of Piper gave raise to the idea of desire and pleasure in art, and specifically my pleasure and whether pleasure that is my pleasure is a worthy project for a middle-aged white woman?

[5] And to continue the line of thinking, Lippard furthered feminist questions about whether women's "subjectivity was a concept to be problematized rather than forcefully asserted" (Morris and Bonin 48).

[6] This is a complicated subject I am broaching" to find a nimble way to work with persistent feelings about my privileged position and connotations for making art. Whiteness is posited to be a position of nothing in particular, "of" not "in," (Robins) and a subject additionally complicated to know/articulate and be received due to its embeddedness in its own privilege, history with a tendency toward appropriation, and dominance in public discourse (Lee). The nucleus of which hints at nearly insurmontable barriers to white individuals discussing whiteness or quite likely I am not seeing something.

[7] "Blod" (Saroyan 33) or possibly I mean minimal poetry.

[8] Wilfred Bion's ideas about a kind of mystical consciousness without the boundaries of concrete or categorical thought, useful here in thinking about art as a medium for such transcendence but not so much art as divine intervention or kitsch spiritualism as making frank the lessor expressed range of human sentiment: regret, guilt, hate (Syminton and Symington).

[9] Mitchell offers much in the way of thinking about the relationship between the image and text, fundamentally that there exists a gap between the visual and the written, seeing and speaking, and that while they may be linked and even act on each other ("text is an intrusion on the image, even a negation or interdiction" (209)), the gap may remain the most salient part of experience and still be inarticulable. "For Thucydides [reflecting on the Peloponnesian War], the fullness of history doesn't lie in what men did or what they said, what we could see and describe or what we could hear. It seeps through the cracks between hearing and seeing and speaking and acting" (106). It was quite meaningful to look at the works of Victor Burgin (in his book aptly titled "Between"), and recognize the degree to which text shifted the concrete to the abstract, and thought into dreaming.

[10] To go even further, Kuspit laments the lack of the presence of the artist's self: his or her yawning being, inimitable experiences and interred feelings (Cole). Kuspit asserts that what art could really do for us is help us face human darkness. Kuspit's book, "The End of Art," has arrived. Lest it be simply another pivot point like Lawson's "The End of Painting," I think it will hold all the answers as promised by its fearless and formidable title.