against employing the quasi-scientific method in art

Reading Art in Theory on the advice of John Baca, I am amazed by the sucessive layers of blinders art has shed over the century. Amazing to think that painting modern urban life was seen as a shattering departure from the nudes and landscapes that had previously dominated paintings. Imagine a medium so unexplored that a change in subject-matter -- not technique -- could be seen as a new direction.

And then painting undergoes the myriad revolutions in representation: the freedom from depicting the world as it is and then from depicting the world -- invented or otherwise -- at all.

Surprisingly, through these drastically different developments I am able to identify a constant in the perspective of the artist: that these developments are not forced, or approached in a scientific way, but are allowed to mature in a very personal form of organic growth.

From Otto Weininger's anti-science manifesto ''Sex and Character'':

"the genius sees nature and all existences as whole; the relations of things flash on him intuitively; he has not to build bridges of stones between them. And so the genius cannot be an empirical psychologist slowly collecting details and linking them by associations..." (p. 35)

to Kandisnky:

"And nothing is more dmaging or more sinful than to seek one's form by force. One's inner impulse, the creating spirit, will inexorably create at the right moment the form it finds necessary. One can philosophize about form; it can be analyzed, even calculated. It must, however, enter into the work of art of its own accord, and moreover, at the level of completeness which corresponds to the development of the creative spirit." (p. 95)

the theory-driven approach to creating employed in our digital media mfa seems antithetical to the process so many of these artists are espousing. The artist statement, which seems to function as an unachievable but necessarily illuminating beacon in my work, is thouroughly denigrated by the artists of the first half of the twentieth century. (I'll comment on the latter half once I have read that far)

"It is impossible to make clear the aim of a work of art by means of words"
(Kandinsky, p. 97).

"The spirit that will lead us into the realms of tomorrow can only be recognized through feeling... Theory is the lantern that illuminates the crystallized forms of yersterday and before
(Kandisnky, p. 90)"

"Talking about art is almost useless. The work which brings about some progress in one's own craft is sufficient compensation for not being understood by the imbeciles."
(Cezanne, p. 38)

"He must beware of the literary spirit which so often causes the painter to deviate from his true path... to lose himself too long in intangible speculation"
(Cezanne, p.37)

"Artists have talked more nonsense about art than any class of men."
(Meier-Graefe, p. 55)

The message seems to immerse oneself in one's own craft, to express in art what we cannot express in words, rather than to use the art-making process as some quasi-scientific means of research, or as a complex symbol for some theory I want others to experience.

The quasi-scientific is comforting. This sucessive soldering of ideas to applications to create a massive intertwined complex of association and proof and relation that is really only held together by my process is massive and tangible. But obscurity does not necessarily denote depth. Devising tools that enable others to comprehend this disjointed, soul-less creature does not provide any answers to great questions or even shared truths: it merely reveals the associations I have made between disparate elements.

amidst uncanny signs

Appropriate then, that when I read these two quotes I thought instantly of my plans for the Planked Mechanical process:

"We are incapable of seeing a series of unfamiliar signs or hearing a sucession of unknown words, without at once falsifying the perception from considerations of intelligibility, on the basis of something already known to us.
(Freud, p. 28)"

"Original man must have wandered through a world full of uncanny signs. He must have trembled at each step."
(de Chirico, p. 61)

because this seems the inevitable result of deliberate quasi-scientific method applied to art. Unrelated icons that accrete meaning through their juxtaposition -- further, through their mechanical connection -- with each other. By preying on the affordances and purported cause and effect that cranks and gears introduce to the already meaning-full (not meaningful) inter-relation of icons, I can create a huge empty spectacle.

The image is a great hollow sphere of tangled wire with a perversely lolling doll's head on top: it seems massive and complex and interconnected and human - but it is empty. I could call it a symbol of our times, the postmodern media manipulation that replaces knowledge and experience: the signifier over the signified. Its a perverse gestalt in which the sum of many meaningless and interconnected parts creates the appearance of a meaningful whole.

Strange how doing exactly what they are saying not to seems to be a solution for what I am currently seeking, my pet truths of the moment:

PET TRUTHS

• false nostalgia
• misapply
• We are all full of shit
• We always fuck up
• the ridiculous savior who ruins all (development)
• negative is not deep
• sarcasm is the crutch of the insecure mind

It is pure surface bollocks attained through painstaking attention to detail. It is ridiculous. This redeems it. Or is it just its "ironic" crutch?...

Also, how deep should the deceit go? If the point is that it is meaningless, do I reveal this, or do I use documentation and artist's talks to further the facade? If the spectacle is the goal, then I should build the spectacle from every angle I can. But it is so refreshing to simply state that it is meaningless, in the hope that they will build their complex lies. It wasn't satisfying to lie about the hay: the simple, fact that I like how it smells is so much more refreshing than pretending it was meant to be faux-detritus.