Charles Olsen teacher/mentor/supporter of Twombly said that, in Western culture, the priority of two intellectual forces, abstraction and self-reflection, had led humans to become estranged from their own bodies and nature. Olson hoped to return unity and balance by placing humans among other objects in the roiling, curving, contingent reality described by modern physics and non-Euclidean geometry. Humans would exist fully contextualised, as sentient objects situated in the same space and time as the objects of their perception.
In 1951, Olson wrote: ‘what I like about Twombly is this sense one gets that his apprehension … is buried to the hips, to the neck, if you like’. This apprehension aligned with his vision of the artist whose ‘inner’ life and ‘outer’ life were enmeshed, whose body acted as a porous membrane, in which energy flowed in and out, part of an overall field of energy. In this field, all entities co-exist and ‘decide’ whether or not to take energy emanating from another entity. In this schema, everything is always in a process of self-formation, including the human subject who emerges from the facts and particularities of reality. More importantly, rationalised power structures are overthrown. Human balance and proportion are restored through a system of causal interrelationships, one object acting on another.
In this kinetic, interdependent universe, humans did, however, retain agency. They alone could move from a state of pre-cognitive apprehension of universal energy, to a coalescing of knowledge gleaned from immersion in that energy, to the construction of forms that are derived organically from and in balance with what is known. In a poem of 1950, ‘ABC’s (2)’, Olson described a course from the pre-cognitive state of apprehension, to a coalescing of knowledge, to acts of human agency that include making art:
of rhythm is image
of image is knowing
of knowing there is
a construct
To further harmonise man with nature, Olson advocated a return to ‘mythic consciousness’, the state before logos and the human urge to dominate became the rule. To locate it, Olson envisioned a new archaeology in which past, present and future history penetrate one another, in paratactic arrangement, to reveal and create metaphors and narratives useful to modern life.
Two alternatives: make your own story – fiction, or history: when you are up against it, to equal what went on. One can know what one oneself makes, but to know what happened, even to oneself? … It isn’t a question of fiction versus knowing. ‘Lies’ are necessary in both – that is the HIMagination. At no point outside a fiction can one be sure. What did happen? Two alternatives: make it up; or try to find out. Both are necessary.
Nearly all of the above from: http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/08autumn/carol-a-nigro.shtm
Image list:
1. The Age of Alexander 1959-60 paint, pencil on canvass
2. Tiznit, 1953 White lead, house paint, crayon, and pencil on canvas
3. Free Wheeler 1955, house paint, crayon, pencil, and pastel on canvas
4. Poems to the Sea, 1959
5. The Four Seasons: Summer 1994, paint,mpencil, crayon on canvass
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
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