Assisi and La Verna

Today we went to Assisi and La Verna to learn more about St. Francis. Very beautiful places to visit, a totally different feel compared to Florence.

Assisi:

La Verna:

The Phenomenon of Interface

"The Phenomenom of Interface"

October 2010

Ink and Watercolour Pencil

On a day like today..

On a day like today,

you notice the little details.

San Lorenzo Market, Florence.

"Off-beat Silence" ringing

I woke up the other day actually in the middle of a sentence. My brain was just in the middle of putting something together when I woke up, I spent the whole day thinking about it, and the phenomenon of my brain actually putting together sentences, thoughts and "constructed" ideas together, while I am asleep really blew my mind.  After reading the Surrealist Manifesto and currently reading John Locke's Abuse of Words I can't help but constantly link them, and wonder where my thoughts are originating.  While in the midst of trying to put these thoughts together I suffered from a very strong mental block, so I pondered on all I read and it all built up against the walls and they completely crumbled, and I came up with this idea. It appears we experience (at least from my own personal understanding) a level of distress, waking up.

"Off-beat silence..." Ringing.

woke up in a sentence

Half in a thought in a mind

Woke up to the offbeat silence distilling murking grinding

Jarred forced, out of place unknown out of rhythm

An imposing realm on mind senses a break

Catch-up to reason logic gravity earthly-being and of knowing

To the
I am I, eye in eye

Self within myself

When they woke up to the mid second of interference
both ceased to exist.

Split between transition/
transfusion,

12:55am
October 20/2010

A.Baron

Poem on a theory how one does not exist for few seconds before they awake, as both the dreaming mind and the conscious mind are both transititioning, neither is in full effect.  Both caught in the interference of reality, the transitioning to.  No self is awake, as we are made up of both our sleeping and waking selves.  However, when one wakes up, they are taken away from the dream they were just in, awoken in half a thought, breath, action, reaction, etc. in another world.  A strange, brief lapse in consciousness of any sort, be it consciousness or subconsciousness which we experience just about everyday.

Early Frottage Experimentation

These are only a few of my pieces from early frottage experimentation and collaging.  I really enjoyed the process and on site adventures that went along with them!

Frottage I

(charcoal)

Frottage II

(charcoal)

Frottage III

(charrcoal and ink)

Frottage IV

(charcoal and watercolour)

Frottage V

(charcoal and watercolour)

Church in Ravenna 2010

(charcoal and ink)

Disorientation 2010

(charcoal, watercolour, acrylic and soft pastel)

Surrealist Manifesto

I just read the Surrealist Manifesto written by Andre Breton, and I truly found it to be an inspirational, humorous and thought provoking read.  It really brought light to some thoughts which I think float around in people's minds but we don't really know they have a definition or light shed on them...  Also, it's a very good perspective on writing and origin of thought, as well as the importance of dreams. Here are a few interesting and abstracted quotes from the manifesto:


-“...the absence of any known restrictions allows him the perspective of several lives lived at once; this illusion becomes firmly rooted within him; now he is only interested in the fleeting, the extreme facility of everything”


-“Christopher Columbus should have set out to discover America with a boatload of madmen. And note how this madness has taken shape, and endured.”


-“As a cleansing antidote to all this, M. Paul Valéry recently suggested that an anthology be compiled in which the largest possible number of opening passages from novels be offered; the resulting insanity, he predicted, would be a source of considerable edification”
- writings should give enough to the reader to imagine, but not enough to dictate what they see, the reader should have more choice than simply to “close the book”

- "If in a cluster of grapes there are no two alike, why do you want me to describe this grape by the other, by all the others, why do you want me to make a palatable grape? Our brains are dulled by the incurable mania of wanting to make the unknown known, classifiable. The desire for analysis wins out over the sentiments.** (Barrès, Proust.)”

-“ The imagination is perhaps on the point of reasserting itself, of reclaiming its rights. If the depths of our mind contain within it strange forces capable of augmenting those on the surface, or of waging a victorious battle against them, there is every reason to seize them--first to seize them, then, if need be, to submit them to the control of our reason.”

-  why do we hold reality higher than dreams?
- whose to say our dreams are more invalid than reality?

-“ Can't the dream also be used in solving the fundamental questions of life? Are these questions the same in one case as in the other and, in the dream, do these questions already exist?”

- the waking state a “phenomenon of interference”
- reality rarely expresses itself and when it does it is confined to an idea already

- “Let yourself be carried along, events will not tolerate your interference. You are nameless. The ease of everything is priceless.”  

-“ If man's awaking is harder, if it breaks the spell too abruptly, it is because he has been led to make for himself too impoverished a notion of atonement.”

-“ I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.”

-“ Let us not mince words: the marvelous is always beautiful, anything marvelous is beautiful, in fact only the marvelous is beautiful.”

-“ May you only take the trouble to practice poetry”

-“ I had begun to cherish words excessively for the space they allow around them, for their tangencies with countless other words which I did not utter.”

-“ The image is a pure creation of the mind.

It cannot be born from a comparison but from a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities.

The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be--the greater its emotional power and poetic reality...* (Nord-Sud, March 1918)”

-“ SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express--verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner--the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.”

-“ ENCYCLOPEDIA. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life. The following have performed acts of ABSOLUTE SURREALISM: Messrs. Aragon, Baron, Boiffard, Breton, Carrive, Crevel, Delteil, Desnos, Eluard, Gérard, Limbour, Malkine, Morise, Naville, Noll, Péret, Picon, Soupault, Vitrac.”

“ But we, who have made no effort whatsoever to filter, who in our works have made ourselves into simple receptacles of so many echoes, modest recording instruments who are not mesmerized by the drawings we are making, perhaps we serve an even nobler cause. Thus do we render with integrity the "talent" which has been lent to us. You might as well speak of the talent of this platinum ruler, this mirror, this door, and of the sky, if you like.”

The entire Surrealist Manifesto and more can be found here.

Self Portrait for Oct 16/2010

Self Portrait for October 16/2010

October 17/2010 4:26am

Landscape in Progress

My newest work in progress...

Florence Proposal

Proposal for my Florentine Exploration:

       

     "This year in Florence I would like my body of work to move in a more cohesive direction, using charcoal, acrylic, oil and watercolour to study the same concepts and how the medium itself can affect the image.  Gathering inspiration from Florence as a city and as a cultural centre, I would like to use my own intution and emotion to create surrealities of combined elements in foreign spaces. 

I would achieve this through use of textures and Frottage, and the human body in relationship to these textures and eventually, created landscapes.  In these methods, touch on the emotions embodied in Roman architecture, sculptures, paintings, etc. to combine tangible and untangible elements.  The importance of using an alien space is crutial to revealing the underlying tones of Florence and the human self, using collage and a variety of materials in its essence.  At some point, I hope to resolve some of the issues lieing in the self and in society where one can arrive at words simply not images, and incorporating them into the final work.

            My Research for these ideas will be self-directed pulling and combining articles from OCAD online, as well as information taught in Art History or any other readings and films important to the program itself.  Personal research starting at Max Ernst’s paintings and techniques, as well as other surrealist and abstract artists whome I can relate to.  In hopes to fuse the technical knowledge with writing and poetry such as Inferno by Dante and John Locke’s writings on the absurdity of words in language, how ideas start and end.  As well as diving into Romantic era poetry and the abstract poetry of E.e Cummings, to initate an absurd yet relatable world where one can heal themselves in the process of making art, as well as the viewer finding a resolved world.  In this, the process of art will be a constant exploration."

Duomo Frottage

Finally going to let this piece rest... unless it shows me more I think it's done more than what I had expected from it... So satisfying to bring out these images!

Duomo Frottage

Studio Space I

Studio Space II