The Dance Partner

She put her hand into his and led him to the dancefloor. He realized she was in front and bringing him along with her. His anxiety began to disappear. It was like a smile inside of him. When they reached an empty spot, she turned around and opened herself to him. Reaching forward with both arms she put her hand into his once again. His other moved along her arm, starting at her elbow and under; to the back of her shoulder. She first put her hand on his bicep and then moved it up farther to the side of his shoulder. He could tell she didn't know how to dance very well, so he looked her in the eye and smiled. Her anxiety began to disappear.

First, he dipped her to the left slightly and the stepped back and she followed. He slid his hand out from under her arm and then held both of her hands. They were soft and fleshy. He could only slightly sense the bones inside them. They weren't plump or loose, but like little bodies. They were her breasts and thighs and waist and neck... they rested in his hands awaiting whatever he wished to do next. She looked at him. Her eyes were dark and large, framed with strong cheekbones and brow. He was used to a more petite women in height, so being able to look at her face without looking down caused him to admire her subconsciously. Her beauty also made it easy.

In a Waffle House World...

the line cook wears his hairnet underneath a folded-paper boat. He works the pots and pans like he has eight arms, ham here, heating oil in that pan, cracks an egg (that's TWO hands... no he did it with one. I didn't even see what he did with the shell.) He wipes down the 6inch counter top he has in front of him... and it's all done with no flair, barely even with effort. The waffle waitress called out the order, messed it up and didn't repeat it. Dude was on it. Some country song was playing and then Phil Collins. [It] Didn't phase him.

I think his name is Eliazer. I guess that's a pretty unique name to only think that it might be what his name is... so I'm gonna say that's what it is. Eliazer. Waffle House blazer on target like a laser with the tater...tots, momma ...ummmmm, correction--- Waffle House doesn't have tater tots, just hash browns. They don't have french fries either!!! I had afriend once who was really upset about that. He eats his french fries with mayonaise which kind of grossses me out so I'm glad (at the time) that don't have french fries.

That's all.

Thnaks for reading.

Tori Amos' Birthday

This Consciousness that is aware
Of Neighbors and the Sun
Will be the one aware of Death
And that itself alone

Is traversing the interval
Experience between
And most profound experiment
Appointed unto Men-

How adequate unto itself
It's properties shall be
Itself unto itself and none
Shall make discovery.

Adventure most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be--
Attended by a single Hound
It's own identity.

-Emily Dickinson
poem #822

art market/ art history

In the 21st century free-market, art has become an elusive product. Yes, I said product. IF you buy art, then you are a consumer and carry the responsibility of knowing what it is that you purchase and for what reasons you are giving said amount of money for. If we look at shoes, and all you arelooking for is a decent pair of shiny leather point toe dress shoes to wear once for an outdoor occassion, then going to a discount shoe outlet and dropping 20.00 would be appropriate, but if you are looking to take the same shoe and embed style, legacy, and refinement into your image as a sign to others, so that you can generate a mystery of what it is that you possess then $200 on some Gucci loafers might be appropriate, and if by some off chance that you collect soes as an investment then you might look at $2000 David Hicks. Art these days is no different. Perceieved value and appropriateness to intent. That is not to say that the factors of the valuation of so simple. Even if it makes sense, you might be sold snake-oil, so it is important to know the context of the art market and art history to keep from being snowed over.

more notes 2

On Picasso:"One thing that is made explicitly clear throughout the late graphics is that the desire is never satisfied. It will both fall short of and override its goal, much like the act of representation itself, which can never completely close the distance between referent and image... The desired object , thus, can never fully account for the drive itself. "desire is the desire for desire"
Continual deferral and the impossibility of closure are built into the very mechanism of desire, which is predicated on a psychic lack, that by definition, be fulfilled. As Picasso summed up..."the desire stays on."
--Inside the Image

Limits of representation
Limitlessness of Desire
Painting as an act of Love

In our relation to things, in sofar as this relation is constituted by the way of vision, and ordered in the figures of representation, something slips, passes, is transmitted, from stage to stage, and is always to some degree eluded in it-- that is what we call the gaze.
-Jacques Lacan

When the Andalusian fixes a thing within a stare, he grasps it, his eyes are fingers holding and probing... In Andalusia the eye is akin to a sexual organ.
-David Gilmore

miranda Fuetre & the Gaze

more notes

Monet, Renoir, Degas- sight was simply the sum of its light-- in terms of illumination
Reality is not waiting to be witnessed
Impressionist- "the gaze was out, the glance was in"
Cezanne- "with an apple I will astonish Paris!"
Courbet- "Let us be true, even if we are ugly"
Oscar Wilde "Life goes faster than Realism"
Rilke "Cezanne made the fruit so real that it ceased to be edible altogether."

Is it only now that Art has begun? -dP

"Art has carried the responsibility of the philosophy of art further than the philosophers of would have been capable. It was as if artists had to become their own philosophers in order to be taken seriously. -A. Danto

In order to consider Brillo Boxes as art, one would need to see how the history of art had evolved to a point where it was now possible for such a work to exist... to know something of the state of discourse of the art world, within which that possibility existed... Duchamp... Greenber...
--Danto

Bildungsroman- as history of modern art

there is no reason inherent in the concept of art for painting not to exist

*painting is charged with resentments as a result of an artistic discourse trying to purge concepts of talent as unacceptably elitist

conception of art that is made by artist with certain ends in view
___________________________
~from random slip of paper in my notes

without elementary disorder there is neither entropy nor irreversible process

Notes from some books and thoughts

for I believe that failure is less frequently attributable to either sufficiency of means or impatience of labour, than to a confused understanding of the thing actually to be done.
-Ruskin

It would be premature and presumptuous to preempt the verdict of prosperity

cartographic. iconography
historical references
-eclecticism, collecting, selection --> Latin - lect- legre- choose

academic conventions
contradistinction, precarious equilibrium, ambivalent correspondence

I should like to carry out my future work in the interplay between Robert Smithson's uncompleted project and Michael Jackson's face -Ashley Bickerton- artist

long tradition of painting
NeueWilde- rebirth of painting

Peter Fischli/David Weiss- Goldsworthy style
Gunther Forg-artist

marginalised social group- unattainable abstracts

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Michel Majerus, Gehard Merz
Dan Peterman "Sulfer Cycle"

Guy Debord- Situation Theory
Peter Halley
STRUCTURALISM
Lacan
Levi-Strauss
Barthes
Foucault
POST-STRUCTURAL
Baudrillard
Derrida

appropriation- Richard Prince
myth of "artistic"

Cindy Sherman - Feminist? I'm not Feminist

white cube vs. over-the-couch

obsolete activities-
read the paper
record players

The ever-expanding field of available objects led me to investigate what I saw as a crisis of meaning and identity by juxtaposing heterogeneous objects in a poetic, yet non-hierachical way.--Haim Steinbach