Instruments with painted decorations

[romberg flat]

Hey romberg flat, who's that spiral painted or inked by?

It's nicely done !

 

...couldn't know, It's an eternal spiral coming from Universe...

[Ben Hebbert]

Romberg! This is why this subject tickles me so much

Have a very very happy Christmas everyone!

[Stephen Faulk]

I've had long and detailed thoughts about the posts of the last few days, thank you for the great ideas coming out. 

 

Romberg,

 

I hope you know I was teasing you about boomerangs.  I like how you tied all those things together in art history, but especially that you brought up cultivating an aesthetic or compiling and looking at objects with an eye towards the what I call the "objectness". I think that is my personal euphemism for aesthetic. 

 

 The aesthetic you bring up is also about emotional qualities, or how an object speaks to you and others. In the case of the set of highway curves, there is nostalgia, history; a special way the curve set reminds you that at one time making engineering plans was more a physical process. The set gives off a real palpable sensation of how that tactile experience felt. I think that is what triggers the emotional response. 

 

I heard the same kind of joy at recognizing an aesthetic and setting it up for people to view from the design curator of the NY MOMA. She was talking about putting together a show of 1970s early 80's personal computers and video games. Not exactly my thing, but I see the aesthetic satisfaction that comes out of different levels for those who enjoy those objects. The "boomerangs" are still more interesting to me. 

 

Ben,

 

As I was reading your post about looking at paintings based on photographs I was nodding my head  yes in agreement that I have had the exact feelings about pictures of photos. I had mentally prepared along an exhaustive editorial for you, but since it is Christmas my gift to you it to not foist my "mansplaining"   about art on you as you already get it it. Why go over territory we agree on? LOL 

 

It did make me think as often do on David Sylvester's interviews with Francis Bacon, do you know this small book? I read it carefully several times when I was about 23 or 24 and the ideas they bounce around have served as one of the mental springboards I launch off of to judge ideas about painting. When Bacon spoke of how a painting can be "illustrative" or go directly into the nervous system I took that as an important distinction. His idea was that pictures can be real looking in many ways, but there is something more emotionally poignant about paintings that are made of irrational marks that add up to an image than marks that are more rational. He favors the irrational marks if they comes across as an image because they make the image in the most unexpected way. It's one of those things that's hard to explain, because painting is it's own language and it does not in my opinion translate to verbal rational language very well. 

 

It's why I find your posts so much fun, you talked about seeing a picture that if I had seen it myself, I might have said it feels like 'slack tide', there is no internal tension to make me want to keep looking at the picture. I'm pretty sure the painters I love most are the ones where you can see that they discovered the image as they made it. Whether that means Velasquez making a very specific portrait of a member of the royal family or the painter of an abstract picture that goes through enormous changes before it is finished. They each in their own way understand the nature of painting as an irrational language. 

 

Your posts are fun because I recognize some of my own ways of looking at things in how to write about your looking experiences, and it is simply good to have compadres! 

[romberg flat]

Romberg,

 

I hope you know I was teasing you about boomerangs.  

 

 

The more I think about “boomerang metaphor”, more and more I like it. Without a feedback (boomerang), each human act will be meaningless.

 

So here is one more boomerang. It’s about game of threads. About some threads here on Maestronet, or about threads that connect different pieces of everything. Or capture them like a double bass in Chiharu Shiota’s space and time corridor…