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Multi-Fold Texts
With the total saturation of knowledge I had not attained any of the necessary adjustments for the thereafter…the accumulation of history and continual change are the constants…sedimentary...layer upon layer…building and excavating…material upon material...
Call me Ishmael (adrift) "Their maybe a possible lack of rigour and stability built into my practice. All that I may have acquired or adopted could be ill based, unstable? Yet I give cause to wonder, if I have been cast upon the sea among the wreckage of a collapsed Ark, is it not best to take hold of any passing flotsam rather than try to recreate the ark whilst I remain in the water? "
The Last Great Shipwreck...
Do we all have the right to visibility? Are we not at this point in time equals? What is it ‘to be’ in the world...to be apart not apart. The first question is perhaps disingenuous as it suggests that ‘we’ could be answerable to a ‘higher’ someone...or to ‘other’.
As part of an investigative and critical practice the belief in the periphery contains palpable agency as it offers alternatives. That which is different contributes to widening dialogues and the possibility of incorporating global perspectives, dialogues that are not defined by previous ideas of Western domination. Is the ‘New Scenery’ created out of cultural congruity?
Conceptual Framework
The foundation to which I construct my notions of self is both what I believe to be true and what I believe I know may also be false; and as such leads to the potential of self-deception, delusion and error. This construction and deconstruction of the self are in relation to ‘other’. Other herewith is two fold; firstly diverse philosophies of the self and secondly, ‘Other’ this is in relation to people, this incorporates those I personally encounter and also those persons not encountered. The second category is the majority and further to this my considerations also extend to places visited / not visited.
My accumulative knowledge includes inheritance, biology and environment. By extension to this, my new knowledge is that which is accrued beyond the influences of the immediate environment, family, family history, biology and home. It is (I believe) this new knowledge that ministers development of the self in relation to other. I think these external influences are of equal imperative to that of the indigenous sense of self (a place of belonging). My existing knowledge can only be my guide unto this point; it affords me little safety towards prospecting new territories.
I like incorporating analogies to help make a sense of things. It is possible that the juggling of multiple positions is akin to a navigation system, one is constantly shifting states of being as to how one relates to ones own position within the world. I am aware that we are here present and we inherit a fragment of physical space within a construct of time. Our presence is a single life lived in union with other.
Within the context of Nomadism my in-built compass is a measure relating to ideas. Herewith I introduce ideas of personal freedom, both cerebral and physical. It is perhaps idealistic or even utopian to contemplate a world without barriers. The New Scenery in question relates to Nomadism. I speculate, this is not just a longing for political solutions to border disputes, wars and catastrophes but intrinsically there is an innate longing for individual migration where conceivably the only barriers are natural ones. This complex predicament is held with ideas of desire, to go beyond home into the greater home. Whilst staunchly repressed and contested by some, others share this desire. I think this is the crux of the objective and is the belay to which I dangle over the precipice, to seek out the questions towards the subject of my study.
What I believe I know is drawn from past history and experience, these reference points help shape who I believe I am, whilst self doubt means that I am questioning self in relation to all that I believe I think know. What I know and the faculties and the tools at my disposal are all I have, inquisitiveness, thoughtfulness, and reflectiveness and to which I add a critical (not auto critical in the pathological sense) faculty.
Should I choose to define self though what I do and and what I know then for over thirty years I have been a practicing artist, working across disciplines, painting, sculpture, writing, film, performance and installation.
If this is my foundation then underneath this is more unstable terrain, this is the sense of self through family influence and the dichotomy between nature and nurture. Within this potage I may develop some sense of place and of home and of belonging but I find this insufficient. This is why I refer to this position of home as unstable ground, and why I have increasingly began to question the nature of home, place and my being in the world.
The unsound notion of safe constructs, the home and homeland is to kick one's own crutch away. The idea is to step forth upon the new thresholds. The pavement outside the door, the common space, do I belong I ask. Do I have any right to be here...why do I choose the words "have right'? Are we all pioneers not prisoners in our own time? These footprints of mine take into account human ancestry and concepts of evolution. The ghosts of unknown stock, all living a life in the footsteps of others before them, we are all transitory beings. We are here only the once and life is a one-time experience. History, complacency and tradition can bind us to ideas of how things were, how things are and how things will be...this is depressing. How many times will we hear the mantra ‘it has all been done before’? I think this is neglect. The self I here present may well be experiencing things for the first time and experience is the verification that I co-exist, have a sense of place and can instigate change and be affected by change. I may well take comfort that people's 2000 years ago (and either side of this time frame) will have the equivalent experiences; this is comforting but not always valuable.
Beginning paintings & setting traps
(Text written 2001)
One is filled with a dread of starting a new canvas. It is the point after the artist has dealt with the concerns of the preparation. This dread would be as familiar to Leonardo Da Vinci as it is to all who work upon the combination of canvas and stretcher. How have I dealt with the fear of the whiteness that is before me? How I wish not to begin for fear that I should fail.
The Multi-Fold paintings begin life by adhering and paying tribute to the traditions of stretcher painting. The canvas is evenly pulled taught over a strong wooden stretcher. The even tension that is applied to the canvas produces in me a natural response, an affirmed flick of the finger on the canvas surface. I seem to do this as second nature, I like to hear the percussive and drum like thud of a well-stretched canvas.
In my early paintings, the canvas would have been pulled taught over the stretcher by the fists. The knuckles would first be roughened and then ripped open by the course cotton duck canvas; they bleed. Hands raw and sore a canvas tack would be held in place and then hammered home through the canvas and into the stretcher. The use of canvas pliers and a staple gun have now replaced such acts of barbarism within my practice. The hands are now saved for more precious tasks, the manipulation of all that seductive oil paint. I no longer boil up the rabbit skin glue; this has been replaced by a good cold-water size. It is less ritualistic now. The lingering smell of the rabbit skin glue hangs in the air, you can feel it in your nose, and its taste is drawn in to your throat by a tongue saturated by the glue's presence in the ether. It is never forgotten.
The first trap is to be set. An acrylic primer is applied upon the canvas. This is allowed to dry and is then sand papered smooth. A second and then a third layer of primer is added to the canvas, each one in turn is sand-papered even. When one-steps away from the white canvas, one has already been caught by the trap. To look deep into the canvas naturally triggers the apprehension and the dread. The canvas virginal white is a very seductive sight. How many times have I left a canvas like this in the studio, face out to me, a day, a week; never a month?
I am no longer rash in the treatment of the surface at such an early inception of a painting. Once, any old dirty turpentine would have been thrown upon the surface to hide all that whiteness. Yet the paintings must start white and some will remain predominantly white! I dress the canvas in a controlled blanket of colour. This is applied with a sponge roller. Evenly and methodically, up and down, up and down, athletic jerks, bending at the knees, an exercise, up and down, up and down, across the width of the canvas, the oil paint is rolled on. This process may be repeated many times during each layering of the ground colour. In some paintings one layer will be enough. This will allow the slight transparency of the white that is underneath to show through. In other paintings the layering will go on, each layer is allowed to dry in turn before the commencement of the next covering part process is repeated. The ground has been laid and is left to dry.
Before I commence a painting I may spend many hours looking into the painted surface. I am re-establishing my familiarity with the canvas, the oil paint and the colour used as the ground. The feint blemishes and imperfections contained with in the paintings' world are discovered.
During this getting acquainted period I shall be thinking of the form that is to be created. Rough ideas may be worked out on paper first. The small paintings studies help affix the form in my mind. Loose line drawings firm up the composition and expand the Multi-fold possibilities for later works. New paintings are also developed from previous Multi-Folds. It is an evolving painting methodology. In some works the form occupies the central ground, in other works the forms have begun to flex them selves across the full width of the canvas.
As I sit looking at the canvas I shall play out in my head the kind of gestures that I will need to make the image. These gestures will be drawn from all that I have learned in all the previous Multi-Fold works. I contemplate the actions again and again.
To begin a painting I will un-stretch the canvas. Placing the skin on the floor I will loosely fold the canvas in half. I may make a few registration marks on the reverse side of the canvas. These lines will be used to de-mark the extremities of the image that will be created on the opposing side. I will then make the first crease up to these registration marks. The canvas is pulled open. There is hesitation, trepidation and fear. Confidence is tested; conviction is vital; the paint is placed upon the canvas.
Kneeling down before the canvas is either an act of reverence or an act of total surrender to the act of painting. It is totally necessary to do this to make the work. I fold the canvas over and align the edges of the painting to secure a good clean first fold. The line in the canvas is stiff for this first fold; gradually the surface becomes more forgiving and subtle. The more the line is worked the softer the weft and weave become. I press down in the centre of the canvas. The paint is moved around under the pressure of my hands. I may fold the canvas some sixty times, opening and closing the canvas, applying more paint or taking paint away. I am constantly assessing the image after each new fold.
It is not uncommon to lose the image with a careless movement of the hands behind the canvas. The work has to be re-addressed; previous steps in making the work are recalled and executed again. The painting is reconstructed, mistakes learned from and the process is repeated to bring back the image that one is working towards.
In the Multi-Fold paintings I have reduced the use of a paintbrush to a minimum. I wish only to use this when it is absolutely necessary. This is to apply the paint onto the canvas surface with a good deal of control. All this is undertaken before the first fold is made.
The more the canvas is folded the more elastic the paint becomes. One is aware of the paintings changing structure under the fingertips; one is moving molecules around. With all the Multi-Folds the echoes of the act of painting remain habitually caught with in the painted surface. The immediate past is caught. Painting is of the present and of the future. The Multi-Folds are mirror like.
The stretcher and the canvas remain the perfect vehicles in which to produce work. The canvas is both flexible and durable. When a Multi-Fold is re-stretched it once again takes on the recognisable form of a painting adhering to the traditions and the structure of painting.
Before the oil paint dries on the tensioned canvas, there have been occasions in which the painting has been removed yet again from the stretcher to enable me to rework the painting further. The painting once dried continues to evolve. Oil paint is used because of its changing qualities. The surface of impasto paint will form a skin. Over time this will wrinkle up and will then show signs of ageing. Oil can seep out from under the skin if the surface is breached. Like a wound it heals.
With the production of these paintings taking place on the floor they are sometimes loosely tacked to the stretcher so that they may be viewed on the vertical plain. As the painting grows I become aware of its increasing weight. There are many human comparisons that can be created in the construction of a Multi-Fold painting
In some of the early paintings other painting mediums had been used. Car body paint, printing ink and acrylic paint have all had the Multi-Fold treatment. In the case of ‘The Polemicist’ I had used my own body hair in the paint. Human qualities remain ever present in the preparation, the execution and in the outcome of the Multi-Fold painting practice.
Text 2 Circa (1991)
A Multi-Fold painting may be folded many times. The paint is folded, squashed and manipulated through the back of the canvas; by hand, fist, finger and foot. Sometimes it is only the weight of the folded canvas itself that determines the outcome of the marks. The echoes of the act of painting remain habitually caught within the painted surface.
The physical process is one of torture; I torture paint. It has to be oil paint on canvas. A painting may be stretched and re-stretched during the process of evaluation. The operation is under constant review.
INTRODUCTION
Since the beginning of 1997, I have returned to a form of painting that I first experimented with in 1991. In those first experiments I began by using drawing ink and acrylic paint to create images by folding the paint or ink in-between sheets of paper. This method can be traced to professor HERMANN RORSCHACH and his development of the inkblot test for use in assessment procedures during psychological testing. The Rorschach technique is one of the better-known methods of testing and is referred to as a PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUE. It has been described as, ‘an instrument that is considered especially sensitive to covert or unconscious aspects of behaviour.’ (Introducing Psychology, an experimental approach. D.S.Wright, Ann Taylor. 1970.)
MULTI-FOLD PAINTING
The strong personal traits of the Multi-Fold are diverse. The judicious combination of searching and finding produces a series of works that run parallel to the central theory and practise of the process.
I have been able to develop my paintings through experiments using the projective technique as the basis of my methodology. Through experimentation I am able to understand something of the pre-determined patterns of material behaviour that occurs in oil paint when making my paintings. I maintain the concepts and the perceptions of the early works. It still forms part of the equation in the making of the Multi-Fold paintings. This refers back to the behaviour of a material as tested on a surface. That surface in part helps define the origins of the image, for example the paper used in folding the ink and how the ink performs on the paper. This process and the visual recognition of the method and the technique is my starting point.
With the use of a differing material that maintains similar properties as the fore mentioned, but that has its own structure and characteristics will act in a different way. The oil paint and the canvas take this artistic pursuit on to a different pathway. This is where the Multi-Fold separates from the original concept and the practical purpose of the aims of the Rorschach inkblot test.
The context has now changed with the new materials and the paintings become in part about the use of those new materials. The Multi-Folds are about painting and image making. This lateral thinking process and the techniques are a provocation on the original concept. This new starting point has a different perception that is formed by side tracking from the original starting point. I have been able to develop my paintings much further than the accidental nature of the process first suggests or indicates. The paintings that I call Multi-Folds have become more sophisticated. The paintings have developed into three distinctive variants along the central theme.
THE LINEAR PAINTINGS
The linear Multi-Fold paintings operate on a definite plain; they seek reason in formal tensions. Control has been maintained by keeping the paintings on a small scale. These works are formal abstractions but parallels can be drawn to the linear bands being read as representations. These ‘figures’ take on some nameless geometric form. They stand astride some mysterious no man's land. The form has been paired down to a line, a skeleton, a backbone, a nerve and a line of enquiry.
THE ONTOLOGICAL WORKS
The ontological works adhere to the same reasoning as the linear paintings, but the guidelines of expression will flow more freely. This is to say that these works are not, ‘first impulse reactions’. They are attained through a perception of a certain automatism of the created form and have a parallel bond with reason. The gestures flow more liberally until the moment the artist imposes himself upon the work. The exercising of control will reveal as much or as little the artist seeks to portray in each work.
THE COLLECTION SERIES
Each painting in the collection series has been formulated by collating forty-two Multi-Folds from an original series of two hundred abstracted states that are produced for each painting.
By administering and reducing the selection, the composition becomes a classification of associated types. The analysis of the chosen forms by the anthologist is a record of the process of collecting and constructing an order.
Two further lines of work have resulted from this series. They are the works, ‘SERIES 2’ and ‘CONSIDERATION’ paintings.
All the Multi-Folds take elements of the process and are then re-interpreted to form new working methods and helps increase the Multi-Fold vocabulary. This systematic production of painting is used for changing concepts and perceptions and creating new perceptions in my own work. The exploration of multiple possibilities and approaches are evident in each of the three variants of the Multi-Fold painting practice.
All the Multi-Fold paintings are formulated out of an asymmetric provocation. This appears to be a contradictory action and somewhat crazy interpretation of one's own painting. This ‘crazy method’ is a deliberately generated behaviour pattern of movement while undertaking the act of painting. The Multi-Fold asymmetric painting is a contradiction.
I define the Multi-Fold as, ‘The exercising of control over chance and the pursuit of the nature of being.’
THE LOSS OF A TITLE
To release the work of a title is to free it from description and from an authority of explanation. This act was undertaken in 1999. This act frees both the self and the work, it will also free the viewer of any restrictions; leaving them to use their individual experience. The viewer may well bring further insight to the work.
Explanation is however bound up in the history of these painting as this text will testify. Perhaps even the titles I give the paintings now are just equivalents and may prove to be just as fraudulent.
SHORT ESSAYS FROM THE ASYLUM
The following text has been taken from a series of notes I had made to explain some of the paintings in detail. A few of these explanations were turned into short essays, these were each titled, ‘ A Short Essay From The Asylum.’ Followed by the works title and when the painting was executed. They offer an explanation as to aspects of the subject matter and how they could be interpreted.
TEMPLE
Temple is a painting that is beginning to deal with the essence of simplicity. This Multi-Fold work is a metaphor for the human condition. It deals with abstract terms but seeks verification in the theories of, ‘art-life.’
Colour psychology and colour theory in both personal language and association and also universal language and association are clearly evident. Haute vulgarisation is transcended in an attempt to understand the subconscious and to go beyond a notion of popular nihilism.
There are four orifices, openings and a Greek temple. Is most of our learning founded upon Greek Philosophy? But is not the temple old and crumbling and in a state of destruction.
This work is about elevation, of morality and intellectualism; of western nihilism… an exploration into stoicism and possible effects on morals, ethics and virtues.
The image is but one of fracture. The problem with seeing is stressed by each individual. With some resignation of the excess of the image; clearly one bares witness to a sexual art that can only be read by one's own interpretation. An emergence of self-analysis and one's own chain of language produces meanings out of the relationships between the following two definitions.
· What one knows to be there in front of you?
· What one knows to be there is more than the sum of the image.
Is language to be used only to rupture the visual image? Is a visual language a pure mark that one can use to blur the psychoanalytical apprehension of a sign or a symbol? One is left to create in the total abstract. But; is the image a mere supplement to the allegorical structure of the meaning of the work? Does this mean that meaning is found only within the language and the dogma of modernism? This is a dilemma within the framework of post modernity. The sophisticated excess of modern aesthetics and the art of art philosophy are by nature, enlightenment on the discourse of progress.
The purity of the visual language of one's own subconscious is a language that has no language. This non-language pulls down the iconicity of visual signs, these visual signs pare away the unconscious by the conscious self the non-self, the other.
Is this work as an art object no more than a stereotype? That it can be no more than it is. But what is it? Art as a medium of truth; does this work show the world's' disenchantment with itself. The work becomes an expression of truth, not an aesthetic truth only to be viewed through the trans-historical concept of art aesthetics. The work had been created out of a personal autonomy. Out of both one's conscious and out of any institution. Is the work valid though void of aesthetic assessment?
This kind of rendering of the work illustrates it to be a fragment of many issues. Is the artist engaged in a sexual representation? Is the artist as a non-moral corrective drawing upon our contemporary times?
‘Where is the feminist demand for the scrutiny of the image?’ I wrote at the time of making this painting, ‘I hope that there is a sexuality beyond the content and beyond the parameters of the visual form. I hope that the image submits to sexual reference in as much; that the reference is its self questioned by the image.’ I implied that the aesthetics of the forms are implicated in more than the pure pleasures of looking. That the work was in part dealing with the aesthetics of a sexual-political space. That space was the art space, the painting.
The purity of the image.
'But are they made whores by the perversity of the mind?’
This was I feel a key line into the enquiry into the content of the painting ‘Temple.’ It drew upon two lines of contemporary reasoning directly related to the populist vision of women. Firstly, ‘That women are still made to look perfect.’ and secondly, ‘The position of women as fantasy depends on the economy of vision.’
The painting was to renounce all pretensions to be a narcissistic perfection of form.
Temple was an investigation into Western culture and the present guises of the fantasy of ‘Absolute Difference.’ Through such representation the painting would convey a moment of unease. There may be some fear and also fear of the unknown. That unknown I described as ‘The act of Failing.’
I raised the question, ‘To a woman, is such a work oppressive?’ My answer was a hopeful, ‘I do hope not.’ Followed by a shield like sentence. ‘It protests against a world that protests’ The four images that sing, cry, laugh, talk, scream, whisper, seduce or repel were anthropological ‘anti-persons’. They occupy a sublime void, an Arcadian landscape that could be viewed as being in the last throes of permanent decline. The building may have never been finished to begin with and have been no more than a folly. The same could be said of the painting and the crudely applied paint to the structure. Yet the painting had been completed.
I wrote about Temple being about denial. That I felt that the image would be denied through the subject and those four voices would mask the meaning. The painting was I wrote,’that intellectualism struggles to show through. It is a fight for pure reason. The works right to exist. Its struggle to fight may lie in its position of ambiguity.’
As I had stated and what remains obvious is the Temple is undeniably sexual. What it does not do is pacify its own space by refusing to be scrutinised. It would be through such scrutiny that the underlying enquiries could be found.
· Truth of morality
· Truth of truth
· The conceptual sciences of questions
· The art is the thing unseen.
· Women as portrayed in Art
· Is there here an image over symbolism
I made a call to the specialist audience. ‘ So if up until now, Religion, ethics, science, art and moral judgements have all been founded upon our platform (Western civilisation) and all this makes up our understanding of the Human Condition. Is it just possible that we have been wrong.’
How the figures cry out. Are they representatives of the unintelligent and are held responsible for all the chaos? Are they the intelligentsia running from the great temples of learning destroyed by them? Do the vandals and the plebeians cause the destruction? To be civilised is to destroy?
I suggested that the painting had been about elevation and enlightenment. The gold that surrounds the upper part of the painting refers to this. This gold leaf reminds me of the use of gold in religious paintings and icons. Art history tells us that the church to illustrate and guide the church going illiterate masses towards the teachings of Christ used at one time paintings. Paintings of course no longer have to form this function. It is however interesting to keep this idea of a painting acting as an arbiter of wisdom alive. But is this painting rooted in a similar reality? I believed that it was, as a physical object that is tangible to touch and to see, but also that the selfish ‘I’ had created it and therefore it must be real. The painting is more than the sum of its parts and the messages contained within are to be learned. Religious paintings had been required to form a similar function for the church.
Should Art put in front of the people show all that is real?
The need for us to experience is a demand for reality. The painting was not a remedy for all the anxiety and depression that sits on the shoulders of humankind. The painting was mirror like, real yet illusory.
I saw Temple as not being without intensity even if it was more contemplative. I said that I felt that the work held an emotional charge that showed both pleasure and pain in principle.
The anxiety of knowledge
The anxiety of the epoch
The anxiety of the isolated soul
I had written about a return to simplicity in the painting. ‘Simplicity is a complex system to work towards. In a confused world that lacks grace and purity, a world that struggles to hold on to its own morals, ethics and virtues are due only to our own condition.’ The condition I believed was an inherent trait in us all and to change it would require something equating to Nietzschean nihilism!
I had been looking into Stoic Philosophy. My prognosis to describe the Stoics at the time, ‘Philosophy for the indifferent’ was a little simplistic. I could see how their philosophy could be annealed onto Christian doctrine, which in turn help shape the Western Mind. I wondered if the Stoic held any great passion for life or in life? Were the ethics rooted in suppression and fear? That life was to be held over until after death. Such a doctrine is deep rooted in Stoic Philosophy. There is a sense that there is some kind of ‘Final Reassurance’, an ordained path in which we all must follow or perish.
Is free thinking a threat and a foolhardy assignment? Enlightenment is a drive into that area of the self-unknown. What it is to be human… to go down many paths and to open many doors. It matters not how far you go. You fail. To this end it is all the same to a Stoic, to them all faults are equal. The virtue of the Stoics is that of attaining goodness. This is synonymous with that of the serious person. He is in a state of true and good intentions, of high moral virtues, honour and logical in truths about all moral and honourable judgements.
But is he void of any reckless hedonism?
Is it all in the pursuit of the idealistic?
Are we all to follow the path of the Stoic? Should we follow the path of the Stoic?
Am I a Stoic? Are you? And do I jest? , And if not, is the call an insult?
Enlightenment cannot be A rejoice for a new discovery; that would be hedonistic.
May be the new Stoic is founded upon self-preservation…a divine blindness; each of us to attain a greater part of the selfish ‘I’. Our new morals, self-governing with our self-love and self hate. Self-preservation is always the first rule of life.
Is this a path of condemnation by the righteousness? But looking for truths is part of the great purpose. Our self-enlightenment.
At the time I had made the painting I believed that it was more than creating histrionics. I would not form the same opinion today. However I think the complexities that lie behind the painting are not illusions. It was addressing many deep and puzzling questions as to the human condition. I would say it was an attempt to explain everything in one painting. What I thought I was painting had been a drive to find an essence of simplicity. This was an enlightened illusion.
THE SILENT MASK
The asylum has become a little too full. Too much self-analysis; and how does one rid the self of an illusion of terror?
We may well look into ourselves to discover the answers to our own chamber of horrors, but to look out at this age of confinement; to view the deformed, the vanquished, the pitiful, the estranged, the flesh, the erotic, the sublime and the abstract. The seduction of all this rot is like candy to a child; it is oh so sweet!
One may need to trace the roots of one's own representations. The substance behind this embodied vision…I who made this work. But who is this ‘I’? I am from the rise of self-determination, truth as experienced by the self; ‘I’ as the self-legislating being.
My intention is not to dwell upon the history of the Western Mind. The philosophers Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Descartes, Kant, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche all in their writings offer us ‘ Movements’ within mankind's' development. The nature of this discourse is very much that it looks into man as its subject matter.
To understand something of the development of ideas…I deemed it necessary to place into this essay a starting point. A split that defines two differing positions. The Christian and the Athestical. I here note that no defining moment exists in reality. The point made only acts as a hook to see what emerges.
A key moment would be the Reformation in the 16th Century. ‘ A new and decisive assertion of rebellious individualism - of personal conscience of Christian liberty...’ (1)
If the reformation began to divide Europe, a gulf opened up between contemporary theology and the power of the Italian papacy. The rise of personal relevance of ideas began to define a new way of thinking. Man no longer looked to God; he began to look into himself. The growth of secular states within Europe began to erode the Catholic matrix. This was the faith that held Europe together. A unified Europe disintegrated.
Man became the subject of his own emotions rather than a biblical revelation. His place was within the universe rather than being the ‘Exclusive’ as in a Christian orthodoxy. Where once man saw God in the mirror, he now only saw himself.
‘The dark mirror’ wrote Nietzsche; ‘ That he held up the dark mirror of the soul of Christianity and its attitudes and values opposed man’s present existence to the body, to the earth, to courage and heroism, to joy and too freedom- to life itself.’ (2) In essence, a liberation and an embrace to life’s totality.
The naked concerns of human existence, suffering, death, insecurity, conflict, spiritual emptiness, a void of absolutes and the frailty of human reason has become the tragic state into which the human condition is our parentage; and the enquiry is our quest for ones independence, self determination and individualism.
Man is condemned to be free. ‘ He faced the necessity of choice and thus he knew the continual burden of error.... Ignorant of his future and thrown into a finite existence, bound at each end by nothingness.’ (3) With no purpose; things existed simply because they existed. To find reason in his life and in this existence, one had to admit to and choose freely to encounter the reality that life was meaningless; the struggle alone would give life it’s meaning.
The mechanisms of the mind may well mean that man could no longer assume that his minds' interpretation of the world was also mirror like. The mind may well have been the alienating principle. One reaches an unsettling conclusion that; even the minds' notion of totality, the total sum of one's' culture, social/political base, biology, language, imagination, emotion, conscious and the unconscious thought for example, could not be relied upon.
One could say that any confidence in human reason was now unstable. One possesses an in-authentic subjectivity relating to ones own place within the objective sphere. Could one then attain an objective conception? This could form the primary question as to how one relates to all claims of knowledge, even when one is bound by historical, social, cultural and linguistic totalities.
With this existential overview of reason, is truth to be found within the totality of man? Could man transcend himself? To look into the mirror anew and see the mask that was there in front of him. Its reality and its identity would be lacking any coherence and it had no absolutes. The questioning of the self is rooted in self-doubt; but the uncertainty would provide its own freedoms. The false prisons could be transcended.
It was Ezra Pound, who coined the phrase, ‘To make anew.’ A paraphrase for all things Postmodern perhaps? Postmodernism, a referent symbol of its own identity suggested Jean-Francois Lyotard. Postmodernism fragments a cultural world that shows a lack of coherence of unity and a lack of purity. Taking an extended view, this constant rebirth is to annihilate one's own view, weather it is personal, general or universal. This view is paradoxical. If the nature of self-determination is to exclude any thing that forms a totality; then for example, Art aesthetics is hindered by the explanation. So once again is language to be used only to rupture the visual image?
Is the visual language a pure mark that one can use to blur the psychoanalytical apprehension of the human condition? That the image is not mere illustration of that condition, and neither is it an explanation. So can create in the total abstract?
OBSCENITY
If this work has become unintelligible and its meaning fragmented and dismembered; and even its beauty is made to look tormented; was it to destroy one's own conventions, to make anew, to create a new beauty and a new content, in one's own image? ‘To make anew’ have we all not taken this call to our hearts and our minds you romantics, Epicurean’s and fools?
The romanticism of the self-annihilating and disenchanted spirit is expressing the dislocation of the fragmented self. This self-parody may possess a possible irony. That the dark paradox of one's own existence may well contain a truth. Has this absurd work been created to represent a contrast to meaning? Is one cultivating the meaningless to show meaning?
I believe my own eyes because I am not deceived by my mind!
'There is absolutely no falsehood - products of imagination perhaps, but no falsehood. A falsehood deceives and makes one stray from the truth, but imagination can be a short cut leading one rather to the truth...There is no
advantage in deception.’ (4)
Kobo Abe writes in his 1974 novel; ‘The Box Man’ about an anonymous figure who cuts himself off from society by moving into a box and observing life from behind a vinyl curtain. The view is that only true freedom lies in a self-imposed segregation from humanity. ‘The Box Man’ is about the very nature of survival not being recognised. That one is part of, but excluded from mass society. Non-conformity was a form of illegal existence because one was in conflict with the collectively of conformist of mass societies.
Kobo Abe the Japanese author is credited (some would say) for introducing Western ideas of absurdity and Nihilism into Japanese literary culture. ‘The Woman in The Dunes’ (1962) deals with an individual who is kidnapped and forced to live with a woman in a sand pit among shifting sand dunes that threaten to engulf both of them and the community, if they don’t dig out the sand that constantly falls in on them. This may be a parable of the sublime; but it reflects in a microcosm that society that has its progress measured by its achievements through a collective will and constant social revolution. This is proclaimed as giving us greater freedom for the individual. What happens is it will only end up offering greater uncertainty to the individual?
Abe’s Nihilism is an absurd depiction of man in his world. It is meant to be an absurdity. The nature of depiction is itself flawed.
'No matter how assiduous (ceaseless activity) one is in scribbling, one can never cover all the blank space... there will always remain enough space to write ones name in, but if you don’t wish to believe even that. It does not make the slightest difference.’ (5)
Depiction as stated is a flaw in the expression of an idea, an emotion or an experience for example. Language also remains inadequate. Things are not easily explained is part of the dilemma. One is aware of an occurrence-taking place, but one is at odds as to how one can explain something. Perhaps the painting is itself the only tangible evidence one needs for ones' proof of existence and that one is living life through experience.
In the ‘Silent Mask’ the mask that occupies the central ground may be a manifestation of one's own condition. The principles that govern that condition however are greater than one's own personal philosophy on colour or subject for example. Is it a metaphor for the human condition? Are the shape and form manifestations of that state of mind?
What one knows to be in front of you?
What one knows to be there is more than the sum of the image.
In the first assumption, one may place all recognisable data to explain the image. What the painting is made of, how it was constructed, how the painting was made...the fact that it is a painting. The title offers the viewer a hook in which to view the painting and formulate one's own interpretation.
The contextual enquiry and the paintings' meaning could be on one level, a painting about painting… the application of the paint and the physical process of making the painting…the psychology of the painting. Is it a catharsis, a releasing of an emotion or a purge? The mask like form is a shield form. Is the mask/shield a block? A symbol of repression or a release…The Silent mask may be all that is self-deceiving.
‘His mortal danger is concealed from their eyes.’ (6)
Is one's' position of freedom threatening? The Silent mask and the idealism behind it grow more profound and more unreasonable. For what one knows to be behind the mask is greater than the sum of the image, because what is there is only a shallow interpretation. That every word spoken, every sign of life one describes; the depth one holds is always concealed. That is a deception; one has to be magnanimous to one's own deceit.
‘Everything profound loves the mask; the profoundest things of all, hate, even image and parable...’ (7)
List of quotations.
(1) (2) (3) The passion of the western mind. Richard Tarnas. Pimlico Edition.1996
(4) (5) The Box Man. Kobo Abe. Harper/Collins. Canada. 3rd printing 1996.
(6) (7) Beyond Good and Evil. Friedrich Nietzsche. Penguin Classics.1990.
Other reading. Art in Theory.1900-1990. Edited by Harrison & Wood.1992.
The Wisdom of your subconscious mind. J.K.Williams. 1977.
Thinking Art. Andrew Benjamin & Peter Osborne. 1991.
History of Western Philosophy. Bertrand Russell. 1947.
The Seduction of Madness. Dr. E.M. Podvoll. 1991.
Notes
I have dated this text 1991…I am aware that it will have been updated and changed on several occasions including some changes in 1996 & 2000 There is every possibility that my writings for multi-folds had originally been in note form or at the very best a series of short sentences and statements. The form the text takes at this time may well have been written for the ‘a big hand for course’ that I undertook in 2000. It has not been altered since this date.
Text Written Circa 2001
Taking Flight ‘and he shall have wings to fly with’
Drawing upon a host of references and ideas, ‘Taking flight’ is an exploration across theoretical and physical thresholds. Interpretation in ‘Taking flight’ can be traced through theological, historical and philosophical origins. The psychological air generated will resonate in the more contemporary aesthetics of the images. ‘Taking flight’ is of the now and the Multi-Fold forms are habitually rooted in the present. The invisible journeys undertaken by the inmates of each painting accommodate the ambiguity. The Multi-Fold works in ‘Taking Flight’ pivot above these two positions.
The evolving Multi-Fold paintings are generated through a particular repetitious process. The uncanny petition and the familiarity of the process can be described as exploring the limits of confinement. This confinement can be a source for profound frustration and yet it can also offer the potential for future escape. The images in ‘Taking Flight’ are bound by contradiction. The use of language to describe and write about the artwork is solely seeking to explain the limits of the confinement. At the same time the text is suggesting that the confinement is it itself-limitless. ‘The prison house of language’ is how Nietzsche describes this tenuous position. Metaphorically, ‘Its flybottles all the way up and turtles all the way down.’
'Taking Flight’ stands at a cross road of evolving uncertainties. Paradoxical assimilation in the narrative structure lies just beneath the surface of each painting. Each work lays before the viewer both the cause and effect of its own invented existence. The works in ‘Taking Flight’ reveal the invention of an embattled and haemorrhaging Western Cultural struggle. The works suggest wisdom of recounting history and the lessons that might be learned from the past. ‘Everything changes, says history, everything remains the same.’ (Jonathan Glancey)
The journeys in ‘Taking Flight’ traverse the foundation of belief, via the pagan worship of both classical Greece and Rome, the ‘evolving truth’, from the early primitive beginnings of the Christian church through to ‘Travelling Theory’, Edward Said’s classification for resisting reductionism. This theory subdues the notion of taking an idea back to its original place of origin. The travelling theory finds new and creative expressions in unexpected contexts. The Multi-Fold painting process draws upon this theory. The brutal physical process that makes up the Multi-Fold is an emblematic ritual. ‘Tearing’ the subject from itself in such a way that it is no longer the subject as such.’ (Foucault)
Any attempt to exchange, to dilute or re-define a subject from its original or intended purpose will alter the context. The material of our predecessors and the answers they provided will in a prior generation transcend the previous originators' intentions. The lesson, the text or the image by the original creator for example is modified. Any familiarity to the past may be marked by an uncanny similarity. The ‘Zeitgeist’ inhabits the present like an uninvited ghost. Without any reference to the past and the notion of the ‘real’, the new real appears to be an unrelated discovery of the present. This phenomenon pays host to an unseasoned cultural but legitimate indifference. The cult of the individual and the self-legislating, ‘there is no such thing as truth, only one's opinion’ is born out of an ignorance to the past. The cult of self-experience as the underpinning of one's own truth is insufficient to sustain any experience that is founded upon multiple meanings. The personal position to understand both subject and subjectivity as ones solitary response to personal truth leaves wanting an array of implications for understanding. Therefore is there no external context? Is this self-contextualisation in our hedonistic and Epicurean epoch our continuing appetite for possessing Freewill?
The pursuit of happiness continues to be a supreme motive for human acts of freewill and self-expression. Self-gratification in various guises, money, power and self-love nourishes the search for bliss. Our position of attaining freewill can be pragmatic! This predicament for the self could confess the self to enquire as to how much freewill can one afford to exert? Are an individual's morals, ethics and virtues sufficiently forged to judge correctly the wilfulness of one's' actions? Is there a limit to ‘self experience’? Human kind not wishing to stand in total isolation will endeavour to kindle a positive unity with the universe. This is the self in relation to the collective. The city of individuals will in part limit self-experience. This is in compliance with common notions of laws for example that promote positive freedom. An individual who limits their self experience and free Will may do so by exercising self-control (I call this, ‘Art of Discipline’). This may be guided by applying moral and ethical directives above and beyond the jurisprudence or the ‘Art of Government’ (society). The idea of evoking ‘free will’ and personal responsibility may be a prerequisite for believing freewill to be bogus if one holds an orthodox view that God knows everything. Is our future really open for us? An Inconsistency exists in as much that we apply doctrines of universal Christian-like good to then appease our fellow citizens with shifting moral directives. This is to gratify one person's’ free will over another. The exercising of this freewill may take the form of dictatorial like power. This is so that we shall flatter our own kin to be more God like. The intention of undiluted human truths and personal truisms as flexing individualism are revealed as strengths in developing personal freewill. There is the error of ignorance behind this unless one attains ‘True Understanding’, so the genius of our ancestors has narrated to us. True understanding was to be found elsewhere beyond the language and the concept of man.
Jupiter erected a tribunal in a region called the ‘field of truth’; and in this place the judges presided. Minos the legislator of Crete who was compared to the real or imaginary Moses by the Jewish Historian Josephus is one of the Judges of Hell. The office of Minos and his fellow Judges, Rhadamanthus and Eacus are appointed by the Gods to pass judgement upon man. Humanity was fated to suffer punishment after death for wretched actions that had been committed in life. Those found guilty were delivered over to the Furies for punishment and execution. It was the will of Pluto that the Furies inflicted and enforced with utmost rigour and inflexibility any punishment fitting to the offence. So long as humankind had some greater being watching over it then perhaps self-restraint would prevent the species from destroying itself. If man observed the natural world in all its violent beauty he may have joined in the truism that he stood apart from nature. Any self-doubt and melancholia would be drowned in the purity of wine. Wine was considered as being infinitely safer to drink than water in classical times for example.
Ariadne daughter of Minos and abandoned by her lover Theseus married Bacchus. On the occasion of marriage Vulcan made a crown of seven stars and this was presented to Ariadne. Bacchus was a man with a handsome countenance (see Titian, ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’) and predisposed to mood swings (what test revealed this I wonder)? He is considered as a great benefactor to humanity for tutoring us how to make wine. The virtuous use of this gift of the Gods was to be used in moderation and so would serve as being of great benefit to mankind. From mortal man to a God Bacchus was celebrated and worshipped in lively festivities. In order to evoke the spirit of Bacchus the partaking of plentiful amounts of wine would simulate the senses of man. Our excess however is to babble and loose our ability to see reason…yet I suggest with intoxication comes moments of personal clarity of both judgement and misjudgement! Upon regaining composure and should we seek a truth we shall feel the pain of repentance and know the virtues of sobriety. Any Superabundance of wine has a transmutable quality and as allegory has shown us any excess of the juice can render man as ferocious and as barbarous as beasts. And so when we partake in this pleasure and drink to excess do we through our clouded visions see that we are really mocking the Gods, like children who do not know when to stop. We wish to exercise our own free will at the expense of rationality. Our measure is the ethics of natural law in to which we shall reach immutable and absolute beauty. Nowadays Bacchanalian wine and the spirit that it evokes have been transposed with other natural life enhancing wares. Herb Guarana in ‘Chocolate cocaine’ hits twice as potent as Red bull, these and similar products sell us the belief that through them, life can be more fun and that we can live a life much enhanced and enriched by them. These commodities stride away from nutrition and enter the realm of creative-corporate imagination.
Our own language is derivative of many sources and possibly littered with many errors of thought. The disposition our own errors and our liabilities may make us magnanimous to nature. An endearing human quality I would suggest. The Greeks notion of nature is perhaps different than ours. It is thought that to the Greeks, the ways of nature were, ‘the ways of pleasantness,’ and that ‘all her paths were peace.’ Nature to our assumption is connected with the origin of a manifestation and usually when we are applying this term we are viewing nature as a state of savagery. To the Greeks ‘Nature’ meant the highest of civilisation. For the ancients' humanity should solicit virtue, to strive for the attainment of the uppermost perfection and live life in the accordance of nature. The ways of living life and in accordance with nature were to live the virtuous life with rationale. The end of life therefore would be the attainment of happiness through virtue.
The notion, to be God or God-Like cultivates a fallacy of freedom and an act of grand self-delusion. To what model and standard do God like humans judge themselves by? Are Some Gods are better than others? Our personal freedom is our choice, yet have we developed the capacity to be informed enough as to who is more or less moral more good, or more evil. If this explores the nature of the self as God like, then we can also entertain the notion of our collective species as being God like. It is the realms of scientific ethics that is exploring as to how far mankind can control his own destiny. From laboratory creation to the extension of life, we demand nothing less than total ownership of the self and yet like consumers I suggest, we shall remain anxiously unsatisfied.
‘Virtue is knowledge’ arises out of Plato’s’ dialogues in the self-critical reflection of reason. In the ‘Laws’ a late dialogue work Plato returns to the ideal republic where civic piety and religion would carry the burden of education away from philosophy. A pivotal concept of Platonism is that ‘Forms’ are positive, divine, changeless and ideal keys to physical nature. ‘Forms’ are intelligible and share abstract features. The form or ideal may not be found in the world but it is something to which things can be approximated. The gaining of knowledge provides the potential for realising ‘Form’. Concepts such as good and justice was perceived as being timeless and being real objective entities. In the past I have referred to the Multi-Folds as being, ‘States’. I have gone further to interpret them as being forms of independent abstraction. This has been a key factor in my reasoning that follows a contrivance of an existential comprehension.
The consensus in classical Greece amongst the various philosophical schools was that there was an end or an aim in life. This end was called ‘happiness.’ The nature of how to attain this state was the nadir of the varied schools of opinion. Democritus found it in mental serenity, Socrates in wisdom, Aristotle in the practice of virtue and fortune and in Zeno, the Stoic way would be that we should live life consistently. Stoicism would be a life lived through the purity of reason. The Stoic rational presumably lacked any Epicurean passion! Stoical indifference would influence future ideologies in as much that humanity will need to attain the concept of a virtuous life that is truthful. A Stoic conjunctive proposition as to their logic was that, ‘Truth can only be followed by truth; but falsehood may be followed by falsehood and truth.’ Zeno advocated a syllogism of temperance, ‘One does not commit a secret to a man who is drunk. One does commit a secret to a good man. A good man will not get drunk.’
The Philosophy of the Stoics would possess influence on and anticipate future Jewish introspection in the development of a future primitive Christian church. Through Stoicism a virtuous man shall seek or need no reward. In humanity there would be no injustice, To bestow sentence and to inflict punishment would be to give up the good in all. The door to virtue shall be open to all invited the Stoics. ‘Man is not earthbound’ was their call. This was the developing genius of the Stoic idea. The only true freedom for humanity was to serve God. In Ancient Greece this was the same as serving Philosophy. The Stoics were opposed to ideas cultivated by Plato. ‘The ideas of Plato, they declared, existed only in our minds. Horse, man and animal had no substantial existence, but were phantasms of the soul. The Stoics were thus what we should call Conceptualists.’ (Stoicism, St George Stock. 1908)
The Stoics like Platonists were aware of political changes that were unfolding in the art of life. The question of happiness was not it seems to be found within the state but increasingly sought through the individual. ‘Perfect happiness is not to be attained in mortal life since man who is given free will must govern and rule himself to dispose happiness in God.’ (Plato) As similarities between the philosophical schools became pronounced so the decline of Greek philosophical thought occurred, Eclecticism evolved during the second century BC and the distinctive doctrines of each school faded. The School of Eclecticism is prevalent in our epoch. The disordered amalgam of grey soup that we feed from fills our bellies but leaves us wanting. Our will may be to act upon this wanting and to discipline the emptiness within.
What is the subjective motive for our human acts? Are our acts voluntary and free or is there a more natural agent that guides us? If this is so, then to what aim are we being lead by this agent? Is this external influence of natural creation? The enquiry of Neoplatonism; the fusion of Plato’s philosophy with religious Pythagorean doctrines was originated by Plotinus. Plotinus conceived of the universe through three intelligible things, the emanation of the ‘One’. The omnipresent and the capacity of God to be present everywhere at once…the transcendental good that which is beyond sense, experience and theory, the soul. An advanced problem of early philosophy was that a defined concept of God was insufficient, Neoplatonism was considered unsatisfactory and remote as the God of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. The notion of God continues to be divisive.
Taking Flight as aforementioned will draw upon references from the past. The images will confront ambiguity yet they shall project a consistency of form and reflect an affirmation of difference. As history paintings they shall remain veiled and clouded. The messages contained within therefore will appear confusing. The process of Multi-Fold image making will be integral to the exhibition of the painting. The construction of the work is a ritualised performance. The process requires both physical and mental energies. The marks contained within each painting will reflect the essence of some purposeful activity. This pays allusion to devout practice that can be found throughout religious belief structures. The cause and effect of casing the image in a contemporary context affords provocation. A Catholic Deity purchased upon hallowed Protestant walls. This is simply an analogy that I draw between the white cube space and the principles that govern the exhibition of images. The provenance of the gallery and the decoration, the images that are set within the confines of the gallery are there to be exalted. Are these images to be viewed for reverential and devout reasons, for educational reasons or for visual entertainment? The viewer may be solitary in formulating their opinions about the context of the work. Their reasons and conclusions will be formed by how much they bring to the work and how much they take away from the image. This is what I describe as, ‘The transferral of experience.’
To begin thinking in psychological terms…there is a contemporary anthropological case to suggest that human kind continues to locate answers by looking to fellow human beings. Our kin shall advance the answers, ‘theory becomes fact.’ This is given preference over the searching for some kind of ‘spiritual guidance.’ Our value base has altered emphasis as to what the individual now knows is fact. The individual is therefore entitled to, ‘understand’ because the individual is self-reliant and has self dependency. The self no longer requires any external influences other than to look to humankind through one's own gaze. Life continues to remain inconclusive, the more we process our own information internally the more we shall need to look into the mirror to view our external self. Taking flight as with previous Multi-Fold paintings makes encounters with that reflection. Is your angel watching over you?
Four Transgressive States I generate the images and the images generate me.
· The outstretched wings Icarus & Daedalus The peacock angel
12 Vultures Theodora-Pantomime acts
· The Open page Scripture The Alphabet of Ben Sira The creation of Lilith
Superscription Language Entropy
· The Splayed cross Crucifixion Obligation Unification
Private devotion Ceremony Superstition
· The Gateway Entrance Ascendancy Prison
of unknown origin
The invisible Church Simon Magus The Golden Mean
The ‘setting’ of the parameters in ‘Taking Flight’ shall cross-fertilise a variety of seemingly independent subjects such as active Catholic Paganism for example. The heritage of these subjects and their differences is the source material. ‘Taking Flight’ will be exploring the relationships between these differing subjects. The arenas that form the Multi-Fold works will echo changes in attitude to previous foundations. The Multi-Fold works in themselves are bound by certain conventions and long standing traditions, for example, the Multi-Fold works are created in the tradition of Canvas and stretcher painting. The paintings adopt images that levitate amid the Pagan worship of multiple gods and the idols made to represent those gods. The birth of Christian sects and the images they made would have been stirred by the culture that surrounded them. Christian orthodoxy I believe would have been influenced by contemporary philosophy and the moral, ethical and the virtues of the period. The transformation of images from Pagan through to Christian can be traced in ‘Taking Flight.’ These references are now to be viewed in a contemporary art context. Any changes in cultural attitudes and cultural trends shall alter the contiguity for the self-legislating ‘I’ in a contemporary secular world.
Flights of Profound Speculation - the language of metaphysics.
As with the ancient sage’s we may speculate and solicit the idea that a soul resides in us. We may wish to entertain the fact that the immortal souls of our kin remain present. Are these souls; spirits? Or are they angels or demons or Gods and are they for this world or the next? Are they temporary visitors or do they languish eternally amongst us; these luckless spirits, souls and angels! Has this sublime enquiry that has previously been jostled by philosophers and pseudo-philosophers delivered a doctrine that has helped mould the human condition. Any lasting impression ingrained in man has been sown by one's own kind. Is this enquiry become self conditioned by human kind? The prison cell of reason, that which has been guided by our own imagination and prompted into existence by our own vanity. Is it an echo from the Garden of Eden? How we can pervert the measure of our own understanding! To find our own beginning, to crave a path that offers assurance for a future, lets us look to the past, which has been moulded by history and written by our untrustworthy predecessors. Let not thinking ideas be commonly accepted as fact…it is a wise and foolish fellow who seeks to rip and tear his own mind apart...
Cutting through the briar of history.
‘The rebellious spirits who had been degraded from the rank of angels were permitted to roam the earth, to torment the bodies, and to seduce the minds of sinful men’ Edward Gibbon from the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
‘Taking Flight’ are non prophesying works. They affirm a curious regard towards possible future events and extend concerns towards our hopes and fears that reach beyond the visible world. The painting's composition and subject matter acknowledge both polytheism and standard Christian Orthodoxy. Perhaps the point in which these two opposing theological systems converged would have been during those first days following the death of Christ. The conduct of man in life was not regulated by any serious conviction that reward or punishment would be delivered in any future state. Mankind would however solicit the favour of gods by sacrifice and worship. This was to abate the wrath of the immortals. The actions and the conduct of man however would not be regulated and life was I suspect never thought of as something that would be given over until after death. Man may have hoped to have one day joined with the gods, but to be judged and damned by one's conduct by the ‘One’ was a modish revelation.
‘Dressed up in theatrical clothes and gladdened by the beauty of the flames, he sang of the destruction of Troy.’
(Suetonius on Nero)
In drawing distinctions between the Ancient Greeks and The Romans various historians, Gibbon included have suggested that Rome unlike Greece was not an Empire founded upon ‘thinking’. Both the Empires were civilised but Rome was an inferior Empire and for a historian not an exciting place to be. Gibbon in ‘The Decline and Fall Of The Roman Empire’ pays high regard to the other great tribes of Europe and Asia as providing equally high civility. That said, The Romans were concerned with spreading existing knowledge rather than expanding it. This provision of Rome’s equality would be to offer self-sufficiency but Rome offered little stimulation for change in the form of developing invention for example. The lack of continual innovation has been cited as being a major contribution in the decline of the Roman Empire. However I would propose that the Roman Empire changed through a series of evolution’s that occurred through social, political and religious syncretic change. Rome was more than a materialistic Capital, Rome was an idea, a thought. She was more than a sum of her parts and the Empire continued long after the Rome of antiquity, the ancient Capital was sacked…she flourished anew. Perhaps Rome’s genius (like religion?) is something that transcends the mind and takes the ‘I’ into the universe and to solicit that which is knowable, real, yet elusive. The genius of Rome may not have been philosophical but she brought organisation and common law into being. ‘Rome did not theorise so much about government, about right and wrong, she cared little for theory, but built upon experience. Rome understood about the art of government.’ (T.R.Glover) The notion of ‘Genius’ is applied here in the context of what Gibbon understood by the term. Genius was an extension of the mysterious power of lineage through previous generations. Genius brought unity and continuity to present virtues. Rome’s catalogue of virtues included Gravitas, a sense of importance, Disciplina, steadiness, Industria, hard work, Clementia, to forgo one’s rights and Frugalitas that is simple tastes…the Romans were great Stoics! In this catalogue of virtue's man should admit his subordination to something external that places a binding power upon him. The Roman term for this was ‘Religio’. A religious man is a pious man before the Gods; man seeks to attain the highest pietas through duty and service. Using this model, as each emperor of Rome was proclaimed as a God and the emperor thought himself as a God, so the image of a man as a God became indisputable.
The use of common language could be used in order to find new audiences or is it simply reflecting a culture of ‘dumbing down.’ Do the Bible and the Koran (for example) become more mysterious and seductive with the possible absences of information? How is it that the meaning and the understanding of the (secret)-knowledge can be located in-between the text…this is the slippage! We can but imagine the full, non-apocryphal text of the Gospel according to St Thomas that is said to be the most accurate account of the life of Jesus. The discovery of this text amongst the Dead Sea scrolls may deliver our revelation. The text however could just be yet more luscious popularist conspiracy. Is there irony (should the truth be told) in using the turn of phrase ‘.... it’s the gospel truth!’ It is perfectly possible that Thomas went to India to apply his trade as a carpenter. It is possible his twin brother Jesus visited the Roman province of Britain. Many people will refuse to believe that it was possible and so refutes these ideas out of hand. Arthur Machen in 1914 presented a story to lift up the British moral following the army’s retreat from Mons. The story of The Angel of Mons was born…fable became fact. The fiction was ignored and so was the stories' creator. Over time a modern urban myth was born…and new folkloric traditions created!
An abhorrence for idolatry.
To any group to who worshipped and showed devotion towards objects of idolatry both early Christian and Pagan people were guilty of fraud and error. The mask veiled contempt and disguised the demons that lead Christian patrons astray. This was the sentiment of the primitive Church explained Justin Martyr an early Christian apologist. Apologetics by Justin Martyr argued that, ‘Christianity, of all philosophies had the only rational creed, that the word of God became human in order to teach his people the truth.’ This would save them from the power of the demons. Justin Martyr drew logic from the Stoicism of Zeno of Citium. The foundation of Stoic philosophy was based upon an apprehensive perception. This perception would need to be filled by certain conditions in order that it could be verified. This is through clarity, order and commonality. Stoicism identified with a moral order of the universe, ‘what goes around, comes around’ and, ‘that which is so, is inevitable.’ A stoic ethic was to find benevolent calm within virtuous self-sufficient peace. To render the wise man with an indifference to poverty, pain and death, some Christian sects would in time chose or create martyrdom to attain full logos with God. This path to God through peace or pain would resemble the spiritual peace of God. This fortitude could be termed, ‘sublime.’ The sublime as such is un-knowable and yet is experienced.
Some of the questions I pose in this text, the answer’s I trust are to be found in the language of man, however the answers may seem to be annoyingly inadequate. Our capacity is that we can understand; yet explanation remains elusive…in art for example I believe I have the capacity to understand much of the art that I have encountered (up to this point)…yet I will add, to understand something does not mean I like it!…taste has nothing to do with it!
A free man may need to accept this as the answer. If ‘The Word’ is God given to man, so that man may communicate the word of God to his kind, then this to could be ‘the explanation’ yet this is inadequate also. One may require proof upon ones doubt but if one has faith then there is no doubt. If the Bible is held in isolation is it specific enough for the message to be understood. Perhaps the message is delivered by the faith rather than by the word. St Thomas upon not seeing the risen Christ says that he can not believe until he has seen and been touched by Jesus. So Christ appears in front of him. ‘My lord, my God’ Thomas declared. The doubting Thomas is symptomatic of the human condition.
The text has been directly referenced from some of the following books; other reading material has provided me with additional background information. They are listed in no particular order.
The Ancient World, T.R. Glover, Cambridge University Press 1935. The Romans, R.H. Barrow, Pelican Books, 1949. The Scrolls From The Dead Sea, Edmund Wilson, Fontana Books, 1955. The Dead Sea Scrolls a reappraisal, John Allegro, Pelican Books 1964. Stoicism, S.T George Stock, Archibald Constable & Co, 1908. Compendium Theologieum (a manual for students in theology), A. Clergyman, Cambridge, M.DCCC.LIII. Moral Philosophy, Joseph Rickaby, Longmans, 1888. The British Controversialist & Impartial Inquirer Vol. 1&2, Houlston and Stoneman 1850-1851. An Introduction To Mythology Of The Greeks And Romans, intended for the use of young persons of both sexes, Mrs Meek, 1827. A Classical And Biblical Reference book, H.A Treble, 1948. I, Caesar, Phil Grabsky, BBC Books, 1997. The Colosseum, Roberto Luciani, 1990. The Catacombs Of Rome, Fabrizio Mancinelli, 1981. Who’s Who In Christianity, Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok, Routledge, 2002. Dictionary Of Ancient History, edited by Graham Speake, Penguin, 1994. Dictionary Of Philosophy, Simon Blackburn, Oxford University Press, 1996. Dictionary Of Beliefs & Religions, Editor Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1992. The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon, Penguin Books, First published in 1776.
Taking Flight ‘and he shall have wings to fly with’
Drawing upon a host of references and ideas, ‘Taking flight’ is an exploration across theoretical and physical thresholds. Interpretation in ‘Taking flight’ can be traced through theological, historical and philosophical origins. The psychological air generated will resonate in the more contemporary aesthetics of the images. ‘Taking flight’ is of the now and the Multi-Fold forms are habitually rooted in the present. The invisible journeys undertaken by the inmates of each painting accommodate the ambiguity. The Multi-Fold works in ‘Taking Flight’ pivot above these two positions.
The evolving Multi-Fold paintings are generated through a particular repetitious process. The uncanny petition and the familiarity of the process can be described as exploring the limits of confinement. This confinement can be a source for profound frustration and yet it can also offer the potential for future escape. The images in ‘Taking Flight’ are bound by contradiction. The use of language to describe and write about the artwork is solely seeking to explain the limits of the confinement. At the same time the text is suggesting that the confinement is it itself-limitless. ‘The prison house of language’ is how Nietzsche describes this tenuous position. Metaphorically, ‘Its flybottles all the way up and turtles all the way down.’
'Taking Flight’ stands at a cross road of evolving uncertainties. Paradoxical assimilation in the narrative structure lies just beneath the surface of each painting. Each work lays before the viewer both the cause and effect of its own invented existence. The works in ‘Taking Flight’ reveal the invention of an embattled and haemorrhaging Western Cultural struggle. The works suggest wisdom of recounting history and the lessons that might be learned from the past. ‘Everything changes, says history, everything remains the same.’ (Jonathan Glancey)
The journeys in ‘Taking Flight’ traverse the foundation of belief, via the pagan worship of both classical Greece and Rome, the ‘evolving truth’, from the early primitive beginnings of the Christian church through to ‘Travelling Theory’, Edward Said’s classification for resisting reductionism. This theory subdues the notion of taking an idea back to its original place of origin. The travelling theory finds new and creative expressions in unexpected contexts. The Multi-Fold painting process draws upon this theory. The brutal physical process that makes up the Multi-Fold is an emblematic ritual. ‘Tearing’ the subject from itself in such a way that it is no longer the subject as such.’ (Foucault)
Any attempt to exchange, to dilute or re-define a subject from its original or intended purpose will alter the context. The material of our predecessors and the answers they provided will in a prior generation transcend the previous originators' intentions. The lesson, the text or the image by the original creator for example is modified. Any familiarity to the past may be marked by an uncanny similarity. The ‘Zeitgeist’ inhabits the present like an uninvited ghost. Without any reference to the past and the notion of the ‘real’, the new real appears to be an unrelated discovery of the present. This phenomenon pays host to an unseasoned cultural but legitimate indifference. The cult of the individual and the self-legislating, ‘there is no such thing as truth, only one's opinion’ is born out of an ignorance to the past. The cult of self-experience as the underpinning of one's own truth is insufficient to sustain any experience that is founded upon multiple meanings. The personal position to understand both subject and subjectivity as ones solitary response to personal truth leaves wanting an array of implications for understanding. Therefore is there no external context? Is this self-contextualisation in our hedonistic and Epicurean epoch our continuing appetite for possessing Freewill?
The pursuit of happiness continues to be a supreme motive for human acts of freewill and self-expression. Self-gratification in various guises, money, power and self-love nourishes the search for bliss. Our position of attaining freewill can be pragmatic! This predicament for the self could confess the self to enquire as to how much freewill can one afford to exert? Are an individual's morals, ethics and virtues sufficiently forged to judge correctly the wilfulness of one's' actions? Is there a limit to ‘self experience’? Human kind not wishing to stand in total isolation will endeavour to kindle a positive unity with the universe. This is the self in relation to the collective. The city of individuals will in part limit self-experience. This is in compliance with common notions of laws for example that promote positive freedom. An individual who limits their self experience and free Will may do so by exercising self-control (I call this, ‘Art of Discipline’). This may be guided by applying moral and ethical directives above and beyond the jurisprudence or the ‘Art of Government’ (society). The idea of evoking ‘free will’ and personal responsibility may be a prerequisite for believing freewill to be bogus if one holds an orthodox view that God knows everything. Is our future really open for us? An Inconsistency exists in as much that we apply doctrines of universal Christian-like good to then appease our fellow citizens with shifting moral directives. This is to gratify one person's’ free will over another. The exercising of this freewill may take the form of dictatorial like power. This is so that we shall flatter our own kin to be more God like. The intention of undiluted human truths and personal truisms as flexing individualism are revealed as strengths in developing personal freewill. There is the error of ignorance behind this unless one attains ‘True Understanding’, so the genius of our ancestors has narrated to us. True understanding was to be found elsewhere beyond the language and the concept of man.
Jupiter erected a tribunal in a region called the ‘field of truth’; and in this place the judges presided. Minos the legislator of Crete who was compared to the real or imaginary Moses by the Jewish Historian Josephus is one of the Judges of Hell. The office of Minos and his fellow Judges, Rhadamanthus and Eacus are appointed by the Gods to pass judgement upon man. Humanity was fated to suffer punishment after death for wretched actions that had been committed in life. Those found guilty were delivered over to the Furies for punishment and execution. It was the will of Pluto that the Furies inflicted and enforced with utmost rigour and inflexibility any punishment fitting to the offence. So long as humankind had some greater being watching over it then perhaps self-restraint would prevent the species from destroying itself. If man observed the natural world in all its violent beauty he may have joined in the truism that he stood apart from nature. Any self-doubt and melancholia would be drowned in the purity of wine. Wine was considered as being infinitely safer to drink than water in classical times for example.
Ariadne daughter of Minos and abandoned by her lover Theseus married Bacchus. On the occasion of marriage Vulcan made a crown of seven stars and this was presented to Ariadne. Bacchus was a man with a handsome countenance (see Titian, ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’) and predisposed to mood swings (what test revealed this I wonder)? He is considered as a great benefactor to humanity for tutoring us how to make wine. The virtuous use of this gift of the Gods was to be used in moderation and so would serve as being of great benefit to mankind. From mortal man to a God Bacchus was celebrated and worshipped in lively festivities. In order to evoke the spirit of Bacchus the partaking of plentiful amounts of wine would simulate the senses of man. Our excess however is to babble and loose our ability to see reason…yet I suggest with intoxication comes moments of personal clarity of both judgement and misjudgement! Upon regaining composure and should we seek a truth we shall feel the pain of repentance and know the virtues of sobriety. Any Superabundance of wine has a transmutable quality and as allegory has shown us any excess of the juice can render man as ferocious and as barbarous as beasts. And so when we partake in this pleasure and drink to excess do we through our clouded visions see that we are really mocking the Gods, like children who do not know when to stop. We wish to exercise our own free will at the expense of rationality. Our measure is the ethics of natural law in to which we shall reach immutable and absolute beauty. Nowadays Bacchanalian wine and the spirit that it evokes have been transposed with other natural life enhancing wares. Herb Guarana in ‘Chocolate cocaine’ hits twice as potent as Red bull, these and similar products sell us the belief that through them, life can be more fun and that we can live a life much enhanced and enriched by them. These commodities stride away from nutrition and enter the realm of creative-corporate imagination.
Our own language is derivative of many sources and possibly littered with many errors of thought. The disposition our own errors and our liabilities may make us magnanimous to nature. An endearing human quality I would suggest. The Greeks notion of nature is perhaps different than ours. It is thought that to the Greeks, the ways of nature were, ‘the ways of pleasantness,’ and that ‘all her paths were peace.’ Nature to our assumption is connected with the origin of a manifestation and usually when we are applying this term we are viewing nature as a state of savagery. To the Greeks ‘Nature’ meant the highest of civilisation. For the ancients' humanity should solicit virtue, to strive for the attainment of the uppermost perfection and live life in the accordance of nature. The ways of living life and in accordance with nature were to live the virtuous life with rationale. The end of life therefore would be the attainment of happiness through virtue.
The notion, to be God or God-Like cultivates a fallacy of freedom and an act of grand self-delusion. To what model and standard do God like humans judge themselves by? Are Some Gods are better than others? Our personal freedom is our choice, yet have we developed the capacity to be informed enough as to who is more or less moral more good, or more evil. If this explores the nature of the self as God like, then we can also entertain the notion of our collective species as being God like. It is the realms of scientific ethics that is exploring as to how far mankind can control his own destiny. From laboratory creation to the extension of life, we demand nothing less than total ownership of the self and yet like consumers I suggest, we shall remain anxiously unsatisfied.
‘Virtue is knowledge’ arises out of Plato’s’ dialogues in the self-critical reflection of reason. In the ‘Laws’ a late dialogue work Plato returns to the ideal republic where civic piety and religion would carry the burden of education away from philosophy. A pivotal concept of Platonism is that ‘Forms’ are positive, divine, changeless and ideal keys to physical nature. ‘Forms’ are intelligible and share abstract features. The form or ideal may not be found in the world but it is something to which things can be approximated. The gaining of knowledge provides the potential for realising ‘Form’. Concepts such as good and justice was perceived as being timeless and being real objective entities. In the past I have referred to the Multi-Folds as being, ‘States’. I have gone further to interpret them as being forms of independent abstraction. This has been a key factor in my reasoning that follows a contrivance of an existential comprehension.
The consensus in classical Greece amongst the various philosophical schools was that there was an end or an aim in life. This end was called ‘happiness.’ The nature of how to attain this state was the nadir of the varied schools of opinion. Democritus found it in mental serenity, Socrates in wisdom, Aristotle in the practice of virtue and fortune and in Zeno, the Stoic way would be that we should live life consistently. Stoicism would be a life lived through the purity of reason. The Stoic rational presumably lacked any Epicurean passion! Stoical indifference would influence future ideologies in as much that humanity will need to attain the concept of a virtuous life that is truthful. A Stoic conjunctive proposition as to their logic was that, ‘Truth can only be followed by truth; but falsehood may be followed by falsehood and truth.’ Zeno advocated a syllogism of temperance, ‘One does not commit a secret to a man who is drunk. One does commit a secret to a good man. A good man will not get drunk.’
The Philosophy of the Stoics would possess influence on and anticipate future Jewish introspection in the development of a future primitive Christian church. Through Stoicism a virtuous man shall seek or need no reward. In humanity there would be no injustice, To bestow sentence and to inflict punishment would be to give up the good in all. The door to virtue shall be open to all invited the Stoics. ‘Man is not earthbound’ was their call. This was the developing genius of the Stoic idea. The only true freedom for humanity was to serve God. In Ancient Greece this was the same as serving Philosophy. The Stoics were opposed to ideas cultivated by Plato. ‘The ideas of Plato, they declared, existed only in our minds. Horse, man and animal had no substantial existence, but were phantasms of the soul. The Stoics were thus what we should call Conceptualists.’ (Stoicism, St George Stock. 1908)
The Stoics like Platonists were aware of political changes that were unfolding in the art of life. The question of happiness was not it seems to be found within the state but increasingly sought through the individual. ‘Perfect happiness is not to be attained in mortal life since man who is given free will must govern and rule himself to dispose happiness in God.’ (Plato) As similarities between the philosophical schools became pronounced so the decline of Greek philosophical thought occurred, Eclecticism evolved during the second century BC and the distinctive doctrines of each school faded. The School of Eclecticism is prevalent in our epoch. The disordered amalgam of grey soup that we feed from fills our bellies but leaves us wanting. Our will may be to act upon this wanting and to discipline the emptiness within.
What is the subjective motive for our human acts? Are our acts voluntary and free or is there a more natural agent that guides us? If this is so, then to what aim are we being lead by this agent? Is this external influence of natural creation? The enquiry of Neoplatonism; the fusion of Plato’s philosophy with religious Pythagorean doctrines was originated by Plotinus. Plotinus conceived of the universe through three intelligible things, the emanation of the ‘One’. The omnipresent and the capacity of God to be present everywhere at once…the transcendental good that which is beyond sense, experience and theory, the soul. An advanced problem of early philosophy was that a defined concept of God was insufficient, Neoplatonism was considered unsatisfactory and remote as the God of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. The notion of God continues to be divisive.
Taking Flight as aforementioned will draw upon references from the past. The images will confront ambiguity yet they shall project a consistency of form and reflect an affirmation of difference. As history paintings they shall remain veiled and clouded. The messages contained within therefore will appear confusing. The process of Multi-Fold image making will be integral to the exhibition of the painting. The construction of the work is a ritualised performance. The process requires both physical and mental energies. The marks contained within each painting will reflect the essence of some purposeful activity. This pays allusion to devout practice that can be found throughout religious belief structures. The cause and effect of casing the image in a contemporary context affords provocation. A Catholic Deity purchased upon hallowed Protestant walls. This is simply an analogy that I draw between the white cube space and the principles that govern the exhibition of images. The provenance of the gallery and the decoration, the images that are set within the confines of the gallery are there to be exalted. Are these images to be viewed for reverential and devout reasons, for educational reasons or for visual entertainment? The viewer may be solitary in formulating their opinions about the context of the work. Their reasons and conclusions will be formed by how much they bring to the work and how much they take away from the image. This is what I describe as, ‘The transferral of experience.’
To begin thinking in psychological terms…there is a contemporary anthropological case to suggest that human kind continues to locate answers by looking to fellow human beings. Our kin shall advance the answers, ‘theory becomes fact.’ This is given preference over the searching for some kind of ‘spiritual guidance.’ Our value base has altered emphasis as to what the individual now knows is fact. The individual is therefore entitled to, ‘understand’ because the individual is self-reliant and has self dependency. The self no longer requires any external influences other than to look to humankind through one's own gaze. Life continues to remain inconclusive, the more we process our own information internally the more we shall need to look into the mirror to view our external self. Taking flight as with previous Multi-Fold paintings makes encounters with that reflection. Is your angel watching over you?
Four Transgressive States I generate the images and the images generate me.
· The outstretched wings Icarus & Daedalus The peacock angel
12 Vultures Theodora-Pantomime acts
· The Open page Scripture The Alphabet of Ben Sira The creation of Lilith
Superscription Language Entropy
· The Splayed cross Crucifixion Obligation Unification
Private devotion Ceremony Superstition
· The Gateway Entrance Ascendancy Prison
of unknown origin
The invisible Church Simon Magus The Golden Mean
The ‘setting’ of the parameters in ‘Taking Flight’ shall cross-fertilise a variety of seemingly independent subjects such as active Catholic Paganism for example. The heritage of these subjects and their differences is the source material. ‘Taking Flight’ will be exploring the relationships between these differing subjects. The arenas that form the Multi-Fold works will echo changes in attitude to previous foundations. The Multi-Fold works in themselves are bound by certain conventions and long standing traditions, for example, the Multi-Fold works are created in the tradition of Canvas and stretcher painting. The paintings adopt images that levitate amid the Pagan worship of multiple gods and the idols made to represent those gods. The birth of Christian sects and the images they made would have been stirred by the culture that surrounded them. Christian orthodoxy I believe would have been influenced by contemporary philosophy and the moral, ethical and the virtues of the period. The transformation of images from Pagan through to Christian can be traced in ‘Taking Flight.’ These references are now to be viewed in a contemporary art context. Any changes in cultural attitudes and cultural trends shall alter the contiguity for the self-legislating ‘I’ in a contemporary secular world.
Flights of Profound Speculation - the language of metaphysics.
As with the ancient sage’s we may speculate and solicit the idea that a soul resides in us. We may wish to entertain the fact that the immortal souls of our kin remain present. Are these souls; spirits? Or are they angels or demons or Gods and are they for this world or the next? Are they temporary visitors or do they languish eternally amongst us; these luckless spirits, souls and angels! Has this sublime enquiry that has previously been jostled by philosophers and pseudo-philosophers delivered a doctrine that has helped mould the human condition. Any lasting impression ingrained in man has been sown by one's own kind. Is this enquiry become self conditioned by human kind? The prison cell of reason, that which has been guided by our own imagination and prompted into existence by our own vanity. Is it an echo from the Garden of Eden? How we can pervert the measure of our own understanding! To find our own beginning, to crave a path that offers assurance for a future, lets us look to the past, which has been moulded by history and written by our untrustworthy predecessors. Let not thinking ideas be commonly accepted as fact…it is a wise and foolish fellow who seeks to rip and tear his own mind apart...
Cutting through the briar of history.
‘The rebellious spirits who had been degraded from the rank of angels were permitted to roam the earth, to torment the bodies, and to seduce the minds of sinful men’ Edward Gibbon from the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
‘Taking Flight’ are non prophesying works. They affirm a curious regard towards possible future events and extend concerns towards our hopes and fears that reach beyond the visible world. The painting's composition and subject matter acknowledge both polytheism and standard Christian Orthodoxy. Perhaps the point in which these two opposing theological systems converged would have been during those first days following the death of Christ. The conduct of man in life was not regulated by any serious conviction that reward or punishment would be delivered in any future state. Mankind would however solicit the favour of gods by sacrifice and worship. This was to abate the wrath of the immortals. The actions and the conduct of man however would not be regulated and life was I suspect never thought of as something that would be given over until after death. Man may have hoped to have one day joined with the gods, but to be judged and damned by one's conduct by the ‘One’ was a modish revelation.
‘Dressed up in theatrical clothes and gladdened by the beauty of the flames, he sang of the destruction of Troy.’
(Suetonius on Nero)
In drawing distinctions between the Ancient Greeks and The Romans various historians, Gibbon included have suggested that Rome unlike Greece was not an Empire founded upon ‘thinking’. Both the Empires were civilised but Rome was an inferior Empire and for a historian not an exciting place to be. Gibbon in ‘The Decline and Fall Of The Roman Empire’ pays high regard to the other great tribes of Europe and Asia as providing equally high civility. That said, The Romans were concerned with spreading existing knowledge rather than expanding it. This provision of Rome’s equality would be to offer self-sufficiency but Rome offered little stimulation for change in the form of developing invention for example. The lack of continual innovation has been cited as being a major contribution in the decline of the Roman Empire. However I would propose that the Roman Empire changed through a series of evolution’s that occurred through social, political and religious syncretic change. Rome was more than a materialistic Capital, Rome was an idea, a thought. She was more than a sum of her parts and the Empire continued long after the Rome of antiquity, the ancient Capital was sacked…she flourished anew. Perhaps Rome’s genius (like religion?) is something that transcends the mind and takes the ‘I’ into the universe and to solicit that which is knowable, real, yet elusive. The genius of Rome may not have been philosophical but she brought organisation and common law into being. ‘Rome did not theorise so much about government, about right and wrong, she cared little for theory, but built upon experience. Rome understood about the art of government.’ (T.R.Glover) The notion of ‘Genius’ is applied here in the context of what Gibbon understood by the term. Genius was an extension of the mysterious power of lineage through previous generations. Genius brought unity and continuity to present virtues. Rome’s catalogue of virtues included Gravitas, a sense of importance, Disciplina, steadiness, Industria, hard work, Clementia, to forgo one’s rights and Frugalitas that is simple tastes…the Romans were great Stoics! In this catalogue of virtue's man should admit his subordination to something external that places a binding power upon him. The Roman term for this was ‘Religio’. A religious man is a pious man before the Gods; man seeks to attain the highest pietas through duty and service. Using this model, as each emperor of Rome was proclaimed as a God and the emperor thought himself as a God, so the image of a man as a God became indisputable.
The use of common language could be used in order to find new audiences or is it simply reflecting a culture of ‘dumbing down.’ Do the Bible and the Koran (for example) become more mysterious and seductive with the possible absences of information? How is it that the meaning and the understanding of the (secret)-knowledge can be located in-between the text…this is the slippage! We can but imagine the full, non-apocryphal text of the Gospel according to St Thomas that is said to be the most accurate account of the life of Jesus. The discovery of this text amongst the Dead Sea scrolls may deliver our revelation. The text however could just be yet more luscious popularist conspiracy. Is there irony (should the truth be told) in using the turn of phrase ‘.... it’s the gospel truth!’ It is perfectly possible that Thomas went to India to apply his trade as a carpenter. It is possible his twin brother Jesus visited the Roman province of Britain. Many people will refuse to believe that it was possible and so refutes these ideas out of hand. Arthur Machen in 1914 presented a story to lift up the British moral following the army’s retreat from Mons. The story of The Angel of Mons was born…fable became fact. The fiction was ignored and so was the stories' creator. Over time a modern urban myth was born…and new folkloric traditions created!
An abhorrence for idolatry.
To any group to who worshipped and showed devotion towards objects of idolatry both early Christian and Pagan people were guilty of fraud and error. The mask veiled contempt and disguised the demons that lead Christian patrons astray. This was the sentiment of the primitive Church explained Justin Martyr an early Christian apologist. Apologetics by Justin Martyr argued that, ‘Christianity, of all philosophies had the only rational creed, that the word of God became human in order to teach his people the truth.’ This would save them from the power of the demons. Justin Martyr drew logic from the Stoicism of Zeno of Citium. The foundation of Stoic philosophy was based upon an apprehensive perception. This perception would need to be filled by certain conditions in order that it could be verified. This is through clarity, order and commonality. Stoicism identified with a moral order of the universe, ‘what goes around, comes around’ and, ‘that which is so, is inevitable.’ A stoic ethic was to find benevolent calm within virtuous self-sufficient peace. To render the wise man with an indifference to poverty, pain and death, some Christian sects would in time chose or create martyrdom to attain full logos with God. This path to God through peace or pain would resemble the spiritual peace of God. This fortitude could be termed, ‘sublime.’ The sublime as such is un-knowable and yet is experienced.
Some of the questions I pose in this text, the answer’s I trust are to be found in the language of man, however the answers may seem to be annoyingly inadequate. Our capacity is that we can understand; yet explanation remains elusive…in art for example I believe I have the capacity to understand much of the art that I have encountered (up to this point)…yet I will add, to understand something does not mean I like it!…taste has nothing to do with it!
A free man may need to accept this as the answer. If ‘The Word’ is God given to man, so that man may communicate the word of God to his kind, then this to could be ‘the explanation’ yet this is inadequate also. One may require proof upon ones doubt but if one has faith then there is no doubt. If the Bible is held in isolation is it specific enough for the message to be understood. Perhaps the message is delivered by the faith rather than by the word. St Thomas upon not seeing the risen Christ says that he can not believe until he has seen and been touched by Jesus. So Christ appears in front of him. ‘My lord, my God’ Thomas declared. The doubting Thomas is symptomatic of the human condition.
The text has been directly referenced from some of the following books; other reading material has provided me with additional background information. They are listed in no particular order.
The Ancient World, T.R. Glover, Cambridge University Press 1935. The Romans, R.H. Barrow, Pelican Books, 1949. The Scrolls From The Dead Sea, Edmund Wilson, Fontana Books, 1955. The Dead Sea Scrolls a reappraisal, John Allegro, Pelican Books 1964. Stoicism, S.T George Stock, Archibald Constable & Co, 1908. Compendium Theologieum (a manual for students in theology), A. Clergyman, Cambridge, M.DCCC.LIII. Moral Philosophy, Joseph Rickaby, Longmans, 1888. The British Controversialist & Impartial Inquirer Vol. 1&2, Houlston and Stoneman 1850-1851. An Introduction To Mythology Of The Greeks And Romans, intended for the use of young persons of both sexes, Mrs Meek, 1827. A Classical And Biblical Reference book, H.A Treble, 1948. I, Caesar, Phil Grabsky, BBC Books, 1997. The Colosseum, Roberto Luciani, 1990. The Catacombs Of Rome, Fabrizio Mancinelli, 1981. Who’s Who In Christianity, Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok, Routledge, 2002. Dictionary Of Ancient History, edited by Graham Speake, Penguin, 1994. Dictionary Of Philosophy, Simon Blackburn, Oxford University Press, 1996. Dictionary Of Beliefs & Religions, Editor Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1992. The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon, Penguin Books, First published in 1776.