Other Than
Brian Grassom
Aberdeen School of Art and Architecture, Research. 2005
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Brian Grassom
Aberdeen School of Art and Architecture, Research. 2005
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Brian Grassom
= (other-ness)
Aberdeen School of Art and Architecture, Research. 2005
Prologue
Brian Grassom
Aberdeen School of Art and Architecture, Research. 2005
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Brian Grassom. Creation, 1993
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Brian Grassom. S. Lucia, 1996
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Brian Grassom. S. Giulia, 1996
Meaning
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Feeling
Brian Grassom. S. Michele, 1996
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Brian Grassom. City, 2001
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Brian Grassom. City, (detail) 2001
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Brian Grassom. City II, 2001
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Brian Grassom. City II, (detail) 2001
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Brian Grassom. City III, 2004
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Brian Grassom. Three Cities, (detail) 1995
Jacques Derrida 1932-2004
Brian Grassom
Aberdeen School of Art and Architecture, Research. 2005
DERRIDA, J. The Double Session. In: Dissemination
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Brian Grassom. City II, (detail) 2001
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Brian Grassom. City II, 2001
DEMOCRACY
Brian Grassom. City II, (detail) 2001
I Beauty and Truth
Brian Grassom
Aberdeen School of Art and Architecture, Research. 2005
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
KEATS. Ode on a Grecian Urn. In: Selections from Keats: Sonnets, Odes
and Narrative Poems.
Brian Grassom. City II, (detail) 2001
Brian Grassom. City II, (detail) 2001
At all events we are well aware that
poetry being such as we have described is
not to be regarded seriously as attaining
to the truth.
PLATO. Republic (X). In: Dialogues
the real artist (…) would be interested in
realities and not in imitations.
PLATO. Republic (X). In: Dialogues
Pulchrum autem respicit vim
cogniscitivam; pulchra enim
dicuntur quae visa placent.
On the other hand, beauty
relates to the knowing power,
for beautiful things are those
that please when they are
seen.
AQUINAS. Summa Theologica
Beauty
=
Praxiteles. Aphrodite of Knidos (copy)
Truth
Integritas
Wholeness
Consonitas
Proportion
Claritas
Brightness
AQUINAS. Summa Theologica
Transcendentals
of
BEING
The one, a thing, something, the good, the true
+ (Beauty?)
According to Aquinas, from Aristotle through Arabic culture to the Scholastics
ECO, U. The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas
Integritas:
Consonitas:
Wholeness
Proportio
n
Claritas:
Brightness
H. Fantin-Latour. Still-Life; Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica
In its purely formal aspect - the aspect which is of interest in aesthetics - a
perfect object is an object which has integrity and proportion, and nothing
more is required. Its form is complete, ontologically ready to be judged
beautiful (…) However, if this judgment is actually to take place, it is
necessary that a seeing or looking (visio) should be focused upon the thing
(…) And it is therefore necessary that there should be a new and essential
type of proportion, this time between the knowing subject and the object (…)
Proportion presents itself as clarity. Proportion is its own clarity. It is fullness of
form, therefore fullness of rationality, therefore the fullness of knowability; but
it is a knowability which becomes actual only in relation to the knowing eye
(…) Clarity is the fundamental communicability of form, which is made actual
in relation to someone’s looking at or seeing of the object. The rationality that
belongs to every form is the “light” which manifests itself to aesthetic seeing.
ECO, U. The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas.
This is why beauty consists in due
proportion, for the senses delight in
things duly proportioned, as in what
is after their own kind – because
even sense is a sort of reason, just as
is every knowing power. Now, since
knowledge is by assimilation, and
likeness relates to form, beauty
properly belongs to the nature of a
formal cause.
AQUINAS. Summa Theologica
the enchantment of the heart
Joyce, J. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce. Ulysses
II Being
Brian Grassom
Aberdeen School of Art and Architecture, Research. 2005
Does it [the question of the
meaning of Being] simply
remain - or is it at all - a
mere matter for soaring
speculation about the most
general of generalities, or
is it rather, of all questions,
both the most basic and
the most concrete?
HEIDEGGER, M. Being and Time
Alethia: the “uncovering” of truth
HEIDEGGER, M. Being and Time
PHENOMENOLOGY (Husserl)
and ONTOLOGY Heidegger)
phainomena – the totality of what lies in the light
of day or can be brought to light - what the
Greeks sometimes identified simply with ta onta
(beings).
[phenomenon:] that which shows itself in itself
HEIDEGGER, M. Being and Time / The origin of the Work of Art.
In: Basic Writings
(…) there is no Grund, or ultimate truth;
there are only historically destined or
historically despatched overtures from a
Selbst or Same, which gives itself to us
through these overtures (by traversing
them rather than by using them as a
means).
VATTIMO, G. The End of Modernity
(…) in order to name the essential nature of
Being, language would have to find a single
word, the unique word. From this we can
gather how daring every thoughtful word
addressed to Being is Nevertheless such
daring is not impossible, since Being speaks
always
and
everywhere
throughout
language.
HEIDEGGER, M. The Anaximander Fragment.
Cited in DERRIDA, J., On the Name.
(…) it is the determination of being as
presence or as beingness that is interrogated
by the thought of différance. Such a question
could not emerge and be understood unless the
difference between Being and beings were
somewhere to be broached [a reference to
Heidegger]. First consequence: différance is
not. It is not a present being, however
excellent, unique, principal or transcendent. It
governs nothing, reigns over nothing, and
nowhere exercises any authority. It is not
announced by any capital letter.
DERRIDA, J. Margins of Philosophy
III Aesthetics
Brian Grassom
Aberdeen School of Art and Architecture, Research. 2005
[Natural
Beauty]
Flowers,
free
patterns, lines aimlessly intertwining
(…) have no signification, depend upon
no definite concept, and yet please.
[Aesthetic Beauty] (…) taste in the
beautiful may be said to be the one and
only disinterested and free delight, for
with it no interest, whether of sense or
reason, extorts approval.
[The Sublime] can never be anything
more than a negative presentation - but
still it expands the soul.
KANT. The Critique of Judgement
In securing an autonomous domain of aesthetic
judgement, a domain with its own norms, language and
set of practices, Kant was simultaneously securing the
independence of the domain of cognition from aesthetic
interference.
BERNSTEIN, J. M. The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from
Kant to Derrida and Adorno
(…) it begins to engender what we have come to
think of as the fundamental conceptual vocabulary of
continental philosophy, the philosophy that
challenges enlightened modernity through recourse
to the phenomena of art and aesthetics.
BERNSTEIN, J. M. The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from
Kant to Derrida and Adorno
Spiritualization in new art prohibits it from tarnishing
itself any further with the topical preferences of
philistine culture: the true, the beautiful, and the good.
ADORNO, T. W. Aesthetic Theory
Francis Bacon, Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope InnocentX, 1953
Artworks become appearances, in the pregnant sense of
the term - that is, as the appearance of an other - when the
accent falls on the unreality of their own reality.
ADORNO, T. W. Aesthetic Theory
(…) the more is not simply the nexus of the elements,
but an other, mediated through this nexus and yet
divided from it. The artistic elements suggest through
this nexus what escapes from it.
ADORNO, T. W. Aesthetic Theory
Because art is what it has become, its concept refers to what it
does not contain. The tension between what maturates art and
art’s past circumscribes the so-called questions of aesthetic
constitution. Art can be understood only by its laws of
movement, not according to any set of invariants. It is defined
by its relation to what it is not
ADORNO, T. W. Aesthetic Theory
The specifically artistic in art must
be derived concretely from its other;
that alone would fulfil the demands
of a materialist-dialectic aesthetics.
ADORNO, T. W. Aesthetic Theory
IV Alterity
Brian Grassom
Aberdeen School of Art and Architecture, Research. 2005
Love is not consciousness. It is
because there is a vigilance
before the awakening that the
cogito is possible, so that ethics
is before ontology. Behind the
arrival of the human there is
already the vigilance for the
other. The transcendental I in its
nakedness comes from the
awakening by and for the other.
LEVINAS, E. Alterity and Transcendence
The postmodern would be that
which, in the modern, puts forward
the unpresentable in presentation
itself; that which denies itself the
solace of good forms, the consensus
of taste which would make it
possible to share collectively the
nostalgia for the unattainable; that
which
searches
for
new
presentations, not in order to enjoy
them but in order to impart a
stronger sense of the unpresentable.
LYOTARD, J. F. The Postmodern Condition
James Joyce. Ulysses
Jackson Pollock. Lavender Mist, 1952.
There is nothing outside the text
[il n’y a pas de hors-texte]
DERRIDA, J. Dissemination
DERRIDA, J. Parergon. In: The Truth in Painting
But a flower, for example a tulip, is held to be
beautiful because, in perceiving it, one encounters
a finality which, judged as we judge it, does not
relate to any end.
KANT. The Critique of Judgement
The being cut off from the goal only becomes
beautiful if everything in it is straining towards
the end. Only this absolute interruption, this cut
which is pure (…) produces the feeling of
beauty.
DERRIDA, J. Parergon. In: The Truth in Painting
no adherence is possible between adherence
and non-adherence. And yet this break of
contact, this very separation constitutes a limit,
a blank, the thickness of a blank (…) there
must well be an adherence somewhere
between the two beauties.
DERRIDA, J. Parergon. In: The Truth in Painting
Brian Grassom. City II, (detail) 2001
Literature is only a domain of
coherence and a common region
as long as it does not exist, as long
as it does not exist for itself and
conceals itself. As soon as it
appears in the distant presentiment
of what it seems to be it flies into
pieces, it sets out on the path to
dispersion in which it refuses to
be
recognised
by
precise,
identifiable signs.
BLANCHOT, M. The Pursuit of the Zero Point. In: The Blanchot Reader
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Brian Grassom
Aberdeen School of Art and Architecture, Research. 2005