thesis.

Some of you have expressed interest in reading my thesis when it is complete. Well, now it is complete.




click here to read my thesis.



It is relatively short at 41 pages long.
The topic is an interpretation of a Francis Bacon painting.

theory from: early Christian Byzantium, St. John of Damascus, Martin Luther, Joseph Leo Koerner, GWF Hegel, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, my own experience
fictional literature from: Oscar Wilde, Jorge Luis Borges
film stills from: The Battleship Potemkin (1929), Triumph of the Will (1935)
art from: Francis Bacon, Diego Velazquez, Albrecht Durer


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self-portraits holding icon & wearing headphones

the two indispensable objects since January 2011.

in the 1800's

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why is classical music so dramatic, especially Tchaikovsky?

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to make it memorable. without an internet stream or .mp3 or CD or cassette or record or piano roll all i have is my memory of the performance.

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dramatic music is easier to remember than subtle music.

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i would die if i could not listen to music at my convenience. i would die inside.

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now it sounds funny, now the most dramatic and beautiful and cathartic pieces are used to buttress romantic comedies and just comedies and men slipping on bananas and items falling in slow motion that are valuable and will cause a major disruption in the plot if that vase breaks.

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now they sound funny, but then i couldn't make my life into a film like i can with earbuds and pot and depression caused by other things.

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please, don't think of Monty Python, think of how actually the first couple minutes remind you of being away for so long, of being away for so long from the one you love and being alone, being alone for so long away from everyone you love.

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piano rolls

I spent the morning listening to piano rolls.


What is a piano roll? They are compositions that are impossible for humans to play, but not impossible for a player piano or reproducing piano to play. Thus they are a feigned performance, somewhere between live and recorded - a spectre of the reality that could be, if only fourteen fingers and three hands. Some composers composed compositions (like that?) specifically for the piano roll. Piano rolls can also preserve the composer playing her own composition - Gershwin actually playing Gershwin. Here are some paradigmatic examples.


Antheil - "Ballet Mecanique" (1924) - perhaps the most famous example, Dada. I am not partial to this type of music, but I do enjoy Legar's accompanying film.





Ervin Nyiregyhazi playing Grainger's playing Tchaikovsky's "Waltz of the Flowers" (1922) - if asked to submit a universally appealing piece of music, I would submit this.   





D-albert playing Saint-Saens "Danse Macabe" - Beautiful piano roll of the piece usually performed with strings and voice.

Kitsch or Art? Guessing Game

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A series of questions designed to gauge your aesthetic sensibility. Structure is dualistic\either/or, usually.

>>>> question one

Which magazine would you prefer to read/look at with interest?

The New Yorker

-or-

jodi.org

>>>>>question two

Which mode of highly-organized Western music appeals to you?

Mozart, symphony no. 40 in g minor, 1st movement

-or-

Tchaikovsky, Serenade for Strings in C Major, Op. 48

>>>>>question three

What film is more enjoyable?

The Royal Tenenbaums 

-or-

Rear Window

>>>>>question four

do you wear thick-framed glasses because your eyesight is so very poor it necessitates a heavy frame to support the weight of your lenses, or do you wear them because it is fashionable?

>>>>>question five

Which graph makes more sense?

-or-

>>>>>question six

Which painting seems "familiar?"

American Gothic / Grant Wood

-or-

Angelus Novus / Paul Klee

"why like this"

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by: Johannes de Silentio



"this work is polarizing," she thought.
the skull of a goat wrapped in stolen metal wiring.
seven feet high, twice as wide as a real
human, beast, bestiality.

"like reality, but better. i'd like to display him."
the artist responded, "installation will be tiring."
"no matter," she said. "this work reminds me
of nothing I've read and everything I've seen."

and she thought inside, "us;" and she meant another,
an other, a match, a mate, a brother,
nothing matches. "why like this," she thought.
"patience mimics care, poorly, as a virtue."

"the opposing viewers may want to hurt you,"
said artist, in regards to his sculpture. still
thinking of love, the woman replied to herself;
her answer, true, for either the guy or myself,

"i care outside confrontation that suggests otherwise.
i am getting better at forgetting to apologize.
i admit imbalance.
it persists, the valence."


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prediction for 2011

>>>>>

the year before the apocalypse
everything will start to sound like this

brainfeedersite.com

let yourself be converted.

...amen

>>>>>

Working Thesis.

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for those of you who were asking about my thesis: this is the bare-bones precis.

"My final project pivots on the words “original” and “translation:” I am interested in translations of portraits that break stylistically and theologically from their archetype. The two archetypes and their translations I will be analyzing in this project are:

1.      Albrecht Durer’s 1500 Munich Self-Portrait, for which I have selected my object analysis 1. (translation of Christ Pantocrator)

2.      Francis Bacon’s 1953 portrait of Pope Innocent X, for which I have selected my object analysis 2. (translation of Diego Velazquez’s 1650 portrait of Innocent X)

I am interested in telling the story of these translations of religious art. I do not wish to merely compare the original to the translation, but I want to show how the original informs its translation and how the translation completes the original. My theoretical platform, therefore, approaches the correspondence as one that could operate within a number of historical trajectories. Specifically, I am interested in the overlap of two histories: a stylistic/artistic one and a theological one. I hope that in telling the story of these pieces of art, the reader also hears a religious story. I wish to communicate that visual literacy informs, supplements, and, at its greatest heights, is theological literacy.

I will mainly be using Benjamin to organize my paper. The two essays I have in mind are “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” and “The Task of the Translator.” I also anticipate drawing upon other aesthetic texts that envision art (or everything) historically – so Germanic aesthetics mostly. Lessing, Hegel, Nietzsche, Adorno, etc. are possibilities.

Also, I am in the habit of titling my papers after I have finished them, so unfortunately I do not have a title yet." 

Velazquez/Bacon

Christ Pantocrator/Durer