dace art : www.dace.co.uk

Portrait of Harriet

2011-11-25T17:05:00.000Z

Portrait of Harriet, oil on prepared board. This was done as a class exercise over three sessions.

If this were a commission I'd probably ask for six sessions, to get all the nuances just right, and to give her a bit of a smile.

In a class situation it is not always possible to get the model just as you want her, and you have to put up with whatever space is available to set up your easel.

I made the background a bit brighter than it was to work with her very bright lipstick.

One of my paintings is to be a book cover

2011-11-03T12:07:00.001Z

St Catherine of Siena as a young girl floating upstairs

This is a painting I did a few years ago inspired by one in the monastery of St. Catherine in Siena, Italy. It shows St Catherine as a girl of about 10 years old praying so hard she floats upstairs.

To see the whole painting, go to my St Catherine page. For a desktop version go to my free wallpaper page on www.dace.co.uk

Is modern art afraid of the nude?

2011-05-05T10:22:00.000+01:00

Tate Modern has blank postcards on which you are encouraged to write or draw what you think should be in the gallery. Some of the responses are displayed in the gallery itself. So here is my attempt to get a work hung in the Tate.

Will they dare show it?

In the post to them today.

A new fairy

2010-11-22T17:34:00.005Z

Naked fairy on a geranium leaf

Here is a drawing of a fairy I did recently. I used pencil and turpentine on stretched paper prepared with wallpaper paste.

You have to use methods like that to make images of fairies because even with modern digital cameras you still can't photograph them very easily.

If you want to buy this drawing, please click through to my web site.

On having no name

2010-08-27T15:18:00.000+01:00

Alice in the forest where things have no names

A little link to a painting I did a few years ago, Alice in the forest where things have no names.

There is an ancient belief that the name of a thing contains its essence, and hence to name something is to have power over it.

Maybe this was once true of the mythical language that existed before the fall of Babylon. Maybe there is still power in the words of a poet or orator. But ordinary words are not the things they point to, and names are not the things named.

Narrow Gate Press

2010-08-16T14:32:00.000+01:00

Narrow Gate Press

This is my new venture: the publication of a book of poems - the lifetime best poems of my late friend David Henschel.

To read some of the poems and follow the progress of the book please go to the Narrow Gate Press blog.

From time to time I shall also post there about the ups and downs of becoming a publisher using print-on-demand technology.

And now for something completely different

2010-08-10T17:50:00.000+01:00

Enough of this philosophical ratiocination, I hear you cry! Where are the mermaids and fairies of former times?You will be happy to learn that I have created a new page for the mermaids, with suitable health and safety information in case you should meet one.

thoughts, feelings, poetry and myth

2010-08-08T21:50:00.001+01:00

A poet who disregards myth altogether will need to find something bigger than his own thoughts and feelings to transform his verse - from the Tilt your head blog.

The 'Tilt Your Head' blogger I think is pointing to the idea that if we decide not to appeal to myth then to be effective artists we need to be larger than our usual selves. Perhaps we should need to have enough being to create a myth. This is no small aim.

From J. S. Bach on continuo playing: It should make a euphonious harmony for the glory of God and the permitted delectation of the mind; and like all music its finis and final cause should never be anything else but the glory of God and the recreation of the mind. When this is not heeded, there really is no music, but a hellish howl and clatter.

Karl Popper: I suggest that Bach wished to exclude from the final cause of music the making of a noise for the greater glory of the musician.

Determinism and free will 4

2010-08-01T20:33:00.000+01:00

I have been reading 'The Concept of Mind' by Gilbert Ryle.

Although I think the problem of the false dichotomy between determinism and free will is adequately dealt with in my previous posts, this gives the option of another way of looking at it.

If a person decides they are going to do something, or desires something, then the actions they take to do that thing or to achieve that aim will be determined by the interaction of the environment and their efforts. So the whole thing is, in that sense, determined.

That doesn't alter the fact that the person is doing what they want. The apparent contradiction between determinism and free will appears to be due to a misunderstanding or misapplication of the term 'free will.'

Is art bourgeois?

2010-07-29T13:48:00.009+01:00

In a comment on my blog post Art theory and my art theory rant Paul Bolton writes:

My disagreement with the stuckists stems from the approach to art as an invention. But an invention that stems from bourgeois ideologies.
This wouldn't mean that using paint as a material was inherently bourgeois but making beautiful objects would be, as they have been sustained and developed by the 'upper class'. In other words purely economic, political, social-rather than spiritual.

Firstly I would quibble with the conflation of 'upper class' with bourgeois. 'Bourgeois' usually means 'middle class,' not 'upper class.' I would grant that the upper class (now a dying breed) traditionally upheld the fine arts, largely because they had money to pay for them, and the middle class that arose out of the industrial revolution started to emulate them in this respect.

That is not to say that the working classes did not produce art, as for example rich traditions of folk music and folk art bear witness. Going further back in time, are we to assume that the finely wrought shields of the Saxons or the cave paintings of the Dordogne are also expressions of a bourgeois ideology?

Also, because the 'upper class' (however defined) sustains and develops something does not make it bad or even necessarily problematic, any more than eating healthy and well-prepared food necessarily tars one with the brush of a particular ideology.

One more argument: the medieval cathedrals were built by expert masons with the help of local labour. Do they not have the same awesome effect on the poor who go in to admire them or to pray as they do on the rich?

New poetry from Narrow Gate Press

2010-07-22T12:14:00.001+01:00

Do you like poems that speak to the mind as well as the heart?

My latest venture is the publication of a book of poems by my late friend and former teacher David Henschel. I only knew of these poems after he died.

Listen, be glad,
butturn and sleep again
until the swords and songs both say
‘now peace is in awakening.’

I have created a separate blog for these poems. I shall post a full poem monthly on that blog, with weekly thoughts on short extracts.

Talk to the prawn - 2

2010-07-12T17:41:00.002+01:00

I realised yesterday that talking to a prawn might not be as crazy as first seems. Or alternatively it is, and we all are.

I was thinking a particularly loud thought, as one might do sometimes while communing with nature in the smallest room, or while driving a familiar piece of road. Suddenly a word popped out of my mouth unbidden. The word was part of a sentence in my totally useless and automatic thought process at that time.

When we are children we tend to recognise that people who talk to themselves are nuts. They generally are and are usually adults. When we have something to say as children, we tend to say it. As we grow up we have more and more thoughts that we don't say, and we start talking to ourselves internally. This is laughingly known as thought and supposedly is what distinguishes us from lower forms of life.

Nowadays of course it is much harder to spot nutters, as we all have mobile phones, so people can and do walk about talking to themselves with their heads on one side all the time paying scant attention to external reality.

Given that this is going on anyway, why not talk to a prawn? At least the prawn is out there in the real world, albeit the prawn is non-English speaking and actually dead. Nevertheless it is a step up from talking to oneself.

I suspect if we all had a plastic prawn (a real one might smell after a bit) in our bathrooms so that we could go in there and talk to it when we wanted to have a random thought, we should be embarrassed at how mundane most of our thoughts are.

I look forward to hearing from anyone who thinks I've got this all wrong.

Art theory

2010-07-07T17:12:00.002+01:00

Some while ago I wrote a rant on art theory. E.J emails me that my essay is flawed.

E.J says that If someone thinks a trash bin full of garbage is more interesting than a Rembrandt, that is their view and they must have reasons for it. He goes on to say that Your assertion that he is wrong to feel that way and that you could walk up to him and say, "Wrong! Change how you feel and your experiences!" is crazy. He also says that we should not enlist a tyranny of the majority to decide on what is considered good and what is considered bad.

As to the first point, I acknowledge it. If someone gets enjoyment from a rubbish bag (whether displayed as art or otherwise) then so be it. Foxes do.

As to the second point, I don't think I wrote anything resembling it.

Regarding the accusation that I wish to enlist a tyranny of the majority, I do not. All tyrannies are to be avoided.

The question with any piece of art is, what is its aim? If its aim is to amuse foxes, then we can judge that piece of art by how successful it is at attracting foxes. If its aim is pleasant decoration, then so be it. If its aim is to induce nausea, or the self-aggrandisement of the artist, then again it may be successful by either of these criteria. And if its aim is to enlarge our humanity and our sense of beauty, then the artist must strive for that.

Hung parliament - talk to the prawn

2010-05-28T14:41:00.001+01:00

A little anecdote I feel should not be entirely lost in the fading memory of time:Round the corner from the Cheese Shop in Greenwich, London, is a small shop selling excellent fresh fish. On the day of the election results my informant who works in the Cheese Shop observed a man outside, evidently the worse for drink, come round the corner from the fish shop and, taking a large prawn from a bag, held it in front of him. Staring into its beady black eyes he intoned:"It's a hung parliament! A hung parliament!"Just thought people should know.

Badia Tower, Marsala, Sicily

2009-11-16T10:58:00.001Z

If you want a romantic holiday for two, Marsala in Sicily is a beautiful baroque town with plenty to see in and around. We stayed in the Badia Tower (booked through Solo Sicily), a converted folly set in the gardens of an old aristocratic estate. Click here for my poem.

You can't easily get any wine that is not made in Sicily, and that is no problem because Sicilian wines are excellent.

We hired a car, which is necessary, but the Sicilian drivers are the worst I have encountered anywhere (and I have been in taxis in Moscow and Turkey), and driving requires constant vigilance and a willingness to swerve frequently. I do not know how we got through Palermo in rush hour unscathed.

Take care not to get double charged on insurance - better to book car hire insurance at the airport because booking the insurance on-line was not recognised by the car hire firms at the airport, so I paid twice. The booking agency refunded my booking fee but nothing else: if you use a booking agency you never know who your contract is with so it's hard to get anyone to take responsibility when it all goes wrong.

Anyway, you will understand from the above that the collision damage waiver is essential for peace of mind.

Having said that, a wonderful holiday and the locals in Marsala were very friendly.

Recommended in Marsala:
La Sirena Ubriaca - a friendly wine bar in which you can taste many local wines before purchase, or just have a glass of wine and some small but very high quality bar nibbles (a nibble is smaller than a snack). (I don't think their mermaid is as pretty as mine.)
The best restaurant is tucked away - from the main square go towards the eastern gate and turn left down one of the narrow alleys before you get to the gate. I'll post more precise details when I find them.
The bar on the main square is good for a savoury pastry or delicious cake and a beer.

The Quackometer duck sells ear candles

2009-10-08T13:52:00.000+01:00

I am not so happy with the little black duck at www.quackometer.net. The quackometer is an experiment to see if it is easy to spot quack medical web sites just from the language they use, however it gave a score of 10 canards (the standard international unit of quackery) to my sister's hypnotherapy web site at www.keyhypnotherapy.co.uk, which seems unfair because she says Clients will always be encouraged to follow the advice of their GP or hospital consultant.

What's more that little duck is advertising ear candles.

The saucy site owner one Andy Lewis says you can contact him via the about page on his web site, but there isn't one. I used the internet time machine at www.archive.org to extract his email address from the Akharshic records.

I've emailed Mr Lewis and await a response.

My old home page reinstated!

2009-09-10T16:23:00.001+01:00

A blog is all very well, but my old home page was all right, so I have reinstated it. There is a new link to a bizarre cartoon strip Katastrophe Qat I did in my youth (i.e. before the dawn of time). Go to Qatastrophe Kat's new home page. (Katastrophe Kat is a cat, not some weird drug that makes your teeth go a funny colour.) He tries to clean up with a get-rich-quick scheme.

'I' do not exist

2009-06-28T18:19:00.003+01:00

'I', in the sense of my own subjective self, does not exist.

Consider the following definition of 'exist':

A thing exists if there is a way for at least two independent observers to verify it, such that their observations match sufficiently.

Now, whereas 'I' (that is, Dace associated with this blog) exist in a certain sense (for you I am a you or a him), my interior subjective 'I' is not accessible to any of you except me. Therefore 'I' fails the test of existence as defined above.

Therefore, 'I' do not exist.

On seeing Peter Brook's Mahabharata

2009-05-17T14:27:00.007+01:00

Classical history is the reverse of the version I was taught at primary school.

My school books suggested that there was a gradual ascent from the stone age to all the gleaming technological advances of modern humanity, whereas in ancient times it was believed that we have descended from a more innocent golden age to the primitive and violent age we now inhabit. In this the Indian, Greek and Roman authors agree.

In between that ancient and mythical golden age and our present demonic age stands the Silver age of heroes: in Homer: Achilles, Agamemnon, Odysseus, and in the Mahabharata: Bhishma, Drona and Arjuna.

In the time of heroes people thought differently and acted differently. They meant what they said - a word had power both over the person spoken to and over the person speaking. If a hero vowed to do something he would do his utmost to carry it out even at the cost of his life. A man's word used to be his bond, and to break it would involve unacceptable loss of being. Today promises are cheap and exchangeable often not for fulfilment but for excuses.

They had rules of war, some of which have trickled down to us in lip-service form, such as not killing an unarmed man, and some that have not survived at all, such as not fighting after dark, not fighting during the harvest.

At several points in the great battle between the Pandavas and the Kauravas the ancient rules of war are broken. One feels that the great epic stands on the edge between the Silver age and our age to follow, an age in which as a man's word means less, so is his being the less, and as the rules are broken so the world slips into chaos.

Yet at these points Krishna himself intervenes, not to keep the old law but to destroy it. Drona is lied to - the deception appears shocking to those who perpetrate it, as if they stand on the very precipice of the old order in doing the unthinkable. Krishna urges them gently on. Arjuna hesitates to plant the fatal arrow in his mortal enemy Karna, Krishna gently urges him to kill.

Consider then Odysseus - the man of many devices who wins the Trojan war on the very eve of defeat by deception. Does he not also stand at the very twilight of the age of heroes, and use language and trickery to survive? How also could he have escaped from the Cyclops except by the verbal ruse of pretending his name was 'Nobody'?

Now having accepted deception as a way of life we have become thoroughly self-deceived. This is what Socrates tried patiently to show and why he was killed.

To be like Silver Age heroes we have at least to know how to use deceptive words (I mean that all words are deceptive) without being ourselves deceived.

The Mahabharata [1989] [DVD] [1990]

art is a signpost

2009-04-19T18:38:00.003+01:00

A while back I got this message via my web contact form:

"hi, love your work what is your inspiration to do the work you do" - from Michelle C.

Here is my reply:

"My inspiration is the need to express beauty. I think probably all of us have a desire towards what is beautiful and expressing it in art is one way of getting close to it. Or perhaps it is frustration at not having the real thing, like a lover wanting to have a picture of his or her beloved because their real beloved is not with them.

"Art is a signpost pointing to something else."

consciousness is not functions

2009-04-16T19:09:00.003+01:00

The human machine is not the mind.

We think we 'do' and 'decide' but it is done for us and we respond unconsciously. Then we claim that 'I' did it. We rationalise what happened after the fact as if we had planned it consciously all along.

This article from the Economist suggests that decisions on what to think and what to do and even the solving of problems are done before they reach consciousness.

So who do we think we are? The machine which thinks and acts unconsciously? Or the consciousness that perceives after the event?

Is there any way we can rescue the 'common-sense' view that we decide what to do and then do it? Or does thinking just get in the way of decisions already made deep inside the human machine?

The study of 'artificial intelligence' mostly studies functions (like the ability to play chess, for example). It seems clear that functions can be carried out prior to (and perhaps without the help of) consciousness.

Vita - naked women and bicycles

2009-04-12T21:33:00.006+01:00

I received an email from a gallery owner in Quebec representing an artist called Vita, who specialises in paintings of naked women, often with bicycles. The gallery owner had responded to my essay, 'Towards a new art'.

I especially liked this painting by Vita in which a woman, beautiful in her nakedness, looks at an abstract painting from which elements have fallen.

There is a commentary on the web site.

In reference to the commentary, the male and female elements both refer to our own psychology - the male guides, the female has the force of inspiration. The male has the rules, the female has the love. One is useless without the other, a string and a bow.

this blog, my art

2009-03-14T10:27:00.002Z

I shall shortly move this blog to www.dace.co.uk/blog and restore my old front page with its direct links to my paintings. See links at the right of this page for my artwork. The blog will continue and there will be a link to it from my new front page.

determinism and free will 3

2009-03-14T10:26:00.000Z

Fate could not operate without that choice, which is part of the web of fate itself, part of its colour.

Did not Odysseus reach Ithaka as he was fated to do all along? And did not that arrival require strenuous efforts and choices, the choice to leave the nymph Calypso for example?

To say that determinism and free will contradict each other is to confuse two things on very different scales.

The sense of choice, of decision and effort, are woven into the very fabric of fate. Free will is necessary for fate to unfold as it must.

mysticism

2009-03-08T20:42:00.000Z

Mysticism (Oxford English Dictionary):
1. belief that union with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or the spiritual apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, may be attained through contemplation and self-surrender.
2. belief characterized by self-delusion or dreamy confusion of thought, esp. when based on the assumption of occult qualities or mysterious agencies.

I have long been a bit of a hard nut, not given to believing in 'mysterious agencies,' and indeed I have come actively to disbelieve anything written in a newspaper, and require stringent proofs for any important claims. I am a doubter.

Even dictionaries, of course, can get things wrong. Be that as it may, the Oxford Dictionary gives the Greek root of the word mysticism as muein - to close the lips or eyes. Plato said that we come into this world knowing much, but we forget it all. Someone has put a seal on our lips. At the same time, much that is worth knowing cannot be spoken.

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. Wittgenstein, Tractatus 6.522

determinism and free will 2

2009-02-17T16:12:00.007Z

Now we descend from Parmenides's vantage point on Mount Olympus.

From there we could see the whole world laid out, not only in space but also in time: everything that was is and will be as a single unimaginably complex intertwining of threads of existence. For each object and being we see that coming into existence, being and going out of existence are just one thread.

Thus the Fates weave. There seemed from there no possibility of anything ever being any different, since we see all changes as one thing.

From the point of view of the being whose thin thread of life we observed from Olympus, things look very different. The twists and turns of fate do not entirely feel to us like being pushed and pulled helplessly, but require decisions and action.

Saxon King Harold Godwinson, standing on the battlefield not far from York in 1066, is faced by his brother Tostig and Harald Sigurdson, King of Norway at the head of a large Norwegian army. Harold sends a messenger to the Norwegian camp and offers a third of his kingdom to his brother Tostig. Tostig asks what Harold will give to Harald of Norway. Harold replies that he will give him six feet of English earth, but because Harald is such a tall man, seven feet.

Battle commences and the invading Norwegians are defeated and Harald and Tostig slain. Harold Godwinson returns to fight William of Normandy at Hastings, the outcome of which we all know.

What if Harold, knowing that he had two battles on his hands and weary troops, had made a pact with Harald and gone on to victory at Hastings? Probably the inhabitants of Newcastle would speak Norwegian to this day, and English history would have been very different.

Perhaps the choice Harold made was determined by Fate. But from Harold's point of view he was making a decision, in those few minutes.

adolescent philosophising

2009-02-15T09:03:00.003Z

Some adolescents pass through a stage when they want to know who they are and what is the meaning of life. Then they grow up and die.

It is better to stay an adolescent in our thinking.

When we change enough we may realise that we don't know who we are, or that we are not who we thought we were. If we are what is common to what was before and what is now then what we thought we were shrinks indefinitely. It can only stay the same if we have fossilised.

Yet what watches remains.

determinism and free will

2009-02-04T21:54:00.006Z

We are with Parmenides, standing on Mount Olympus, looking down on the whole universe in time and space. From our god-like perspective the universe is a four-dimensional space-time solid, in which all our heres and nows that were and are and shall be are but specks.

We can perhaps distinguish a line connecting all the moments of the life of one being, this being the thread spun by the Fates. Everything is fixed.

Omar Khayyam wrote:

With Earth's first Clay They did the Last man's knead,
And then of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed:
Yea, the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.

However, from the point of view of this being, whose thread of life we observe from Olympus, things look very different.

In my next post I propose to challenge the idea that determinism and free will are irreconcilable.

silence

2009-01-15T13:46:00.005Z

Be silent, or let your words be worth more than silence - Pythagoras. I have many thoughts, but few of them of any value.

decadence

2009-01-05T13:05:00.008Z

...Professor C E M Joad once defined decadence as 'the loss of an object in life.' - Charles Johnson, introductory essay to Proverbs from the authorised King James version of the bible, Canongate 1998.

words and reality

2009-01-04T17:52:00.007Z

What is the true purpose of thought?

Words interpose themselves between us and the present, so much so that we live in a world of thought, an internal virtual reality, hardly ever being where our feet are carrying us. Our thoughts, beginning as symbolic tokens for the real world, become a substitute for it. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, as Shakespeare wrote.

There must once have been a time, in the early pre-historic, when there was little speech, no words as we know them, no syntax, no thought. Were we real then, but animals? Now we are human, but illusory.

There was a time before writing was invented. Writing enabled many things from libraries of knowledge to the keeping of accounts. Yet the price we paid for writing was the gradual loss of the ability to remember. The work of Homer was passed down from singer to singer from the Mycenaean age to Classical Greece. Yet by the time of the Peisistratids there was a real risk that one of the masterpieces of the world would be lost forever. Thus they had to have Homer's words written down.

Similarly with speech and thought - perhaps there was a much more ancient gain and loss. How can we use thought without being bewitched by it?

poetry

2008-12-27T09:47:00.004Z

A friend of mine, a poet, told me she was sad when someone told her that words are not important. Words belong to this ordinary state of being in the mind. They are mere tokens for reality, codes to which we try to attach meaning, not reality itself.

I said, someone told me that the important part of music is the silence between the notes. In the same way the importance of poetry is the silence created in the listener.

the present

2008-12-26T12:32:00.008Z

This is my new home page. You can access my paintings by clicking on the picture. I shall post any thoughts I have that seem worthwhile on this page, which means in practice that there might be a new blog entry about once a week. I think one good thought a week is pretty good going.

If the past is memory and the future is guesswork, the only thing we have is the present.