A lot today.
Went to the library to check out books on color theory and pattern-making. Found and borrowed two books - Color in Art, by Stefano Zuffi, which is fun and has a chapter on 8 colors and tours art history looking at ash one. Kinda fin and inspiration, but also great at seeing how color can structure a composition. For gaining my technical chops, I was glad to find Stephen Quiller’s Color Choices. Great book.
Also, a color book by Leslie Cabargin led me to an incredible and famous artist whom I’ve never known by name: Alphonse Mucha. SO MUCH of what he does, with frame composition, body, and ornament, is what I want to do. He and Beardsly are masters of ornate and dynamic framing.
And framing is something I’ve made an abstract extraction about today, while perusing this books, and maybe mulling over Jun’s books on Mandalas. Jung says… oh, where is it… So writes Jung, concerning mandalas:
“[T]he severe pattern imposed by a circular image of this kind compensates the disorder and confusion of the psychic state - namely through the construction of the central point to which everything is related, or by a concentric arrangement of the disordered multiplicity and of contradictory and irreconcilable elements. This is evidently an attempt at self-healing on the part of Nature, which does not spring form conscious reflection but from an instinctive impulse.”
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In that passage is so much I’d love to discuss.
Immediately, I will just draw a connection to a beloved literary theorist of mine, Mikhail Bakhtin. He had a theory of polyglossia, or ‘many-tongued-ness.’ A particular beauty of certain novels and stories, he described, was that, within the bounds of single book, which is it’s own field of consciousness, can exist many contrasting and opposing points of view and characters. Thus, a novel contains - and possibly synthesizes (not sure what that might mean) - opposing elements of existing. In that synthesis of what may seem chaotic, even if it’s just a perceived synthesis, lies a stability and quality of beauty.
The common threads through these, then, is that the idea that when can place irreconcilables on a single field and, in some sense, synthesize them by means of framing, by means of making them part of a complex whole.
The other thing: Linda and I went to sit in on a Joey Weisenberg jam. I was there to get a taste of it because Ilusha wanted to possibly hire me to do the album art for Joey’s new music.
I had a great time, and a number of things coalesced in my mind as I doodled in that most productive state: half-listening to live music, half swimming through the unbound currents of the mind.
Firstly, architecture. We were in a synagogue on Kane St., and , well, I loved it. Photos here. Paper-cutting composition and color theory with out-spooling form my mind. And the patterns in the high windows effected me, especially later.
The architecture immediately became a part of my design doodles- the intimacy of the playing (a loft in high alcove, the musicians huddled around a bundle of christmas lights): a kind of gothic size and austerity juxtaposed with the warmth and intimacy of the music/ians.
What was interesting was that, after 45 min or so, I was done doodling the space and the people (that is, the visible), and wanted to try doodling what I was hearing and feeling - this wonderful music of many voices and instruments, supported and building themselves. What I found was that I drew patterns - apparently rhythm and and repetition in music is the aural equivalent of visual pattern design. I began drawing the music this way, created angled beams that were supported by contrary beams and intern support the contrary beams above them, and all of this in an ascending pattern. Suddenly, what I drew looking very similar to the stain glass window. And that was - either a pleasant and superficial epiphany, or a connection that I might spend the rest of my life poking at.
Alright. Basta.
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