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Francesco Hayez and Domenico Induno

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If we switch back to the Biedermeier era again let us proudly present Francesco Hayez as the leading painter of that time in Italy. Hayez melted the ideals of classicism with the sentimentality of romanticism. He was a historical painter yet relied on Renaissance style in an endeavour to give Italy a new and self-conscious identity. In the spirit of Risorgimento he was a democratic painter. He was heavily ideologically involved with the unification of Italy and the shaking off of the Hapsburg rule and expressed his melancholy about the failure of legitimate nationalist attempts in powerful paintings. On the internet it says: „Corrado Ricci describes him as starting as a classicist but then evolving to a style of emotional tumult“ – but unfortunately I was not able to further discover what emotional tumult would mean, in the history of art (Ricci´s Art in Northern Italy is from 1911). The expression of emotional tumult in Hayez` paintings, however, is obvious and Stendhal said about him: „rien moins que le premier peintre vivant“, „l´expression des personnages est vivre et profonde, on sent que ce peintre a de l´ame“, „m´apprend quelque chose de nouveau sur le passions qu`il peint“.

Francesco Hayez and his women

Domenico Induno was a pupil of Hayez and they had an intimate and warm relationship. In his more mature paintings the brushwork is more raw and seemingly spontaneous, his paintings seem somehow internally tattered and give quite an immediate sense of emotional tumult, convulsions, stress or despair in his characters and scenes. His paintings are rather suggestive than descriptive. Domenico Induno also was an adherent of Risorgimento (and his powerful Melancholy we have encountered in the Biedermeier exhibition) and became also critical towards society in post-unification Italy (The Return of the Wounded Soldier, indicating a strenuous past but also a bleak future for ordinaty Italians). Towards the end of his life his paintings became gloomy and melancholic.

Domenico Induno

Domenico Induno also had a younger brother, Gerolamo, who also was a painter who did some fairly cool stuff (which, however, was not shown at our Is That Biedermeier? exhibition).

Michael Neder, Hillbilly Elegies, Murderous Children, the Question about a Good Society

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If again we remember the Biedermeier era in Austria Micheal Neder comes to mind as a peculiar figure. He was born in Oberdöbling, then a suburb of Vienna, as a son to a shoemaker. Neither his father nor his stepmother treated him particularly well. Despite that he remained the most loyal portraitist of the lives and times of the common people and the lower classes. His talent as an artist was discovered when he went to school, he was sent to the academy and started a semi-successful career as a painter (Waldmüller, for instance, did not hold Neder in high esteem although he was well respected by others). Unsure about the solidity of his talent and whether it could earn him a living he abandoned art and became a shoemaker himself for a while and returned as a more mature painter to the art scene again some years later. For the rest of his life he remained a truthful portraitist of ordinary folks – craftsmen, peasants, maids, proletarians, etc. He depicted their sorrows, the monotony and repetetiveness of their lives, their occasionally empty eyes, as well as their joys, their innocence, their festivities or them becoming philosophers in their own right when sitting together with a beer. It is correct that Neder does not come in with the grandezza and majesty of the other renowned artists of this time, Waldmüller, Amerling, Danhauser and the like, his art was no Gedanken/Ideenkunst either but stemmed out of sentiment. There are no indications that Neder got heavily influenced by the intellectual life of this time, in a sympathetic way he stubbornly remained true to his vision. Although he of course mastered academic painting he deliberately remained „naive“ most of the time as the most adequate fashion to depict what he wanted to depict. That makes up for his special place in the history of Austrian art. He was an honest artist and his work radiates honesty.

Michael Neder´s humble beginnings and the torment he underwent as a child may, on this occasion, be associated with an article I read a while ago about the lives and times of the so-called white trash population in America, largely unknown territory for me before, so that I also read J.D. Vance´s book Hillbilly Elegy the article refers to (the other book I could not get so easily so far). Hillbilly Elegy is an illuminating and sympathetic book and helps you to better understand people and view them with some sympathy even if they are, effectively, broken. It effectively raises epistemological and sociopsychological questions as the hillbillies and the white poor in America are effective reality deniers, which serves the hygienic function of not effectively having to confront their misery but is dysfunctional in not offering them any help to find any way out of it. Deindustrialisation is one thing but the other thing is that, contrary to wide held opinion, there are plenty of jobs for these people which they cannot take for utter lack of discipline and manners. Contrary to his opinion, and the opinion generally held by the hillbillies (and others), J.D. found out that politicians usually DO care for their people and try to improve their lives, the problem is rather that, among humans, there are limits to what you can achieve with them (there are, of course, also voices who diss J.D., yet of course also they have to be handeled with some care). I would also like to help people and improve everyone´s life but I don´t know how to do it effectively. As it seems to me social problems are rather not the problem caused by a system but by a general culture and mentality among a people. And as it seems to me the people most intelligent at solving their problems are (among Western Europeans) the Swiss. I think the key to a good society is that there is a keen sense of individual responsibilities as well as a collective responsibility. The Swiss have both, due to Calvinism a „protestant ethics“ of capitalism and individual responsibility and due to the history of their defensive battles, where they had to stand, as different peoples/Kantone themselves united against foreign powers, notably the Hapsburg Empire, they have a strong sense of collective responsibility (and, as they were equal footmen who triumphed collectively over the aristocratic knights, a strong sense of egalitarity). See that the formation of a benign culture is contingent, and few people/s have the luck to get born in a supreme culture. I have to dive into this complex of thoughts deeper and will do so in the future.

Another story of outcast humanity is the case of „Child from Hell“ Mary Bell which attracted my attention via my Sociopathic Children Facebook group. In 1968 Mary Bell from Newcastle, England, strangled 4 year old Martin Brown shortly before her eleventh birthday, tried to murder the little sister of her friend Norma a little later and then, together with Norma, murdered and mutilated 3 year old Brian Howe. She (and Norma) boasted with what she/they did, cynically insulted family members of the dead boys and at the same time tried to confess to the police, one letter of confession they signed with Fanny and Faggot. No one believed them, notably as Mary was well known as a habitual liar and boaster who had a highly problematic relationship to most other children whom she hit, beated, bite in an obvious attempt to attract attention. As her ongoing cynicism about the murders became too blunt police took the hints more serious and began to interrogate the girls more systematically (with Mary trying to blame Norma for the murders at first). It turned out Mary was a deeply disturbed child and she got sentenced for manslaughter at Her Majesty´s Pleasure, effectively an indefinite sentence of imprisonment (Norma was absolved but got into conflict with the law later again and was then put under psychiatric supervision). She was released 12 years later, got married and gave birth to a child (the marriage was divorced later). She was granted anonymity but sold her story to the press for money years later, producing an outrage again (and putting her daughter who originally was unaware of her mother´s past in an uncomfortable position). Meanwhile Mary Bell is grandmother. In a book about her published years after the incidents it was thoroughly revealed how Mary was tried to be abadoned or killed several times as a child by her mother, as well as that her mother was a prostitute and dominatrix who forced Mary to engage in violently sexual acts with her clients. Her father was a petty criminal. When Mary was first sent to a community home she developed deep affection for the director whom she viewed as a surrogate father. When she was sent to a juvenile hall some years later (which got opposed by the director) she relapsed into her old habits, broke out of prison at one occasion (and at that occasion also lost her virginity). A female police specialist says girls are a minority out of children who kill, but when they do they usually start earlier and are more violent.

(And now, on occasion, I get reminded about the Winsconsin Death Trip, a documentary I recommend, not only for reasons of enhancing knowledge and awareness but also because the film has a very peculiar atmosphere. Mariana says the book is cool, but I have not read it so far.)

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller

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All acts and gestures of children are graceful since they originate from the wealth and abundance of the moment and seemingly actualise the full potential of the moment, free, spontaneous, undisguised and bare of affection, says Fuseli/Füssli in his aphorisms about art. And Kierkegaard says in the moment the temporal and the eternal meet, each moment in time is a cut through the eternal and an epiphany of the eternal. And Schopenhauer says art has to illustrate and comprise entire humanity with no individuals, gestures or scenes being too profane or unimportant as art has to give an idea about humanity in its entirety and its manifoldness. I say graceful gestures uplift the soul and spotting graceful gestures save us from the emptiness that is frequently behind them. I like to spot graceful gestures; they give us an impression/idea of the moment and the transitory as a present that is fulfilled.

If we remember the Biedermeier era again Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller was probably the most prolific painter in Austria. He captured life. He was master at epiphany of the eternal in the transitory, ethical truth in desolation, dissolving heterogeneous and heteronomous realms of culture into a benign nature, etc. In his paintings you have to blossoming of the moment, of the event. Whereas his fellow great Biedermeier painter Amerling was more concerned about depicting the truth of physiognomy Waldmüller was more concerned about the truth in actions and gestures. „Sehr wahr im Ausdruck“ was the highest compliment Waldmüller could have for a painter.


As is common for the art genius Waldmüller had a spiritualised relation to nature. Apart from her beauty, manifoldness, productiveness and hidden treasures of the previously unseen nature strikes us as independent, autonomous, self-contained and original. It is that which predates us, surrounds us and outlives us i.e. giving us an idea of the harmonious whole into which we may immerse and into which we are immersed. To Waldmüller nature is „eternal truth“ and it is not mean or brutal. „The acts of people may occasionally be mean, the forms in which nature expresses itself never are.“

Waldmüller announces the actual endeavour of art is „the portrayal of man as the subject of action which in the form of beauty encourages the spirit of goodness“. Art is an ethical enterprise and is powerful in the respect as it stimulates imagination i.e. it adresses not only the mind but also the sensual and the soul. Negativistic shitheads may belittle the pastoral idyll Waldmüller frequently portrays as unrealistic if not phony. Let them be told that criticism was not encouraged in the Biedermeier era therefore artists had to be tacit. Waldmüller did make explicit social commentary and it may come in as quite powerful like the depiction of Exhausted Strengh of a single mother or in the paintings about the Seizure. The children Waldmüller frequently depicts (as children symbolise innocence, purity, vitality and playfulness and intimate contact with nature) often work or have to follow duties but seem vital, happy and blossoming, their clothes may be old and botchy but they are neat, they walk barefoot but their feet are clean, etc. They express dignity and integrity even under dire conditions. From a realistic perspective that is actually not what you get when you go to the countryside and among the poor; the countryside may be even worse than polis and the poor more degenerated than the rich, granted: but art is also about purification and refinement of man, therefore also about purification and refinement in the portrayal of man (which is largely forgotten today) and whilst Waldmüller´s pastoral idylls may not be realistic they carry (ethical) truth.

  Although dismissive of other genres in painting than the depiction of (ethical) man embedded in circumstances, saying that depiction of landscapes or still lives are merely for sensual pleasures, Waldmüller also was a prolific painter of portraits and landscapes. His portraits had similarity with them of Ingres. In the Biedermeier era the bourgeoisie was not interested in idealised and canonical portraits of themselves like the aristrocrats, proud of their acquired wealth and status they were longing for expression of their true individuality. As a painter of landscapes and unanimated scenery Waldmüller was primarily concerned with how light is truly reflected. That allowed him to depict people and objects in space more truthful, at times isolated objects become, due to their illumination and masterful depiction, even hyperrealistic, in later years he fell from grace in the Viennese academy (and got expelled) for his extremely immersive depictions of landscape in bright sunlight – a personal tragedy frequently to occur for the anti-academic genius iconoclast. After his death Waldmüller received praise particularly from impressionists and the Secessionists, yet although Waldmüller depicted the transitory and was analytical concerning colour he was not particularly a (proto-)impressionist since the contours remain valid and the draughtsmanship pronounced. Waldmüller´s depiction of nature was incredibly detailed, in his later paintings he seems to anticipate Klimt – although this is an auxiliary construction since it is difficult to decipher them ex post. Like any great painter Waldmüller was immersing his vision and the components of vision and the expression of vision into themselves so as they emerge in a new quality out of themselves (die Vision in sich hineintreiben, damit sie verstärkt und erneuert aus sich heraustritt, as I use to say but unfortunately cannot find an adequate translation for hineintreiben). It is true that Biedermeier paining remained „petty“ and local, isolated in itself and this is also true for Waldmüller who is, despite his greatness, not very well known. Yet it was Waldmüller who pushed the inside perimeter of Biedermeier art in Austria into the great wide open and the spherical. (Apart from that he makes it clear that WE have the best of nature; WE, hahaha! – I also remember a globetrotter who told me the most striking mountains on the globe are neither, for instance, the Andes or Himalaya but the ALPS. Hahahahaha!)

Occasional Note about Dichterwahnsinn

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Doing innovative art happens in a painful isolation, the artist does not know what he is doing yet senses what he is doing is right yet society may not be confirming, the artist cannot compare himself and his productions to others, individualisation reaches such a degree that the artist is more or less effectively cut off from the whole despite him being the one who effectively relates to the whole and not the others, communication is impaired, and these alienations may well be resemblant to neurosis. The intensity of the inner processes of the artist (including the permanent (contrasting) juxtapositions thrown up by his associative intelligence) may aggravate the situation into (quasi)psychosis or (quasi)psychotic depression. That is the reality behind so-called „Dichterwahnsinn“ („poet´s frenzy“).

If we push this to further extremes it may come to mind that a lady who knew Kafka said about him that this apparently highly neurotic individual was the only person who thought like a human should think and who felt like a human should feel. I.e. despite probably having an avoidant personality disorder Kafka was completely anti-neurotic. We may call the poet who is completely anti-neurotic and who is the only who thinks like a human should think and who feels like a human should feel the omega poet.

It is apparent that the vision of such an omega poet would be one of a bizarre nightmarish world where nothing and no one is and behaves how it should be, if the way they behave is not needlessly grotesque, absurd or brutal at all. And that´s what you have in the vision of Kafka.

Beauty in colours

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This is the coolest face I´ve seen in a while (within a cool mix of colours)

These are the coolest hands I´ve seen in a while (within a cool mix of colours)

This is the coolest butterfly on face I´ve seen in a while (within a cool mix of colours)

This is the coolest scenery I´ve seen in a while (within a cool mix of colours)

The sentient, creative inner child rejoices upon them impressions (and this is the cutest redhead I´ve seen in a while)

(Although I also dig that one)

 

Deleuze, Leibniz, Whitehead

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Referring back to the interrupted note about Pinsel and Deleuze and the fold a while ago we conclude that the Deleuzian fold is a somehow fuzzy concept, but that is usual business when Deleuze comes up with concepts. Deleuze´s concepts are open-ended and inexhaustive, non-exclusive and intensive, a kind of virtuality, since his philosophy is a metaphysics and cosmology of transformation, evolution and potentialities. Some (like Rancière) fail to appreciate this since Deleuze´s concepts (and his whole philosophy) is linked to a semi-private imaginary that may be alien to some, notably those inclined to more analytic philosophy. Deleuze is a synthetic philosopher and a primarily associative thinker. Despite that, Deleuze´s concepts/philosophy are, of course, clear-cut and precise and well-defined, respectively they are purely analytic concepts when viewed from the perspective of the phase space (not the quasi-static metaphysics related to analytic philosophy). – The concept of the fold was first introduced by Deleuze in his book about Foucault (1986) with reference to Foucault´s philosophical investigations of how subjectivity is constituted via power (outside forces) and his final ruminations about how autonomous existence would be possible. In contrast to Foucault´s somehow staunchly hermetic perspective Deleuze refers to the fold as how the „outside“ constitutes an „inside“, but may include autonomy, potentiality and variation („differentiatedness“ in itself). In his subsequent book about Leibniz and the Baroque (1988) he refers to the fold as a monad although it becomes a much more dynamic concept and rather the constituent of a monad. The fold is a relationship upon itself, both static and dynamic, in flux and self-preserving and it is constituted via prehensions, pre-individual singularities, events. It is transsubjective. Folding means making something implicit, via unfolding it becomes explicit. The fold is a „point of view“ upon existence and its „subjectivity“ does not primarily refer to idiosyncracy but objective vagueness and variety of the world. Once again, Deleuze tries to think and illustrate the univocity of being and how the One relates to the Many and how both are interrelated.

Such was also the undertaking of Leibniz, indeed. Leibniz refers to monads, single, atomised beings as the final substance of the world beyond which there are no emanations of existence i.e. no „truth“ beyond their ontological scope. The „dark fond“ (i.e. both potentiality and lack of consciousness) is inherent in the monads themselves, and is their own primal ground upon which they may actualise themselves. Monads are embedded in a universal interrelationship of cause and effect, with God being the primal (and final) cause and each monad being a „mirror of the world“. There is a kind of hierarchy among monads with only humans capable of apperceptions (as elevated upon mere perceptions) and soul. The higher the monad the clearer and more comprehensive are the apperceptions and the awareness of being a „mirror of the world“ and the more elevated is the soul. Despite offering a relatively static paradigm, Leibniz emphasises that monads contain entelechies and are subject to change. The highest goal of life is to gain the highest awareness possible of the „harmony of the world“ and being as a divine monarchy. Alongside this trajectory the monad does not progress to rational vision of the „thing in itself“ yet breaks through the material hyle and becomes maximally competent (as it, as we may say, becomes the „suject/monad in itself“). Leibniz´ Monadology and related writings are, by the way, cool the way they are sharp and precise, anti-logorrhoea and without word vomit. That is not of necessary occurence in philosophy.

In his major work Process and Reality Whitehead occasionally mentions Leibniz, though not extensively. Yet the parallels to Leibniz and his monadology are striking, so much as that Deleuze bluntly refers to Whitehead as a „diadoche“ of Leibniz. Whitehead takes „actual entities“ as the true substance of the world, they resemble monads but are inherently more dynamic. They´re embedded in a universal process of becoming (not merely „cause and effect“) under which they finally constitute themselves as monads. Whitehead refers to intensity of perception as the highest value: the more intense the perception the more qualities the perceived as well as the perceiver accumulate. Whitehead´s ontology does not refer to a specific beginning or a specific end of the world process and embraces a higher notion of chance and the merely processural as a value in itself: creativity as the ontological principle upon which the world unfolds. In his notion, God is the primal ground of all possibilities and potentialities and via processural reality God actualises himself (which puts Whitehead´s philosophy in an apparent relationship to pantheism respectively panpsychism though it is not the same since Whitehead´s God is rather to be understood as an ontological substrate as well as a reflection which relates to the univocity of being and the harmonious interrelatedness of a heterogenous world). Embedded in processural reality actual entitites, like monads, are a reflection of the whole world and nothing that has ever happened ever gets lost. However, no actual entity, and not God himself, can have a divine universal perspective on being since it progressively unfolds and actualises itself, constituting actual entities and constituting God. Whitehead is aware that there truly is negativity and destructiveness in the world but sees them as a necessary emanation or by-product of creativity. The quality of the world is rather aesthetic and probably should be seen as an artwork by God, through which God, however, preserves the actual entities and the process of the world. The ethical implications seem to indicate the need for a filigrane percpetion and understanding of the manifoldness of the world and an awe for the creative process. Despite being acknowledged as one of the most eminent metaphysicists of the 20th century, Whitehead is not very well known, and they say Process and Reality is terribly opaque. However, I cannot sense that, it is quite accessible. The thing may rather be that we do not really know what to do with a metaphysics that abstract (or so I guess), respectively Whitehead´s metaphysics and its apparent implications partially relate to both Western and Eastern mindsets (as they are about the progressively competent individual (Western) in a harmonious whole (Eastern) which is not transcendent (Western) but immanent (Eastern)) and we don´t know how to think them together, but we may learn to do so in the future.

The debated philosophies are about how to understand heterogenousness and oneness, epistemology and ontology, the subject-object dichotomy, relentless creativity and harmony, the relationship between man, world and God. Leibniz presents are relatively static, quasi-feudalistic world with harmony the supreme good, Whitehead modernises and cracks the monad up into the progressive and democratic, Deleuze comes up with the postmodern fold and transgresses the monad/monadology into nomad/nomadology. Whitehead emphasises that philosophical undertaking and approach cannot be absolute but is limited by our contemporarian understanding or the eternal limitations of the human mind and has to operate with concepts which may be both to abstract and too precise to fully comprehend realities. Nevertheless one has to do something philosophical to make us understand the (current) situation. It is apparent how these three metaphysical approaches are grounded in the supreme, gentle and creative human mind, somehow becoming its own theophany. Despite it is also my own intuition I doubt whether a monad is a mirror of the all, or whether things are preserved. Maybe chance and vagueness are inherent qualities the world (enabling „creativity“?) and being is not univocal. Of course metaphysics has to aware of what physics does reveal. I am quite curious about whether we live in a holographic universe, how the quantum realm relates to the macrorealm, how the different macrorealms relate to each other and how emergent phenomena can be explained. – Via Deleuze´s immersive writing metaphysics becomes a sexy and colourful thing. Leibniz makes me think of an elevated silver sphere which is stabilised in its own harmony, floating a little bit above me. Whitehead´s metaphysics makes me think of a giant web of little golden balls with flashy golden beams connecting between them. But reflecting about them all the vision of gazing into the metaphysical structure of the world now becomes one of quadratic zones, honeycomb-like, that fall into an indefinite ground of which you don´t see much and, presumably, does not carrying much to see. To save the vision and elevate it to a new level, respectively open it up into another dimension, I think it is indicated to ram a white spear perpendicularly into the structure. This should give Deleuze, Leibniz and Whitehead a pause. An event has happened, a koan. After that I think all the four of us will silently smile at each other and nod in consent.

Deleuze on Whitehead & Leibniz

Nikolaus Lenau´s Faust, Gilles Deleuze´s Proust, and Second Prelude to a Note about the Hyperset

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I have stated elsewhere (in the Book of Strange and Unproductive Thinking) that I find Faust a quite strange, annoying and unconvincing figure (as well as that Goethe < Büchner). Likewise – despite Faust is a character through which humanity is individualised (like Don Quixote, Yorick, K., Malone, Ishmael or Peer Gynt) – Nietzsche said that, upon reflection, probably all that remains of Faust is a bizarre, degenerated example of scientific man. Ibsen wrote his Peer Gynt as an allusion to Faust and someone said Ibsen´s Peer Gynt is a bizarre satire upon Goethe´s Faust. I find Peer Gynt a more convincing, direct epitome of humanity, also given the ethical implications of Peer Gynt, although I somehow think that the mirror image of Faust (who is, of course, the much more comprehensive character) is somehow necessary to make Peer Gynt truly shine. Otto Weininger was very fond of Peer Gynt and it was Otto Weininger who made me understand Peer Gynt so that I wrote my Rompf as an allusion and a bizarre satire upon Peer Gynt. Otto Weininger (wrongly) was somehow dismissive of Ibsen´s later plays and said that, if he had wanted, Ibsen could have become greater than Goethe (because he somehow didn´t like Ibsen´s progressive attitude towards women). Otto Weininger was also dismissive of Nietzsche and called him a genius of seventh (lowest) grade (because he missed the ethical component in Nietzsche´s philosophy). Otto Weininger mourned that there was no one around like Goethe anymore in his days. I think if Otto Weininger had stayed alive he would have become greater than Goethe and Nietzsche, but he was psychologically troubled and did not survive. I partially understand Otto Weininger´s psychological troubles (in the dimension of overexcitabilities common among geniuses) and as far as I can see I am the only one around who actually understands Otto Weininger as a philosopher. I also think Ibsen was at least a more convincing and powerful playwright than Goethe. I have written one play so far and it was a bizarre satire upon theater and theater audience. I wonder what would have become of Büchner if he had stayed alive. I think Büchner would have become a major existential philosopher like Weininger or Nietzsche, not a theorizer of colours like Goethe. Enter Nikolaus Lenau.

 

Nikolaus Lenau denied Goethe possessing a „monopoly“ upon Faust, instead understood the archetype of Faust as a creative common of mankind and wrote his own version of Faust (like Christopher Marlowe had already done before Goethe). Nikolaus Lenau is relatively obscure today although Wikepedia bluntly states that he was the greatest Austrian poet of the 19th century. His Faust is a somehow more dire figure than Goethe´s and is frantically and desperately motivated to understand the presumed „truth of it all“. As he gets thrown into the world of the living by the devil he neither finds fulfilment in elementary constructiveness (love, giving birth) nor in destructive passions and finally finds himself cut off from everything so that, in a metaphysically deluded reflection upon his emotional alienation, he kills himself (and falls prey to the devil´s plot). Lenau´s Faust finds himself in a heterogenous, emotionally detached world and, as long as he cannot be omnipotent, omniscient, omnisentient and sovereign rather chooses death, his endeavour to „weld together himself, world and God“ („Dich, Welt und Gott in eins zusammenschweißen“) a failure. Lenau´s Faust indeed does not have the universality of Goethe´s Faust, it is rather a reflecion upon Lenau`s inner world as he finds himself torn between a longing for a protective God and being embedded in nature and being an autonomous god himself, unable to find reconciliation and consolation between the two extremes. As Faust is an archetype for (metaphysically) struggling man, Lenau was right to weld his alter ego together with the Faust archetype. I came across Nikolaus Lenau´s Faust when Alexander Nitzberg and his companion Peter Sendtko made a theatrical performance of the poem/play at Roman´s atelier some weeks ago; it was really lovely.

I still have not read Proust´s Recherche, I bought a copy of Swann´s Way when I was 19 or so and finally managed to read it some years ago. As far as I understand, Proust is longing for closure within intensity too which he tries to achieve via realization of memory. Proust´s Recherche is also archetypical. Gilles Deleuze bluntly announces (in Proust and Signs) that the Recherche is not an undertaking directed into the past and into autobiographical memory but into the future and into learning where memory is the material through which the subject enriches itself and comes to itself. Neither the subject nor the world does express itself directly, the chiffres of the world are the signs (for instance social signs, romantic signs, etc.), and via understanding the signs the subject progressively deciphers the world. The purest signs are the signs of art as they are immaterial and spiritual. The signs of art are deeper than the subject or object that carries and sends out the signs and more elementary as they reveal the essence. The essence of an object is its true embeddedness in the world, that what is actualised about it and its potentialities, it is, with reference to the note about Deleuze and Rancière and as Angell de la Sierra puts it, the „meta-noumenon … nothing less than the existential ontology of the object, another way of expressing its circumstantial semantic content, now and later on, a mind´s view of ,objective reality`“. The essence of the subject is to become a „point of view“ upon the world, finally, as Deleuze notes, a de/transpersonalised „spider“ which reacts to and acts upon the vibrations within the world-net. In becoming a „point of view“ the subject becomes objectified, eternal and immortal and it is eventually via the artwork via which man is able to make sense of the world and establish identity. It is associative intelligence, not logical intelligence (which is the intelligence of Faust) which reveals essence. – Trying to live in this world with a pronounced artist´s intelligence is not easy of course, but I have to say that Faust´s problems are to a considerable degree alien to me. The arid character of the world gets compensated as before my inner eye as lose graceful gestures I occasionaly witness (for instance by birds, by twinkling stars or by children) get inflated into a graceful world and potentialities seem to pour out everywhere (despite being aware that that´s a kind of bluff package, yet only partially). I do not communicate much with people but I feel, in a way, in a communion with them much more than the chatterboxes out there commonly do. Memory is virtually present not in a fotographic, textual way but via a hypertextual monitor on which I can recall memories to a given sensual or intellectual stimulus via association, enriching both the stimulus and the memory content with additional meaning. That monitor kind of enwraps and cocoons me and gives me presence. Faust obviously lacks such a thing.

A while ago I have started to ruminate about the „hyperset“. The occasion was a diagram I saw which made me think of a, say, meta-diagram as a necessity to competently understand and process the diagram, as a, so to say, conscious reflection over the diagram. Likewise, I have observed that I seem to belong to many groups within the human realm which often venn very thin and marginally, or not at all, making the final intersection a set to which seemingly only I belong, in solitude, on this earth, maybe also in this history. However, I also seem to understand all the sets at a higher level than those who only belong to the respective sets, I have higher awareness, I have higher consciousness of them. That diversification and pluralism is a good thing is commonplace, that the one who only understands a single discipline actually doesn´t understand that discipline either is what they say. Pluralistic understanding is good. Deleuze (and Guattari) refers to transversality as a mode of establishing connection between heterogenous sets that make up reality. Transversality does not try to totalize and normalise heterogeneity but is affirmative towards difference, lets them resonate and explores interdependencies. It is experimental and reflects anti-logos and becoming, the associative method of the Recherche, the instability of the world and the object as well as the emergence of essence through the process of art. Artistic style (i.e. a subjective mode of expression which is of objective substance) is what holds heterogeneity together and is the correlate to the logos (Welsch takes „transversal reason“ as a model for reason in postmodernity). This is vibrant and humming and makes us think of a microcosmic reflection of macrocosm (which also Deleuze does in Proust and Signs). Remember, Otto Weininger says: „The ego of the genius accordingly is simply itself universal comprehension, the centre of infinite space; the great man contains the whole universe within himself; genius is the living microcosm. He is not an intricate mosaic, a chemical combination of an infinite number of elements; the argument in chap. iv. as to his relation to other men and things must not be taken in that sense; he is everything. In him and through him all psychical manifestations cohere and are real experiences, not an elaborate piece-work, a whole put together from parts in the fashion of science. For the genius the ego is the all, lives as the all; the genius sees nature and all existences as whole; the relations of things flash on him intuitively; he has not to build bridges of stones between them.“ That is, well, the purest emanation of the hyperset, not somehow clumsily (or, if you want, more cautiously and operational) as it appears before my inner eye or that of Deleuze, Guattari or Proust (not to speak of Faust). Unfortunately Otto collapsed psychologically under its airy weight.

Despite having written the First Prelude to a Note about the Hyperset months ago it seems that I have not progressed a lot about thinking about it further and deeper, which is, however, excusable since I have done other things. I wonder whether the „hyperset“ can be a mathematical object and how it could be modelled, maybe it could shed light on the incompleteness theorem. I also wonder whether consiousness could actually be understood as a hyperset, or what we refer to as the soul, or processes of „emergence“ in nature (which are, so far, little understood). It reflects however an elevated state of mind which is, in the same fashion, „grounded“. Maybe I also lose interest in the hyperset, though I don´t really think so because first I like the name and second I think it is actually a name and category that refers to something real and one day, after I am gone, they will jubiliatingly scream „the hyperset, the hyperset!“ when they´ve done something dilettante; but that does not differ from what I do and how I came to think of the hyperset.

Prelude to Note about the Hyperset

Deleuze and Rancière (and the Question about Art as a Form of Resistance)

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Deleuze (respectively the Deleuze/Guattari hermaphrodite) says art is about Becoming. Deleuze (respectively Deleuze/Guattari) is very fond of transformations that stem out from the obscure and unexpected (from „chaos“) and lead to new ways of how perceive things. He likes that so much that in his philosophy true „events“ (not subjects, objects, structures, etc.) embody the highest degree of reality since they´re the ones that inflict change on reality. The true artist permanently „becomes“ and calls for „a new earth, a new people“, that is to say for new modes of understanding and being alongside his specific vision which is, if it is of the highest caliber, self-transcendent. Becoming happens at „zones of indistinguishability“ between qualities (for instance that the maltreated, oppressed human becomes animal, the maltreated, oppressed animal becomes human), via his empathy and associative intelligence and powered by his drive to transform and finally to incorporate being in its totality, the true artist is sensitive for spotting and experiencing zones of indistinguishability. Deleuze/Guattari says (with reference to Lawrence) the artist carves slits and openings into the firmament, respectively into common understanding, to let some chaos in, which then allows syntheses of new and higher order. Deleuze/Guattari also says that the artist, in a way of defying chaos, tries to reach into the infinite and then tries to project it into the finite i.e. the true artwork being a zone of highest order in which the infinite shines trough. Deleuze says, if we try to understand art and artists in such ways, i.e. as people that dive into the unknown solely for the sake of achieving knowledge and transformation of mind, artists who write „minor“ literature, only, actually, a small minority of people doing art could be labelled artists (respectively writers, as he is, in the respective text – Literature and Life – specific about literature).

Ranciére understands aesthetics, as well as politics, as regimes which legitimise certain objects/subjects/entities as theirs. The paria, the proletarian, the slave is originally excluded from the sphere of politics; with finding a voice they become political subjects; they are able to participate at the political process, they are included in the political process. Politics does happen when excluded parias become included and transform from (quasi)objects to authentic subjects of politics. Therefore, politics is about finding strategies for the excluded to become included. Likewise, the regime of aesthetics defines what is to considered as beautiful or as art. These regimes are open and in flux. Rancière is concerned about how art could contribute to political change. He makes reference to Schiller and to the idea that art is kind of democratic since the sensual, the aesthetic, can be experienced by everyone, as well as to the idea that art orginates from a ludic drive (Spieltrieb) in man. The playfulness alongside the ludic drive can be seen as opposed to the seriousness of material conditions, as well as where true freedom and the possibility of self actualisation lies, which becomes projected into the vision of a somehow brotherly society of competent, empathetic individuals. Rancière, who has a keener eye on investigating paradoxes (of art, politics, literature, etc.) than offering a stringent philosophy (like Deleuze) says that, in practical terms, political revolutions via aesthetic revolutions largely have failed, degenerating, in the 20th century, into consumer aesthetics in capitalism or Stalinist pomp under communism. (I, however, am quite content with living in a consumer society. Likewise, under specific circumstances there is nothing wrong with being sympathetic with communism. Bolz reminds us that living in a consumer society prevents us from relapsing into religious or ideological fanaticism and extremism, or communism.) Rancière claims that while Deleuze wants to extend philosophy into spheres that are external to philosophy, he himself is rather interested in using philosophical understanding and method in other playgrounds of the human mind, or in the most practical arenas. He is also skeptical of Deleuze´s notion of philosophical concepts or books as „tools“/“toolkits“, given the emptiness of many texts in which others try to use the Deleuzian tools, and he confirms that Deleuze establishes a kind metaphysical imaginary that is alien to him. He seems to have a need for precision that may rather be found in the writings and approaches of Deleuze´s temporary friend, Foucault. — Rancière´s text „Is Art Resistant?“ provided the ferment of this text, and I am glad that after weeks of intellectually working on it i now finally seem to be able to get the fucking thing done.

So there you have the art genius, trying to look at the world in order to determine its value – the artist, spiritualised with empathy and sense for connection and therefore trying to spiritualise the objects of art, trying to establish connection and communion in the world — with his vast intellect he sees abstractions and general modes of being in the individual and the idiosyncratic as well as he sees the individualities and idiosyncracies which evade the abstractions. He sees occasional gestures and movements full of grace, in a specific way a person laughs for instance, which give him awareness of the presumably graceful nature of the world and of people — a giant, a cosmic spectacle before his eyes, in his mind ———– which unfortunately effectively gets contrasted via a more sober look on the world: In which most people, effectively, are not specifically intelligent nor equipped with pleasant personalities. Their epistemology is simple and they can´t think, which is why offering genuine innovative philosophy and art is about the same as trying to offer a paper on advanced topology or differential geometry to people – it is equally incomprehensible to them although it is (apparently) written in the same language they use, not in the language of mathematics. Likewise, beauty is, indeed, recognisable for everyone, just most people don´t care a lot about it, let alone that they were able to understand beauty on a more abstract level and intellectualise it in order to solidify their understanding and enliven it (with those intelligent enough to intellectualise stuff often not being receptive to beauty or genuine creativity in turn), same goes for originality. Despite people are quite self-centered they usually don´t even know how to dress themselves properly. Look at how people are running through the city or sitting in restaurants and obviously take a look at nothing – whereas my own sight usually roams and roves and tries to look at my surroundings their glimpses don´t! They are, to a considerable degree, not interested in the world they inhabitate, let alone in that which is beautiful, intelligent, vibrant, etc. but in stuff and people in which they can mirror themselves, which is why slightly above average people often are so popular (since average people can project themselves into them) whilst it is often a hindrance to success being very much above average. People like to complain a lot and they´re negativistic, they demand that „more intelligence“ should happen or „true art“ should happen, but when it does happen they regularly don´t pay attention. When they see that intelligence comes around the corner but does not confirm their pre-existing world views, they may hate it. The problem of intelligent artists is that they want to make people more intelligent, but, in the first place, they make them look stupid as they confront people with something they cannot properly understand; and people don´t like that. That is when their „sapiosexuality“ usually ends. Paradoxically, the great genius who establishes the most potent worldview by thinking outside all contemporarian boxes is what is least desired or acknowledged. There may be nothing (of substance) the world is less interested in, and less friendly to, than a truly original thinker as long as he isn´t recognised and verified by the machine. (Meditate about that.) So much for the polemic.

Houellebecq says, while the artist tries to make the world an object of art, the world actually does not at all qualify as an object of art: the world is bluntly rational, without any magic and without particular interest. With that being one of Michel´s usual pessimisms it can actually be, occasionally, quite a nuisance, when the artist and the genius tries to get his firm and powerful, secure grasp on the world and what he grasps into is a kind of foam of stunted or irrelevant understandings, a kind of Emmentaler cheese with a lot of holes and air between the solid structure. This kind of foam is, actually, the world. To many artists it therefore becomes apparent that we are living in a kind of ghost world and then they write sad novels. I find this exaggerated. Foam can be quite beautiful, it changes or vanishes after a while, the foam of the world is stratified and consists of different, and distinguished elements. Art is about giving a lucid impression of the world. Great art is about seeing the universal in that which is transitory, and, therefore, bringing both to life in making it comprehensible for us. Art helps us in understanding a heterogenous and manifold world in which most things forever happen beyond our horizon, not only as it broadens our horizon but as it charges the world, and entitities within the world, with meaning. It illuminates the world as it illustrates the situation of man. Even it is a sad or drab world presented, the intellect rejoices because it makes him see and understand how the pieces fit – „Was im Leben uns verdrießt, man im Bilde gern genießt“ says Goethe. Personal consolation or the possibility to make sense of one´s own situation may also be found in works of art. It gives dignity to the fallen (and may actually be the truest form to deal with horror). And indeed, a work of art may give identity to a people, if not a system of meaning. Identity is good, being equipped with a system of meaning is good, since it increases competence (and gives people a „voice“).

Heterogenousness, due to individuality, is a some kind of oppositional force against reconciliation, and the „new earth“, the „new people“ will be heterogenous all alike. The prospects of a „we all shall come together“, of a reconciled world, are dim since we aren´t all alike. If we were all alike, humanity would cease to exist (and intelligence would cease to be competent since there would be no individuals of above average intelligence to tell the collective what to do). (For instance in the „hellish“ virst volume of Dead Souls) Gogol shows how „individuality“ commonly simply is a nuisance, resulting from lack of heart, mind and soul (not from excess), a mode in which stupidity is displayed. Because of stupidity, reconcilement decreases to become an option. In another dimension, of course, individuality is that which is productively resistant against totalitarian visions of reconcilement, and strong individuality is necessary to evade the influence of other powerful artists. Finally, the extreme individualism of the genius provides the locus of truth since due to his extreme individualism the genius is able to discover authentic human values. The paradox, or the tragedy, is that the genius will forever be alone in his visions and profoundly isolated from society, even if he gets appreciated by society. Whitehead remarks the malady of this world is that average elements can easily be reconciled while the progressively individualistic elements cannot or may even be sorted out or destroyed in the process that makes reality, despite embodying a higher extend of truth. (I, however, advocate the notion that the more individualistic, the more „real“ elements operate at different and distinguished levels of reality and it is probably a good thing that interference between these levels is limited; it need not add up or may be well dangerous to both.) Deleuze says art is about trying to reconcile the „originals“ (genuinely original people) with society (Bartleby or the Formula).

Rancière meditates a good deal about how the specific qualities inherent in art and qualities that make the political may meet, although, with reference to Kant, he emphasises on the sensual and aesthetic qualities and is quite silent about the intellectual qualities of art. – I say maybe the most important quality of the artist is universal empathy. It is his way to relate to the world. Without that his experience of the world can´t be enlivened. Empathy is both an emotional and an intellectual quality and it is noted that exceptionally gifted persons display a high amount of empathy also in their intellectual undertakings (they become unusually immersed in them and de/transpersonalise, etc.). Likewise, art is primarily an expression of associative intelligence which does not primarily aim at exposing the logical structure but the multilayeredness and manifoldness of the world. Divergent thinking is more important than convergent thinking for the artist. As divergent thinking primarily aims at reflecting upon a concept the way of how it could be viewed upon differently, the artist naturally runs (to some degree) against the grain. His intelligence is subversive and his divergent thinking makes him comprehend (and master) chaos. His intelligence expresses itself in an experimental way and opens itself into an evolving future. Associative thinking gives a sense of universal „connectedness“ and a longing for cohesion. Because of that the artist has a strong sense for establishing (authentic) communion between people and between things (which may deem the rest of humanity whimsical or fantastical). While, with reference to Kant, the qualities of the aesthetic (beauty and the sublime) and the qualities of reason and of ethics are distinct, beauty gives us an idea of transcendent order and the sublime fills us with awe for a higher (ethical) instance (deus (absconditus)) to which we have to bow down. Beauty refers to constructiveness and love, the sublime to humility, self-reflection, etc. as a necessary ingredient of how to do things right. Art, therefore, is both contained in itself and self-transcendent. It is both concrete and universal. Art gives a sense for the ambiguity of things and (their embeddedness in) contexts. It opens a dialogue between the empirical and the transcendental. Because of that it is, somehow ironically, the artist, not the scientist, who sheds light on the „thing in itself“. In seeing the universal in the transitory, the multilayeredness and ambiguity of things and contexts, cosmos and chaos, the artist grasps a „meta-noumenal“ essence of a thing, which is „nothing less than the existential ontology of the object, another way of expressing its circumstantial semantic content, now and later on, a mind´s view of ,objective reality`“, as Angell de la Sierra of Omega Society wonderfully makes it explicit of what is apparent to the artistic gnostic in one or the other way and what the art gnostic expresses in one or the other terminology.

The world may be a terrible disappointment for the artist, and it will be so with growing, painful intensity for the omega artist. Yet of course art requires non-art. Beauty erects upon ugliness, the sublime upon our limitedness, the spheres upon suffering. The isolation of the true artist and thinker may be profound and eternal, but without individual elevatedness upon the collective no intelligence and no transformation and progress can ever be possible. Nietzsche, who embodied extreme intelligence and originality, with the consequence of being also the embodiment of an outcast, sadly philosophised that the world can only be justified as an aesthetic phenomenon. As an aesthetic phenomenon the world, however, necessarily must contain stuntedness; Whitehead somehow proposes that God´s will is not to make the world perfect in the ethical sense but aesthetically and therefore allows stuntedness and decay to enforce creativity and to bring in the new. Consider the world as an artwork by God. This is difficult for the human mind to grasp, but, as stated above, intertwined with that, art may offer consolation. Stuntedness may appear beautiful and fascinating. Since before the inner eye of the artist there is constantly something emerging, evolving, if not protuberating, there is no actual stuntedness. With respect to what is important for Deleuze, the artist´s gaze both sees the actual but also the virtual. The „new earth“, the „new people“ is, therein, a virtual quality. It is also, somehow, „out there“ in this world. For practical and metaphysical reasons we should embrace pluralism and the understanding that the world, when trying to grasp it in totality, becomes elusive, opening itself to an understanding that it consists of many worlds (as Markus Gabriel and New Realism annotate).

Deleuze says philosophy is not a power. „Religion, the state, capitalism, science, the law, public opinion and television are powers, but not philosophy.“ Same would apply for art. Since philosophy (art) is not a power it can also not enter into open battle with any power, rather it establishes a guerilla. It is true that the logics of art and of politics are distinguished. Science is the art of grasping the rational aspects of existence, whereas art is the science of investigating the irrational aspects of existence (i.e. the subjective embeddedness of man in nature). They´re different territories. Yet knowledge and understanding vice versa also allows the own and private territory to be understood and explored in greater depth. Who is more powerful is a question of perspective. Finally, it´s only the great works of art which last forver, as the artist may be oppressed, maybe destroyed by any power, but it is him who sees all the kingdoms rise and fall before his inner eye. The powers are transitory, art is the universal. In his downfall, the artist embarrasses and humiliates the powerful transitory victor – who is, then, the vanquisher? Deleuze/Guattari say a true work of art is erected and can stand for itself. Rancière reminds us of the blunt autonomy, the „unavailability“, the statutory character of the statue/artwork, as the autonomy of art and the virtual indifference the l´art pour l´art towards politics carries a moment of resistance, and finally concludes that art is resistant as it does not only enter a dialogue with the political and the transitory but also eternally refuses to do so. Art is its own affirmation, and an affirmation of life. It seeks the liberation of life. It is expression of a liberated, and higher consciousness. It may contain more of the world than the world itself does. And with that I ascend into the regions of the ice mountains and lose myself to never return. Hahahahaha!

Johann Georg Pinsel and Gilles Deleuze

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A chief characteristic of the sculptures of Baroque artist Johann Georg Pinsel are the exaggerated folds, which will remind the hipster intellectual of Gilles Deleuze´s book about Leibniz and the Baroque; indeed, one of the coolest parts of The Fold. Leibniz and the Baroque is when Deleuze uses his immersive, empathetic language to write about Baroque clothing and why the folds Baroque clothes crinkle are metaphysically connoted (in the opening of the final chapter, A New Harmony).

Deleuze´s main philosophical endeavour may be how to think the many facettes of the univocal one; put in other words he is the thinker of metaphysical confusion. Hence the dynamics between the virtual and the actual (as opposed to Platonism) and the notion of difference and non-identity at the core of every thing, respectively being itself as difference in itself and non-identical to itself, enabling productive dynamics of an open flux, which becomes tangible via the competent, productive agent (alongside Deleuze´s empiricism/Heideggerianism which assumes the subject and his modes of cognition and his modes of being affected as interrelated and elastic (and corruptible) to the dynamics of the outside world, respectively to the outside „forces“). Deleuze thinks that being is essentially composed of relations (i.e. network-like) and via his intellectually mobile concepts Deleuze „puts metaphysics in motion“. He makes us think being in itself is something that is colourful, catchy and cool.

The Fold is a concept Deleuze already used to greater extent in his preceding book about Foucault, refering to ——– but I seem to find out that, despite having planned to write this note since last week and having read and prepared myself a lot to do that, I am not particularly in the mood for doing so now – but I want it to go out now since this weekend the Pinsel exhibition at the Winterpalais, to which this note refers to and is dedicated to, is running out and I want to remind people of it and I want them to visit it. Apart from that I should write an article about Scelsi, Leifs and Ustvolskaya for the Versorgerin this weekend. Also this Pinsel-Deleuze note was considered to be followed by notes about Deleuze and Ranciere and Leibniz and Whitehead (which also annoys me a bit since my main objective is to write about artists now).

Deleuze is likeable because he is the quintessential thinker of the productive mind, unfolding and appealing to us via his erotic, ecstatically faltering language and he is a considerable metaphysicist since he also is aware that the universe is, to some not unsubstantial degree, quite full of shit and of not happy, flamboyant productiveness; that, qua difference and repetition, being is inherently unstable and nothing that actually or necessarily comforts, protects and conceals; that like enlightenment, catastrophe may be the actualisation of the virtual (despite not putting a lot of emphasis on it due to his sovereign, optimistic personality). I made the plan to go through the entire Deleuze again and to write about Deleuze and metaphysics, as I plan to do it with the entire Nietzsche and some other stuff somewhere rather sooner than later, in a general Heideggerian attempt to establish Lichtung. I don´t know whether I will have any message for humanity to deliver or something commonly labelled as wisdom. Rimbaud says, his wisdom is despised like they despise chaos. Maybe one day this century will be called Yorickesque.