Post  # 11

Words yet to Come

(cursor on photograph for detailed view,

note: unless otherwise indicated all photographs,
by Michael Schreier and drawings by Hilde Schreier,
reproduction, without permission, prohibited.)

Storyteller/ Waiting for Words

Artist book: 2007-8

Michael Schreier

I have always interpreted Carl Jung's definition of a Night Sea Journey as a necessary place/attitude that an artist might embrace at a time of deep introspection. One may become occupied by doubt and uncertainty, perhaps even challenging a sense of place and possibly one's accomplishments. My regard for such a deep challenge provides me with the necessary energy and guidance for clarity: as it may also become a component in my work. The above layout from Storyteller/ Waiting for Words, An Artist's book: 2007-8 illustrates my suggestion.  

Detail from Intro: Layout

(cursor on image to detail text)

The above two details underscore the subtlety offered in the complete image. Clearly, the reversed illegible text presents its source somewhere behind the beholder. A further complication arises as one notices that the perspective tends to the right and into the distance. As an aside, notice that this perspective will marry virtually with the space suggested by a mirrored spacial movement offered by the photograph of the store window/blue rectangle space: its perspective also moving into the distance. The two might meet behind the central image of the ceramic women figure?! Further study of the surface of the glass reflecting the text reveals a rubbing, a smudge, probably a sloppy window cleaning effort. A deeper study of the lower corner of the text image may reveal a shadow form cast by and echoing the shape of the ceramic figure. I leave the reader with any implications arising from these formal traces. I would however as I have tried to emphasize in previous posts reiterate that a photograph offering detailed information may actually propose a more complex truth. Although a cloak of certainty has somehow always been presumed as the photographic process renders accuracy, it  has however, over the course of photography's short history just as quickly been questioned.

Tabula Rasa #1                                      Table 1                                    Tabula Rasa #2

                                      Michael Schreier                                 Gerhard Richter                          Michael Schreier

                                             2009                                                     1962                                         2009

                       Anecdote: Robert Rauschenberg, Erased Drawing

Notions of erasure as a creative gesture are not new as a painter may draw over, erase a previous gesture. Rauschenberg's interest to erase a de Kooning drawing happens at a very interesting moment in American history as Joseph McCarthy revs up his insidious efforts, directing his notorious witch hunts throughout the american cultural fabric. My understanding for the erased drawing comprises a profound sense of irony as certainly Rauschenberg would have to decide to what extent evidence should be retained and destroyed, almost a foreshadowing: the completed erasure in 1953 introduces with some irony the initiated McCarthy hearings of 1954.

(Please allow me to acknowledge a mistake made in the initial posting, It was not Eugene McCarthy but Joseph McCarthy that was involved with the Anti-American hearings. Much appreciation to Dave Heath for pointing out the mistake!, now corrected)

                             

                                                                       Christopher Lea Dunning, "from an Artist's" book.          

Christopher Lea Dunning is a close friend, colleague, compatriot who has for a number of years insinuated himself into Art History publications. Cursor on his above name and you should arrive at one of his remarkable works, Insinuating Oneself into History. The work speaks for itself. These references to erasure and "collage" emphasize both an artist's need for linkage and continuity as well as challenging the very nature of truth and witnessing, the value, duration not only of utterance but the broader archive of humanity's guarantee for voice. 

As history compels itself to the surface of time, to compete with the quotidian  can one really acknowledge the value of witnessing? Artists over the years have struggled with both their conscience and ethics, finally relying on an artwork's profound implication for guidance. Implications guided not strictly by formal gesture, abstraction  and rendering but by the very desire for continuity.

As Edmond Jabès has so eloquently challenged in The Book of Dialogue, translated by Rosemarie Waldrop,

                                

Hidden language, not that of the hand or eyes, a language beyond

gesture, beyond looks, smiles or tears that we had to learn! Ah, what

desert will revive it now?

We thought we were done with crossing the desolate stretch of

land where the word had dragged us, making us and our wanderings

bear amazed witness to its perennial nature.

And here silence leads us into its glass kingdom, vaster yet at first

sight, breaking all trace of our passage.

...primal silence which we cannot escape. 

  

Post  # 10

The Beholder, beheld:

(the reader, read)

(cursor on photograph for detailed view,

note: unless otherwise indicated all photographs,
by Michael Schreier and drawings by Hilde Schreier,
reproduction, without permission, prohibited.)

                

                                  From Series; Camera Obscura               Hilde Schreier                     From Series; Corner room

                                                    2016                                      circa 1995                                    2016

                                            Michael Schreier                                                                         Michael Schreier

Disturbances in Reading, Palimpsest

Michael Schreier, (artist book),

Blurb.ca

 "It is time I get a name fit to live in," he had written me.
"The one I have used so far is the name of my absence."
"I need my life in order to write, but did my life want
to be written?" he asked.
"Every life is the writing of a life," he was told.

The Book of Dialogue
Edmond Jabès

Translated by Rosemarie Waldrop

I began this post wanting to offer some clarification, perhaps some additional references, that might make for an easier or less confusing reading. It has been suggested that my reflections have tended to the opaque, dense and perhaps even the esoteric. I have never wished to obfuscate but simply to reach a more exacting and responsible reading both for myself and for my reader.

                                                             "It is time I get a name fit to live in," he had written me. 

The above photograph was taken at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico. Visitors were invited to offer marks to this panel, signatures, dates, scribbles, whatever they chose to trace. I spent time studying this photograph, intrigued    with some poetic license    by its subtle reference to Walker Evans:

Further study, of the Mexican photograph, (serendipitously) revealed the word "temes". Susan Blackmore makes reference to "temes" as the basis of technology. How ironic that this word should appear on an anonymous panel with vernacular markings. It seems that the profundity in this accidental marking could imply that the basis for technology might just include an urgency to voice and mark-making. Certainly Walker Evans in his critical work American Photographs, with text by Lincoln Kirstien, underscores the value for the quotidian and vernacular gesture.

An aside:

A friend of mine studying Hebrew indicated that the graffiti on the wall can be loosely translated as "lushi" meaning to knead, 
as in bread, before baking in an oven. 

This double-page spread is taken from my artist's book, "Storyteller/Waiting for Words"

Taking on the formal costume of utterance is no easy task. Utterance embraces a series of sounds placed within a designated structure, to be recognized initially as word and then as sentence. I am not aware as to when abstract thought-perspective was initiated. One does however eventually embrace rational and abstract voice, both within the social and the privatized experience. Walker Evans' Studio suggests humanity's collective library, each one embracing and challenging continuity within Babel's unreachable intention to assemble and to recognize.

The three photographs in the introductory layout are all taken in library, museum or gallery facilities. Each offers a distinct reference to both the beholder and the beholder beheld. The beholder embraces the outsider vantage point while at the same moment being beheld. The larger image from Palimpsest recognizes a rich still life, while reflecting its viewer's presence. That shadow however assumes a peculiar attitude, framed by an outside frame, (shadowed), it ascribes to a similar position as the artist in Durer's woodcut previously discussed in Post #9. It is suggested that the shadow will never attain a presence inside the garden/still-life, exiled. It seems to me that this offers an understanding for knowledge...that one can attain a certain amount of clarity that is then immediately rendered  in doubt and further more, inaccessible.

"Erlaubt"/allowed 

and then, 

disavowed.

"The one I have used so far is the name of my absence."

From Series: Corner Rooms

(con't)

2015-16

Michael Schreier

Balance, Transition and Continuity remain, for both author and reader/beholder, integral to voice and clarity. As Jabès asks in Dialogue...but did my life wish to be written...I suggest this is the fundamental question to be asked. In fact we are given this question throughout our history even though, at times, its answer may not be as clear. Certainly in the last number of years as my work progresses it reflects two elements: the first a conviction towards trying to understand and then a profound embrace for doubt. I am motivated to trust my intuition while at the same time measuring each garnered instinct and trace for any sense of credibility. Perhaps that's why Duchamp proposes a time element for the viewing of the Small Glass. 

And finally Jabès offers;

...Every life is the writing of life... 

                                                                                                                                           

Next

Post  # 11

Words yet to Come

Storyteller/ Waiting for Words

Artist book: 2007-8

Michael Schreier

                                                                 

Post  #9

Uncertainty and Doubt within the Theatre of the Moment

(cursor on photograph for detailed view,

note: unless otherwise indicated all photographs,
by Michael Schreier and drawings by Hilde Schreier,
reproduction, without permission, prohibited.)

Uncertainty and doubt, two critical incentives when combined with the "theatre of the moment" may motivate an artist's work: initially privileged, later shared with another. As well, constantly changing rules of representation can be adjusted according to specific demands, some governed by a sense of place while technological invention may provide additional and welcomed assistance. Albrecht Durer's use of the window-grid establishing perspective could reflect an accuracy that for some might guarantee clarity for a more authentic and perhaps truthful experience. We can appreciate Canaletto's use of the camera obscura: his attention for a rendering of increasingly complex details. Each of these perspective interpretations proffers an accurate, although anonymous, witnessing of space associated with an implied moment in time. 

                                                                                        Blue    light, library (office), she, 

                                                                                           Vienna walk, 2007

                                                                                              Michael Schreier

                     

While studying Durer's etching, I have come to realize that, apart from its illustrative function, Durer offers three distinct vantage points: the artist at his table studying his muse while resolving perspective issues; the reclining woman resting introspectively without regard for the artist's attention; and then the beholder of the work, witness to an event. The beholder's vantage, on the edge of the proscenium, echoes the artist's position using the frame as a suggested window to privacy. The grid-frame provides a viewing of minute separate elements that in reality are contiguous. It offers a similar attitude as the camera, selecting from the broader and extended moment. More importantly however, both artist and beholder have the privilege of familiarity, seemingly more complex than a simple study for perspective rendering. This image reminds me of both Duchamp's Étant Donné and of Nobel laureate  Yasunari Kawabata's novella House of the Sleeping Beauties. When studied in this context, the work offers a very different and more profound understanding of the human theatre. It may also introduce ethical concerns.

Wine for the Architect

1992

National Gallery of Canada

Michael Schreier

Theatre, conversation, and the directive may be inextricably linked. A moment in time is recognized, a directive given and then photographed. My intent with Wine for the Architect was a simple acknowledgment, not an observation, similar to my portrait of Lea included in the introductory layout to this post. The directive offered was " please, just stay like that". All participants are aware of the process as it happens. Does this mean, as Michael Fried has suggested in Absorption and Theatricality, that these moments although referring to absorption remain theatrical? Do the protagonists assume a pose of absorption rather than being absorbed? I am not certain whether this issue is so critical as to differentiate the value of experience, reducing the value of one while elevating the other. These moments occur sometimes casually but always offer a consideration more profound and inaccessible. What remains paramount for me is that the beholder is now, by proximity, complicit in the event observed. An artist always reflects the beholder's role either as a silent witness or as an active, although virtual, participant. It may also be true that he/she the artist remains the beholder, beheld.

Disturbances in Reading, Palimpsest

Michael Schreier, (artist book),

Blurb.ca

Post  # 10

The Beholder, beheld:

(cursor on photograph for detailed view,

note: unless otherwise indicated all photographs,

by Michael Schreier and drawings by Hilde Schreier,

reproduction, without permission, prohibited.)

      

Disturbances in Reading, Palimpsest

Michael Schreier, (artist book),

Blurb.ca