{Notes} Munévar, Gonzalo. Evolution and the Naked Truth

Evolution and the Naked Truth

Munévar, Gonzalo. Evolution and the Naked Truth: A Darwinian approach to philosophy. Vermont, USA: Ashgate Publishing Company, 1998.


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Chapter 1. Evolution and the Naked Truth. 3-22.
1.why evolutionary considerations lead to a complete relativism (perceptual, intellectual, scientific).
2.Defend this evolutionary relativism from standard and new objections advanced b realists.
3.An evolutionary theory of relative truth

3>> ... an entrenched realism would lead us to assume that either the truth of the matter has not yet been discovered in those areas in question, or else that there is no truth of the matter.
Realist would think that those areas where he makes relativist concessions are somehow not as worthy, epistemologically speaking, as those areas where knowledge is really possible.

Kuhn (1970) and Feyerabend (1975)
→ Science itself is subject to the vagueness of social relativism.
... there is no truth of the matter in any empirical investigation, but I [Munévar] suspect that most realists who can recognise the social relativisation of natural science would simply fall back on the position that the truth of the matter has not been found yet.
All the realist needs is the belief that the truth of the matter indeed exists.
→ 'metaphysical realism' A truth in principle impossible

4>> ... to come to know the naked truth, or rather, to come to know the way things really are (in epistemology: to come to know the structure of the world). It is supposed that humans will fall short because their senses are prone to distortion and their intellects to prejudices [...] there is no such thing as knowing the ways things really are. Absolute knowledge is a mistake even as an ideal.

Popper and others have thought that evolutionary theory would in some way provide a warrant fr realism (an evolutionary variation of 'science is successful because it approximates the truth'). But as we will see, careful attention to the implications of evolution will turn the realist diction on its head.

5>> Natural History and Knowledge
the capacity to know and to organise socially in order to know, may have some biological basis.
→ the sort of empirical knowledge possessed by organisms is largely the result of the interaction between the biology of the organisms and their environment.
{see example of a bird p.5} → perhaps bowerbirds too, etc. yea yea?
interaction (social/environmental) → knowledge

1.perception has a biological basis;
2.intelligence arises out of perception and other biological structures;
3.science is a social product of intelligence.
→ perception, intelligence and science

6>> no matter how successful an interaction with the environment is, e.g. a perception, that there could be an alternative interaction which is as successful...

7>> if two interactions are equally successful, i.e., 'good,' it is difficult to say that one is superior to the other. It would be arbitrary to say that one should be preferred to all others.

++ Munévar, G. Radical Knowledge: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature and Limits of Science. Indianapolis: Hackett. 1981. Chap.3 for frame of reference
Frame of reference/perceptual mechanisms
It would be arbitrary to say of any one frame of reference that the perceptions or views of the world that originate within it correspond to reality, or tell us the way things really are. For t is clear that the others would be just as deserving the honour.

One perception, or point of view, can be said to 'correspond' to the way things really are, i.e.., to be the true representations.
Special theory of relativity: when a property, e.g., mass or length, can be measured only relative to a frame of reference, and when there is no preferred frame of reference, there is no 'naked' instance of that property – this in case, there is no absolute mass or length.
→ there's no absolute reality,
→ no such thing as 'the way things really are,'
→ 'no structure of the universe,' no naked truth.

Heuristic
Dictionary of Philosophy, Penguin. 276.
1.adj. pertaining to an experimental, trial-and-error kind of procedure.
2.n. the art of discovery.

8>> Intelligence and Scientific Relativism
close connection between intelligence and the complexity of the central nervous system
its (intelligence's) flexibility and its capacity for indirect action.
→ Munévar, 1981: 40-44. Radical Knowledge...
→ Piaget: thanks to intelligence an organism is scope of interaction with the world goes beyond immediate and momentary contacts. (1950: The Psychology of Intelligence. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.)
{example of vision of a bird p.8}
Understanding intelligence + social cooperation = invent science

9>> when we discussed intelligence, we realised that the increase in the complexity of the central nervous system offered an increase in the variety of certain kinds of response, while the actual development of that system was clearly the result of a series of evolutionary compromises.
In the case of science, social structure may bring about an even greater variety and flexibility of response. In science, thus, the many possible superpositions of social upon natural histories have a multiplicity of pats available to them.
→ no matter how good a 'conceptual frame of reference (i.e., the conceptual potentialities of a genotype) is, there could be others just as good. And as in the case of perception, it would be arbitrary to prefer one to those others.

9>> Scientific Convergence?
Even if we grant that natural history may have produced different brains, and thus different modes of thought, intellectual convergence should still be expected with the growth of science.
→ science (tries to) deals with all-pervasive features of the universe.
The more a science advances, the more similar to other advanced sciences it should become.
{examples of convergence: camera eyes of humans and squids, etc.}
See: Lorenz, K. Studies in Animal Behaviour. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1971.
→ p.10 & p.21 notes 4. refer to arguments, etc.

Arbitrary.
Can we not be?
Surly we can, but it can't establish any common grounds.

11>> Objections to Relativism
1.Relativism is contradictory.
Simple-minded relativism: truth is relative to each observer. → this would permit one observer to hold that A is true while another holds that not A is true.
In evolutionary relativism we do not hold that A and not A are true together, for A is held in one frame of reference and not A in another.
2.Plato's first argument (in the Theœtetus):
Progagoras held that all points of view were equally valid. → the absolutist point of view would be valid as well. But the absolutist point of view claims that relativism is wrong. → Plato concludes, relativism is incoherent. → it does not apply to evolutionary relativism, since I [Munévar] do not claim that all frames of reference are equally valid, but only that some may be.
3.Relativism entails that the universe would not exist without observers...
The universe must be independent of any frames of reference. If it were not, then it would not come into existence until it could be described within the point of view of some observer or other.
12>> The frames of reference in question need not be actual frames. Relativism requires only potential frames of reference → the objection does not apply.
4.Evolutionary relativism itself is expressed within a frame of reference, is it not? But why should that frame of reference be preferred to all others? Is the thesis of evolutionary relativism absolutely true or not? If it is, my position turns out to be absolutist at the meta-level. If not, it will then be either false or else 'true' only in some subjective or relativistic way. ... hmmm.... An alternative to a standard is dismissed because it does not conform to that standard.

12>> Sophisticated Realism
'there are real particulars (objects, events, processes, etc.) which are mind-independent,' and 'there is no ontologically given, categorically ready-made world.'

15>> Relative truth
++ In the hypothetical comparisons between frames of reference, when two frames led to similar performance, it was found arbitrary to make of either one a preferred or absolute frame. This indicates that the notion of performance can be fruitfully tied to the notion of understanding, particularly to that of scientific understanding (Manévar, 1981, Chp.4)

Theory by means of an illustration
perception → true representations
see example p.15: Apple

16>> other thory of truth
A view-point was successful either because it was true or because it approached truth.

17>> The relative truth (or seeming absolute truth) of a viewpoint depends on its success, not the other way around. The naturalist's task is to explain why a 'picture'- making activity appears satisfactory.
Evolutionary thinking is the best I can do within the bounds of my conceptual equipment, and I suspect that it has the highest potential for performance with respect to a great number of areas of experience, particularly those that have to do with living things and their history.

20>> Conclusion:
Plato's second objection to Protagoras: if truth were relative to a culture, or to a point of view, then there would be neither reason nor motive for changing (for every point of view would already be satisfactory). This removes one presumed advantages and disadvantages has now tilted in relativism's favour.

Casual realism (Hooker, Lewis, etc.): The would is that 'something' that in casual interaction with frames of reference brings about certain points of view. It is the same world, but forever indescribable: 'mysterious substratum,' a 'Kingdom of Being,' 'noumena.'
relativist: Truth is relative ANYWAY

Therefore:
except for the emotional connotations of the little, evolutionary relativism is the view that best fits their philosophical outlook.
Understanding the nature of knowledge rather than fantasizing about the naked truth.
→ to see the process!!!!!!!


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Chapter 6. The Connection Between Evolution and the Nature of Scientific Knowledge. 65-74

65>> whether scientific knowledge is somehow a result of evolutionary pressures (that it has adaptive value, say- or that evolution presents the key in understanding the nature of scientific knowledge.

Ernst Mach, Konrad Lorenz, Karl Popper, etc.
Evolutionary Epistemology (19th century) Mach, etc.
1.science has the function of reproducing facts in thought in order to save, or replace, experiences. (According to Mach, one of the main functions of science is the economy of thought. Mach's biological or evolutionary theory of knowledge can be found in his Popular Science Lectures, Open Court, 1943. 184-235, and in section IV of Chapter IV of his Science of Mechanics, Open Court, 1942. & p.222.
2.Through evolution the mind adapts itself to the world.
{quote p.65}

Spencer: 'What is a priori for the individual is a posteriori for the species.'
by adapting to the world the mind comes to reflect it ('the structure of the world forces itself upon the structure of the mind.')
Poincare: we choose our theories not because they are true but because they are more convenient.

The Foundation of Science, The Science Press, 1946. p.91.
{quote p.66-1} .. geometry is not true, it is advantageous.
{quote p.66-2} p.428. Truth & error.

We see that if geometry is not an experimental science, it is science born apropos of experience; that we have created the space it studies, but adapting it to the world herein we live. We have selected that most convenient space, but experience has guided our choice; as this choice has been unconscious we think it has been imposed on us; some say experience imposes it; others that we are born with our space ready made; we see from these preceding condiserations what in these two opinions is the part of truth, what of error.

66>> Mach, Popular Scientific Lectures, p.235.
We are prepared, thus, to regard ourselves and every one of our ideas as a product and a subject of universal evolution; and in this way we shall advance sturdily and unimpeded along the paths which the future will throw open to us.

Our scientific ideas have changed quickly and considerably for the past few hundred years. Thus, if they were biologically embedded, as Mach suggests, our biology must have changed in a similar fashion. But that is clearly not so.

67>> Karl Popper 'Is there an Epistemological Problem of Science,' Problems in the Philosophy of Science. Eds. North-Lakatos, A. Musgrave. North Holland Publishing Company, 1968. 163.
theories are like organs that we develop outside our skins → exosomatic evolutionary
Popper. Objective Knowledge. Oxford University Press, 1972. 264.
human knowledge can only be understood as an instrument in our struggle for survival.

Theoretical adaptation he has in mind is adaptation to an 'objective realm' separate from the world of things (i.e.., from the universe), that is, adaptation to what he calls the 'Third World.' (p.106)

++ Popper argues that a theory should be preferred if it adapts best to the intellectual environment it faces. This environment is provided by the ideas, techniques, and problems that the scientific community of the time finds pressing and important.

67>> Toulmin requires mechanisms for variation and selective perpetuation (generation of alternative views, and what Feyerabend calls the 'principle of tenacity, ' although applied only to successful candidates). For these mechanisms to operate, there must be a forum or a court in which the new alternatives may be 'heard,' and a tribunal that will preserve the accepted view until one of the alternatives can show that it is better adapted (or perhaps adaptable) to the discipline's intellectual 'environment.'

both Toulmin's and Popper's approach can be called 'biological' or 'evolutionary' only in an analogical sense. This approach fails to draw as sharp a distinction as required between scientific and non-scientific intellectual activities.

Piaget: intelligence is 'the form of equilibrium towards which all the structures arising out of perception habit and elementary sensori-motor mechanisms tend.' Psychology of Intelligence. Littlefield, Adams & Co. 1966. p.6

→ the intelligent mind interacts with the universe by forming views of it and then trying them out. This accord very well with the contemporary philosophy of science developed by such thinkers as Kuhn, Feyerabend, and Lakatos, all of whom would claim in some form or another that out scientific views structure the very manner in which we experience nature.

69>> if intelligence has adaptive value, in part precisely because of the way it interacts with the world, and if science constitutes the means to that interaction, then science has adaptive value as well. A science as such helps:
1.dealing with greater ease with our environment (our 'niche')
2.increasing the number and diversity of environments that we can deal with (enlarging the 'niche')
3.coping with a continuously changing environment (which puts a premium on flexibility or response).

70>> survival value is more or less connected with foreseeable application. It is often said, for example, that whereas animals can only take care of immediate and pressing problems, ie., react to them, we can behave in ways that do not constitute a reaction to an compelling demands of the environment, we are endowed with curiosity (a higher form of which provides much of our scientific motivation), and curiosity liberates us from the drudgery of 'plain' animalhood.
→ see J. Bronowski in his television series (& book), 'The Ascent of Man.'
There is a long standing prejudice that what distinguishes science from other activities is that science tries to force upon itself the verdict of experience (through predictions, testing, and so on).

71>> of course we can expect great differences between the curiosity behaviour of animals such as ravens and that of man. The difference lies in the fact that man's investigative behaviour is pursued until the onset of senility, a formate characteristic made possible by the neotenous nature of our species. In other animals such investigations are restricted to an early phase in individual development. Curiosity ends when play behaviour ends.

++ if science is an attempt to satisfy intellectual curiosity, it seems that its origin is not to be found in problem solving but in play! Its preservation, furthermore, seems dependent on the very happy accident that we are able to keep our childlike sense of wonder.

Waplington, Nick. Learn How to Die The Easy Way. London: Trolley Ltd., 2002.

Waplington, Nick. Learn How to Die The Easy Way. London: Trolley Ltd., 2002.
ISBN 0954207971
UoA Fine Arts Library 770 W252L

though i only gave it 2stars i thought it was a pretty good book, it's just that i don't generally like works on paper referring to works that can be of actual existence. o well, virtual existence does not count, what is it? argh, too much reading involved for this one. But yea, enjoyed the dark humour in Waplington's work so i will research into that in the near future -- i think.

Polly Apfelbaum. Ed. Bennett Simpson

Polly Apfelbaum. Ed. Bennett Simpson. Phildelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. 2003.
ISBN 0884541037
UoA Fine Arts Library 759 A641

"Interview with Polly Apfelbaum by Claudia Gould" (11-9)
\\\\titling of work\\\
"Daisy Chain", "A Pocket Full of Posies", "Peggy Lee and the Dalmatians" contrast with "Ice", "Bones", "Reckless"... etc. contrast in the aesthetic qualities: initial pop/bang/explosion of colour followed by the sense of minute accumulation, accretion, form layered upon form...
(((Pop is never innocent)))
My work is never explicitly narrative, so the titles are always indirect - sometimes they refer to the process, but they are often simply meant to be evocative - I think Duchamp said that titles were like another colour in the work. (11) Using film titles as colour references, etc.

\\\creating entertainments\\\
(((music is very evocative and emotional, but never literal)))
The difference between music and "entertainments" is, for Apfelbaum, that the emotional content is very literal in entertainments whereas in music it's "less intellectual and more intuitive, but at the same time it's very precise. (14)

\\\influenced by taste in film and music\\\
(((my taste is very eclectic)))
I think there's an analogy with what I do - taking little pieces and rearranging them.... I am drawn to the quirky and not always popular.. Many of the pieces work from very explicit rules, or systems, but often - in fact just about always - the system is invisible. I guess I like that kind of tension, between the intuitive and the formal, or the emotional and the controlled. (15-7)

\\\the power of colour and form\\\
(((there's no pure abstraction)))
there is always some reference outside - a connection to place, to memory or to popular culture... By keeping the content indirect, I try to leave space for viewers, so they can bring their own experience to the work. The idea is to make the work rich enough, dense enough, or complex enough so that there is always something unexpected that may come out of that experience. (17)

"Having It All: Polly Apfelbaum at ICA by Ingrid Schaffner" (21-43)
\\\a contrarian\\\
Polly Apfelbaum believes you can have it all and she is determined to realise the possibility through her art ... "Every single painting has 100 more paintings in it, his [Matisse's] million decisions and indecisions are the picture ... Apfelbaum's art appears free of anxiety and stress. But like Matisse's, it is based on a similar desire to embody the irresolute, especially the immateriality of colour ... Her work involves the activities and occupies the space of sculpture, but makes a contentious bid for painting, sculpture, and installation to occur all at once, and to be experienced simultaneously ... Apfelbaum's art has sparked talk about issues of appropriation and abstraction, the legacies of minimalism and feminism, and, most recently, the powerful pleasures to be had in surrendering to design and bringing in architecture. (21)
We can have it all: colour, drawing, structure, formlessness, systems, chaos, thinking, doing, painting, sculpture, geometry, mess. These things don't necessarily cancel each other out. Indeed, polarising them simplifies complexities, which are not only challenging to consider, but pleasurable to embrace. (40)

\\\colour\\\
Sculpture is about form, not colour, which belongs to the precinct of painting. In an essay called "Colour and Sculpture: A Capricious Affair," art historian Frances Colpitt elaborated: "The rejection of colour in sculpture stems from the Western predilection for purity. From Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) to Clement Greenberg (1909-1994), theorists have demanded that each art form be true to its essential nature, with the implications that colour belongs to painting and is superfluous in sculpture." (26- Frances Colpitt, "Colour and Sculpture: A Capricious Affair," Chromaform: Colour in Sculpture, University of Texas at Antonio Art Gallery, 1998, 7.)
Since the Italian Renaissance, artists, philosophers, and critics have argued over the supremacy of drawing (disegno) versus colour (colore). It was a mind/body debate, as well as a moral and class issue: akin to writing, line was the intellect, with all the privileges due enlightenment. Beyond words, colour was sensual, immoral, tricky, dumb. (Anybody can enjoy it.) (40)
"Yes, colour grounds the value of art in the bodily social relationship between the beholder and the object, not in the shadow realm of the disembodied idea. Think about it!" -- Libby Lumpkin, "Vive la résistance: Polly Apfelbaum's Vanitás of Painting," Reckless, Helsinki: Kiasma, Studio K, Museum of Contemporary Art, 1998, 13. (40)

\\\Feminism & Abjection\\\
The art market, along with the economy, had crashed, taking mainstream heroes like George Baselitz, Sandro Chia, Julian Schnabel and David Salle down with it. The culture wars called for artists (especially female, gay, and non-white artists) to champion difference and to degrade the canon with critical bodies and subversive politics -- or at least confuse it with hybrid practices and shape-shifting works of art. (26)
Slinky and cheap, textured and tactile, crushed velvet treated with Sennelier dye, a French brand available in 104 colours that she [Apfelbaum] pours directed out of the bottle, has been her main material since 1992 ... Apfelbaum had been distilling throughout her transition from readymade or found sculpture. The mark of the hand is now signified by the stain of the dye and by the gesture of arranging pieces of fabric on the floor. (29)

\\\stain\\\
In Apfelbaum's work, the stain isn't simply repulsive or taboo. It's smart, sensual, and full of feeling. Apfelbaum calls this sculpture "a beautiful mess." It operates equally as a critical and as a constructive object. (30)

\\\the question of rules\\\
Gilles Deleuze: "Folding -- unfolding no longer simply means tension -- release, contraction --dilation, but enveloping -- developing, involution, evolution." Instead of a system of oppositions and ruptures, Deleuze imagines one composed from continuities, which he elaborates elsewhere as elastic, affirming, flowing, and horizontal. (43)


"Polly Apfelbaum: 'I wanted the work to be... as sexy and hallucinogenic as possible.' by Irving Sandler" (49-53)
"I am interested not so much in attempting to invent new categories but in operating promiscuously and improperly -- poaching -- within fields seemingly already well defined." Her aim, as she said, was to "twist" these categories "into a different form." -- Polly Apfelbaum, "Statement for Chain, Vol. 2, one page typescript. (49)
Daisy Chain (1989): composed of found objects, simply juxtaposed, significantly titled, and exemplary of the post-Duchampian practices that were prevalent throughout the 1980s. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp's readymades and Andy Warhol's remades at a time when appropriation art was everywhere in the art world.
Ashley Bickerton, Sherrie Levine, & Haim Steinbach: appropriating newly-minted objects to make art that critiqued commodity culture.
Ann Hanilton, David Hammons, Donald Lipski, & Nancy Shaver: transposing things patinated by human touch and time, to convey cultural memory and a sense of loss. [with which Apfelbaum's use of the found object allied] (21)
Colour is notably absent from Apfelbaum's take on this work. Daisy Chain copies the printed set of shapes and their configuration in the form of raw wooden elements, laid out in rows upon the floor.
Pink Dalmatians (1992): She began to control her marks. "The pieces are dyed and cut out, then set on the floor, ordered and arranged to make more forms. The assemblage of pieces mobs through the space like an organic growth... Much of the work consists in directing its flow, organising and looking for new organisations in the liquid movements of fabric and stain." -- Polly Apfelbaum, "The Night," in Polly Apfelbaum, San Francisco: Walter/McBean Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute, 1997. (50)
Shaping each velvet swatch by hand is critical. With Matisse's cut-outs as a precedent, Apfelbaum said, "Cutting is drawing, almost." Scissoring into dyed fabric enabled her to draw directly into colour. (50) Decoration and handicraft materials and techniques are historically identified with women's work, which feminists rightly considered art ... Apfelbaum views her artistic enterprise as a quest for beauty. After all, the purpose of decoration is visual pleasure .. It is commonly thought that art that is pleasurable is or has to be mindless. Not so in the case of Apfelbaum's floor reliefs. In providing a conceptual component, she bridges pleasure and cerebration. As Wesley Gibson observed: "Here, beauty is intelligence, and intelligence is beauty." -- Wesley Gibson, "Reviews: Polly Apfelbaum," New Art Examiner, March 2001, 54. (51)
Apfelbaum's abstraction signifies her concern with "high" art. At the same time, she looks for inspiration to popular culture, notably in her material ... The diversity of interpretations that Apfelbaum's work evokes is such that at the same time you are reminded of "high" abstract art and popular culture, you are put in mind of lily pads, landscapes seen from on high, and other natural phenomena... her work is open to myriad readings. -- David Pagel, "A Supersaturated Return to the Spirit of the Punk Era," Los Angeles Times, May 10, 2002, Sec. F, 26. (51)
The underlying content of Apfelbaum's work is the tension between the structured and the unstructured. Her aim, as she sees it, is to compose an initial order, then to welcome disorder - or the unknown - and finally to order it. (52)


"Let's Twist Again by Tim Griffin" (59-60)
Bones (2000): The tubes are totemic, with their basic forms and serial layout; at the same time, they are completely, even uncomfortably ordinary, resembling so many rolled-up rugs on the ground. Embedded in their repetitions is the implication of manufactured items, but the pieces are obviously handmade, richly marked with the artist's trademark mottled patterns of coloured dye. This signature aspect draws the pieces away from the context of minimalist sculpture toward painting, taking potential artistic references off the floor and onto the wall. Evoking the formal purity of, say, Helen Frankenthaler's staining technique, whereby she allowed her paints to seep into canvas, these traces of the artist's hand invite closer inspection ... The majority of the piece is, in fact, wrapped up and completely out of view, enfolded within the layers of would fabric. Bones shows and withholds at once. (59)
Apfelbaum produces work in which two basic factions - whether medium, art history or popular culture - are at odds yet bound together inextricably, so that, as in Bones, the implications wind continuously outward and inward ... her works often have consisted of coloured strips and spots organised into patterns on the floor, invoking Jackson Pollock. But Apfelbaum has rendered Pollock's performative mode into a motif. The drip remains in place, but now registers as flat fabrics saturated with dye; and what was once the gestural trace of the creative subject is now organised according to a formal system set up by the artist. Indeed, any sense of "action" is displaced from artist to the viewer who must navigate the space shaped by the individual works. In this vein, Apfelbaum further closes the gap between painting and sculptural space, as the act of looking becomes more resolutely corporeal, more physical. (59-60)


The Color of My Fate (1989-1990)
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_1_92/ai_112131277/pg_2 http://citybeat.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A90962
http://citybeat.com/2003-12-10/art.shtml http://www.irhine.com/index.jsp?page=home_cac012504 http://contemporaryartscenter.org/exhibitions/apfelbaum

Kelly, Ellsworth. Line Form Color. Harvard university Art Museums, 1999.

I propose to create a book which will be an alphabet of plastic pictorial elements, aiming to establish a new scale of painting, a closer contact between the artist and the wall, providing a way for painting to accompany modern architecture.
There has been a growing awareness among young painters, that painting return to the wall as in the days before the Renaissance. The scale of the painting and its placement will become a direct, spontaneous, visual experience. It will speak to people anonymously as did the art of Egypt, the art of the great periods of China and India, of Byzantium, and of Europe during the Middle Ages (the glass and sculpture of Chartres).
In America there is no painting to accompany contemporary architecture. Recently at New York City's Museum of Modern Art there was a "Symposium: Art with Architect re," headed by Philip Johnson. They were unable to solve their dilemma: "what kin of art should be used with the new United Nations building?" It was stated that American artists lacked the scale for working with modern architecture.
Creative painting today means easel painting, "the original oil painting," sold through galleries to private collectors, and to museums, to be hung on walls. This painting has no relation to the architectural wall; it is an expression of the artist's separate personality. I believe that artist should work directly with the architect, building as the architect builds.
Today, instead of the stained-glass of Chartres, Romanesque frescoes, Byzantine mosaics, Chinese calligraphy, Egyptian reliefs and sculpture, we have the cinema, the best-seller magazines and books, the radio and television, produced to "please," and for financial profit, not to teach, or to state an absolute truth.
Spirituality, the representation of nature, and the personality of the creator have been present, in varying degrees, in all the art that man has made. With the birth of easel painting, in the Renaissance, spirituality began to give way to the artist's personality.
Spiritual art in the past has had an immense scale, covering entire walls of buildings. Much of the art that has survived from the ancient civilisations has been monumental, and compared with the art of today, appears anonymous, while the art of the twentieth century is personal on a very much smaller scale.
The book I plan will be an alphabet of lines, forms, values and colours, having no written word. Linoleum cuts will be made from approximately fifty drawings. The plate size will be approximately 8" x 10".

Project for a Book: Line, Form and Colour
Ellsworth Kelly
November 1951

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Ellsworth Kelly first conceived Line Form Color in 1951 as a series of studies, both drawings and collages. Later that year he applied to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for a grant to produce a book, "an alphabet of plastic pictorial elements," but the application was not successful. With this volume, Kelly has brought Line Form Color to completion. Its forty plates correspond to the original collages. This slipcased edition also includes an essay by Harry Cooper, curator of modern art at the Harvard University Art Museums.

English; Paperback; 108 Pages
ISBN-10: 1891771051; ISBN-13: 9781891771057
Publisher: Harvard university Art Museums; Pub date: May 01, 1999
Dimensions: 20 cm x 20 cm x 2 cm

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Don't read. Get paper, rods, blocks.
Set them out, paint them, build.
El Lissitzky, Of Two Squares, 1920

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Think Colour

Think Colour: Art is Never Just Black & White. Porirua City, New Zealand: Pataka Porirus museum of arts & culture, 2001.

In Maori cosmology, life evolves from absolute darkness, the intense night, the deep night, the dark night. From the wind, and the rain, and the intense energy, come the first signs of light -- the rising sun. From the rising sun, the wind, the rain, and the energy, comes the personification of the dawn maiden -- bursting into light, into colour, to embrace her mother, the planet earth. From the world of light -- come al living things. Colour, like music, transcends all cultures and barriers. It is a universal form of communication, and like its primeval parent the sun, it warms the heart and soul. Darcy Nicholas

Exhibition catelogue for "Think Colour" group exhibition in the Pataka Museum of arts & Culture, 28 October 2000 - 18 February 2001. This publication brings together New Zealand painting colourists and investigates these questions:

- What lies behind New Zealand's passion for black?
- Why do artists eschew strong and vibrant colour in favour of a restrained palette
- Why has black become such a significant colour in New Zealand painting?
- Can it be that our passion for black, which is so intimately associated with our national identity, is reflective of a lingering puritanism, an emotional reticence in our national psyche?

1704: Opticks.

Sir Isaac Newton observed that light passed through a prism refracts into a scale of colours.
Scientist Thomas Young discovered that primary colours [red, yellow, blue] could be used to create all the colours in the solar spectrum [the colours of the rainbow].
Eugène-Michel Chevreul established as scientific 'laws' that (a) 'contiguous colours influence and modify each other'; and (b) each primary colour is intensified optically by its complemetary. The principles of harmony and contrast of colours: and their applications to the arts.

1865 Eugène Delacroix, colour theory
1905 Monet's palette: white, cadmium yellow, vermillion and deep madder, cobalt blue and emerald greed.

'Liberation of colour' - colour as an element independent of subject in its own right.
Art et Critique, 1890. Maurice Denis: '... a picture, before being a horse, a nude or some kind of anecdote' as 'essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order.'

See NZ Artists:

• Gretchen Albrecht (b.1943 Auckland)
• Philippa Blair (b.1945 Auckland)
• Jeff Brown (b. 1964 Nelson)
• Matthew Browne (b.1959 London)
• Philip Clairmont (1949 - 1984)
• Max Gimblett (b. 1935 Auckland)
• Rudolph Gopas (1913 - 1983)
• Jeffrey Harris (b. 1949 Akaroa)
• Emily Karaka (b.1952 Auckland)
• Len Lye (1901 - 1980)
• Rob McLeod (b. 1948 Glasgow)
• Milan Mrkusich (b. 1952 Dargaville)
• John Reynolds (b. 1956 Auckland)
• Philip Trusttum (b. 1946 Raetihi)