competent gestures 2

From our present moment Hume's picture of human psychology appears a little naive. He could not imagine the extent to which human preferences and sentiments are effected and provoked by a media economy of images, and the extent to which his own arguments in favour of utility could undermine his simple though honest faith in the human facility of sentiment. He writes:

And if the principles of humanity are capable, in many instances, of influencing our actions, they must, at all times, have some authority over our sentiments, and give us a general approbation of what is useful to society, and blame of what is dangerous or pernicious. The degree of these sentiments may be the subject of controversy; but the reality of their existence, one should think, must be admitted in every theory or system.

competent gestures 1

Jeff Wall, an artist whose work I like very much, has written about the gradual mechanisation of gestural language in pictures. The classical and even romantic ages developed a comprehensive lexicon corresponding to emotional and spiritual states. Today we see gesture as either symptomatic of some interior state, and with all the negative connotations that something symptomatic implies, or the outward sign or material after-effect of work competently performed or accomplished. Both relate to mechanisation, the first relates to the body and mind literally as a mechanical device which may malfunction, the second to the ability of a mind and body to accomplish tasks through the mastery of some type of machine.
At the moment I'm reading David Hume's 'An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals' which he wrote during the 1740s. So far his argument seems to be that morality derives from considering what behaviours are generally useful for society and what behaviours aren't. In a footnote he explains that although much human behaviour is valued because of it's usefulness we should never consider inanimate objects that are useful in the same way as human beings. He doesn't say, I think, that we should never, only that we can't, which is consistent with his generally belief that there just are some feelings we have about our fellows humans, that are naturally given, that we can rely on to be always part of our make-up.

smell of old paper

Perhaps it's my age but I often find myself trying to piece together certain scenes from my childhood, that is trying by way of memory to recreate the sensations I experienced when I was, say eight years old. The feeling of watching television, at the time still a marvelously ingenious device, even if I had to spend sometime fiddling with the arial to get a reception; and the test-card transmission, and milk bottles with the foil caps, packets of monster-munch, the illicit thrill of Top of the Pops on a Thursday night (my Mum and Dad were young old-fogeys, they never had much time for pop music, we would go on expeditions to the Opera, an art form I have never enjoyed), roaming from newsagent to newsagent in search of the latest 8p Spiderman comic, with all those black and white reprints of Marvel madness. While deeply caught up in nostalgia/revie mode of affection for past things I realised that instead of these memories being conjured from the vapours and remaining intangible snaps of the past, that it was in fact me now that was in some strange sense the phantom in the scences I was trying to reimagine, a ghost from the future intruding on a life that is no longer accessible. I don't draw anything particularly profound from this, it was a curious slight of hand of consciousness, though to some extent I suppose it's possible to say that we don't contain memories that we can do with as we wish, so much as they contain us.
I think Bergson probabely says something about this kind of experience though I'm not absolutely sure.

Behavioural Difficulties

It may be esteemed, perhaps, a superfluous test to prove, that the benevolent or softer affections are estimable: and wherever they appear, engage the approbation and good-will of mankind. The epithets sociable, good-natured, humane, merciful, grateful, friendly, generous, beneficent, or their equivalents, are known in all languages, and universally express the highest merit, which human nature is capable of attaining. - David Hume

Virtue, like wisdom, is an almost totally redundent notion today. Out of fear of hypocrisy we've dropped it as if it were a socially awkward guest someone made the mistake of inviting to a polite gathering.

melisma - personal responses to art, Part One

"A group of many notes (usually at least five or six) sung melodically to a single syllable. Melismas are found especially in liturgical chant"

The first poem of Messiaen's Poemes pour Mi contains a very beautiful example of a melisma. A word I learn the meaning of from the sleeve notes as they used to be called. The Alleluia sung by a female voice starts out of a winding, sinuous, chain of faltering notes that creates a backdrop to this exclamation of faith very different to some powerful affirmation. The music makes me feel, as this is a very personal reaction, as if something complex, quite profound is coming to surface, in a quite wholly contingent manner, quite independently of any action or intention, on the part of what is human. It is a spiritual revelation appearing out of some natural process, or very close to a natural process, perhaps it suggests a world in the act of appearing, as it comes susceptible to human perception.
There is a tradition of French Catholic pantheism which Messiaen belongs to, very tuned to the material world, attentive to this force which brings to life the world, an elan vital, which to my mind is not such a silly notion as some argue.

grace and confusion

Hopper's painting of the empty room may anticipate the white cube of the contemporary art space, or look back to the simple surroundings of a church, a place where experience can become simple again, can go back to basics, perhaps to be cleansed or some such thing. A container or format for renewel and refocus. In regards to holding today a common language, we hold in common if anything this desire for a means to let the world not be so complicated again, that is the belief in a place where excess can be washed away, a place where we can reset life to zero. We confuse this 'reformating' with grace.

Edward Hopper

Hopper is a little bit of an anomaly. A twentith century representational realist or more accurately naturalist painter. But absolutely modern. There is no contradiction really, he painted less real space than a kind of meta-space, beyond simple psychological reductions to inner experience or rather naive naturalistic portraits of an outside visable world. Where and what is this place of spaces he painted?
To answer my own question I think a little like Manet his paintings are about spectatorship, except where Manet was very much a society painter, for the American Hopper, society is always out of view. Society has already been overcome, that's why it is rare to see anymore than a single individual in his pictures. There is just this freedom to have in front of us something to view. The spectator - freedom, freedom therefore the spectator. Just for comparison's sake, Van Gogh painted pictures that definitely do not this - his paintings are co-creating a world that definitely does not exist outside of a making, participation, a process of production. What is idealised, and is both attractive and melancholic in Hopper is the illusion he offers, that there can be places to view the world that are of the world, but not altogether part of the world, his paintings take their place with other spectral productions of the 20th Century like cinema; all ghosts that try to walk in sunlight.
Hopper's connection to cinema is always noted, the idea that his paintings suggest stills from movies. Are they not also in some sense experiences whose descendents we find in our reactions to contemporary media? Wasn't 9/11 like a movie, when celebrities are seen in real-life, when we can't quite believe something is happening 'before our eyes'. The fantasy suggests everything is moving too fast and it is disorientating. Perhaps it is quite the opposite, and like Hopper the painter we are quietly, almost unconsciously marking out a place from which to sit back and watch the world as it appears to disappear in front of us.