All in a good cause

Knight of Faith

It’s inevitable, dare I say it, doubting ones own authenticity - feeling like a series of reflections of the environment. I could be mistaken but I read somewhere that Barnett Newton cut himself off critically and socially for a spell in a bid to escape it. Anyways I found myself also heading back towards the existentialist territory.  It is always rather attractive at first and then you don’t necessarily find answers you want, but more answers and references to a load of other philosophers you haven’t read. I came across Adorno’s The jargon of Authenticity – it was just and inkling really - kinda to do with the book project but probably more to do with the condition mentioned above.

Reading through the introduction at some point he began refuting Kierkegaard’s idea of ‘radicalinward love’, Adorno found this love uncannily similar to the spiritual love of Christianity. The book attempted to rattle a kind of pseudo mysticism he identified in German existentialist philosophy and its community. Adorno critiqued the ideal of the autonomous intellect, and reckoned that retreating inwards (to exist serenely) was the life of a dominated individual. For him existence unaffected by the ‘concrete’ world and its dictates was impossible.

He was obviously talking on a grand political scale, but (as he might admit himself) you can attempt to apply these ideas/theories to anything. So what does that say of the ‘creative subject’ who struggles to find assurances about what they put in the world? What makes someone an artist? Is there a set of criteria and would we all be in agreement upon what they are? Probably not, which is why so many factions exist so people can agree to agree – implicit, complicit, whatever you want to call it…

But in cutting that hairball - I think I had submitted to making something badly, but keeping that conviction and hope in arriving somewhere through the uncertainty. Isn’t that what Kierkegaard would call a ‘Knight of Faith’? We’ve all become accustomed to the idea of getting closer to yourself or a higher being through ritual. Considering Adorno’s critique, perhaps the existentialists were just acknowledging the need for transcendence, no matter show rational or irrational it is.

It just is…

Layers

I found myself at the British Library this week, loving and hating the opportunity I had to track down virtually any book that’s been printed. I went there hoping that I could find some answers to my text problem. A problem – I haven’t really got to the bottom of really. Sometimes the idea gets a bit too big, too much to handle and although one wants to have layers of meaning and connotations. The timing of all these layers is critical to the momentum of the thing, making nods to all the things your artwork could be, can leave you with a mess on your hands. So initially the project was a very simple idea of making an equivalent to the relic. Then the process of making the thing itself started to take on a sort of ritual. At the same time I thought the object aptly stood in for Maurice in terms of the ‘suffering’ endured. 

Then there’s the question of faith…

Some one asked me recently if I would invoke him, try and call on him for assistance. I can’t say that I even thought about it.  I don’t believe in deities in that way, and as it’s becoming more and more doubtful that he ever existed, I think the interest is more about him as a cultural figure, which fuelled imaginations of many artists. So this book in the British Library was dedicated to cataloguing surviving black Maurice’s. The ‘Golden legend’, which has several versions, is but a small portion of the text. Apart from being a catalogue of 300 objects, it also contextualizes how these objects came about – invevitably linked to the political wrangling’s of the time. Interestingly most of the examples came from Germany, which at around 1500 was pretty much most of the Holy Roman Empire.

Its like the project is going in two directions… In one way a book project could be an extension of that catalogue dealing with Maurice as an object rather then a person or metaphysical figure.  On the other it’s an interpretation of the Hagiography. I haven’t made up my mind yet and I don’t seem in a hurry to do so just yet…

Track change …

So how do we say goodbye to another year? As usual it felt like it passed in a flash, but looking back it was plenty eventful. I spent Christmas with my folks in the West Indies, it’s funny - artist friends insisted that it would be a great inspiration, perfect for rejuvenating my work. I have made some small gestures towards this, but have been more preoccupied with hanging out with as many cousins as I can find, tracking down new beaches and drinking plenty of the local produce. Going into 2013… there are things I want to do, things I have to do and things I don’t really want to do at all. I’m going back to my studio, which fills me with both excitement and trepidation. Although I’m feeling a change in terms of what I want to make -there is still a project I cannot put down, but there is also the desire to make some mess in a way a can’t do at home. Someone told me recently that there’s a filmmaker inside me waiting to get out. He could be right who knows, now the seed is planted, things have a way of materializing in unexpected ways.

I have definitely taken the holiday as an opportunity to read however. I was put on to a book about another black hero of a swash buckling kind. This one the Black Count was the father of Three Musketeers novelist Alexander Dumas. His mother a slave (from Haiti) his father an aristocrat, Alex Dumas was a real military man, fighting during the French revolution in 18^th century France and the inspiration for many of his son’s stories. One of the clinchers for buying this book was the proposition that civil rights and liberties could be fought for on all levels in France at that time including racial ones. It’s within that context that this man rose quickly to the rank of a general. Although the effects of the revolution on French West Indian colonies has been widely documented in books like the black Jacobins, I had never thought about the situation in France itself. I’m not really into war stories or war films a such, the book takes a lot of information from military records so there is much detail about his campaigns, (which makes it harder work for me) but the idea of this man is compelling enough to read on. I know the book is biased and the long dead can be glorified, but reading this book you wonder how a man so accomplished and respected could have ever be forgotten. Read along and you realize how protracted the French revolution was - subject to the wills of several factions and individuals. By the time Napoleon came in to the mix those early principles of equality and liberty were some what compromised.

I am trying to work out why I’m so interested in these men (Maurice  and Alex Dumas) on one level I think its about acculturation, the ‘When in Rome’ factor. They became citizens, learned the rules and excelled to be exceptional. They were extremely noble men believing in something higher that of their commanders and they both paid a price…  In many ways I think of this in terms of an art practice, the conviction needed not just to keep it existing - but to give it life. The Maurice piece played with the idea of a relic. The relic gains more metaphysical power through the continuation its story. Maurice’s weaponry and remains have significant symbolism in Austrian and German royalty. There are heraldic objects fashioned in tribute, I think there is an order of St Maurice in Italy also.  So I think continuing to write the story of the object I made in tribute to him creates a mythology for it. But I started it so long ago – it’s all getting a little fuzzy. I’ve got to work out how to get it back on track.