2025.10.27
12:55:20
2024.10.27
451 Rhawn Gallery
More sculpting . . . working title: I'M NOT EVEN SURE WHAT TO THINK MYSELF
2007.10.27
Collage Architecture
...lately there's been some digital collaging...
Old School of New Thinking 2007.09.22
2003.10.27
Crack Scam 006
Crack Scam 012
Crack Scam 013
Crack Scam 024
2002
Denis Diderot "Encyclopedia"
Diderot, Denis. "Encyclopedia." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Philip Stewart. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.004 (accessed 27 October 2026). Originally published as "Encyclopédie," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 5:635–648A (Paris, 1755).
161/192
But these considerations on the spirit and matter of an encyclopedic dictionary bring us naturally to discuss the style appropriate to this sort of opus.
162/192
Laconicism is not the tone for a dictionary; it would leave too much to guesswork for most readers. I prefer that what is left to the reader be limited to what could be lost without leaving him ill informed on the basics. The effect of diversity, besides the fact of its inevitability, does not in this case appear to me displeasing. Every laborer, every science, every art, every article, every subject has its language and its style. What is the harm of preserving them? If the editor had to make his hand visible everywhere, the work would be considerably slowed down, without being better. However well informed an editor be, he would often risk committing a material error, while thinking he was correcting a mistake in language.
163/192
I would summarize the general character of an encyclopedia's style in two words: communia, proprie, proprié, communiter. By heeding this rule, common things will always be elegant; and proper and particular things always clear.
164/192
A universal dictionary of the sciences and arts needs to be thought of as a vast countryside containing mountains, plains, rocks, water, forests, animals, and all the objects that make for the variety of a great landscape. The light of heaven falls on them all; but it strikes them all in different ways. Some stand out by nature and exposure, in the front of the scene; others are spread out on countless intermediate planes; some fade into the distance; all enhance each other.
165/192
If the slightest trace of affectation is unbearable in a small opus, how would a major opus look in the judgment of men of letters, in which such a flaw were egregious? I am sure that the excellence of the subject matter would not compensate for the defect of style, and it would be little read. The works of two of the greatest men nature has produced, one a philosopher, and the other a poet, would be infinitely more perfect and admired, if those rare men had not been gifted to a quite extraordinary degree with two talents that to me seem contradictory, genius and wit. The most sublime thoughts are constantly spoiled by brilliant jabs and the most ingenious comparisons. Nature would have dealt much more kindly with them if, having endowed them with genius, she had denied them wit. Solid and genuine taste, the sublime in whatever genre, pathos, the great effects of fear, commiseration and terror, noble and lofty sentiments, and great thoughts all reject epigrammatic turns and contrasted expression.
166/192
If however there is a work that allows for variety of style, it is an encyclopedia ; but as I intended for the most indifferent objects to be always tacitly related to man, to take on a moral dimension, to bespeak decency, dignity, sensitivity, elevation of the soul, in a word that the breath of uprightness should be everywhere discernable, I would have the tone answer to those purposes, and take from them some austerity, even in places where the most brilliant and cheerful colors would not have been out of place. To entertain and please, when one can instruct and move, is to miss the mark.
167/192
As for purity of diction, that is something the reader is entitled to expect in any work. I do not know where people got their demeaning indulgence for large opuses and especially for dictionaries. It is as if folios were entitled to be written heavily, negligently, and without genius, taste, or subtlety. Do they believe it is impossible to introduce these qualities into a lengthy and exacting work? Or is it that since most such works which have appeared up till now commonly have these defects, they are regarded as inherent to the format?
168/192
Yet one will notice, if one looks more closely, that if there is an opus into which it is a simple matter to inject some style, it is a dictionary; everything is cut up into articles; and its longest pieces are less long than an oratorical performance.
169/192
But here is the thing. It is rare that those who write excellently wish and are able to continue for long such an arduous task; besides, in collective works where the glory of success is shared, and where the labor of one man is conflated with the labor of many, you identify someone else as your competitor; you compare your work to his; you would blush to do less well than he; you worry little about doing better; you use only part of your strength; and you hope that any neglect of yours will disappear in the immensity of the volumes.
170/192
For this reason, each man's self-interest diminishes as the number of collaborators rises; and as the work of an individual stands out less the more colleagues there are, the book overall will tend more toward mediocrity as more hands are employed in its making.
2002.10.27
Re: research assistance
Sue,
The Basilica Neptuni seems to be a building that Piranesi 'played' with within the Ichnographia. According to Nash's Pictorial Dictionary, Palladio drew a plan of the Basilica Neptuni (as illustrated therein), and Piranesi obviously knew this plan because he used it [and labeled it Xystus] within the Ichnographia. In my experience, whenever Piranesi makes what seems to be an obvious mistake within the Ichnographia, that's usually a sign that Piranesi is playing a(n inversion) game. That may not be the case here, but you should at least be aware of the (intentional?) transposition of buildings.
Platner also has some to say about the Basilica Neptuni, as I'm sure other sources do as well.
From the 'Catalogo' of Il Campo Marzio:
Basilica di Nettuno, «El Sparzian. in Adriano» Vegessi Portico di Nettuno. --I assume this is a reference to the Hadrian biography within the Historia Augustus.
Steve
2001.10.27
Helena and Lucian
I'm still working on EPICENTRAL, and it looks like the first chapter will begin appearing at www.quondam.com sometime soon. Regarding Helena, I have developed some new theories as to her relationship with St. Lucian. A few nights before Constantine died, he prayed at the basilica built over the burial site of St. Lucian in Helenopolis (the re-named Drepanum where Helena was born). Eusebius records this.
One legend speaks of dolphins that brought Lucian's body to Helena's feet on the shores of Drepanum. In fact, Lucian died a martyr at Nicomedia 313 after many years in prison, and his body was thrown out to sea.
Lucian was the teacher of Arius, from whom the Arian controversy sprang.
I believe there is every possibility that Helena attended to Lucian during his years in prison, and ultimately took care of his burial. Furthermore, it may be that Helena moved to Rome only after Lucian's death and burial.
If any of these theories are true, there is then the question as to why no historical records exist (besides legends). My inclination is that the answer lies within Arianism, and specifically how Arianism was treated by early Christian (and later Christian) historians. (It may not have been prudent to record that Constantine's mother had very close links to Arianism, although there is much recorded as to the support of Arianism by Constantine's half-sister Constantia, who was betrothed to Licinius.)
I have also been collecting data on all the martyrs of the early 4th century Christian persecution (who are mostly either military men, or men of the Christian priesthood, or individual woman), thus it has been becoming easier for me to make the case that this last persecution was generally sexist in that Christianity engendered subordination within the armed forces, and also lead to a kind of woman's liberation, both of which threatened the Roman power/control structure. Some of the persecution decrees read uncannily like the present US military "don't ask, don't tell" policy, and there is even an historical example where two Christian soldiers (martyrs) were dressed up as woman in order to shame them of their faith.
Overall, EPICENTRAL is proving to be an incredible project that I may be working on until the next 18th of August.
ps
I did make a pilgrimage to the quondam World Trade Center site. This was around noon 29 September, and the first thing I saw there was a Prayer Station set up by students from Vermont. We prayed together for several minutes. Around noon 29 September 2001 was also exactly four years after I witnessed the burial of my own father.
2000.10.27
Baroque ending (for sure)
Although most of the current discussion at architecthetics deals more or less with theorizing of how 'style' (might) come to be, generally how things/styles emerge, I nonetheless offer the following as an example of how (a) style ends, in this particular case the Baroque style.
The following is a passage I first read over 23 years ago. It comes from Thomas K. Kitao, Circle and Oval in the Square of Saint Peter's: Bernini's Art of Planning (New York: New York University Press, 1974), pp.22-23. I was reminded of this passage after some reflection upon the recent bit of cyber theater that occurred here at design-l [i.e., the email list I first sent this post to on 16 October 2000--design-l and architecthetics are the double theaters I play in] a month and a half ago.
"In the well know production of the Due Teatri, first given in 1637, Bernini developed a simulated amphitheater of a very elaborate kind. This is, of course, the best known of Bernini's theatrical works, but a recapitulation is in order.
According to Massimiliano Montecuculi, who witnessed the performance, the stage was prepared with "a flock of people partly real and partly feigned" so arranged that, when the curtain had fallen for the opening of the play, the audience saw on the stage another large audience who had come to see the comedy. Two braggarts, played by Bernini himself and his brother Luigi, then appeared on the stage, one facing the real audience and the other the fictitious; and recognizing each other in no time, they went on to claim, each in turn, that what the other saw as real was actually illusory, each firmly convinced that there was no more than one theater with its audience in that half he was facing. The confusions of realities in mirror image thus heightened, the two firmly decided "that they would pull the curtain across the scene and arrange a performance each for his own audience alone." Then the play was performed to the real audience, that is, the main act to which that preceded was only a pleasant prelude. But through the play another performance was supposed to be taking place simultaneously on the second stage introduced by Luigi; the play was, in fact, interrupted at times by the laughter from those on the other side, as if something very pleasant had been seen or heard.
At the end of the play, the two braggarts reappeared on the stage together to reaffirm the "reality" of the illusion. Having asked each other how they fared, the impresario of the fictitious performance answered nonchalantly that he had not really shown anything but the audience getting up to leave "with their carriages and horses accompanied by a great number of lights and torches." Then, drawing the curtain, he displayed the scene he had just said he had shown to his audience, thus rendering complete the incredible reversal of reality and illusion to the confused amazement of the real spectators, who were now finding themselves ready to leave and caught in the enchanting act of feigning the feigned spectators."
Here's my analysis:
Of course, the Baroque style continued beyond Bernini--I believe even the double porticos of St. Peter's Square were done after the above performance. All the same, Bernini's theatrical performance manifests the Baroque's consummate ending. Within his double theater Bernini capsulized the beginning of Western culture's new bifurcation of the real and the illusory, introduced mirroring as a henceforth dominant Baroque (stylistic) theme, and, at base (or should I say at the ultimate end), inverted reality into a reenactment of its own illusory mirror (--is this perhaps also the genesis of historiography?).
Essentially, beyond the Baroque (and still often in our own modern times) architecture at its best is very sophisticated theater, keeping in mind that theater is one of the earliest forms of (man made) reenactment.
1994.10.27
second birth
Now I will address the role that the diaphragm plays in birth. This, of course, relates to the whole idea of pregnancy and the fact that the plane of the present passes through the area of pregnancy between the years 770 A.D. and 3090 A.D. The diaphragm occurs in the human body--the Timepiece--at the same time that the pregnancy ends and the birth occurs. This birth then occurs and coincides with the transition from metabolism to osmosis. This birth also coincides with the end of the period of major purge in humanity.
1966.10.27
1966. Thursday, New York City
Writes to both M. Dorival, the director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, and Mile Popovitch, the director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, to inform them of his encouraging visit to Philadelphia the previous day and Dr Evan Turner's willingness to lend works for the exhibitions to be held in France the following April.
Ephemerides
1953.10.27
1953. Thursday, Philadelphia
Travels again to the Philadelphia Museum of Art [22.10.1953] to inspect the rooms for the Arensberg collection, which are now finished except for some details in the artificial lighting. However Fiske Kimball remains noncommittal about plans for a "grand opening".
Ephemerides
1926.10.27
1926. Wednesday, New York City
From Manhattan, Duchamp goes to meet Miss Dreier at the Brooklyn Museum, where the stretching of canvases and the framing is under way in preparation for the opening of the Société Anonyme's "International Exhibition of Modern Art" on 19 November. They decide where to position the Large Glass which, until it was brought to the museum recently, has been in storage for three years [5.2.1923].
Ephemerides
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