From:
Norman Watts <Norman_Watts@zzzzzzz>
Date:
Fri, 3 Feb 2006 06:20:23 -0500
Subject:
YAY DUST
On Feb 2, 2006, at 4:12 PM, VisualThinker7@------- wrote:
Quoted text begins. or with clubbing baby seals and skinning them alive in front of
their mothers, either.
End of quote.
As synchronicity would have it, inserted between my stone-list mail
this lovely rainy morning is a message from the Humane Society.
Canada is about to begin its annual seal club. It is expected to be
the largest cull yet, with over 300,000 animals to be beaten to death
so that Ladies and Gentlemen (good word that) must not shiver while
hurrying from the Lincoln to the opera house. 300, 000! What other
purpose could they serve, right? As a proud Canadian I am even
prouder now.
What bugs me about art in the wee hours of the morning is that it is
so damn anthropocentric. In earliest literature appreciation classes
I was introduced to the notion of literature speaking to the human
condition. I was duly impressed. Here was something deep and I had
better sit up and pay attention. And then again, and yet again with
the human condition. There must be more to this I thought, and I read
on. But soon, even to my young mind, there came the question, and
what about all the other creatures? What about their condition? Not a
word. And now still non. Art, we are told, can express things that
words cannot. Artists, the good ones at least, can tell us deep
things about ourselves. The essential nature of this or that. Point
out our pre and misconceptions.
To the very, very best of our ability this is the only place we know
where life exists. By many orders of magnitude beyond our ability to
go or grasp there is only this place and yet we blithely eliminate
the number and diversity of all living things, except ourselves. In
the literal sense of the word we decimate the species not just on the
planet but anywhere in the known or attainable universe. Obliterating
life forms around longer than the descent of man. We are estranged
and lonely, we and our clubs, and what do our artists say, standing
by brush and chisel in hand? Do they sense anything wrong, draw a
line or two? Is there any pain, compassion, outrage, murder in their
hearts? Something carved in stone so that later generations can say;
somewhere in the middle of the 20th century some people began to
apprehend an atrocity of universal dimensions and spoke out about it?
They made urinals to address the human condition and attitude.
Duchamp know what he was talking about. It was that which I was
trying so ineffectually to say.
n
- Follow-ups
- message 00255: YAY DUST - sue (03 Feb 2006)
- References
- message 00232: YAY DUST - VisualThinker7 (02 Feb 2006)
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