[Robert Irwin] came to think of paintings as showing two faces, one as interpretable image and another as physical presence, and he saw the former as bleeding the intensity of the latter. To the extent that a canvas could be subsumed as a painting of something, it was no longer being confronted as an energy field in its own right. And what Irwin was increasingly after was this pure physicality.
…[Irwin noted:] “When you stop giving [the late line paintings] a literate or articulate read (the kind of read you give a Renaissance painting) and instead look at them perceptually, you find that your eye ends up suspended in mid-air, mid-space, or mid-stride: both time and space blend into a continuum. You lose your bearings for a moment. … The thing is you cease reading and you cease articulating and you fall into a state where nothing else is going on but the tactile, experimental process.
“…When I look at the world now, my posture is not one of focus but rather of attention.”
—Lawrence Weschler, Robert Irwin / MATRIX 15 catalog essay, University Art Museum (now BAM/PFA), October 1, 1978 – December 31, 1978
Tag Archives: attention
Social Media: More is not always better
Turning over a Facebook page.
Eleven months ago, I started a Facebook page. I thought I would use it to interact with the public (for unclear reasons, FB remains very popular with artists). It seemed like a good idea* after taking a workshop on social media for artists, but now there are reasons to re-consider having a page at all.
Valleywag just confirmed that Facebook suppresses page visibility to drive up ad revenue:
the social network is “in the process of” slashing “organic page reach” down to 1 or 2 percent.
It’s enough for me to discontinue using the page.
Thanks to folks who had been kind enough to like or follow my page.
Please continue to find me here, or check out my website or tweets.
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*The following is not news, but being able to control one’s attention is crucial to both creativity and happiness, so I’ll share it at the risk of stating the obvious: I was also hoping to target and limit my Facebook usage. I detest the addictive, pleasureless compulsion its usage always fosters; the composing of updates in my mind instead of being in the moment; and the rage-y, poisonous aftermath from dealing with trolls and disagreements. For these reasons, I try to limit my time on FB, and therefore keep my personal profile very private, and my circle of friends extremely intimate. Ironically, my relationship to FB might be best explained by FB-speak: it’s complicated.
R+D 