Kupka, Klein, Kubrick: Eyes Wide Art-History
Padraig L Henry
speculations precariously hovering around Kubrick's art ...
Frantisek Kupka
Czech painter Frantisek Kupka, 1871-1957, is generally recognised as
the founder of Abstraction. Though born in what is now the Czech
Republic, in 1891 he first moved to Austria, settling in Vienna where
he discovered the German poets and philosophers, and then in 1895 he
travelled to Paris. Like Vasely Kandinsky, Kupka began as a Symbolist
before becoming one of the great pioneers of abstract art, his work -
surprisingly - as refreshing, complex and contemporary though about a
century has since passed. In the New York Times of 1913, he stated:
"Man exteriorises his thoughts in words... Why should he not be able
to do the same in painting and sculpture, independent of the forms and
colours that surround him?" He might also have added film, given
Kubrick's later, more mature work. Though Kubrick often acknowledged
the literary influence of another modernist pioneer, novelist Franz
Kafka, a Czech contemporary of Kupka, on his own world-view, it is
also possible that he was aware of Kupka's work, especially when New
York became the world centre of much abstract art in the 1950s, with
the emergence of the American Abstract Expressionists just when
Kubrick began making films in New York. Indeed, one of Kupka's works
from 1901-1903, The Principle of Life, is quite simply astonishing in
the light of Kubrick's symbolic, floating-foetus Starchild in 2001
sixty five years later. Kupka's Symbolist painting features a floating
foetus in a bubble over an other-worldly landscape, though here Kupka
is symbolising a Buddhist theme: "Kupka showed a lifelong interest in
the esoteric. Here he gives his subject a Buddhist treatment: the
lotus is the symbol of the soul. He attempts to synthesise the
spiritualist and scientific world views by linking the foetus to the
flower by an umbilical cord." The painting can be viewed at the
following web-page:
http://www.artmagick.com/paintings/enlarge.aspx?pid=930&path=kupka/kupka2
It might also be argued that in the final section of 2001 ("Jupiter
and Beyond") Kubrick was also attempting a synthesis, that of the
philosophical and the scientific, that of the spiritual and the
rational. Even more interesting is that Kubrick's later films,
especially The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut, become
more and more abstract: though obviously and unavoidably figurative,
they are not a depiction of everyday "reality", but increasingly an
all-encompassing representation of the "world", both micro- and
macrocosmic, a projection of the inner workings of Kubrick the
artist's inner mental landscape, which indeed was always the aim of
abstract art, as first articulated by Kupka. Such is a profoundly
difficult, even problematic, artistic project to realise on
conventional film, because - unlike painting - such film is an
unavoidably Realist medium (the ineluctable modality of film "reality"
and the "what you see is what you get" of both classical cinema and
post-modern film, TV and consumerist multi-media). Kubrick, of course,
circumvented this structual limitation by employing a variety of
techniques: the uncanny, narrative dislocation and recursion,
non-naturalistic acting, Brechtian distanciation, Escherised spaces,
as well as utilising compositions taken from both classical and
modernist art eg Expressionism. The abstraction is in the work taken
as a whole, the totality of the narrative work itself, and not
necessarily in any individual scenes. For instance, in Eyes Wide Shut,
a film which appears to incorporate the whole history of art (almost
every scene featuring examples of fine art in the mise en scene -
classical, neo-classical, modern, post-modern and kitsch etc), many
scenes are themselves composed and framed according to a particular
art genre: the depiction of Dr Bill Harford in the back of a taxi is
pure Modernist Expressionism; the triangulation of Mandy, Bill, and
Ziegler in the Bathroom scene is composed according to neo-Classical
principles , and so on.
William Klein
As someone who has made distinctive contributions in the fields of
painting, photography and film-making, William Klein, now 75, is
clearly not as well-known as he undoubtedly deserves to be. In
fact, Klein, an archetypal American in Paris, where he has been based
for more than 50 years, is a consummate outsider, by nature a rebel.
As with Groucho Marx not to mention Stanley Kubrick, you feel that on
principle he wouldn't belong to any club that would accept him as a
member.
Equally fascinating are certain biographical details he shares with
Kubrick: he was born in New York; he was born in 1928, and into a
family of East European (Hungarian - Klein bears a striking
resemblance to the lecherous Hungarian Sandor Stavost in Eyes Wide
Shut) origin whose clothing business was ruined by the Wall Street
Crash. Still in his teens and desperate to get away, Klein enlisted in
the army, mainly to take advantage of the GI Bill of Rights, he
claims. After training as a radio operator in the cavalry - then
mounted on horses, not in tanks - he was dispatched to
Germany. Many Americans volunteered in such a way in the
re-construction of Germany after WWII (a phenomenon darkly explored
in Lars Von Trier's 1992 neo-noir film, Europa), and perhaps this
might be one of the factors that attracted Kubrick to make a film on
location there, Paths of Glory, in the mid-1950s, even though that
film ultimately focused on how power corrupted the upper echelons of
the French military machine during WWI.
After a relatively quiet year there Klein was enrolled in the Sorbonne
in Paris because he spoke some French. On his second day in the city
he met Jeanne Florin, the daughter of a Belgian architect, who became
his partner and collaborator. She has said that they gravitated
towards each other because they were both running away from their
backgrounds, and were alone. Keen to study painting, Klein went to the
atelier of the academic cubist, Andre Lhote, but lasted only a day
before moving on to the more formidable Ferriand Leger.
"Leger," he said later to John Heilpern, "blew my little bourgeois
mind." In fact, he took Leger's revolutionary imperatives to heart and
left his atelier within a few weeks.
"As with all father figures, we couldn't wait to reject him," Klein
said. Amazingly, given the tenor of what came later, Klein's initial
artistic efforts used an abstract, hard-edged, flat, geometric
language, influenced by Max Bill and other severe exemplars. He was
conscious of being on the straight and narrow, aware that aspects of
himself were not finding their way into this stringent optical
framework. So began what he termed his "Dr Jekyll and
Mr Hyde" existence. He realised that figuration, expressiveness, all
the forbidden things, could be admitted through the click of the
camera shutter.
When Vogue's Alexander Liberman spotted his work and invited him to
come to New York to shoot fashion pictures and anything else he had in
mind Klein jumped at the chance. His fashion photography is
outstanding and innovative, but the main result of his New York
sojourn was, famously. *Life is Good and Good for You in New York:
Trance Witness Revels*, a book so unprecedented and so
iconoclastically disturbing that no one in the States would touch it.
But thanks to visionary film-maker and documentarist Chris
Marker it was published in France, in 1956, to considerable acclaim.
It inaugurated the photographic book. That is, it is not a book of
photographs; the book itself, as a whole, is the work.
Partly inspired by the tabloid vitality of the New York Daily News, it
is essentially Klein's edited photographic "journal" of his months in
the city, which he has said many times he approached as an
ethnographer documenting an alien culture. Not only did New York come
across as a slum, as one potential publisher complained, but there is
a rough, aggressive quality to Klein's technique, and to his images,
that is still disconcerting, even though his influence has filtered
widely into documentary reportage and art photography. He says he was
technically indifferent, sometimes - though not often - shooting
without even looking through the viewfinder, pushing every aspect of
the process beyond its limits, bombarding the viewer as a
city bombards its inhabitants with stimuli. He felt that "I was back
[in New York] with a secret weapon - a camera. I thought New York had
it coming, that it needed a kick in the balls."
Further books, on Rome (while waiting to work as a photographer for
film director Federico Fellini), on Moscow and on Tokyo (at the
invitation of a Japanese publisher), followed. In each case Klein's
approach is simple and effective. As he described it in writing: "I
photograph what I see in front of me, I move in close to see better
and I use a wide-angle lens to get as much as possible in the frame."
He really does plunge right into the middle of the crowd and start
shooting. He has a knack for capturing a sense of the way people in
public spaces are still locked within their personal worlds. Apart
from the accidental, composite dramas of street life, in which there
are at least 10 different things going on in a single image, he seeks
out communal events, demonstrations, parades, funerals, performances.
The brutal closeness and distortion of the wide angle pulls
us into the heart of the picture. As he says: "I photograph a marriage
like a riot." Jean-Luc Godard's 1972 Brechtian political satire Tout
Va Bien dramatises the politicising of an expatriate American maker of
advertising commercials. The character is based on Klein, who was not
only politicised in the 1960s but, like Godard, is still substantially
defined by the spirit of the time. The spirit, that is, of 1968, when
the boundaries between art, film, politics, philosophy and even
fashion seemed to melt in the brief, intense heat of revolutionary
potential. A spirit recently recreated in The Dreamers, Bernardo
Bertolucci's latest film, so successful at suggesting the frantic
ferment of Paris 1968 (loaded throughout with nostalgic references
to Godard movies, among many others), itself yet another film about an
American in Paris.
Klein started making films in 1958 and he has made more than 20 since.
After his prolific burst of photographic books he virtually gave up
still photography until the 1980s, when renewed interest in his work
drew him back to it. His films encompass documentary and satirical
fiction. They include Muhammad Ali: The Greatest; a film about
Algeria with Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver; a study of Little
Richard; and a satirical broadside at American foreign policy in
Vietnam, Mr Freedom, which followed on from his involvement in the
collaborative Loin du Vietnam, featuring segments by Klein, Godard,
Marker and other French New Wave directors. He also targeted the
fashion industry. His film work is more varied, amorphous and uneven
than his photography, but it too is fiercely engaged, distinctive and
influential. Like his photographs, many of his documentaries are feats
of close, informal observation. When it comes to satirical drama
though, Klein can't resist battering the viewer over the head to make
a point. He works from a position of isolation, and he's swept away by
his own passion and enthusiasm. Perhaps the limitations and discipline
of photography suit him best. As he himself describes the process of
taking a picture: "Luck directs. Things seem to fall into place by
themselves."
Padraig
=============================================
Coincidentally, I recently watched a preview of Klein's 1999 film
Messiah, which has its Premiere here on Tuesday April 13th in an
open-air venue, Meeting House Square in Dublin, on the anniversary of
another premiere, that of Handel's oratoria itself, which Handel
conducted in its first performance just a few hundred yards away in
Fishamble Street on April 13th, 1742. The showing of the film
is a good way of noting the anniversity, but anyone who knows anything
of Klein will be aware of what not to expect. That is, one of those
dutiful, reverential and usually rather dull videos of a classical
performance. Instead, viewers will see scenes involving ecstatic
gamblers in Las Vegas casinos praising their particular god; a Danish
woman expressing her devotion to the Lord by having religious pictures
tattooed onto her stomach; mob violence in Liberia; newsreels of the
Troubles in Northern Ireland; and details of Hieronymus Bosch's
nightmarishly surreal visions. As Klein commented to the International
Herald Tribune, his religious vision is altogether more Bosch than
HandeL.
Yet Messiah features plenty of rapt, respectful footage of musicians,
though not in a single performance. The oratorio, inextricably linked
to Christmas, has become one of the most performed pieces of music in
the world, and Klein samples an eclectic spread of those who sing it.
There are professional soloists and choirs, but also many amateurs,
including the Dallas Police Choir (sirens muted but squad-car lights
flashing), a prison choir in Texas and a New York drug addicts' gospel
choir. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir declined to take part.
There is a barbed, satirical edge to some of Klein's juxtapositions of
words and images but, judged by his usual standards, Messiah is a
mild-mannered piece of work.
===========================================
Tobasco
"Padraig L Henry" wrote
" Here he gives his subject a Buddhist treatment: the
> lotus is the symbol of the soul. He attempts to synthesise the
> spiritualist and scientific world views by linking the foetus to the
> flower by an umbilical cord." "
While these are interesting points of referral and well worth exploring by
any student of Kubrick's art, I don't see the "Buddhist" theme in either
this painting or in Kubrick's image of Starchild and Earth. A Vedic image
of Atman and/or an Emersonian world-soul would seem to be more relevant
parallels in these instances.
from the Heart Sutra:
"... Form is emptiness; emptiness also is form. Emptiness is no other than
form; form is no other than emptiness. In the same way, feeling, perception,
formation, and consciousness are emptiness. Thus, Shariputra, all dharmas
are emptiness. There are no characteristics. There is no birth and no
cessation. There is no impurity and no purity. There is no decrease and no
increase. Therefore, Shariputra, in emptiness, there is no form, no feeling,
no perception, no formation, no consciousness; no eye, no ear, no nose, no
tongue, no body, no mind; no appearance, no sound, no smell, no taste, no
touch, no dharmas, no eye dhatu up to no mind dhatu, no dhatu of dharmas, no
mind consciousness dhatu; no ignorance, no end of ignorance up to no old age
and death, no end of old age and death; no suffering, no origin of
suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path, no wisdom, no attainment, and
no non-attainment."
This is the 'Heart' of the Mahayana Buddhist postulation of No-thingness or
"suchness". Whether Kubrick or even Kupka pursued Buddhist themes in their
art would be a matter open for further discussion - but these images have no
inherent "Buddhist" characteristics in and of themselves.
Thanks for the post tho...
Padraig L Henry
wrote:
>
>"Padraig L Henry" wrote
>
>" Here he gives his subject a Buddhist treatment: the
>> lotus is the symbol of the soul. He attempts to synthesise the
>> spiritualist and scientific world views by linking the foetus to the
>> flower by an umbilical cord." "
I didn't actually write this bit: I was quoting from a gallery caption
for Kupka's painting. Hence the quotation marks :-)
>
>
>While these are interesting points of referral and well worth exploring by
>any student of Kubrick's art, I don't see the "Buddhist" theme in either
>this painting or in Kubrick's image of Starchild and Earth.
Certainly (student?). The principal point of interest was the
[surface] image similarity and their Symbolist genre, quite aside from
whatever may or may not have been the actual symbolic philosophical
intent of either artist [Leonard F Wheat's "specialty" re 2001, with
no dissension permitted]. As I wrote previously: " ... one of Kupka's
works from 1901-1903, The Principle of Life, is quite simply
astonishing in the light of Kubrick's symbolic, floating-foetus
Starchild in 2001 sixty five years later. Kupka's Symbolist painting
features a floating foetus in a bubble over an other-worldly landscape
..."
Nevertheless, Kupka, as with such other initially Symbolist artists
who later progressed entirely into Abstraction (Kandinsky, Mondrian,
Delaunay etc), was influenced by the growth in popularity in the late
19th century of Theosophy, presenting concepts found in the
Theosophical teachings on esoteric Eastern religions and philosophies,
as well as the ideas of Edgar Allen Poe and Germany philosophers.
Theosophy, a synthesis of philosophy, religion, and science, guided
Kupka’s holistic approach to art. His paintings draw on a variety of
sources, including ancient myths, color theory, and contemporary
scientific developments. As a Symbolist, these ideas seemed to be a
representation rather than a manifestation of his evolving and
eclectic spiritual knowledge, and so obviously were never strictly
confined to any one religion, such as Buddhism. When he began to make
the connection between the forces acting in this world as a microcosm
of the macrocosmic forces in the universe, he abandoned Symbolism
[along with Neo-impressionism and Art Nouveau] as being too
restrictive, given his emerging non-objective vision of art, detailing
his frustrations: "Here I am only dissecting surfaces. The atmospheric
co-penetration is yet to be found. As long as there is a distinction
in color between ground and flesh, I will fall back into the postcard
photograph."
This is also when his paintings became more and more abstracted,
abandoning all figurative art. So a beginning in Symbolism led him,
following Orphic, Fauvist, and Cubist experiments, to esoteric
positions that were wholly founded in painterly thinking, whose
intentions focus on existential and ontological dimensions beyond the
immanent questions of painting. Kupka’s work became increasingly
abstract around 1910-11, (his exhibition of work from that time,
Amorpha, was the first ever exhibition of totally Abstract Art, in
Paris, 1912) reflecting his theories of motion, rhythm, color, and the
relationship between music and painting. An eclectic auto-didact,
Kupka's interests ranged from Einstein's special theory of relativity
and Etienne-Jules Marey's chronophotography to the fourth dimension
and - as already mentioned - theosophy, which became the underpinnings
of his paintings. He was interested in portraying time through organic
movement on the canvas (as with the Stargate sequence in 2001), and
many of his paintings are studies of this idea. Kupka held that color
alone was a separate language. Similar to Kandinsky and Mondrian, the
artist also believed that by entering into the "fourth dimension", the
viewer could access a higher reality beyond visual perception.
[Incidentally, he was also a theoretician, setting out these thoughts
in his treatise La Création dans les arts plastiques (1923), as well
as in other writings. In The Creation of the Visual Arts, he viewed
art as a means to create images aside from nature, so Kupka’s
paintings of this period are not simple or formulaic abstractions from
ultimate "sources" in nature, but are rather pictorial syntheses of
the artist’s formal ideas.]
His musically-structured Cubist and Orphic compositions and organic
abstract paintings made him a true creator of new painterly values,
one of the most outstanding artists of the 20th century, approaching
closest to the ideal Avant-garde. [Among other areas, he even explored
Fractal representations decades before they became widely popular]. So
I should imagine that it is reasonable to conclude that Kubrick was
familiar with his work - or at least those who followed him - in the
light of the final, Symbolist and Abstract sections of 2001 (Stargate,
Starchild, Morphism, etc) ... Or perhaps not: because at the end of
Kupka's life, in 1957, he was very much alone, isolated and little
appreciated [other modern abstract and semi-abstract artists, from
Picasso and Duchamp to Pollock and Dali, having stolen the celebrity
limelight]. Maybe because his Bohemian origins, his mysticism, and
his eccentric personality kept him at a distance from the avant-garde
circles of the artistic capitals. As a searching, eclectic
individualist, he rejected association with any artistic school or
trend or "ism", even though he largely founded Abstract Art and
despite his undeniable affinities with Fauvism and the work of Henri
Matisse, as well as with Orphism, Robert Delaunay’s color-based brand
of Cubism.
It is only in the last few years that his true significance has been
fully appreciated [and is likely to increase further with the
accession of the Czech Republic to membership of the EU next month
---some of his work now features on Czech stamps and coins, as well as
the album covers of records by numerous musicians] ... And so ends
another rant.
>A Vedic image
>of Atman and/or an Emersonian world-soul would seem to be more relevant
>parallels in these instances.
>
>from the Heart Sutra:
>
>"... Form is emptiness; emptiness also is form. Emptiness is no other than
>form; form is no other than emptiness. In the same way, feeling, perception,
>formation, and consciousness are emptiness. Thus, Shariputra, all dharmas
>are emptiness. There are no characteristics. There is no birth and no
>cessation. There is no impurity and no purity. There is no decrease and no
>increase. Therefore, Shariputra, in emptiness, there is no form, no feeling,
>no perception, no formation, no consciousness; no eye, no ear, no nose, no
>tongue, no body, no mind; no appearance, no sound, no smell, no taste, no
>touch, no dharmas, no eye dhatu up to no mind dhatu, no dhatu of dharmas, no
>mind consciousness dhatu; no ignorance, no end of ignorance up to no old age
>and death, no end of old age and death; no suffering, no origin of
>suffering, no cessation of suffering, no path, no wisdom, no attainment, and
>no non-attainment."
No blank canvas, no non-blank canvas? No waiting for godot, no
not-waiting for godot?
>
>This is the 'Heart' of the Mahayana Buddhist postulation of No-thingness or
>"suchness". Whether Kubrick or even Kupka pursued Buddhist themes in their
>art would be a matter open for further discussion - but these images have no
>inherent "Buddhist" characteristics in and of themselves.
>
>Thanks for the post tho...
>
>
>
I take it you're an authority on Buddhist ideas, a "student" of it?
Padraig
Tobasco
"Padraig L Henry" wrote in message
> I didn't actually write this bit: I was quoting from a gallery caption
> for Kupka's painting. Hence the quotation marks :-)
> >
I gathered as much, but considering that no source was cited - I just shot
the messenger. ;->
> >
> >While these are interesting points of referral and well worth exploring
by
> >any student of Kubrick's art, I don't see the "Buddhist" theme in either
> >this painting or in Kubrick's image of Starchild and Earth.
>
> Certainly (student?). The principal point of interest was the
> [surface] image similarity and their Symbolist genre, quite aside from
as an unabashed student(!) of Kubrick's films I certainly found more than
one point of interest in your post - as AMK's preeminent POMOist I'm shocked
(GASP)that you'd toss Eco's pointer of non-interpetation for the reader away
so casually...
> whatever may or may not have been the actual symbolic philosophical
> intent of either artist [Leonard F Wheat's "specialty" re 2001, with
> no dissension permitted]. As I wrote previously: " ... one of Kupka's
> works from 1901-1903, The Principle of Life, is quite simply
> astonishing in the light of Kubrick's symbolic, floating-foetus
> Starchild in 2001 sixty five years later. Kupka's Symbolist painting
> features a floating foetus in a bubble over an other-worldly landscape
> ..."
>
> Nevertheless, Kupka, as with such other initially Symbolist artists
> who later progressed entirely into Abstraction (Kandinsky, Mondrian,
> Delaunay etc), was influenced by the growth in popularity in the late
> 19th century of Theosophy, presenting concepts found in the
> Theosophical teachings on esoteric Eastern religions and philosophies,
> as well as the ideas of Edgar Allen Poe and Germany philosophers.
> Theosophy, a synthesis of philosophy, religion, and science, guided
> Kupka's holistic approach to art.
Madame Blavatsky anyone? Ouspensky's Meeting With Remarkable Persons? Mary
Baker Eddy cowering in an apartment in her twilight years - paralyzed by
"astro-psychic attacks" launched by her Theosophical enemies? Despite the
(ahem) authoritative claims of contact and study with "The Grand Eastern
Masters" ( no forwarding address available), the Theosophists had nary a
clue WRT Buddhism > in any form< as has been revealed by too many scholars,
too many times to recount here on AMK. Willy nilly and arbitrary culling of
philosophical points of interest, drawn from dubious and unvalidated sources
in the service of self-interest hardly constitutes valid knowledge of a
system of thought and experience as deep and extensive as that of Buddhist
philosophy and practice. Quick now! --- summarize Nagajuna's work in one
easy paragraph. A Zen adept might accomplish this in a simple
>>>>>>>>gesture<<<<<<<<. Alas, the theosophists rather miss the point(s)
entirely. At any rate, very few consider them (with the possible exception
of Gurdjieff) of being particularly adept at much of anything save
charlatanism anyway.
But already you know that...
-snipped interesting synopsis- an artist to explore further accounting even
his unfortunate Theosophical forays...
. ty for the clue.
> I take it you're an authority on Buddhist ideas, a "student" of it?
>
Authority? hmmmmmm no - but then none of the Zen Roshis and scholars I've
had the good fortune to practice and study with and under since 1969
considered themselves to be "authorities" either.
Are you an "authority" Padraig? A true "expert"? To be honest, I cannot
imagine engaging any artist for any length of time and not be a student -
of myself if nothing else and that would be the salient point - or don't you
agree?
"To the expert the possibilities are few - to the beginner, the
possibilities are endless."
We call this Shoshin.
Padraig L Henry
wrote:
"This is a new kind of cinematic colour invented by Kubrick, working
against the standardised norms of film lighting and processing. "
Taking the Symbolist art of Kupka's pre-abstract work, and its
relevance to Kubrick re 2001, a stage further, here is an unusual but
fascinating essay exploring Kubrick's use of Symbolist art throughout
Eyes Wide Shut, as well as further maintaining that "painting forms a
virtual sphere nourishing this film":
The Ornamentation of
Nicole Kidman (Eyes Wide Shut)
and Mita Vashisht (Kasba):
a Sketch
by Laleen Jayamanne
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/02/23/ornament.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Laleen Jayamanne is a lecturer in cinema studies, author of Towards
Cinema and Its Double: Cross-Cultural Mimesis (Indiana University
Press, 2001), and is currently working on the cinema of Indian
director Kumar Shahani.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“The ornament is the élan vital ”
- Kumar Shahani (1)
The Australian actress, Nicole Kidman, as a pre-eminent Hollywood star
has recently been mythified to the iconic status of the screen
goddesses of the 1950s. It is however not this careful crafting of her
star image (after Moulin Rouge [Baz Luhrmann, 2001] and The Others
[Alejandro Amenábar, 2001]) that is a concern of this piece but rather
her ornamental performance in Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999).
I shall also discuss Mita Vashisht's ornamentation in Kumar Shahani's
Kasba (1991). Vashisht, if not a star, is one of Shahani's favourite
actresses. By thinking these two films (from two quite different
cinematic traditions and cultures) together, I shall sketch an idea on
ornamentation as a temporal event, detailing its singularity in each
instance; singularities which are coloured through a visible and
invisible deployment of painting. The exploration of the link between
a pre-technological art form, such as painting, and film is part of a
larger cross-cultural project on synaesthesia or the conditions for
the recharging of the human sensorium within the technosphere which we
now inhabit. Painting and the other art forms, evolved over millennia,
activate the human senses differently. And their ornamental address is
used as virtual capital by Kubrick and Shahani (2).
Insert:[ Rose Hedge with Magpies and Molehill (painting by
Christiane Kubrick) ]
Eyes Wide Shut
As Tim Kreider said, “critical disappointment with Eyes Wide Shut was
almost unanimous and the complaint was always the same; not sexy.” (3)
True, it didn't show Tom and Nicole making love nor was the orgy
orgiastic. But the film's colour and light left me breathless, wanting
more and more. My encounter with the behaviour of colour (and I insist
on the activity of colour rather than its meaning which seems to me a
more art historical concern) drew me into the film. Eyes Wide Shut is
strangely animated by the colours of the vegetal/floral paintings done
by Christiane Kubrick (the director's wife). Strange because these
colours seem to jump out of the frames on the walls, strewn with these
paintings, creating an ornamented garden of artifice in the couple's
affluent New York apartment.
Alice Harford (Nicole Kidman), the wife of Dr. Bill Harford (Tom
Cruise), is an out of work curator whose Soho gallery has gone bust.
Her taste in interior decor is highly decorative, creating a richly
layered, textured surface of materials, light and colour, the most
conspicuous contributor to which are the paintings themselves. While
her late twentieth century Central Park West apartment is expressive
of the couple's taste and status, it does evoke, as Virginia Spate
pointed out (to me in a conversation), the intimate domestic interiors
of the late nineteenth century Symbolist painters such as Felix
Vallotton, Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. This path into
Symbolist art history is also made more mysterious by the briefly
conspicuous presence of a Vincent Van Gogh coffee table book which
Alice wraps up as a Christmas present, and also the painting of
sunflowers on her bedroom wall.
The Symbolists experimented with colour and surface ornamentation
around the same time that cinema was invented in 1895. It is evident
that the Symbolist aesthetic was developed as a resistance to the
mechanisation of perception (4). The importance of this moment for
Kubrick, after 100 years of cinema (and consequent technologisation of
the human sensorium), is encapsulated in the film's title. The
expressive use of what Van Gogh called arbitrary as opposed to local
colour is facilitated by the garden of artifice created by the
paintings (5). I would go further and say that painting forms a
virtual sphere nourishing this film. The importance of colour over
light is made possible by Kubrick's refusal to use studio lighting in
a film shot almost entirely on a studio set. Instead of the usual
studio lighting he used the available light sources visible in the
shot, such as lamps, Christmas tree lights and so forth. When this was
not adequate he used Chinese paper ball lamps to softly brighten the
scene. The colour was enhanced in an unusual manner in the lab where
the film stock was “force-developed by two stops” in processing to
bring out the intensity of colour. The cinematographer Larry Smith
makes the point unequivocally: “There's no question that with
force-developing you get exaggerated highlights—they really blow out.”
(6) This is a new kind of cinematic colour invented by Kubrick,
working against the standardised norms of film lighting and
processing.
Through the looking glasses – at the dining table
Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut
What Dorothy Parker said many decades ago – “men seldom make passes at
girls who wear glasses” – is still more or less true within Hollywood
generic coding. Why then does Alice wear glasses, especially when she
is naked? Does Alice/Nicole play the age-old role of nude model to
Kubrick the artist or is she simply a naked woman who in wearing
glasses creates a slight difference. If so what might this little
ornamented difference be? Something funny is going on here between
Kubrick and Kidman that develops into a little joke, the kind he liked
to make at the expense of Hollywood codes of editing for continuity.
Alice is helping her daughter, Helen, do her homework at the dining
table which is shot at an angle and framing strongly reminiscent of
the Nabi paintings of such intimate domestic scenes. At this point
Bill comes home, sees them, goes into the kitchen, gets a beer from
the fridge and begins to hear (in his head) his wife's confession of
the previous night, about her desire for another man. As this
imaginary voice torments him he comes over to the dining table and
Kidman smiles at him, her gaze slightly above her glasses but
crucially directed at us/the camera/at Kubrick, though ostensibly it
is narratively directed at Tom. This look directed at the camera
(common in early silent film but proscribed with the formulation of
the classical Hollywood codes of editing by the 1920s) gains another
dimension if one sees a photograph of Kubrick by Christiane, taken
during the production of Eyes Wide Shut. There, Kubrick, wearing his
glasses, looks at the camera with the same gaze and expression as
Alice and even has his eye brows shaped just like hers in the film. So
what are they up to these two, playing little games, having some fun
at Tom's expense? Is Kubrick making a pass at his bespectacled model
or more interestingly are they involved in what Gilles Deleuze called
a “double becoming”? Does Alice permit Kubrick to become a little
girl, playful, while Kubrick gives Nicole a chance to go slow, really
to unwind time and make time itself play little games?
Bathroom – Gaseous Blue
In the “bedroom scene,” the couple get stoned; Bill begins a bit of
foreplay while Alice starts questioning him about “the party last
night.” She gets querulous and begins to talk about “last summer”
which leads to the disclosure of her desire for a total stranger, to
Bill's stupefaction. Bill wants to have sex, while Alice wants to
unravel time; “last night...last summer” and their whole past
collapses into the present. Bill doggedly goes looking for sex while
Alice hangs out at home and travels in another dimension that Bill can
sense exists but does not know how to activate. From now on Alice and
Bill operate two different series. Bill is driven by images and Alice
surfs the sonic like a surfer a wave.
The development of time as series (7) is one of the crucial means of
temporal ornamentation in this film. What I perceive as the virtual
crack in the mirror (scene), separating Tom/Bill from Nicole/Alice, as
she turns her head away from the kiss, is a sign (and there are
several such signs) of the bifurcation of time into these two series,
the audio and visual. The blue that fills the bathroom quite
“arbitrarily,” behaves as if it were a gas because it does not obey
gravity, seems to go any-which-way just like Alice's speech at moments
heightened by champagne, dope or the memory of a desire. A great deal
could be said about Kidman's extraordinary performance but briefly,
the main point to be sketched is that, in her speech, she stretches
syllables and vowels to a point where their semantic values are
displaced by musical values. The consequent unpredictability of what
she will say, of how her words will turn out, creates a correspondence
between her speech and this blue. In this scene Alice/Kidman, with Van
Gogh's and Christianne's mediation, enables Kubrick to draw out the
power of colour as a transformative force.
Alice (who is figured as a Symbolist woman; the red head a sign of
sexual potency for them) stands framed by this blue, wearing her
Calvin Klein-like underwear as though in a modern-day portrait but
evoking some of Van Gogh's vibrant ones. Beyond a mere correspondence,
the colour and sound act on each other creating a synaesthetic
vibration that wafts Alice out of the genre of the intimate “chamber
play”. What is wonderful to see here is the agility of Alice/Kidman
bifurcating time (creating multiple micro-series), ornamenting it at
each instant, creating a range of micro-affects, sensations and
emotions while poor Bill sits high on the bed frozen in a catatonic
stare. Alice's impulsive, girlish bursts and waves of laughter (her
response to Bill's assertion that women don't have wild sexual
fantasies), is one such micro-movement which even the stately Kubrick
camera gets infected by, moving around to capture her impulsive
convulsions on the bedroom floor.
Cinematic ornamentation here is not the same as a painterly plastic
ornament because what is ornamented is movement and time. Alice's
ornamentation of time is not about harmonious effects created by
synaesthesia (the traditional take on the relationship between sound
and colour) (8) but rather her sonic ornamental line is aberrant,
unpredictable, now humorous, now sad, now something else, difficult to
name, but always moving like a gas, any-which-way. This is what Bill
senses and wants to access in order to get out of his solid and stolid
perceptions but the only ornamentation he can achieve is to simply
repeat the last word or phrase from another's speech, a mere
repetition with little capacity to create a different move, a dogged
marking of time. In Deleuzean film theory, the non-anthropomorphic
vision of the camera enables three kinds of perceptions; solid, liquid
and gaseous (9). I contend that Kidman in her sonic performance
accedes to a gaseous perception with the aid of colour. The blue
responds actively, merging with the red of the curtains; becoming a
purple halo around her hair.
The Orgy
In Eyes Wide Shut, the encounter between painting and film is staged
within a self-conscious aesthetic awareness of the simulacral
commodity form of the cinematic image. This awareness is structural,
that is, internal to the composition of the film, which is why the
film is shot on a set; a simulated Symbolist New York and this is also
why Kubrick wanted a married couple to play Bill and Alice. The
distinction between Bill and Alice and Tom and Nicole becomes
imperceptible, simulacral. In Eyes Wide Shut, there are 12 perfect
female nudes and only one naked woman (Alice). The dozen nudes are
interchangeable commodities both because they are prostitutes and
because they are of an identical body type rendered anonymous by being
masked in the high-class orgy. Their speech, gestures and movements,
their breasts, hips and legs, are all standardised. The expected
eroticism of the bodies is transposed into the cinematic image. The
very substance of Kubrick's film is erotic, while, despite their
promise of happiness, the perfect nudes remain disenchanted
commodities, plastic bodies, moulded to the desire of late twentieth
century mediatised beauty. Kidman's Alice, whether naked or clothed,
because of her Symbolist affiliations is able to take us elsewhere
even in the shopping mall.
Eyes Wide Shut
The central orgy takes place in a palatial house whose interior decor
consists of Islamic arches and decorative motifs. As well, the orgies
staged as tableaux are accompanied by South Indian vocal music
associated with erotic traditions within Indian culture. The complex
montage and modulation of multiple rhythms in this sequence occurs
within a context where the perfect orgiastic bodies are de-eroticised
by being subjected to a mechanised rhythm of copulation, while in
contrast, the vocalisation intimates a highly flexible rhythm marked
by the microtones of that musical tradition. It is my contention that
Kubrick uses decorative motifs from an Islamic visual aesthetic
tradition as well as a South Indian (Hindu) aural tradition, to
function together as critique (“Is this hell?...lovers...” is heard
sung in Tamil) and lamentation of the commodification of bodies and
the consequent loss of sensuality, but simultaneously to open up a
multiplicity of rhythms. In combining two traditions of ornamentation
(visual and sonic) in Indian culture that both Hindu and Islamic
fundamentalisms would want to eradicate, and using it not only as
critique but also as intimating other temporal potential beyond the
chronometric time of the pulsed bodies, Kubrick makes a transnational
gesture with the kind of care and precision one expects of him. The
traditional pre-industrial ornamentation he deploys here now returns
as a form of pastiche, made possible by technologies of mass
reproduction. It is evident that Kubrick does use the familiar bag of
tricks of postmodern pastiche – citation, irony, parody – quite
liberally in this film: in his use of music, in the highly
melodramatic hocus-pocus dialogue at the orgy and in the very
construction of the plot; assuming urbanely that these examples of
postmodern pastiche constitute a contemporary realism of sorts. But
something qualitatively different happens with the South Indian music
because at that moment there is a multiplicity of differential
audio-visual rhythms: those of the copulating bodies; Tom's slow walk;
the floating camera; and the rhythms of the song. Through these,
Kubrick creates a rasa (aesthetic sentiment) of sadness (10). This
sadness is highly abstract, and precise, a function of the music; it
is not achieved through a depiction of a sad scene. In fact there is
one word that modulates that particular rasa – viraha – which may be
translated as a melancholy yearning associated with erotic loss.
Toy Shop
Kubrick's film ends in a toy shop, a place of artifice unlike
Schnitzler's Dream Novella which ends in the conjugal bed room with a
beam of sunlight streaming in with bird song mingled with the child's
laughter enhancing the happy resolution of marital conflicts. I think
the film ends there for the same reason that the orgy is mechanised
and for the same reason that the film as a whole is shot on a set (all
be it a Symbolist New York). They are perfectly controlled
environments of late capitalism where all things and relations are
under the reign of standardised exchange of commodities as signs.
In this space of exchange, as if remembering Dorothy Parker's comment,
Alice wearing her looking glasses doesn't wait, she makes a pass, (at
her husband), but in an unusual manner, with a deadpan expression. She
uses an infinitive: “There is something very important we need to do.”
“What?” “Fuck”, thus virtualising the actual. Throughout the film,
Alice has conjugated the “dark precursor”, the nonsense word “Fuck”,
to replenish her conjugality with a light and perhaps also therefore
terrifying humour. This is not the Freudian dirty joke that rouses
loud laughter through exclusion of the other. There is no self or
other to exclude in the infinitive which has no subject, a pure
virtuality in language. If indeed one smiled loudly at this ending, as
I recall doing the very first time I saw it three years ago, the
absence of the reverse shot leaves one wondering if Bill was man
enough to smile? Or would he still have that mildly appealing obtuse
look and posture of being quite out of his depth? Anyway in refusing
us the grammatical reverse shot, Kubrick is once again calling the
shots, giving Alice (in the wonderland of the late capitalist toyshop)
the power to toy with time, to multiply micro series, which I have
called the ornamentation of Nicole Kidman.
Darin Boville
Thank God film still has an audience beyond the university! Mediocrity
and dullness must be requirements to matriculate at some schools...
--Darin
Darin Boville
Fine Art Photography and Video
www.darinboville.com
phe...@iol.ie (Padraig L Henry) wrote in message news:<40872b25...@news.iol.ie>...
> On Sun, 11 Apr 2004 16:34:44 GMT, phe...@iol.ie (Padraig L Henry)
> wrote:
>
> "This is a new kind of cinematic colour invented by Kubrick, working
> against the standardised norms of film lighting and processing. "
>
> Taking the Symbolist art of Kupka's pre-abstract work, and its
> relevance to Kubrick re 2001, a stage further, here is an unusual but
> fascinating essay exploring Kubrick's use of Symbolist art throughout
> Eyes Wide Shut, as well as further maintaining that "painting forms a
> virtual sphere nourishing this film":
>
> The Ornamentation of
> Nicole Kidman (Eyes Wide Shut)
> and Mita Vashisht (Kasba):
> a Sketch
> by Laleen Jayamanne
>
> http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/02/23/ornament.html
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Laleen Jayamanne is a lecturer in cinema studies, author of Towards
> Cinema and Its Double: Cross-Cultural Mimesis (Indiana University
> Press, 2001), and is currently working on the cinema of Indian
> director Kumar Shahani.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ?The ornament is the élan vital ?
> - Kumar Shahani (1)
>
> The Australian actress, Nicole Kidman, as a pre-eminent Hollywood star
> has recently been mythified to the iconic status of the screen
> goddesses of the 1950s. It is however not this careful crafting of her
> star image (after Moulin Rouge [Baz Luhrmann, 2001] and The Others
> [Alejandro Amenábar, 2001]) that is a concern of this piece but rather
> her ornamental performance in Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999).
> I shall also discuss Mita Vashisht's ornamentation in Kumar Shahani's
> Kasba (1991). Vashisht, if not a star, is one of Shahani's favourite
> actresses. By thinking these two films (from two quite different
> cinematic traditions and cultures) together, I shall sketch an idea on
> ornamentation as a temporal event, detailing its singularity in each
> instance; singularities which are coloured through a visible and
> invisible deployment of painting. The exploration of the link between
> a pre-technological art form, such as painting, and film is part of a
> larger cross-cultural project on synaesthesia or the conditions for
> the recharging of the human sensorium within the technosphere which we
> now inhabit. Painting and the other art forms, evolved over millennia,
> activate the human senses differently. And their ornamental address is
> used as virtual capital by Kubrick and Shahani (2).
>
>
> Insert:[ Rose Hedge with Magpies and Molehill (painting by
> Christiane Kubrick) ]
>
> Eyes Wide Shut
>
> As Tim Kreider said, ?critical disappointment with Eyes Wide Shut was
> almost unanimous and the complaint was always the same; not sexy.? (3)
> the film stock was ?force-developed by two stops? in processing to
> bring out the intensity of colour. The cinematographer Larry Smith
> makes the point unequivocally: ?There's no question that with
> force-developing you get exaggerated highlights?they really blow out.?
> (6) This is a new kind of cinematic colour invented by Kubrick,
> working against the standardised norms of film lighting and
> processing.
>
> Through the looking glasses ? at the dining table
> Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut
>
> What Dorothy Parker said many decades ago ? ?men seldom make passes at
> girls who wear glasses? ? is still more or less true within Hollywood
> a ?double becoming?? Does Alice permit Kubrick to become a little
> girl, playful, while Kubrick gives Nicole a chance to go slow, really
> to unwind time and make time itself play little games?
>
> Bathroom ? Gaseous Blue
>
> In the ?bedroom scene,? the couple get stoned; Bill begins a bit of
> foreplay while Alice starts questioning him about ?the party last
> night.? She gets querulous and begins to talk about ?last summer?
> which leads to the disclosure of her desire for a total stranger, to
> Bill's stupefaction. Bill wants to have sex, while Alice wants to
> unravel time; ?last night...last summer? and their whole past
> collapses into the present. Bill doggedly goes looking for sex while
> Alice hangs out at home and travels in another dimension that Bill can
> sense exists but does not know how to activate. From now on Alice and
> Bill operate two different series. Bill is driven by images and Alice
> surfs the sonic like a surfer a wave.
>
> The development of time as series (7) is one of the crucial means of
> temporal ornamentation in this film. What I perceive as the virtual
> crack in the mirror (scene), separating Tom/Bill from Nicole/Alice, as
> she turns her head away from the kiss, is a sign (and there are
> several such signs) of the bifurcation of time into these two series,
> the audio and visual. The blue that fills the bathroom quite
> ?arbitrarily,? behaves as if it were a gas because it does not obey
> gravity, seems to go any-which-way just like Alice's speech at moments
> heightened by champagne, dope or the memory of a desire. A great deal
> could be said about Kidman's extraordinary performance but briefly,
> the main point to be sketched is that, in her speech, she stretches
> syllables and vowels to a point where their semantic values are
> displaced by musical values. The consequent unpredictability of what
> she will say, of how her words will turn out, creates a correspondence
> between her speech and this blue. In this scene Alice/Kidman, with Van
> Gogh's and Christianne's mediation, enables Kubrick to draw out the
> power of colour as a transformative force.
>
> Alice (who is figured as a Symbolist woman; the red head a sign of
> sexual potency for them) stands framed by this blue, wearing her
> Calvin Klein-like underwear as though in a modern-day portrait but
> evoking some of Van Gogh's vibrant ones. Beyond a mere correspondence,
> the colour and sound act on each other creating a synaesthetic
> vibration that wafts Alice out of the genre of the intimate ?chamber
> play?. What is wonderful to see here is the agility of Alice/Kidman
> function together as critique (?Is this hell?...lovers...? is heard
> sung in Tamil) and lamentation of the commodification of bodies and
> the consequent loss of sensuality, but simultaneously to open up a
> multiplicity of rhythms. In combining two traditions of ornamentation
> (visual and sonic) in Indian culture that both Hindu and Islamic
> fundamentalisms would want to eradicate, and using it not only as
> critique but also as intimating other temporal potential beyond the
> chronometric time of the pulsed bodies, Kubrick makes a transnational
> gesture with the kind of care and precision one expects of him. The
> traditional pre-industrial ornamentation he deploys here now returns
> as a form of pastiche, made possible by technologies of mass
> reproduction. It is evident that Kubrick does use the familiar bag of
> tricks of postmodern pastiche ? citation, irony, parody ? quite
> liberally in this film: in his use of music, in the highly
> melodramatic hocus-pocus dialogue at the orgy and in the very
> construction of the plot; assuming urbanely that these examples of
> postmodern pastiche constitute a contemporary realism of sorts. But
> something qualitatively different happens with the South Indian music
> because at that moment there is a multiplicity of differential
> audio-visual rhythms: those of the copulating bodies; Tom's slow walk;
> the floating camera; and the rhythms of the song. Through these,
> Kubrick creates a rasa (aesthetic sentiment) of sadness (10). This
> sadness is highly abstract, and precise, a function of the music; it
> is not achieved through a depiction of a sad scene. In fact there is
> one word that modulates that particular rasa ? viraha ? which may be
> translated as a melancholy yearning associated with erotic loss.
>
> Toy Shop
>
> Kubrick's film ends in a toy shop, a place of artifice unlike
> Schnitzler's Dream Novella which ends in the conjugal bed room with a
> beam of sunlight streaming in with bird song mingled with the child's
> laughter enhancing the happy resolution of marital conflicts. I think
> the film ends there for the same reason that the orgy is mechanised
> and for the same reason that the film as a whole is shot on a set (all
> be it a Symbolist New York). They are perfectly controlled
> environments of late capitalism where all things and relations are
> under the reign of standardised exchange of commodities as signs.
>
> In this space of exchange, as if remembering Dorothy Parker's comment,
> Alice wearing her looking glasses doesn't wait, she makes a pass, (at
> her husband), but in an unusual manner, with a deadpan expression. She
> uses an infinitive: ?There is something very important we need to do.?
> ?What?? ?Fuck?, thus virtualising the actual. Throughout the film,
> Alice has conjugated the ?dark precursor?, the nonsense word ?Fuck?,
Wordsmith
> This reminds that academics have (nearly?) killed the visual arts...
> Thank God film still has an audience beyond the university! Mediocrity
> and dullness must be requirements to matriculate at some schools...
>
> --Darin
>
> Darin Boville
> Fine Art Photography and Video
> www.darinboville.com
The ornamentation of prose, more like! *yawn* The posted article
was certainly not without worth, but it would have had twice the impact
at half the length.
Wordsmith :)
Matthew
From: "Darin Boville" <da...@darinboville.com>
Newsgroups: alt.movies.kubrick
Sent: Friday, April 23, 2004 1:56 AM
Subject: Re: Kupka, Klein, Kubrick: Eyes Wide Art-History
> This reminds that academics have (nearly?) killed the visual arts...
> Thank God film still has an audience beyond the university! Mediocrity
> and dullness must be requirements to matriculate at some schools...
>
> --Darin
>
> Darin Boville
> Fine Art Photography and Video
> www.darinboville.com
:)
You mean you don't think that it is evident that the Symbolist aesthetic was
developed as a resistance to the mechanisation of perception, and you don't
think it is wonderful to see ... the agility of Alice/Kidman bifurcating
time (creating multiple micro-series), ornamenting it at each instant,
creating a range of micro-affects, sensations and emotions? Clearly the
author has truly succeeded in sketching an idea on ornamentation as a
temporal event, detailing its singularity in each instance; singularities
which are coloured through a visible and invisible deployment of painting!
If you have trouble seeing this, Darin, it may be because your eyes are wide
open, and not, as they should be, wide shut.
Matthew
Darin Boville
Exactly. I can't help but wonder if people who write (and read) this
sort of thing can even enjoy sex anymore...
Padraig L Henry
wrote:
>
>as an unabashed student(!) of Kubrick's films I certainly found more than
>one point of interest in your post - as AMK's preeminent POMOist I'm shocked
>(GASP)that you'd toss Eco's pointer of non-interpetation for the reader away
>so casually...
Then I beg to contend that you are fundamentally misinformed: As a
modernist, I'm a [harsh] critic of post-modernism, today's pervasive
cultural ideology, uncritically accepted and cluelessly, unwittingly
embraced by the majority of posters here at AMK, including yourself
(your Buddhist fetish being a clear symptom).
>>Padraig wrote:
>> Nevertheless, Kupka, as with such other initially Symbolist artists
>> who later progressed entirely into Abstraction (Kandinsky, Mondrian,
>> Delaunay etc), was influenced by the growth in popularity in the late
>> 19th century of Theosophy, presenting concepts found in the
>> Theosophical teachings on esoteric Eastern religions and philosophies,
>> as well as the ideas of Edgar Allen Poe and Germany philosophers.
>> Theosophy, a synthesis of philosophy, religion, and science, guided
>> Kupka's holistic approach to art.
>
>Madame Blavatsky anyone? Ouspensky's Meeting With Remarkable Persons? Mary
>Baker Eddy cowering in an apartment in her twilight years - paralyzed by
>"astro-psychic attacks" launched by her Theosophical enemies? Despite the
>(ahem) authoritative claims of contact and study with "The Grand Eastern
>Masters" ( no forwarding address available), the Theosophists had nary a
>clue WRT Buddhism > in any form< as has been revealed by too many scholars,
>too many times to recount here on AMK.
As to what all of this might have to do with the origins of Abstract
Art in Western society in the first decade of the 20th century and its
influence on, and relevance to, Kubrick's Stargate/Starchild sequence
in 2001 will remain a complete mystery, then.
>Willy nilly and arbitrary culling of
>philosophical points of interest, drawn from dubious and unvalidated sources
>in the service of self-interest hardly constitutes valid knowledge of a
>system of thought and experience as deep and extensive as that of Buddhist
>philosophy and practice. Quick now! --- summarize Nagajuna's work in one
>easy paragraph. A Zen adept might accomplish this in a simple
>>>>>>>>>gesture<<<<<<<<.
"When you are bombarded by claims that in our post-ideological cynical
era nobody believes any more in the proclaimed ideals, when you
encounter a person who claims he is cured of any beliefs, accepting
social reality the way it really is, you should always counter such
claims with a simple, yet intricate question: What is your gadget,
your favorite illusionary escape-hatch?"
=====> from Self-Deceptions: On being tolerant - and smug,
by Slavoj Zizek, in Die Gazette, Israel, 27 August 2001.
You see, David, I see no contradiction whatever in someone like
yourself being simultaneously a Western Buddhist *and* a far-right
militarist. Indeed, you may have been uneasy about the coldly
psychotic sentiments that Beavis and Butthead "Kill All Terrorists"
AMKer Ichorwhip expressed here recently regarding his manic
glorification of the bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki [by any yardstick,
the most "Evil" _single_ Event in recorded history], especially given
Buddhism's proximate origins and your personal knowledge and
experience of Japanese culture; but ultimately, for someone like
yourself, "if the external reality is ultimately just an ephemeral
appearance, even the most horrifying crimes eventually DO NOT MATTER",
as Zizek makes clear about the smug Western Buddhist fetish below.
Padraig
-----------------------
Does, then, this mean that, today, "nobody believes"? One of the
postmodern ironies is the strange exchange between Europe and Asia: at
the very moment when, at the level of the "economic infrastructure,"
the European technology and capitalism are triumphing worldwide, at
the level of "ideological superstructure," the Judeo-Christian legacy
is threatened in the European space itself by the onslaught of the New
Age "Asiatic" thought, which, in its different guises, from the
"Western Buddhism" (today's counterpoint to Western Marxism, as
opposed to the "Asiatic" Marxism-Leninism) to different "Taos," is
establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of the global
capitalism. Although "Western Buddhism" presents itself as the remedy
against the stressful tension of the capitalist dynamics, allowing us
to uncouple and retain the inner peace and Gelassenheit, it actually
functions as its perfect ideological supplement. One should mention
here the well-known topic of the "future shock," i.e. of how, today,
people are no longer psychologically able to cope with the dazzling
rhythm of the technological development and the social changes that
accompany it — things simply move too fast, before one can accustom
oneself to an invention, this invention is already supplanted by a new
one, so that one more and more lacks the most elementary "cognitive
mapping." The recourse to Taoism or Buddhism offers a way out of this
predicament which definitely work better than the desperate escape
into old traditions: instead of trying to cope with the accelerating
rhythm of the technological progress and social changes, one should
rather renounce the very endeavor to retain control over what goes on,
rejecting it as the expression of the modern logic of domination -
one should, instead, "let oneself go," drift along, while retaining an
inner distance and indifference towards the mad dance of the
accelerated process, a distance based on the insight that all this
social and technological upheaval is ultimately just a non-substantial
proliferation of semblances which do not really concern the innermost
kernel of our being. One is almost tempted to resuscitate here the old
infamous Marxist cliche of religion as the "opium of the people," as
the imaginary supplement of the terrestrial misery: the "Western
Buddhist" meditative stance is arguably the most efficient way, for
us, to fully participate in the capitalist dynamics, while retaining
the appearance of mental sanity. If Max Weber were to live today, he
would definitely write a second, supplementary, volume to his
Protestant Ethic, entitled The Taoist Ethic and the Spirit of the
Global Capitalism.
And, instead of playing the old game of the aggressive Islamic
monotheism against the "gentle" Buddhism, one should rather use the
bombing of the Bamiyan statues to reflect on a more fundamental
deadlock. It is not only that Western Buddhism, this pop-cultural
phenomenon preaching inner distance and indifference towards the
frantic pace of the market competition, is arguably the most efficient
way, for us, to fully participate in the capitalist dynamics, while
retaining the appearance of mental sanity — in short, the paradigmatic
ideology of late capitalism. One should add that it is no longer
possible to oppose this Western Buddhism to its "authentic" Oriental
version; the case of Japan delivers here the conclusive evidence. Not
only do we have today, among the Japanese top managers, the
wide-spread "corporate Zen" phenomenon; in the whole of the last 150
years, Japan's rapid industrialization and militarization, with its
ethics of discipline and sacrifice, was sustained by the large
majority of Zen thinkers - who, today, knows that D.T.Suzuki himself,
the high guru of Zen in the America of the 60s, supported in his
youth, in Japan of the 30s, the spirit of utter discipline and
militaristic expansion. There is no contradiction here, no
manipulative perversion of the authentic compassionate insight: the
attitude of total immersion into the self-less "now" of the instant
Enlightenment, in which all reflexive distance is lost and "I am what
I do," as C.S.Lewis put it, in short: in which absolute discipline
coincides with total spontaneity, perfectly legitimizes one's
subordination to the militaristic social machine. Or, to put it in
somewhat simplified terms (which, however, just repeat the central
ethical lesson of Bhagavadgita): if the external reality is ultimately
just an ephemeral appearance, even the most horrifying crimes
eventually DO NOT MATTER.
"Western Buddhism" thus perfectly fits the fetishist mode of ideology
in our allegedly "post-ideological" era, as opposed to its traditional
symptomal mode, in which the ideological lie which structures our
perception of reality is threatened by symptoms qua "returns of the
repressed," cracks in the fabric of the ideological lie. Fetish is
effectively a kind of envers of the symptom. That is to say, symptom
is the exception which disturbs the surface of the false appearance,
the point at which the repressed truth erupts, while fetish is the
embodiment of the Lie which enables us to sustain the unbearable
truth. Let us take the case of the death of a beloved person: when I
"repress" this death, I try not to think about it, but the repressed
trauma persists and returns in the symptoms. Say, after my beloved
wife dies of breast cancer, I try to repress this fact by throwing
myself into hard work or vivacious social life, but then there is
always something which reminds me of her, I cannot escape her ghost
haunting me. In the case of a fetish, on the contrary, I "rationally"
fully accept this death, I am able to talk about her most painful
moments in a cold and clear way, because I cling to the fetish, to
some feature that embodies for me the disavowal of this death. In this
sense, a fetish can play a very constructive role of allowing us to
cope with the harsh reality: fetishists are not dreamers lost in their
private worlds, they are thoroughly "realists," able to accept the way
things effectively are - since they have their fetish to which they
can cling in order to cancel the full impact of reality.
So, when we are bombarded by claims that in our post-ideological
cynical era nobody believes in the proclaimed ideals, when we
encounter a person who claims he is cured of any beliefs, accepting
social reality the way it really is, one should always counter such
claims with the question: OK, but where is the fetish which enables
you to (pretend to) accept reality "the way it is"? "Western Buddhism"
is such a fetish: it enables you to fully participate in the frantic
pace of the capitalist game, while sustaining the perception that you
are not really in it, that you are well aware how worthless this
spectacle is - what really matters to you is the peace of the inner
Self to which you know you can always withdraw.
=====[ah yes, now getting back to the socio-economic and cultural
bases for the "convenient" emergence of Modernist Abstraction as a
reaction to late-19th century European capitalist materialism and
technological determinism ................................. Either
way, Kupka did influence Kubrick ... :-), and Brian Siano urgently
needs to visit his Marathon Man dentist, if he wants to remain smug
and "safe"].
Padraig
Matthew
"Padraig L Henry" <phe...@iol.ie> wrote in message
news:408c595d...@news.iol.ie...
Popular, watered-down variations of ancient belief systems like Buddhism, in
the form of Western Buddhism for instance, probably do arise because of the
influence of global, bestial capitalism, but people of primarily
Euro-centric stock, who still constitute the largest buying power segment of
the West, are never going to understand these Asiatic or Oriental religions
like Buddhism due to their bloodline (genes) alone. And...
Never mind, I should probably take into account whatever the hell you guys
are talking about right now before butting in with something so off-topic...
Matthew
Tobasco
"Padraig L Henry" wrote >
> Then I beg to contend that you are fundamentally misinformed: As a
> modernist, I'm a [harsh] critic of post-modernism, today's pervasive
> cultural ideology, uncritically accepted and cluelessly, unwittingly
> embraced by the majority of posters here at AMK, including yourself
> (your Buddhist fetish being a clear symptom).
>
Then why the not-infrequent discourses on or employing Barthesian semiotics?
Why the descriptions of Kubrick as "coming down squarely in the
post-modernist camp"? (that is quoting you directly Padraig). Why the
rather endless deconstructions you engage in? You wouldn't be employing a
few lessons from Schopenhauer's The Art of Controversy now would you?
> =====> from Self-Deceptions: On being tolerant - and smug,
> by Slavoj Zizek, in Die Gazette, Israel, 27 August 2001.
>
> You see, David, I see no contradiction whatever in someone like
> yourself being simultaneously a Western Buddhist *and* a far-right
> militarist. Indeed, you may have been uneasy about the coldly
> psychotic sentiments that Beavis and Butthead "Kill All Terrorists"
> AMKer Ichorwhip expressed here recently regarding his manic
> glorification of the bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki [by any yardstick,
> the most "Evil" _single_ Event in recorded history], especially given
> Buddhism's proximate origins and your personal knowledge and
> experience of Japanese culture; but ultimately, for someone like
> yourself, "if the external reality is ultimately just an ephemeral
> appearance, even the most horrifying crimes eventually DO NOT MATTER",
> as Zizek makes clear about the smug Western Buddhist fetish below.
>
> Padraig
As noted earlier - most Western ideologues, to include the quoted Zizek,
fail to comprehend Buddhist perspective of nature and the relativistic forms
of phenomenal existence. You've rather absorbed this fetishistic (animist)
categorization rather rapidly - more monkey see - monkey do Padraig? The
"does not matter" charge of Nihlism has been politically and disengenuously
leveled at Buddhist thought since Siddhartha's time - Zizek says nothing at
all new in this essay - in fact, this is a rather tired rehash of those same
kneejerk reactions, regardless of being couched in socio-economic
nomenclature.
> -----------------------
> Does, then, this mean that, today, "nobody believes"? One of the
> postmodern ironies is the strange exchange between Europe and Asia: at
> the very moment when, at the level of the "economic infrastructure,"
> the European technology and capitalism are triumphing worldwide, at
> the level of "ideological superstructure," the Judeo-Christian legacy
> is threatened in the European space itself by the onslaught of the New
> Age "Asiatic" thought, which, in its different guises, from the
> "Western Buddhism" (today's counterpoint to Western Marxism, as
> opposed to the "Asiatic" Marxism-Leninism) to different "Taos," is
> establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of the global
> capitalism.
Here Zizek attempts to persuade the reader to categorize all non-traditional
(read Judeao-Xian, to include it's modernist offsprng Atheism) treatments of
the nature of being into the grossly oversimplfied "New Age" (and
conveniently trivial) pigeonhole as spread through commercial and
self-serving sources/venues. Zizek's pathetic attempt at filtering Buddhist
thought through 20th Century economic philosophy is akin to Floyd's Great
White Hunter pose while standing next to the Monolith. Utterly absurd.
Although "Western Buddhism" presents itself as the remedy
> against the stressful tension of the capitalist dynamics, allowing us
> to uncouple and retain the inner peace and Gelassenheit,
It does? Who has made this claim? What "inner peace" is Zizek blathering
about?
In Buddhism there is no difference whatsoever between the "inner" and the
"outer".
." The recourse to Taoism or Buddhism offers a way out of this
> predicament which definitely work better than the desperate escape
> into old traditions: instead of trying to cope with the accelerating
> rhythm of the technological progress and social changes, one should
> rather renounce the very endeavor to retain control over what goes on,
> rejecting it as the expression of the modern logic of domination -
> one should, instead, "let oneself go," drift along, while retaining an
Who should "let oneself go" and "drift along"? (In Buddhist...) There is no
"oneself" to let go - any delusions about an intrinsic "self'" that can be
grasped OR let go are entirely conditioned and arbitrarily derived from
environmental dynamics. The 'self' has been described as a cloud of
fireflies - we may impose patterns of imagination onto the arrangement - but
one (ahem) gentle breeze and the patterns change - or the cloud may cease to
'exist' as an entity altogether - not that any sane person would have
considered it to have had anything other than a temporary and entirely
relative "self" in the first place.
And that Padraig - is the remedy that Siddhartha was pointing to - the
illustrious and, doubtless authoritative Mr. Zizeks "analysis"
notwithstanding.
> inner distance and indifference towards the mad dance of the
> accelerated process, a distance based on the insight that all this
> social and technological upheaval is ultimately just a non-substantial
> proliferation of semblances which do not really concern the innermost
> kernel of our being.
What kernal of being? Mr Zizek is not talking about Buddhism - it rather
sounds like a Hindu mantra that he is going on about. In case you were
unaware Padraig - Buddhism is antithetical to Hinduism. In fact, Hinduism
quite literally declared socio-cultural war on Buddhism. A system of
thought and experience that denied the validity of socio-economic
superimpositions of caste and rigid patriarchal hierarchies was not exactly
welcomed with open arms by the elitist power brokers of 5th-1st Century
India.
Mr Zizek needs to do a bit more research in this matter - and you Padraig
shouldn't be so gullible in the monkeying of sources...
It is not only that Western Buddhism, this pop-cultural
> phenomenon preaching inner distance and indifference towards the
> frantic pace of the market competition, is arguably the most efficient
> way, for us, to fully participate in the capitalist dynamics, while
> retaining the appearance of mental sanity - in short, the paradigmatic
> ideology of late capitalism.
And here again Mr. Zizek would have the reader unquestioningly accept his
fundamental analysis of the nature of Buddhist practice --- a fundamentally
flawed analysis. GIGO. Mr. Zizek really does need to rework his
algorithms. Inner distance? Ludicrous! Indifference? Ok I'll bite -
would Mr. Zizek have us distracted by every and any 'outside' event that
happens on the street while we are driving a car? Perhaps Zizek would have
us ramming into crowds of pedestrians as we're being distracted by the
redhead that dropped her purse and is provocatively bending over to retrive
it... We don't want to be "indifferent" to the plight of this unfortunate
lass now do we?
One should add that it is no longer
> possible to oppose this Western Buddhism to its "authentic" Oriental
> version; the case of Japan delivers here the conclusive evidence. Not
> only do we have today, among the Japanese top managers, the
> wide-spread "corporate Zen" phenomenon; in the whole of the last 150
> years, Japan's rapid industrialization and militarization, with its
> ethics of discipline and sacrifice, was sustained by the large
> majority of Zen thinkers - who, today, knows that D.T.Suzuki himself,
Apparently, Mr. Zizek is unaware that in the Meiji Reformation, Zen lost its
status as the semi-official authority of aesthetics and philosophy as
enjoyed in Shogunate Japan. The Japanese power elite formed an amalgam of
Shinto/Bushido/and >selected elements< of Zen practice that were integrated
into a political stew that buttressed the Nationalistic rise of Japan on the
world stage. The entire mishmash was largely used to galvanize the populace
and was carefully orchestrated to cultivate a national identity that could
and would aggressively compete with Imperialistic European powers. Most of
the Buddhism in Zen was cast aside in this process and further, only the
practices of Zen meditation (Zazen), that segued into the long term strategy
of the militarists were retained. Tojo was no Buddhist - and he scarcely
practiced Zazen.
Again -- Mr Zizek needs to do some homework on this matter.
> the high guru of Zen in the America of the 60s, supported in his
> youth, in Japan of the 30s, the spirit of utter discipline and
> militaristic expansion.
Suzuki was no 'guru'. He was an an academic. A scholar. A professor. He
was not engaged in the formal orthodoxies of the liturgical/religion aspects
of Zen practice --- he was, in fact, an outspoken critic of the same. Mr
Zizek here falls prey to his own POMO pop-image fallacies.
> coincides with total spontaneity,
Unfortunately for Mr. Zizek - Buddhist thought refutes "absolutes" and
"totals" as delusory fabrications generated by a clinging and ahem ---------
fetishistic mind.
perfectly legitimizes one's
> subordination to the militaristic social machine. Or, to put it in
> somewhat simplified terms (which, however, just repeat the central
> ethical lesson of Bhagavadgita): if the external reality is ultimately
> just an ephemeral appearance, even the most horrifying crimes
> eventually DO NOT MATTER.
And here we have Zizek's central argument in classifying Zen as a Nihlistic
practice. At this point I'd refer the reader to either Bodhidharma or Dogen.
http://hjem.get2net.dk/civet-cat/zen-writings/teachings-of-bodhidharma.htm
http://www.stanford.edu/group/scbs/Dogen/Dogen_Zen_papers/Dogen_Zen_papers.h
tml
>
These are Zen practitioners that Mr. Zizek has apparently spent little time
with - as to why he would have us believe or even give miminal credence to
his conclusions gleaned from pop-culture "sources" on this matter is open to
speculation.
Let us take the case of the death of a beloved person: when I
> "repress" this death, I try not to think about it, but the repressed
> trauma persists and returns in the symptoms. Say, after my beloved
> wife dies of breast cancer, I try to repress this fact by throwing
> myself into hard work or vivacious social life, but then there is
> always something which reminds me of her, I cannot escape her ghost
> haunting me. In the case of a fetish, on the contrary, I "rationally"
> fully accept this death, I am able to talk about her most painful
> moments in a cold and clear way, because I cling to the fetish, to
> some feature that embodies for me the disavowal of this death. In this
> sense, a fetish can play a very constructive role of allowing us to
> cope with the harsh reality: fetishists are not dreamers lost in their
> private worlds, they are thoroughly "realists," able to accept the way
> things effectively are - since they have their fetish to which they
> can cling in order to cancel the full impact of reality.
I have no idea what what 'remedy' Zizek is referring to here - but it has
nothing to do with Zen or Buddhism. To cling to >anything< is ignorance.
I'm afraid that Mr. Zizek is now falling into the trap of believing his own
lie.
> So, when we are bombarded by claims that in our post-ideological
> cynical era nobody believes in the proclaimed ideals, when we
> encounter a person who claims he is cured of any beliefs, accepting
> social reality the way it really is, one should always counter such
> claims with the question: OK, but where is the fetish which enables
> you to (pretend to) accept reality "the way it is"?
ok then, where is the fetish which enables Zizek to (pretend to) postulate
that these fetishes are somehow necessary or inevitable? That such
conclusions even reasonbly follow from the premise?
Zizek's sockpuppet is in dire need of darning...
Oh --- as for Japanese Zen's association with militaristic post-Meiji
Bushido...
http://jbe.gold.ac.uk/11/loy.pdf.
Zen At War and the follow-on book were written by a >still-practicing< Zen
monk. Padraig ------ do such apparent contradictions confuse you?
Fireflies and winds...
Please Padraig - by all means, tell us more of Kupka's influence on
Kubrick --- but don't mind me if I point out fallacies and errors in the
material you present, whether those errors are to be found in the source,
the analyst or your own assertions. We're all here in the service of
"truth" ----- right?
ichorwhip
Indeed, you may have been uneasy about the coldly
psychotic sentiments that Beavis and Butthead "Kill All Terrorists"
AMKer Ichorwhip expressed here recently regarding his manic
glorification of the bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki [by any yardstick,
the most "Evil" _single_ Event in recorded history],
your insults notwithstanding Padraig, here's what I DID NOT say so
that you may better unfairly villify me on this out of context matter:
Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the single greatest feat ever
accomplished by the US military. We should have a National Holiday
commemorating the event with barbecues, apple pies and of course ice
cold beer. We can call it Nuke Day. We should be a proud country
knowing that we killed so many people in the blink of two eyes; blue
ribbons for most efficiency ought to be rewarded. Did the Japanese
deserve it? prolly not, but who gives a shit? The US, champions of
worldwide death, scored the two highest marks for single day deaths!
Yay! All that matters is the world record. Those Japanese made new
ones to replace the dead ones just lickity split, just like the Jews
did after being baked away by the Nazis. Hopefully one day the good
ol' USA will break all the genocide records out there including those
dandy murderers the Nazis themselves. We can only hope and pray to
God that he will help us kill everyone in the world except us of
course! huh huh huh!!
p.s.
kill all terrorists
your obedient apostle and satyr,
ichorwhip
'peace is our profession"