[On Painting] Topophilia
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Duane
Dec 17, 2006, 9:18:10 AM12/17/06
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Topophilia is a word I discovered in Gaston Bachelard’s book, “The Poetics of Space.” Although it is not included in most dictionaries, literally translated it means “ a love of place.”
In undergraduate school I fell in love with an old building called Pace Hall. There were three levels to the building; the upper levels were condemned and the lower level, where the Art Department resided, wasn’t in much better shape. The paint was peeling and there were cracks in the walls (it has since been refurbished.) but to me it was like a cathedral, full of wonderful light that refracted through enormous bottled-glass windows into airy rooms. It was there that I decided to be a painter. Ray Berry, my painting and drawing teacher, in what ended up being a pivotal moment in my life, gave me the key to the building. I spent a lot of time alone there, often working till the early morning, wrestling with the paint and in the process discovering Vermeer and Hopper and Rembrandt and Velazquez. Since then I have investigated many different genres of painting, and many different buildings, but the light and mystery of Pace Hall is in every painting I have done since. We bring our lairs with us.
Frankly, when I first read "The Poetics of Space," it flew over my head. I think I needed to live a little before I could appreciate it. I reread it recently and found it to be immensely rich and complex and inspiring. His incisive, sensitive observations; the way he follows threads of thought and poetry through the various rooms of the home, crystallized an idea for a project that I’ve had floating in my mind for sometime now.
Home, aside from being the building in which we live, is a state of mind. Home is an idea that has been silently, and uniquely, cultivated in us throughout childhood. It is where we experience many of our most personal and intimate moments and it is where our memories reside long after we a moved on to other houses: revisiting a home from our past always triggers a flood of forgotten memories that come back as we walk through the rooms in which they were formed. And just as we leave something of ourselves in a home, home leaves something in us-- Bachelard writes:
“But over and beyond our memories, the house we were born in is physically inscribed in us. It is a group of organic habits. After twenty years, inspite of all the other anonymous stairways; we would recapture the reflexes of the “first stairway,” we would not stumble on that rather high step. The house’s entire being would open up, faithful to our own being. We would push the door that creaks with the same gesture, we would find our way in the dark to the distant attic. The feel of the tiniest latch would remain in our hands.”
Since my years in Pace Hall, I have always had the strange sense that rooms have a secret life, that they contain a hidden universe of memories and history, of light and dark; that we need only notice them to find them. When I reread Bachelard, I felt a kinship with him about this, and my project coalesced.
This is a project I have long considered, but I was never sure what form it should take. Ironically, I finally decided it should not take place in a physical space, but rather in the digital realm. The project will expand and contract; it may involve video and works in progress and literature and music (or not.) A blog seemed to be the perfect venue: time is clearly marked, its ease of use allows me to focus on the work and not the demands of site design, and it allows for various media to be easily accessible and, as in a painting, I can adapt and change things as the work requires. Unlike a physical space, its walls can grow along with the project. So this is a case where a blog is more than a way to present work, it IS the work.
It is hard for me to impart to the reader what, exactly I intend because, like a painting, the end result can never be predicted. I have some broad notions and perhaps a half-dozen interior vistas in mind presently. So while this blog may start as an exploration of my home, it will probably expand to other spaces. My eye may wander out the window into the landscape, or the natural still lives that reside within, or the figures that wander through. But home is where I will begin.
There is nothing posted to the blog at the moment and there probably won’t be until the New Year. Like all spaces, it is starting out empty.
--
Posted By Duane to On Painting at 12/17/2006 06:10:00 AM
In undergraduate school I fell in love with an old building called Pace Hall. There were three levels to the building; the upper levels were condemned and the lower level, where the Art Department resided, wasn’t in much better shape. The paint was peeling and there were cracks in the walls (it has since been refurbished.) but to me it was like a cathedral, full of wonderful light that refracted through enormous bottled-glass windows into airy rooms. It was there that I decided to be a painter. Ray Berry, my painting and drawing teacher, in what ended up being a pivotal moment in my life, gave me the key to the building. I spent a lot of time alone there, often working till the early morning, wrestling with the paint and in the process discovering Vermeer and Hopper and Rembrandt and Velazquez. Since then I have investigated many different genres of painting, and many different buildings, but the light and mystery of Pace Hall is in every painting I have done since. We bring our lairs with us.
Frankly, when I first read "The Poetics of Space," it flew over my head. I think I needed to live a little before I could appreciate it. I reread it recently and found it to be immensely rich and complex and inspiring. His incisive, sensitive observations; the way he follows threads of thought and poetry through the various rooms of the home, crystallized an idea for a project that I’ve had floating in my mind for sometime now.
Home, aside from being the building in which we live, is a state of mind. Home is an idea that has been silently, and uniquely, cultivated in us throughout childhood. It is where we experience many of our most personal and intimate moments and it is where our memories reside long after we a moved on to other houses: revisiting a home from our past always triggers a flood of forgotten memories that come back as we walk through the rooms in which they were formed. And just as we leave something of ourselves in a home, home leaves something in us-- Bachelard writes:
“But over and beyond our memories, the house we were born in is physically inscribed in us. It is a group of organic habits. After twenty years, inspite of all the other anonymous stairways; we would recapture the reflexes of the “first stairway,” we would not stumble on that rather high step. The house’s entire being would open up, faithful to our own being. We would push the door that creaks with the same gesture, we would find our way in the dark to the distant attic. The feel of the tiniest latch would remain in our hands.”
Since my years in Pace Hall, I have always had the strange sense that rooms have a secret life, that they contain a hidden universe of memories and history, of light and dark; that we need only notice them to find them. When I reread Bachelard, I felt a kinship with him about this, and my project coalesced.
This is a project I have long considered, but I was never sure what form it should take. Ironically, I finally decided it should not take place in a physical space, but rather in the digital realm. The project will expand and contract; it may involve video and works in progress and literature and music (or not.) A blog seemed to be the perfect venue: time is clearly marked, its ease of use allows me to focus on the work and not the demands of site design, and it allows for various media to be easily accessible and, as in a painting, I can adapt and change things as the work requires. Unlike a physical space, its walls can grow along with the project. So this is a case where a blog is more than a way to present work, it IS the work.
It is hard for me to impart to the reader what, exactly I intend because, like a painting, the end result can never be predicted. I have some broad notions and perhaps a half-dozen interior vistas in mind presently. So while this blog may start as an exploration of my home, it will probably expand to other spaces. My eye may wander out the window into the landscape, or the natural still lives that reside within, or the figures that wander through. But home is where I will begin.
There is nothing posted to the blog at the moment and there probably won’t be until the New Year. Like all spaces, it is starting out empty.
--
Posted By Duane to On Painting at 12/17/2006 06:10:00 AM
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