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Sunday, October 31, 2010

A Tribute to Christopher R. Al-Aswad

8:23 PM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post
Entered into life July 16th 1979 -
Escaped into life July 27th 2010


When Chris set up this Online Arts Journal just a little over a year ago, he dedicated it to his late mother, the artist Rosalind Al-Aswad.

Shocked by his untimely death, his bereft family and followers feel that an appropriate way to honor Chris’s vision is to keep his beloved journal going. Escape into Life is now also dedicated to Chris, its inspiring and charismatic founder. It is his legacy and also, we hope, his enduring monument.

In the last incomplete essay that Chris wrote before his passing, he explored his dream of blending visual and litereray arts through this online journal. Though unfinished and almost in note form, Chris’s distinctive voice shines through. It is reproduced below, incomplete as it was found.

When Visual Art Becomes Poetry

The complex inter-relationship between literary art and visual art is like an enigma to me.

This is not an intellectual puzzle I’m trying to figure out in my early 30′s. This is my life. This is what Escape into Life, online arts journal, embodies: the fusion of two types of media; art and literature; and the urge to discover what happens when a journal allows both forms to meld and grow as an organic whole.

pEscape into Life aims to explore, enmesh, and mostly, to uncover the core similarities of the two through the growth and development of technology, community, and inquiry.

At the most basic level, there’s poetry and there’s visual art; separate and distinct forms of artistic expression. Nonetheless–the history of visual art and the history of literature reflect each other to such a degree that it would seem visual artists and poets are made from the same

It’s more like an intuition has grown over the years. Undoubtedly, my parents, my upbringing, my talents and lack thereof, contributed to these two equally strong influences in my life. Mixed exposure to both literary and visual art.

Escape into Life, online arts journal, is basically a new media experiment to blend, meld, mesh, mingle, interrelate, bind, juxtapose, and interpenetrate the two forms of art.

The best comparison is to a scholar or a scientist who comes to discover that their life-work revolves around a single theme.

Of course, there is reason for my interest in this subject of art and literature; and how they remain separate and distinct and yet intricately enmeshed. My mother was an oil-painter, I was exposed to art at an early age, and I was brought up in her creative shadow.

–and a life-long exploration of mine–that fuels the very online arts journal you are reading right now, called Escape into Life.

I have no philosophy or common goal I wish to convert our readers to. There is no academic bent or political ideology behind this journal.

Escape into Life pushes the boundaries of visual art, literature, and poetry.


Nocturne by Michael Cheval

Essays by Chris Al-Aswad


Chris published his writing online under his pen name Lethe Bashar. Lethe Bashar is also the lead character he used in the Novel of Life. Chris wrote the Novel of Life as a “recording”, a fictional history of his adolescence, to have a more comprehensive understanding of the past. He wrote 22 chapters in all. A continuance of the Novel of Life is Las Vegas, a graphic novel completed with 61 chapters. He also was writing The Book of Innocence, better known as The Blog of Innocence. These were chapters of his “present” life as it happened beginning in the year 2008. Chris intended to publish four volumes of essays online but he only published the two below.

Taking Off the Mask – Essays Volume I

Sentimental Education: Essays in Art – Volume II

More of Chris’s writing can be found in his Collected Essays.

p

Poems by Chris Al-Aswad


The Pleasures are Fleeting


the pleasures are fleeting,
 on some days you’re wondering
if they even exist
but in the slow station
of all our lives, a moment of being
comes and goes, lingers for awhile
out of a plateau, pleasures rise
this wondrous hot spring
fills you with momentary delight
and even the thoughts you are thinking
echo with reason and brilliance
and even the coffee tastes incredibly rich
so you want more of the experience
and less of the waiting, I suggest
a simple remedy, I suggest
breathing, maybe taking a break with me
on the pier, we’ll sit and listen to
the waves crash

p

The Swan of my Youth


I awoke in the middle of a summer night,
To see her resting outside my window,
Reposing on a patch of lilacs, crashed
Flowers under her sparse plumage, looking out-of-place,
And out-of-time, depleted after many summers
Of migrating between the many lakes,
Searching for food or friendship or refuge from
The ill-tempered geese.
Unfurling her long neck, she assumed the pale moon,
And conveyed her solemn song with dignity.


My mother painted a self-portrait
That now hangs in my apartment,
I am staring at that painting now,
Remembering how, in her final days,
She retreated into her room,
And held herself there--above all of nature--
Without the taint of fear.
I remember when I rushed into her room, crying
How she poised herself,
Without a single feather stirring.

Anxious child beating in my heart


the anxious child beating in my heart is you furious whirling child of discontent and love you disentangle with grace never losing touch with unmistakable anguish you fall belatedly to the bottom of the world

a cycle will remake you as a cycle broke you down and all your thoughts about the world won't matter

i'm young again with you i'm blind and naked and undefeated anxious child come dance with me

what are you afraid of only lovers speak this way what are you running from timid infant on a wave

the dark engulfing world will cower behind you and me

Read more of Chris's poetry in Collected Poems , and in his e-book Purposeless Solitude – Selected Poems by Lethe Bashar

Podcasts by Chris Al-Aswad

In addition to his Blog of Innocence podcast, Chris started a YouTube channel in 2008 to explore and share what he had learned through his life experiences. Among the topics he wanted to talk about were poetry, philosophy and writing. In the video below, Chris talks about the characters in Dead Souls, a Russian novel by Nikolai Gogol.




The following is an excerpt Chris wrote in his own handwriting, from Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth.







From all of us who follow and love Escape into Life, thank you Chris, for everything.

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Friday, June 11, 2010

Sentimental Education: Essays in Art

2:32 PM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post
The visual arts have been at the center of my life from my earliest memories. My mother was a painter and she taught me to observe the world intently; she also conveyed the mysteries of the creative artist; a love of introspection; and an intelligence built on association. My father had a passion for classical literature and he taught me the importance of words, sentences, logic. He introduced thematic concerns. My own form of expression, I like to believe, is a combination of the two.

My sentimental education was not based on failed romances, or successful ones, for that matter. But my maturity to appreciate art. I believe visual art is born in the emotional realm, that it lives in emotion as a human being lives in the open air. A poet once said that art leaves the imprint of the artist’s emotions as she creates.

I hope these essays carry a sense of experimental wonder to whomever reads them; also a love of beautiful forms, and a sadness toward self-destruction. Because I am not a visual artist, I have the privilege of looking on, the privilege of an outsider’s point of view. I admire painting, drawing, illustration, photography, architecture, even music, like a little boy mystified by a magic trick. Literature and writing, on the other hand, is a trick I wish to learn.

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Thursday, June 10, 2010

Gustave Dore's Sketchbook

5:49 PM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post
is a poem cycle I'm beginning that joins my love of visual art and classical literature. Gustave Dore (b. 1832-1883) illustrated scores of literary masterpieces including Paradise Lost, Idylls of the King, The Divine Comedy and Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I purchased a book not so long ago that presents his illustrations alongside thirteen of these literary works, and just recently the thought occurred to me to make use of this edition by taking certain selections and writing my own poems based on the original works. I foresee the poem cycle as an assemblage of literary classics, each a fragment from a larger work, placed into a context of my own creation and its development, but reflecting the Romantic style of Dore's illustrations, and the styles of the authors from which each poem will take its inspiration.

The first poem of my cycle is based on "Geraint and Enid," from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King. The poem follows lines 314-344 of "Geraint and Enid". I use the stanzaic structure of the original poem as well as employ some of the exact words or lines in the original.


Then Lethe awoke and stood before his bed,
he didn't know if it was early morning
or if the shadows on the floor meant night.
he looked and saw that all was ruinous
here sulked an unfed plant and here
the milk for the cats, licked to the last
drop, like a plate of steel burnished with neglect,
like a bowl that remains empty for weeks,
and the carpets collected parts of insects,
wings, antennas, torsos, trapped
by monstrous dust while brown stems
grew along the wallpaper and made a map
of bifurcations, and looked like a deserted
territory some poet once dreamed up.

And while he waited in the living room,
the voice of Rosalind, Lethe's mother, spoke
directly from the pencil drawing he hung
on the wall beside the door, and the voice
confounded him, as an unprotected child
whose parents have marooned him in the night,
becomes startled and thinks what other person
could be trudging through the rooms, whose nerves
begin to quiver with the slightest noise he hears,
so the voice of Rosalind shook Lethe;
and made him like a prisoner who jumps
at the sound of keys rattling when the guard appears
and lifts him out of a cold, unwanted bed,
so the shock passed through Lethe, who thought,
"Here is my dead mother."

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Tuesday, June 8, 2010

We are attracted to the infinite

4:36 AM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post
for the moment it lasts
something like the mathematics of miracles or continuous space
we sense it under every mundane awareness
we seize it once or twice
I imagine we're split into particles
each a smaller copy of the whole
we undergo a transformation
with our sudden sprawling capacity
we define an infinite goal
we are not the size of our own height
but the size of what we see
and it may seem foolish to even talk about
these moments
but we're tessellated and amplified
with electricity buzzing through us
even when the infinite seems improbable and distant
we're two mirrors exactly
parallel with our dreams
nesting a shared intuition
that must be discrete.
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Saturday, June 5, 2010

The theater is self-contained

10:36 PM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post
and then self-enclosing, like an oyster shell
pink ribbons and flesh-colored brilliance
reflecting on the inner wall,
sudden darkness once the shell
has closed. The origin of the world
may never be found, locked in a mass
of tangled ropes, swaying with the tides,
a prisoner of our dreams, a captive
of our senses, how can I nurture this life?
Where you feel the pulse racing
through a tiny muscle in your neck,
the wheel keeps on turning, it turns
until it stops. Childhood spliced
into fragments, the records tossed
into a vain shoebox, opened irregularly
and easily forgotten; outside a parade
sweeps past the suburban block, girls and boys
hold hands, french-kissing in the crowd,
parents sulk in the heat, holding flags.
Above all, the clouds pull apart like taffy
and the center reveals a satin hue,
it's nighttime and my devotion to these spectacles
is constant and mad, as if I'm viewing
my own poor imprint on the world.
I carry home a banquet and pry open
the door, flies emerge from a carcass
I never knew I had. Unreason dresses me
in the morning and I'm weighted down by
superstitious charms, I don't even have to travel
to hear sermons for what I'm after;
delusion wears a costume of elegant ties
and writes verse in an empty cell.


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Friday, June 4, 2010

I'm back at the beginning

12:56 AM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post
as if I've gone nowhere
I demand my rose and my pearl
both were lost along the way
look over this cliff
do you see tomorrow receding
beneath yesterday's waves?
every wrinkle of hope
belongs to another part of me
I don't think we can save ourselves
it is too cold, too deep
the world, family, strangers
reside in far off places, rarely visited
by myths and fables
here the spiral moon talks
to a chorus of insects
I envy your silence, your faith.


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Monday, May 24, 2010

Earlier today, it was the heat

11:55 PM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post
bearing down on us . . . the heat like a thousand rattlesnakes hissing in the continuous burn of the sun. I slept well past noon, I shouldn't have, but when I awoke and went outside, it didn't seem to matter that I was unconscious, possessed by dreams I don't remember.

Much of my life is fixated on the missing things, what I don't have. As if projected on a screen in front of me, everywhere I go, I see what I am not, I see what I do not have.

I believe that if life is ironic in any way, it is ironic in how the things we deeply want, the things we pine for, are withheld from us at about an arm's length. What I mean by this is, in any moment your life can change, and that which you desire could easily stand before you. Not many times, but sometimes this happens, when our wishes come true and the world seems like a dream.

But for the remainder, we are nomads in the desert, experiencing mirages daily.

The heat effects the senses by a wrinkle, creasing the air until it feels like a blanket were wrapped over my head.

I have searched for objects far and near to hold my attention. Could this be related to the irony of life? That nothing ultimately holds our attention?

There is, however, a singular devotion that each of us can call our own. We become it over a lifetime, and this must be how a human soul can take on a definite form, and that form can be embedded in history.

The heat crawls, it moves across stunned windowpanes, and thick asphalt. And nothing is like the silence in summer, where the heat settles on parks and baseball diamonds, in suburban backyards, and fields of crops extending to the highway.

The heat waits, it lingers, and as it lingers, it grows, layer upon layer . . .

I'm easily distracted by the sun. It makes me want to go inside after a short while. I take refuge in the air conditioning of the hopeless cafe. Maybe I will see some more beautiful women who will avert their eyes when I look at them . . .

We remember our lives in a certain kind of narrative. That narrative proceeds from a point and moves forward. And then it drops off at the present and seems to hold that note forever, and we hear the monotonous note again and again, and that is the present.

The irony is that, as humans, we are condemned to living this incomplete dream. One part of the dream is real and the other part, unfinished. For the unfinished part, we busy ourselves with imagining new endings in countless ways. Summer abides in these moods of sweltering languor, when desire is shunned by the heat and souls are forced to move inside--

It is there I find my singular devotion. Where hours are abundant and empty, and every room reminds me of the bedroom I grew up in.

True splendor lies in recognizing the thing you've always had. All the longings, cravings, and wishes fall off like scales . . .

And while the heat is stirring outside the window, and the fields shimmering in the sun, I'm liberated inside my house, the dullest place in the land, a container of restless boredom on most days . . .

Ecstatic--because for the first time I am in possession of the part of the dream that is real.
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Saturday, May 22, 2010

When I'm at the library

6:48 PM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post
I write nonsense poetry in my journal, and several hours later, try to make sense of it . . . the only way of course, is to create something, a form, a pattern of allusions and metaphors that fit the foundation no matter how small or inconsequent that structure appears to be . . .

We start with nothing and build cities, empires, or just a treehouse with your name engraved on the trap door that opens when you want to jump out of your dreams . . .

I'll go to the college library today and sit in the cool wooden cubicles for awhile, and then I'll find a chair with velvet arms and a cushion to sink into . . .

It's here that I do my writing, my contemplating, here that I get my respite from whatever it is that preoccupies me . . .

I've been coming to this library for five years now--it reminds me of the library where I went to school in upstate New York . . .

Hardly in the summer do you find anyone in here. With the exception of a tiny murmur from the students by the computers, or a door to one of the study rooms, opening and closing, the library feeds on its own silence . . .

It's almost like a church, in its effect and the way I use this building . . . I come here to be saved. Saved from the tedium of life, saved from outlandishness and isolation, saved from my own recursive folly, saved from modern self-consciousness bearing down on the soul, saved from listlessness and anxiety, saved from noise and chaos, saved from . . .

I read literature also, but the books are not entertainments, they are like an assortment of maps I collect and refer to repeatedly, hoping to locate some miserable lost treasure inside of myself . . . I read verse, fragments, essays, entering the silence, brushing against a voice here and there that I can honestly relate to . . . something that echoes

The echoes in the library are continuous whorls, projected out of the ventilating system. But it is in these echoes and between them that I can hear my thoughts padding to and fro like busy workmen on a construction site, unsure whether to begin something or just wait for the boss to arrive . . .

I'm tempted by the line I haven't written yet, it lingers just ahead and I want to meet it with something worthwhile, something worth saying . . . ah, there it goes, into emptiness.

It's easy to despair!

The Book of Disquiet names every single version of the story of despair. Many of them are wrapped around a set of daily observations . . . How could this book be my holy word? Its pages are saturated in hopelessness, every movement to every act is quivering with a deep melancholy . . . but nothing sounds more true, nothing has the flavor of this life I am living except Pessoa . . .

Innocence may then seem like an angel that has come to save me from Pessoa's waking nightmare of endless banality, ongoing tedium. If only because innocence captures the spirit before it descends into these morbid fascinations and cynical spirals . . .

An objective eye can see the soul is lit by purpose. The animating force of the limbs--the activity of the mind--stirs with a single purpose.

Mine is to write in my journal, and then to transform these awkward ramblings into a page of clarity, to turn the nonsense into sense; it's all nonsense in our heads, but with reflection and serious study, we can create a form of expression . . .

If I could extract a story out of this, I would . . . my interactions today have been minimal. Threads of narrative stretch back to infancy, and we can pick them up wherever we like, but sometimes it's best to leave the stories where they're at, and build little garden walls around them.

I get my inspiration from these shut books demanding to be opened by the soul who needs them the most. I buy these books in used-bookstores, or I take them out of the library and return them when I'm done. I collect books compulsively, and many of them just sit on a shelf until the time comes to open them and see whether they'll do me any good as maps. My library at home reaches up to the ceiling . . .

I always have two or three books in my company, like good mentors. Even if my mentors are cranky old men, like Pessoa, I cherish them. They are the keys to my expression, my innocence.

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Thursday, May 20, 2010

What surprises me is . . .

7:24 PM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post
the mass of caring I have toward an object,

any object--it can be big or small . . .

emotion clings to it--I need it

must have it

it defines me--

and then, after a period of time . . .

it can be three months, a day, or a half-hour

the object

does not hold the mysteries to my desires anymore.

What a strange feeling!

to go from a state of anxiety, of constant worry over a thing

to not wanting it at all--

seeming indifference, nonchalance . . .

what happened?

what happened in the mind?

I'm reading Eugenio Montale's Cuttlefish Bones, translated by William Arrowsmith. Here is the first poem in the volume:

Rejoice when the breeze that enters the orchard
brings you back the tidal rush of life:
here, where dead memories
mesh and founder,
was no garden, but a reliquary.

That surge you hear is no whir of wings,
but the stirring of the eternal womb.
Look how this strip of lonely coast
has been transformed: a crucible.

All is furor within the sheer wall.
Advance, and you may chance upon
the phantasm who might save you:
here are the tales composed and deeds
annulled, for the future to enact.

Find a break in the meshes of the net
that tightens around us, leap out, flee!
Go, I have prayed for your escape--now my thirst
will be slaked, my rancor less bitter . . .

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Wednesday, May 19, 2010

After two days of steady rain,

5:45 PM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post
the sun came out. I noticed among the people a feeling of joy, renewal. The cook at the Garlic Press usually has a dour face, but today she was snapping her fingers--to the music. I turned around and couldn't believe it was the same person.

Yes, the mundane is everything . . .

I chased after a rabbit just to see how far I could run . . . it wasn't very far.

There is this pull toward a greater livelihood. I am pulled by aspirations and dreams despite the absurdity of these dreams.

I am still alone today, but it's not so lonely.

Ignorance is easy--like sleepwalking. But then, you also have to walk to get out of it, to wake up. Life is flat and then suddenly it's remarkably contoured, twisted, curvy, long . . .

On the trail, walking--for hours. My thoughts were like loose pockets, holding nothing. I could hear the trees creaking above the bridge . . .

Funny how I make a choice and then my life begins to unfold in a different way. It's a pattern made up of moments.

Instead of pining for a different life--a miserable condition of wanting something that never comes--I started to believe one choice could alter this life . . .

The hours are empty. They were always empty. Before I filled them with hatred, self-loathing. Now, for some strange reason, friends are calling me.

Yes, you're right. I feel better.

I want to remember this.

But don't we lose wisdom? I've tumbled into old ways like an alcoholic stepping into familiar taverns.

The wisdom is deeply personal. It relates to a specific circumstance.

After all, I'm just shining like the sun today. Nobody with nothing inside. And these words are all temporary. They mark my place in one instant.


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Monday, May 17, 2010

Escape into Life: Issue no. 18

11:04 AM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post
Julie Heffernan, Self-portrait Sitting on a World

We have an outstanding line-up of art essays, poetry, and reviews this issue. Personally, I am grateful for the contributors to this online art journal. Month after month, we receive erudite, well-researched submissions on interesting topics, and it's my pleasure to present them to readers.

"No symbols where none intended": Samuel Beckett's Doodles . . . Bill Prosser has recently completed a three-year research project into Samuel Beckett’s doodles at the University of Oxford. Here is a brilliant condensation of his work.

The Prose-poetry of Nin Andrews . . . The writing of Nin Andrews doesn't fit into any easy categories, but it's effect is undeniable. She writes a lot about sex and orgasms. I think you'll like her work.

Julie Heffernan's Constructions of Self . . . Julie Heffernan is currently the most popular artist on Escape into Life, receiving over 100,000 visitors on a single page. I recently asked Linnea West to explore the symbolism in Heffernan's paintings, and she offered in return one of the most fascinating art reviews I've ever read.

The Spaces in Between . . . Lara Cory, a regular contributor to Escape into Life, always selects the most rich, interesting subject-matter. Here she examines the work of three printmaking artists, Frans Masereel, Dan Rickwood, and Leon Sidwell, and their capacity to use "crude imagery to express sophisticated themes."

What is Escape into Life?

Escape into Life hosts over 900 contemporary artist profiles, and is also an online arts journal with contributions from nearly 25 different writers. Many of our contributors—ranging from well-known published authors, university professors, and freelance journalists—continue to publish art reviews and art history essays month after month. In addition, our poetry editor selects a new poet to feature in the journal every issue.

The Escape into Life digest comes out about twice monthly and you can subscribe at the top of the website, next to the search bar.

As an organization, we seek to promote the arts in all its forms. Our next milestone is to merge the thriving online publication with a viable online art store.
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Monday, May 10, 2010

Pleurisy

2:22 AM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post

On a Friday night, not unlike any of my other Friday nights, I came home with a pepperoni pizza and turned on the oven while emptying the dishes from the machine.

This was my second pepperoni pizza since last week, and so I anticipated it would not give me the same rewarding pleasure that the original one gave me several nights before. But I was turning to food more lately, as a consolation for my boredom and loneliness.

As far as I knew, I would eat my pepperoni pizza, enjoy a cigarette in the garage (another consolation), and retire to my upstairs office. There I would work on the arts website, perhaps read some submissions, and if the inspiration came to me late at night, I would compose some verses or add another essay or meditation to this chronicle of innocence.

It occurs to me that a writer who is consciously or subconsciously perusing the material of her life will inevitably come to the conclusion that the material is wanting, lacking somehow. Very few things stand out on the vast topography of our mundane existence.

For this reason, I'm curious about how we change in the span of a single day--how our course is suddenly pushed onto another track of possibility, which gives rise to a new self-conception. Brought on by the force of an event, we see our lives, as it were, in color, with new wishes, dreams, desires, and motives.

These are the experiences I wish to capture in my writing, if only because they convey the interesting passage from the finite to the infinite.

I'm not feigning obscurity here. You'll understand everything by the end of this essay, and if you don't, then at least you will have spent some time with me, and perhaps made a friend.

There is a tragic story to all our lives; I am convinced of it no matter how happy you tell me you are. Lucky for us, the tragedy is raised to the arch-background and we prefer not to dwell on it. I won't talk too much about tragedy here, other than through the story of what happened to me after I finished eating my pepperoni pizza.

Like I mentioned, it was a Friday night, which always seems to conjure up feelings of isolation. I won't get into that too much either. But I was sitting at my computer, if you recall, and there are a number of things I do at my computer which make me feel occupied, important, or otherwise pro-active. That's why it doesn't really matter what day of the week it is (I work from home), I can always distract myself from whatever subtle anguish or boredom is nagging at me just beneath the surface.

The pepperoni pizza was having a hard time digesting in my stomach, and I knew this would be the case from the last time I ate one, and from eating unhealthy food in general. It looked like an average Friday night so far. I smiled at my reflection in the computer screen, I typed, I sent messages to friends over Twitter, I replied to emails, I surveyed the traffic patterns on Escape into Life.

This is precisely what I was referring to when I mentioned the vast topography of our mundane existence. These little sorts of activities that cushion our lives. Think of them as taking place within a grey continuum, with blips of surprise, discomfort, headache, joy, nausea, fatigue, rest.

There are also countless forms of anguish that can be added to that category of the mundane, depending on your physical condition, and how well you maintain your body. As for myself, I've been having a rough time of it. Since last week, these extraordinary pains in my chest led me to seek out a doctor for the first time in five years.

I went to one of those Prompt Care facilities, in which no appointments are necessary. The doctor they matched me up with looked Greek. He had a tan bald head and a reserved manner, but you could tell he thought highly of himself. The Greek doctor determined that there was nothing wrong with my lungs or my heart, but that I had severe allergy symptoms, and he prescribed a nasal spray and some antibiotics.

I left the Prompt Care facility feeling as though something had not been addressed. Although I was happy to breathe again thanks to my new prescription of nasal spray, I remembered repeatedly telling the old man, "I feel like I'm dying."

I was feeling a pain under my left chest plate. Each time, it was like someone had dug their fist into my chest and squeezed out all of the air in my lungs, applying the most excruciating pressure to the heart and everything else inside. I couldn't breath while this was going on and the muscles in my back tightened into a vice.

Several hours later, while I was at my computer, the chest pains returned and I curled in my chair, unable to breathe. I observed that my Friday night wouldn't be wasted if I drove myself to the Emergency Room at St. Joseph's Hospital, rather than endure the agony of severe chest pain.

I parked my car in the wrong section of the parking lot, and hobbled toward the lights at the circular entrance doors. My decision to admit myself to the Emergency Room was not yet certain. I didn't want to get charged an exorbitant price for not having health insurance, and perhaps worse, I didn't want to be told that my chest pains were normal.

My physical state was pathetic, I felt like an invalid, unwashed, and I got the abrupt sensation that with all the gas from the pepperoni pizza, I may have shit my pants.

So I opened one of the hospital doors and briskly entered the nearest bathroom. I checked the inside of my underwear, which thankfully, showed no signs of run off. I briskly washed my hands and wended my way through the labyrinthine basement of the hospital, reading the signs that pointed to the ER. A tech worker caught me in my state of confusion, and guided me to the Emergency Room doors.

With the odd hours of the night, and my general feeling of confusion, I began to see myself as an outsider here. But I also felt a twinge of belonging, like perhaps this is where an outsider is meant to be.

I stood at the registration window, and glimpsed a technician speaking to an older lady in a wheelchair. The old lady had a blood pressure wrap on her arm and was telling the technician that she didn't have any pain.

It was approximately 12:30 pm. As I filled out the registration papers, a large black security officer made small-talk with a smaller lady sitting at a desk in front of five computer monitors. Their topic of conversation was "Facebook and Security."

I was called into the tech's office, where I removed my jacket and waited for several minutes, going over in my mind all the questions I had about not having insurance and how much it would cost, and whether they could really help me with my condition.

The woman who had been talking to the older lady for so long finally came into the check up room to do my blood pressure. I still hadn't made up my mind about whether I should be admitted into the hospital. But with a clandestine swoop across my wrist, I found a loose, beige hospital band with my name on it.

I believe there are three rooms, if you count the waiting room, before you reach the doctor.

Well, on this night, each of these three stations led me deeper into an experience. I didn't know what I was doing here to be perfectly honest. I mean I had some severe chest pains, but other than that, I think I was just bored and wanted to go to the hospital. Or maybe there was something I wanted . . .

When a surrogate nurse brought me into the second station, I removed my jacket and placed it on a chair, along with my cell phone and wallet. I immediately laid down on the flat cushion, which appeared to me at this moment more comfortable than a king size bed. Then the real nurse came inside the room and asked me to put on a gown. She seemed very genial, and also hip for her age, with short dyed blond hair. Her hair reminded me of my mother's because it was cropped short.

I was in pain but I didn't want to make a performance out of it. So I held my arms close to my chest and leaned back into my pillow.

"Do you want me to raise that?" She asked.

"Yes, please," I said, taking a second glance at her face. "You seem like a nice lady."

You know there is something about being in the Emergency Room late at night, where there are only two people in a single room, a nurse and a patient. It can be a very tender intimacy without any sexual implications, just the presence of two strangers put in the same room, one taking care of the other. These thoughts were comforting to me even though I had a bit of apprehension about when the doctor would arrive, what he would say, and what he would give me.

The plain truth is that I'm a self-destructive person. There is no easy way to talk about this. I've tried to understand it my whole life. Part of my sensitivity comes from this destructive nature of mine.

After the nurse dimmed the lights and left the room, I sunk into the cushion and closed my eyes. Without exaggerating, this Friday night was turning out to be one of the best Friday nights I think I've ever had in my entire life. I'm pretty sure I fell into a dream where my father's nose was cut off, as if he'd had plastic surgery and it didn't work out. Well, the vision was terrifying and the image still burns strong in my imagination.

Luckily, I was startled awake by a young woman, I want to say "girl," dressed in a casual striped men's shirt. She had short raven hair, and held a clipboard.

"I'm here to collect your insurance policy information." She spoke in a sweet tone of voice.

At first I didn't answer, I only looked at her pale freckled face and dark hair, and the way her men's collar rose slightly over her narrow shoulder-line.

"You look familiar," she said. "You look like one of my older brother's friends."

And those were the kindest words that have ever been spoken to me. I must have looked like utter crap.

"Oh, I don't have insurance," I said.

"Well, we could get you one of those Charity forms, where you fill in your financial information."

"No, no, that won't work. I've tried that before. I have a trust fund."

"It's always better to be safe than sorry," she said.

I nodded in agreement.

She left the room and I gloated that she had even entered it in the first place. For the next twenty minutes, I fantasized about asking her if she had a boyfriend, and if she said "Yes," I would reply something like, "That doesn't surprise me."

But if she answered "No," then I would ask her out to dinner. Maybe she would think of my trust fund and how I could probably take her out to a pretty fancy restaurant. Or maybe she despised people who never had to work, and wouldn't want anything to do with me.

The nurse returned to my room to ask how I was doing, and I explained to her that my pains were getting worse. I could feel spasms in my chest but I didn't want to sound like a martyr. She said the doctor was on his way.

When the doctor finally arrived I was reeling in pain, and all I could catch a glimpse of was his silver toned face and sharp eyelashes. He had a wide expression like he was going to eat me. But he asked a lot of questions, and I had rehearsed my symptoms for days now, so in a sense, we were perfectly in tune.

I was hoping he would have an answer for me, a diagnosis of some kind. I kept describing the pain under the chest plate, deep, sharp, in my breathing, suffocating me, pulling at my muscles . . .

He smiled and said it would all be better soon. And then he left.

The nurse returned with three tall needles on a steel plate. I turned on my side and pulled down my underwear and jeans.

The nurses and doctors on the other side of the curtain were chatting lightly. They couldn't see me, but I was glowing inside. Especially when the first needle went into my butt, I wanted to meet them all.
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Sunday, May 9, 2010

A Chronicle of Essays and Meditations

10:23 PM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post

The story I write always begins with having the experience first.

After living in Madrid for a year, I grew obsessed thinking that every new experience would then become a short story or novel.

Ten years later, I found myself still toiling on the the same scenes from the past.

Now I've given up The Novel of Life. One, because it was toil.

And two, because my experiences in Madrid are too far removed from where I am now. I pored over the Spain material until I could no longer see the important connections.

It was a romantic fiction based on my life in Spain, which I painstakingly tried to evoke the mood, characters, and conflicts. But time has flown beyond these adolescent insecurities, and delivered me into a place with greater contradiction, more openness, and less answers.

There are few rules here, but the rules I go by are based on the sheer daily practice of examining my thoughts through writing. I know them by instinct.

What's painfully clear to me is that I stopped believing in the Spain stories, and that's why I stopped writing them.

But I knew I could write. And so I dedicated myself to writing other kinds of stories (whether they were essays, articles, reviews, or meditations, I don't think it matters).

But I could believe in these stories. They reflected my innocence about the world, and provided me with an enormous amount of energy and interest in what I was doing.

So I scrapped my novel with few reservations. A great freedom came out of this decision, and I feel I am embarking on new territory.

I've mentioned before in On Blogging and Technology for Writers that a conventional blog can be a profoundly creative outlet for a writer. Anyone who has been blogging long enough will attest to the discipline built into the practice. This discipline builds on the dynamic between readers and writers on the web. And soon, you'll find the motivation to create a community around your words.

I call this blog a chronicle because it chronicles my life in written form. The way I write, the things I believe, my passions, my failures, inevitably seep through the text of these digital pages. But none of it will hold a set pattern, a formula, if you will.

The only pattern of this blog is Time and what Time does to me. My language, the topics I choose, and how I present myself to the reader, will arise out of Time.

The best way to tell a story is to find a comfortable place, like a sofa, with lots of light in the room. It's always nice to have a friend next to you, and that's how I imagine my reader.


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Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Appropriating Leopardi

7:45 PM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post

Without giving away too much about the circumstances in my life, I feel I am going through an exceptionally dark period.

How did I get to this place? I've asked myself this question many times.

I can only attribute my present situation to my personality. To me, the personality is the root of all our troubles (and joys). Maybe there were certain clues in my childhood and adolescence . . .

The only inspiration I can find right now is in the verses of one of my favorite poets, Leopardi. I tried to write my own poem today, but it didn't work out. So I began reading these poems which I've read a hundred times before . . .

Here is a poem I appropriated from a translation of Leopardi's poems. I took from five separate poems and created one poem. These verses speak directly to my experience. The translator is Eamon Grennan.

At first, I was going to add a couple lines of my own, but then I thought it would diminish the power and cohesiveness of the original verses. I altered some of the lines to make them work better with the whole piece.


Such black, black days
In so green a season!

And sorely
My heart is shaken at the thought
Of how everything in the world goes by
And leaves so little trace behind.

The work-day comes on, and time takes away
All we are and do.

And random suffering cancels all
Such raw, unripened knowledge.

Both of us, she said, were born to suffer:
Our lives lacked joy, and the heavens took
Pleasure in our pain.

For I’ve seen enough of wretched cities
Where hatred dogs unhappiness, and where
I live in misery and will, soon enough,
In misery die.

Even you,
Scorning calamities and crosses, smile
Only on those who lead happy lives.
In heaven, on earth, the lost ones
Can find neither friend nor refuge
Except in their own cold steel.

It was
That sweet unrepeatable season
When the sad stage of this world seems
To young eyes a paradise of smiles:
In its very first virgin flush of hope
A boy’s heart gallops with desire
As he, hapless poor creature that he is,
Plunges into the business of living
As if it were only a game or a dance.

Now
It is stormy weather I love plunging into
Along the crags and through deep valleys,
Seeing terror-stricken flocks in scattered flight,
Or hearing wave after wave go rushing over
Crumbled banks: the swollen torrent’s headlong roar.

But ah,
The gods and grim-lipped fate have given
Poor Sappho no part of this infinite beauty.
A tiresome wretched guest in this
Grand, indifferent domain.

What sin
Did I commit as a child—when one can know
No wrong at all—that my iron-dark thread of life,
Lacking all the summer colors of youth,
Lay twisted on fate’s implacable spindle? Reckless
Words fly from your mouth: A hidden purpose
Fashions whatever has to happen. Everything is hidden
Except our pain. We come, a forsaken race,
Crying into the world, and the gods
Keep their own counsel.

From his miser’s store
Of sweet blessings, God gave me nothing
Once my dream of youth and its illusions
Withered.
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Sunday, May 2, 2010

Escape into Life: Issue no. 17

2:23 PM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post

Escape into Life continually welcomes new writers onto our team. In this issue, you'll find an eloquent essay on Gauguin by Linnea West, whose art blog, Art Ravels, is a favorite among arts writers. You'll also find contributions from Lou Freshwater, somewhat of a haiku expert, and the German writer, Klaus-Dieter Knoll.

This issue we also introduce a new segment of Escape into Life, called "Arts and Culture Headlines." I wanted to bring together the most interesting art reviews and culture stories from newspapers, blogs, magazines, and art media sources.

Paul Gauguin and Savageness . . . . West explores Gauguin's "idealization of savageness" while giving us an intimate sense of his experiences in the Caribbean and later Polynesia. She intersperses primary materials into the essay, such as letters from Gauguin to his wife and friends.

The Art of Haiku . . . Everything you need to know about writing haiku. Freshwater's essay can serve as both an aid to composing haiku as well as an informed discussion of the Japanese art.

Poetry by Seann McCollum . . . . In McCollum's first poem, "The Twombly Equinox," the poet meditates on Cy Twombly's painting, Quattro Stagioni: Primavera.

The Process of Becoming Intimate: Interview with Danielle Duer . . . I don't believe we've published an interview as deeply touching as this one. Part of the reason for this is Klaus-Dieter Knoll's fond appreciation for the artist and his passion for her work.

New Segment on EIL:

Arts and Culture Headlines . . . I plan to run this every couple days. Culled from blogs, newspapers, magazines, and art media sites, bringing you the most interesting art headlines.

What is Escape into Life?

Escape into Life hosts over 700 contemporary artist profiles, and is also an online arts journal with contributions from nearly 25 different writers. Many of our contributors—ranging from well-known published authors, university professors, and freelance journalists—continue to publish art reviews and art history essays month after month. In addition, our poetry editor selects a new poet to feature in the journal every issue.

The Escape into Life digest comes out about twice monthly and you can subscribe at the top of the website, next to the search bar.

As an organization, we seek to promote the arts in all its forms. Our next milestone is to merge the thriving online publication with a viable online art store and auction.
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Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Taking off the Mask: Essays Volume I

6:23 PM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post
The Blog of Innocence was started in 2008 with the motivating desire to write essays and meditations on a broad spectrum of topics that intimately concerned me. The title of “Innocence” is a partial response to Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet. Whereas Pessoa’s writings center on an imaginative cynicism, I sought to create essays that would appeal to just the opposite.

The sense I wanted to convey about myself and the world was a simple questioning and naivety toward material reality and experience. I don’t go in for any postmodern tricks here, but rather I seek to return to a state where cleverness and sophistication are alien and not very useful to understanding ourselves. I want to experience not knowing, so I can further discover something.

You will see many references to The Blog of Innocence in these essays; this is because the essays were originally posted on my blog. There will be four volumes of essays available as eBooks, each covering a different subject area. This first volume, entitled Taking off the Mask, concerns life and culture. The next volume will be concerned with art. The volume after that will be concerned with technology and the web. And the last volume will be concerned with literature and writing.

My sincerest wish is that you take something from these words of mine. Writing is the closest thing to my heart. It is the way I commune with others, and myself.

Taking Off the Mask: Essays Volume I
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Saturday, April 24, 2010

With the Passage of Time

10:55 AM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post
Julie Heffernan, Self-Portrait as Broken Home

Throughout the course of a day, many battles are fought. The mere fact of having a physical body creates stress--whether in the form of exhaustion, bouts of emotion, anxiety. But the alternative, floating around in some amoeba-like wavy film, doesn't sound any more appealing.

And so we have this body. I've been a bit unhappy with my body--now into my thirties, I lack the motivation to lose the weight I've gained in the last year. This requires discipline and for a long time, I've avoided the necessary restraint to curb my appetites.

I wonder if as we get older we lose certain motivations. I'm obsessive about writing, reading, and my work--those things seem to motivate me to a fault--but the care of the body, once a concern, no longer matters.

I'm sort of embarrassed to say that I don't care for my body as I once did. Because the real reason for this is I don't have anyone to impress. There are no women I'm trying to woo, or otherwise get their attention, have dinner with, etc.

Since my late twenties, I've socialized less and less, and my circle of intimates has narrowed.

By choosing to marry, you can prevent the circumstances I've just described. You may be lonely in another sense, but you'll never feel isolated. If anything (and I'm speculating here because I'm not married), you'll feel crowded or as my mother used to put it, "I feel like I'm drowning."

My mother was a fierce individualist, an artist, and not really suited to raising a family or having children. But she did and I acquired many of her traits for contemplation, creativity, solitude and private work.

She used to keep journals in her art studio, many of them handmade. She bound her own sketchbooks and journals. I remember seeing the half-cut fabrics in the laundry room beside reams of thread. But she stored her journals downstairs, in a chest of drawers. My mother's art studio had immaculate white walls and was filled with repurposed furniture and random objects cluttering the floor.

She created scenes with the furniture, rugs, or whatever she found around the house. Her models sat under giant flood lights, and for hours my mother would stand at a canvas and translate this imaginary situation into a painting. The window of her studio regularly appeared in her paintings, with a view of our suburban enclave, a privileged world protected by a gate.

It was a beautifully landscaped, dead conglomerate of houses. The houses were so big and set apart that it was an inconvenience to visit people. You would have to drive to their house just to say hello.

As a teenager, the vastness of the subdivision inspired many adventures on my bike. I charted the territory available to me. Originally a golf course, which had been transformed into a gated community, there were several large ponds, always with a great deal of Canadian geese squawking and shitting in the grass. I remember the exact color of the grass on most days. It was dark green. Around the ponds were massive weeping willow trees and I used to stand on the tops of the roots jutting out of the ground. Sometimes there were nooks in the bottom branches, where you could sit and watch the cars go by.

The grounds of the Midwest Club, where I lived, were expansive. Cul de sacs snaking up hills, and new houses always being built, large, preposterous modern ones. I used to to explore the construction sites with a friend, and we collected those bottle-cap things. The little metal caps were scattered in the sawdust, and we filled our pockets with them.

The basements, I recall. Most basements of the houses we couldn't go down into; there wasn't a staircase built yet. But we peered into the gaping hole that extended into shadows and frameworks for rooms. We marveled at this part of the house, I imagine, because it was so inaccessible.

In time, every basement we peered into would become a finished one, with lush carpets and modern cooling devices to keep the temperature just right. Some of the basements would be equipped with small movie theaters or bowling alleys. The general rule of the place where I lived was that every year a newer, more elaborate house would be built. The new house in the subdivision with a waterfall, indoor gardens, and running streams, would inevitably provoke gossip and cause the other residents to look with envy as they drove back to their humble, dated mansions.

This probably explains why I wanted to spend so much of my later adolescence outside of the house, and the neighborhood, for that matter. Our environments undoubtedly shape our personalities, and when I was younger, I remember being by myself a lot. Whether it was amid the vastness of the gated community or sequestered inside my own large house, it was a common experience that repeated itself.

It seems I had more friends when I was younger, but at every stage of my life I've felt a disconnect between myself and others. I felt this even when I had made friends in high school or college; my friendships were always private and never in large groups. They were also tenuous. When a friend was accepted into a larger group, I was usually left on my own. I'm not wallowing here--that's just how things turned out for me. And I kind of liked being by myself.

Of course, a part of us desires what we don't have, and so, I did long for acceptance and to be part of a larger group. But my personality never allowed for it. Another way to put this is I didn't fit in.

And now that I'm thirty years old, soon to be thirty-one, I'm slowly recognizing why things are the way they are for me.

We tend to forget the past, and how we developed into individuals. I feel stuck when I forget my past, like a coma has obscured some vital reference points. And these instances of my separation from others, where I lived, how I grew up, describe my tendency toward contemplation and creativity, as opposed to other forms of immersion, like social immersion, which has always made me slightly uncomfortable.

I understand why I'm on my own, and it doesn't bother me as much as it used to. I've always wanted this, even though I may have pretended otherwise.

Every choice in life implies the loss of another. Since I was very young, I chose to cultivate my interior world. And that's where my poems come from, and these essays.

Strangely enough, when I write these essays, I'm consciously reaching out to the world. The fact that my interiority changes to its opposite makes me think that while we're always "on our own," we also have this place to meet others, through language and art. It's a wonderful hidden doorway, and I'm passing through it a lot these days.
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Sunday, April 18, 2010

Escape into Life: Issue no. 16

9:17 PM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post

This issue of Escape into Life expresses every reason why I began the journal in the first place. Lara Cory's article, "The Etsy Phenomenon," challenges us to see the effects of a democratic web on art. The article provoked a lot of conversations, and I invite you to read the string of comments.

Also in this issue, Escape into Life introduces a new project for artists. Inspired by Giorgio Vasari's artist biographies published in 1550, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, I'm asking artists to create their own stories about their lives. We will run the artist autobiographies periodically through the online journal.

The Etsy Phenomenon . . . Lara Cory's balanced account of the success of Etsy with much room for opposing viewpoints.

The Poetry of Kelli Russell Agodon . . . Kelli Russell Agodon is the author of several published books, and her work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly.

What is Real: Chuck Close and Kazimir Malevich . . . Mark Kerstetter provides a fascinating analysis of photorealistic and abstract painting, and whether either one can be said to be "real."

PeopleMatter: Interview with Nic Rad . . . Nic Rad talks with Lara Cory about his PeopleMatter project, explaining how he intends to give his paintings away to the public for free.

Why Nic Rad Matters . . . Nic Rad's portrait project is an intelligent critique of celebrity culture, and a brilliant use of social technology to promote art.

New EIL Project:

Lives of the Artists . . . Arists! Tell your story. How did you become an artist? What style and medium do you choose for your work and why? See the website for more details.

What is Escape into Life?

Escape into Life hosts over 700 contemporary artist profiles, and is also an online arts journal with contributions from nearly 25 different writers. Many of our contributors—ranging from well-known published authors, university professors, and freelance journalists—continue to publish art reviews and art history essays month after month. In addition, our poetry editor selects a new poet to feature in the journal every issue.

The Escape into Life digest comes out about twice monthly and you can subscribe at the top of the website, next to the search bar.

As an organization, we seek to promote the arts in all its forms. Our next milestone is to merge the thriving online publication with a viable online art store and auction.
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Saturday, April 17, 2010

Is Nic Rad the Next Warhol?

4:36 PM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post
Nic Rad, Peter Schjeldahl

Nic Rad's PeopleMatter project is essentially a portrait project in which the artist paints media personalities, tech-industry giants, literary and entertainment figures. He shows the portraits on his website and offers his paintings to anyone who can give a good enough reason why they should have them. (Some portraits have a paywall; meaning these works must be purchased.)

Reading the interview Lara Cory had with Nic on Escape into Life sparked my thinking in the direction of contemporary art as a predominately social vehicle. Because the PeopleMatter project has leveraged the potential of the web to spread word about a single artist's work, I see this experiment as noteworthy and perhaps suggestive of how art is increasingly becoming a social object.

One could argue that art has always been a social object--a topic of conversation, a locus of interaction with others in a museum or gallery--but I believe the acceleration of the web is serving to emphasize the social aspects of art. And if it continues, I believe we will be seeing more projects like Nic Rad's, which enroll the public to participate in the process of the art-making, exhibition, and sale.

There is a Warholian overtone to the PeopleMatter project. Like Warhol's silkscreen prints, Rad is making a statement about celebrities through his portraits of them. He sees these portraits as "avatars" and "graphic symbols" of members of the media, inspired by how we are represented to each other online. Furthermore, his method of aiming for imperfect works, perfectly resonates with Warhol. Rad says,
This kind of painting requires a certain speed and stops looking and feeling like art. It starts to look like fan fiction or signage or candy wrappers; it looks like everything but nice furniture . . . which is why I believe I’m doing something right.
What has changed since Warhol is our notion of celebrity, and Rad seems to pick up on this and play off of it in his portraits. He purposely intermingles actual celebrities with self-anointed ones, and blurs the distinction between the new media and the old. With Warhol, we have the mass-produced image of Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley, but with Rad, the mass-produced image is no longer meaningful as a critique.

Today we are deeply entrenched in mass-produced images and so what titillates the viewer is its opposite: the one of a kind and the possibility that it could be you. The democratic process by which a person can obtain a portrait of herself from Rad, simply petitioning for one on his website, appears straightforward:
If you feel that you’re a member of the media and are on some inexplicable trajectory and that I should consider painting you instead of one of my current subjects—tell me why. There’s a decent chance I’ll agree with you and make a replacement.
The democratic process, however, is not without its irony. Rad is offering to memorialize you as a cultural figure (read on his website: Become Immortal). And he's also capitalizing on our particular historical moment, with major industries, and social hierarchies, in transition; this project could not be achieved at any other period in history. The categories for fame these days are fluid and loosely-defined as new technology catapults regular people into the sphere of celebrity over night.

The genius of the project is how the website generates interest in the portraits. First, with the possibility to be painted, and second, with the possibility to receive a painting for free, Rad has created a mini-ecosystem of "celebritization," a word that Rad used in his interview.

The whole experiment could quickly be dismissed as a promotional gimmick, and Rad knows something about public relations and marketing for having worked in the field for six months; but I believe Rad is holding up a mirror instead.

His PeopleMatter project shows how we make each other known and important in this new cultural landscape; and how the individual is made into a media icon. It also shows how we use "graphic symbols" to represent ourselves in the Internet era; and how the public projects meaning onto these short-hand representations through floating bits of information on Twitter streams, articles, video clips, and web searches.

It is not by coincidence that many of the portraits resemble caricatures, some more than others. This representation of the celebrity is meant to be a visual reference point which may only capture a single quality of a person's character or beliefs, but serves to place them on the map of cultural dialogue. It is also important to remember that the portraits are set against the background of the entire body of paintings. Unlike Warhol's prints, these icons are taken together, as a cultural whole.

Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, following the tradition of Warhol, put as much work into marketing their art as they did creating it. The PeopleMatter project is contradictory and wonderful for its ability to make art social while at the same time critiquing the social consequences of such art.

Rad does not attack the cultural apparatus, but instead feeds it to each of us. We are one among many; no single portrait deserves ultimate scorn or praise. None is set higher or lower. These portraits are a tapestry of dreams, however imperfect or fragile our dreams may be.

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Thursday, April 8, 2010

Why is Photorealism Hugely Popular?

8:37 PM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post

One of the things I've noticed lately is the immense popularity of photorealistic works online. I believe this is related to how photorealism conjures up the "real" while simultaneously negating it due to the materials involved; ie, this is a drawing or a painting, it can't be real. Apart from the technical virtuosity of many of these works, there is an enigma at play beneath the surface; and there is something about the works that mesmerizes us.

Escape into Life, the online arts journal I edit, receives surges of traffic around photorealist artists such as Richard Estes, Dirk Dzimirsky, Denis Ichitovkin, Don Gore, Eric Zener, and Alyssa Monks. Another arts blog by Alice at My Modern Met, covers photorealistic and hyper-realistic art frequently. Some of Alice's most popular entries include, "Hyper-Realistic Acrylic Body Painting," "21 Mindblowing Hyperreal Paintings," and "Photorealistic Pencil Drawings by Paul Lung."

When we look at these works, we see some similarities in technique and method. For example, images of water are common in hyperrealistic paintings and drawings. Eric Zener chooses solely to focus on pools and individuals diving in or suspended underwater. In an interview I had with Zener last year, he described his method:
I take photos of models in the water and then use them as a reference to make my drawing. Usually a lot changes but it gives me a good starting point. Then I paint an underpainting in grey/blue scale. After that I paint from the farthest point back to the foreground.

Many of the paintings by Alyssa Monks are situated in bathrooms or behind shower doors. We are presented with a human face behind glass, steam clouding the glass, and drops of water blurring the picture. This play of barriers against the direct human image heightens the drama of the "real"--we see the human figure, but we cannot directly approach/access it.


Another example is Dirk Dzimirsky's Drawn Face VI (below). Here we are drawn to the frenzied motion of water, the splatter of drops and the trajectories down and off the man's face. The water is so pronounced that it seems to take on another form, like transparent oil. The heaviness of the liquid reinforces its impact. Just as the drawing enhances the qualities of water, the image heightens the reality of being drenched, producing a simulacrum of experience and sensation.


Another technique used in photorealistic works is reflection. Like water, reflection deflects the "real," fragments the "real," complicates the "real," and thus heightens it. Richard Estes is a contemporary master of this technique, often using reflections from city buildings and the play of sunlight on various types of glass, to create a multidimensional effect. In The L Train (below), we are presented with a dead-on view through multiple layers of glass. The reflections from each panel create distorted, but corresponding images in different quadrants of the painting, while the numerous steel bars at various angles further break up the picture we are looking at.
If the Photorealism heralded decades ago by Chuck Close, Ralph Goings, Richard Estes, and Audrey Flack was a reaction against Surrealism and Pop Art, then these artists seem to have presaged our contemporary moment. The popularity of photorealistic works right now says something about our needs and desires as humans in the 21 century.

Consider the introductory paragraph in David Shield's Reality Hunger: A Manifesto:
My intent is to write an ars poetic for a burgeoning group of interrelated (but unconsciously connected) artists in a multitude of forms and media (lyric essay, prose poem, collage novel, visual art, film, television, radio, performance art, rap, stand-up comedy, graffiti) who are breaking larger chunks of "reality" into their work.
While photorealism in art has been around since the late 1960's, there is a curious resurgence of interest around these paintings and I wonder if it is connected to Shields's thesis. He goes on to describe the "hunger" contemporary culture has for "the lure and blur of the real."
Living as we perforce do in a manufactured and artificial world, we yearn for the "real," semblances of the real. We want to pose something nonfictional against all fabrication.
In a convincing argument, made up entirely of quotations and passages, many of them not even the author's own, Reality Hunger uses examples such as the popularity of reality TV shows, the ascendancy of the memoir, and sampling in hip hop to show our lust for reality-based art. Most of us would agree that reality TV is not art, but it reflects a trend in culture where we are more attracted to the "real" than the blatantly fictitious.

Photorealistic works can thus seem to cast an enchanting spell upon our reality-hungered lives. They are like drugs, providing the greatest visual impact, giving us the thrill of the "illusion of reality." Shields writes:
The body gets used to a drug and needs a stronger dose in order to experience the thrill. An illusion of reality--the idea that something really happened--is providing us with that thrill right now. We're riveted by the (seeming) rawness of something that appears to be direct from the source, or at least less worked over than a polished mass-media production.

More Essays . . .
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Sunday, April 4, 2010

Escape into Life: Issue no. 15

8:12 PM | Posted by Marvelous | Edit Post

The popularity of Escape into Life on the web is reaching unforeseen levels. According to a conservative estimate, we received nearly 50,000 unique visitors last month. By blending artist profiles, multimedia, poetry, and journal-length essays, I am finding that people really do enjoy a mixture of content relating to the arts.

Also, this month a new writer joined the team. We feature Marc Nash's essay, "Approaching Non-Linearity in Literature," and Marc will be focusing on literary criticism for Escape into Life in future issues. Here are some of the highlights of this issue:

Approaching Non-Linearity in Literature . . . Marc brings together insights in science and literature to show some of the ways in which contemporary fiction might be rejuvenated.

French Rococo: Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard . . . Arts critic Stephen Pain introduces us to the "three tenors" of French Rococo in the history of painting.

Poetry by Susan Rich . . . In "Curating My Own Death," Rich offers us an ironic and humorous contemplation of her own death.

Fernando Botero at the Museum of Fine Arts . . . Mark Kerstetter recently visited the Fernando Botero exhibit in St. Petersburg, Florida. Here is his review.

From the Showcase Series:

28 Recommended Art and Design Tumblrs . . . These blogs range from contemporary, modern, and classical art; vintage illustration; vintage photography; design and typography.

What is Escape into Life?

Escape into Life hosts over 700 contemporary artist profiles, and is also an online arts journal with contributions from nearly 25 different writers. Many of our contributors--ranging from well-known published authors, university professors, and freelance journalists--continue to publish art reviews and art history essays month after month. In addition, our poetry editor selects a new poet to feature in the journal every issue.

The Escape into Life digest comes out about twice monthly and you can subscribe at the top of the website, next to the search bar.

As an organization, we seek to promote the arts in all its forms. Our next milestone is to merge the thriving online publication with a viable online art store and auction.

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