An Anti-Aesthetic History of Idolatry
(Literature by Maxwell H. Pines and Paintings by Ian E. Pines)
Our project expresses a philosophical interpretation of changes in attitudes prompted by social evolution and scientific advancement in our contemporary day. The elements of our project are 10 paintings, 10 corresponding aphoristic-essays and one summary-disquisition.
Our basis is a Nietzschean genealogy, a naturalistic origin story given to account for the prevalence of metaphysical myth. The idols of our civilization, God, ethics and the beautiful are hypostatized in reaction to consciousness of a disparity between what is and what ought to have been. A psychological, historical, story-like account in explanation of what were once our most secure and sustaining truths resonates in our contemporary ears already attuned to the changes entailed by advances in science and shifts in social structure. Genealogy does not disprove the existence or validity of idols, rather it makes them look ridiculous. With our anti-aesthetic style the postulation of idols is presented as a conspicuous and ugly aberration from rational thought. We show how the myths have devalued the world and how they themselves have been revealed as the figments of desperate faith and timid recidivism. The fear is that should the idols depart our world, we are left with colorless dirt resulting in the character of today’s spirit: feckless irony or alternatively, undignified regression. Our project is an honest and creative expression of and for our situation: we work to disparage the tired idol of beauty and free us from her grip, making space for the future authentic creation. Our modus operandi is the anti-aesthetic, at once a confrontation and a style.
| Cosmological Diagram
1 A crystalline scaffolding crisscrosses, supporting the World. Invisible: deduced from the trepid clinging of sights and sounds, matter and force, life and dirt to the uncompromising rigidity of necessity and causation. What is possible: everything that can be said to fit in a nook of the scaffolding. What is actual: the stuff that collects in those already carved out nooks. A thing is instantiated and passes away, but there is nothing new under the scaffolding; the paths are already laid out in all directions. What is true is there, and what is there is true: a closed system. All this makes sense. 3.0353 The scaffolding is the firmament of the world. it stretches out over and pierces through all that is and could be. what makes sense collapses in at two vanishing points, narrowing at the polar limits of sense. sense-less. 6.3 Nonsense (not a part of possible/impossible, true/false {unthinkable! inconceivable! <so?:-) frustration: the limits of sense, the restriction of preexistent cannons of possibility, a pre laid path- a seem ripped in the firmament and born through it. |
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| !ê| ! 1ê€ !Dialectico de Idolotroismo:
1 immediately given: all particular things which are: contingent, transient. Nota Bene: subset{minds} = localized densities; temporary fiefdoms of order (a quantitative difference in order from the chaotic given). lemma(absurdity: there is no manifest law to be found to explain the interactions of stuff. scattered, whirling jumble defies law, order. no qualitative distinction can be found to separate minds from the rest; its distinguishing characteristic is only a matter of degree, memento mori, epitome of dust! mindÕs continuity with the given: ?unacceptable?) 2 quantitative difference aggrandized, made sublime through the postulation of the givenÕs absolute other, its negation: the Logos (eternal stability, order, meaning). Imagine: The Mind that is the father of and model for minds, an origin and goal. Consider:(can the postulation fulfill its role? The distance between where the mind dwells and the postulated realm… what do they have to do with each other, how can He save us?) 3 mediation: a bridge between the absolutely incongruous elements. the Word made flesh. hence: a new absurdity. the eternal is born and then dies. swallowing the new absurdity (faith) resolves the given absurdity. (when is hypostation [an ugly use of the intellect] no longer a justifiable solution to explain away the given absurdity?) ZÿÿNÔDSET†ÿÿ2H ÿÿÿÿÿÿêÔ ˆ{ ˆÔ ÿÿ6ÿÿ* DSET†ÿÿ2H @Jÿÿÿÿÿÿê˜ ˆÔ ÿÿ6ÿÿ* |
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| the idolterÕs movement: a fine specimen of evolution! mmmm my pretty pretty picture: where physical frustrations were relieved directly; natural desires satiated, pain Aleved. *ah soothing*
how disappointing!: consciousness of the gap between how it is and how it should be have you heard the good news?: where the crooked is straight and the rough is smooth Mediation (or: my end of the bargain) I move towards the other world by pealing away bits of husk that covers up the recherché artifact of the dirt-world (me) tragically marooned here: reveal and make bare those morsels of flesh that rub up against the soul. allow brain and heart to be naked before dry sandy windy irritation: the weathering of the final and most delicate of the otherworldlyÕs worldly husk- sands down my worldly shell to geometrical perfection. until I have crossed the threshold between here and the beyond, by disparaging the stuff here I exalt the divine beyond. my senses dull to the incomprehensible shifting here: my dusty capsule stumble over other clumps of dust. So be it:What is most immediate true must be false, world of illusion! and thus my sensitivity to the True light hightens. this is against my nature? all the better to reveal my true Nature! with each life preserving instinct I extinguish I thicken and brighten my aureole (this is hard! but I was already defeated: stupid body stupid world). Once my body would rebel: groan as I starved it, twitch as I pricked it, resist as I crushed it. penitent for what it is, the attrition of contirition. But my soul, resentful of its dusty prison asserts command, a model of divine logos over the lawlessness of facticity. . And dust aggrandized by structure and the breath of my soul returns to dust. |
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| Ineluctable modality of the moral
what is moral: most rigid and sacred; irrespective free-floating archduties. obligation unconditioned by circumstances. Always been out there. or: From whence? morality’s humble origin: what will make us happy- pizza: yea!! nasty-ass shit: boo moral action approaches being real as it speeds away from the actual. Was it (offered zillion US$ to withhold life-preserver from man sleeping with your wife drowning at sea? No! lend succor with out stretched hand) executed by the good soul?: I don’t know, can’t see the soul. what does the post-idolatrous morality look like? |
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| landscape Transformation:
nature: eternal? irrepressible? the phenomena keep looking the same returning, despite surface mutilations and corruptions… well, you’ve never seen a horse give birth to a frog, have you? the sleepy hamlet: isolation and continuity. ante-grandpa is the stuff of lore, mythical. eternal equilibrium of in-order-to’s roles : civ2006: synthetic?organic; man?woman; real?image |
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| The Beautiful by ianobien from Canada ***what is beautiful? what has beauty? a lineament from lineare- to make straight. take what you wanted trim and manicure launch into space make a constellation. no longer ***visceral, a mental delight: subtly floral with hints of tannin; divine! do you still want what the beautiful was abstracted from?-> desires unfilled, grapes you couldn’t reach, ***lovers who ignored you. so artful is your resentment, s effective the devaluation, they are now unpalatable. those things give your big brain indigestion; can’t get it up. Its okay- ***you were too butt-ugly for them anyway. Our sickness: idols that devalued the earth are now themselves devalued by the earth but why so uh, hmm, er…? now that i yacked on it you have to go get another one |
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| i like that chewy meat-doughnut up there. savory with puree filling. m^m^m milkysauce dripdrip the drips suggest stimulating ridges. of course its real and, yes, you may touch. yellow snake likes you. May I say its ugly in that irresistibly fascinating way. Out there… er ah J’appelle un chat un chat Spackle on my ceiling and the drips that hung, stretch hung and split after I heaved viscousness up there. Underneath: Kilroying over the threshold pump-organ with buck teeth dragging itself over to the party. {and the mechanical ghost} *and the slimy elbow* & the hairy eyeliner? |
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| Out of a gelid drizzle of perspiration from irritated flesh, what can only be described a vortex with a prominent lower jaw contorts back around itself inexorably attracted to receding beam. Some vortexes will bite off more than they can chew but this is propaedeutic to voracious incorporation. And what is a vortex without a bright red pole? If aggrandizing the basic shapes and conceptual elements of phenomenal experience into creation myths is a crime then I, friends, am guilty as charged. But sometimes the purple sea of de-oxidized filaments feels warm. Oceanic enveloping like home. Rod ready at hand to stir it up; localize swirls from uniform downward drips into vortex. Gravitational center soul and distancedefying colonial baton. |
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| !@# ***tities and beer, tities and beer. I thank God-Almighty for tities and beer.*** #@!
^&*vanity of vanities- so sayeth the preacher! !@# ***tities and beer, thank God I ain’t queer. If there’s one thing Daddy likes- well that’s tities and beer.***#@! |
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| they said that jammin was a thing of the past. and indeed it was. before it was all shat on by second order self-consciousness. unabashed and pure can a man still rock out with his cock out? even as i suffer the slings and arrows of FABULOUS (televised) fortune? *snif* nostalgia for something I never had. I was ironic about my wonder years before I had them! resolutely going through the motions of naiveté, eyes and mouth pried wide open, ready for it to come: oh! halcyon days of youth. You know i’ve seen it all, i was there first. I was wearing black rimmed specs while your old man was wearing diapers! Now its all about Versace: take a significant peso, a viable link in a network or in-order-to’s, and by subjecting it to critical genealogical review and phenomenological redux de-value it. Do the bilious vapors of the nightly news hour penetrate even the most serene chillaxing? |
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Our myth: an eternal idol. For we cannot know that which will change. What decays cannot be beautiful. What is true cannot die. There must be something good far away from here.
We were in horror of what we saw: flux, life living off life, dirt. Our consciousness of the disparity between desire and satisfaction, what is and what ought to be is a terrible burden. A burden made lighter by faith in the other, extra, true world far away from here. So we believed.
But the myth is no longer tenable. Not disproved but made ridiculous by the advance of human knowledge. Once the continuity between generations and stagnant ideas made a comforting world-view seem eternal. But today physical and moral landscapes metamorphose before our eyes. Technology telescopes change; evolution is axiomatic of modern thought.
The more absurd the idols become, the more precious they seem: have we nothing else? When we placed value in the other world, we devalued this one. We foreswore what we could touch and see. And that, the depreciated matter on which we live, who we are, is all that is left should the idols crumble. It is a dreadful task to unchain ourselves from the sun. The spirit of gravity beckons us back to our warm cradle of eternal canons of knowledge to be put to sleep by the opiate of faith.
But for one who can affirm what he sees, our unique situation is the greatest of opportunities. The clearing away of the idols would leave a space where one can express, invent, and celebrate. The actualization of this possibility is the aim of the anti-aesthetic creation. Lest we fall prey to the inhumanity of nihilism and depravity, the idols of the metaphysic and the ethical must not be spat upon. But turn about devaluation is fair play against the idol of beauty. Tired ideal, Goddess ripe with decay stands in the way of the authentic expression of our day.