Timing Is Everything (Missed Connections)

        All of us have probably had occasion to feel or say that “it’sall a matter of timing, ” and fortunately we probably care in unequal degrees aboutthe many things we may have “missed” through our inattention, miscues, missedcues, etc.

Peter Griffin, Example of "Post-Modern Architecture," Zhengzhou Green Fair, China

    I think I missed (am currently missing and will continue to miss) post-modernism.  The only thing the term has ever meant to me(that is to say, the image that forms in my mind whenever I hear it) is ofthe Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan becoming overfull (even after its porcine over-expansion), over-capacity, and artmarketers desperately meeting in secret committees to coin a new term to promote and sell subsequent "art events" and so-called "art developments."  Branding, after all, is everythingthese days.

 

      Today, while engaging in research concerning theweird and deplorable "human microphone" (the people control device/exercise being used atcontemporary political rallies), I learned that I really must have missed "queer theory"  too (although I knew of its existence) because it is apparently in the process of being supplanted by "post-queer theory" (skip to end of linked article).

 

Scully and Mulder.  For some reaon, Mulder is identified in this photo as the "Post-Modern Prometheus." 

        I can survive without regret both of these losses or deficiencies.  Generally I am able, when I need or want to,to understand complicated, even insanely prolix, pieces of literature or technicalwriting, provided their authors are sincerely trying to communicate, are making a palpable effort tomake themselves understood. 

M.C. Escher, Relativity, 1953.  Modern? Post-Modern? None of the above?  Queer, certainly, and proudly so.

        I cannot accomplish this, however, nor can I abide reading self-involved,neologism and jargon-filled academic or pseudo-academic writing thatclearly seeks to impress, but is nothing more than grotesque and distorted Fun House mirrorfare.

         I sincerely believe that this kindof work is intentionally self-deceptive and that it also seeks to deceive readers based on the authors' contempt, anger and fear.

Post-modern Chinese surgical needles (Actual caption label)

Mrs. Danvers must fit in here somewhere.  The rest is silence, except for:

Look At Me, I'm Wonderful  &

Tent

(Bonzo Dog Band links from Keynsham, 1969)


[Please Note 3 links in Paragraph 3]

The Bride Stripped Bare By The Bachelors (V. Stanshall/N. Innes)

(So The Boys Got Together And Formed A Band;

Fate Played The Straight Man, And Since Then They've Never Looked Back.)

We arrived at the gig looking rough.

Not happy, We'd all had enough

Of Eight Hours On The Road.

Legs Larry said: "Ee, It's the Boozer for me, dear boy."

(Yip, Yip! Yes, Indeed!...)

And the Hotel Reception was empty and cold,

With horrid red wallpaper, forty years old.

It stank like a Rhino House.

Mr. Slater said: "Pooh -- I can smell vindaloo."

"Oh, really?"

"No, Sir. O'Reilly!"

As We Wave To The People Who Frown
At Our Hair As We Ride Into Town. . .

And Chalky and Noz set up the gear

At the club where the Do-Pal Show would appear

In Person As Themselves

In Person As Themselves

And Neil, Fred and I played darts for a while
Before we switched on our theatrical smiles

LINK:

Bonzo Dog Band: The Bride Stripped Bare By The Bachelors (from Keynsham) 

Has there ever been?  I ask You.

Maximal/Minimal

Socialist-Revolutionary Party election poster, 1917

        Until recently I was entirely unaware of the word and concept "maximalism".   Lately, however, I have heard it used more and more, especially in remarks made in the course of and news reporting concerning contemporary U.S. politics.  I became curious about its origin and through dictionary and encyclopedia research I found that the term actually originated in early 20th century Russia,  its first known use occurring in connection with the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries in 1906. (Please see discussion in I(a) below.)  Maximalism has since been adopted by successor fringe political movements (please see I(b) below), in mathematics (especially in connection with order theory), in the arts and aesthetics (e.g., music, literature, visual arts), and even in theology.  

        Although over 100 years old, the term "maximalism" (usually appearing in the form "maximallist" or "maximal") continues (to my ears at least) to have the grating sound of neologism. Whenever I hear the word used, the speaker seems to change his or her facial expression, a large "thought balloon" appearing behind them, bearing the legend: 

"Look at me -- I just said 'Maximalist'"[1]

 I.    Maximalism
 

      (a)  The Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (PSR, the SRs, or Esers; Russian: Партия социалистов-революционеров (ПСР), эсеры) was a major political party in early 20th century Russia and a key player in the Russian Revolution. After the February Revolution of 1917 it shared power with other liberal and democratic socialist forces within the Russian Provisional Government. In November 1917, it won the majority of the national vote in Russia's first-ever democratic elections (to the Russian Constituent Assembly), but soon split and was defeated and destroyed by the Bolsheviks in the course of the Russian Civil War and subsequent persecution.

        

             The "Union of Socialists-Revolutionaries Maximalists", a radical faction within the PSR, united agrarian terrorists, the 'Moscow Opposition' and other radical dissidents from the PSR in an independent party. The Maximalists officially split off from the PSR at its Second Congress in Imatra in 1906. Maximalists played a role in both the Revolution of 1905 and the Revolution of 1917. Many former SR Maximalists eventually joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik).

           The SR Maximalists held a favorable view of terror and expropriation were often compared to anarchists, with whom they shared a fondness for 'propaganda by the deed' and 'direct action'. They were not opposed to the concept of the state as such and envisaged a popular revolutionary dictatorship. They rejected parliamentary democracy as a mere 'lighnin rod of popular discontent'.

 

      (b)  Abba Ahimeir (Hebrew: אב"א אחימאיר‎, 2 November 1897 - 6 June 1962) was a Jewish journalist, historian and political activist. One of the ideologues of Revisionist Zionism, he was the founder of the self-described "fascist" Revisionist Maximalist faction of the Zionist Revisionist Movement (ZRM) and of the clandestine Brit HaBirionim, which had a profound influence on the ideology of the Irgun and Lehi undergrounds.  There is inadequate space in this brief post to discuss Ahimeir's views and writings, which remain controversial, in detail.  Ahimeir's strong resemblance to silent-movie era superstar comedian Harold Lloyd is hereby noted.



II. Minimalism
 

Donald Judd, Untitled, 1969/82

Walter de Maria, Vertical Earth Kilometer, 1977

Robert Morris, Box With The Sound Of Its Own Making, 1961

Carl Andre, Sum Roma, 1997

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970

 Walter de Maria, Lightning Field, 1977

[1]  Look At Me, I'm Wonderful, The Bonzo Dog Band, 1969 (from Kenysham) (Click link above or HERE)

Readymades (Vivian Stanshall-Neil Innes)

Wendy Wetlip stares from a poster,

Ignoring the drawing adorning her smile.

Her lover has shuffled away,

Looking the other way

Ronnie the Raincoat hangs out in a book store.

He's never seen his own wife in the nude.

Somebody called him depraved.

But think of the money he saved. 

Dwarf on a moped speeds through the park,

To Kilroy's Renaissance -- the Temple of Art.

Signs with a flourish and makes it his own,

Pockets his pencil and slyly rides home. 

Annual cultural African dancers,

Bereft Isabella in rubber thigh boots.

A man was arrested today,

For something he put on display.

 

Note to reader: Link in last line to Exploding Sausage film featuring the Bonzo Dog Band "at play" and en famille.  Songs featured are: (i) Quiet Talks and Summer Walks (from Keynsham); (ii) We Are Normal (from The Doughnut In Granny's Greenhouse (UK) and The Urban Spaceman (US)); and (iii) Readymades (beginning at 5:10)(from Tadpoles). It's really wonderful footage to watch of a great, inspired, and highly original band. No other group could have or would have dreamed of making the wonderful Readymades. The song's mood kind of reminds me of this.

And looking very relaxed, Adolf Hitler on vibes (The Phalaris Bull)

 

Phalaris, der Tyrann von Agrigent, läßt den Künstler Perilles in einen Bronzestier einschließen. (Phalaris condemning the sculptor Perillus to the Bronze Bull)  After Baldassare Peruzzi, before 1562. Engraving Copperplate print, 22.4 x 17 cm

Choose your poison is not one of my favorite expressions.  I'm too much a literalist and tend toward being "slightly depressive" (on good days).

Therefore, when I learned about the Phalaris Bull while reading Dante's Inferno earlier this year, it really affected me.  This is a bad one.

Briefly, the story is this:

Phalaris (Greek Φάλαρις) was the tyrant of Acragas (Agrigentum) in Sicily during the period approximately 570 to 554 BC.  He was entrusted with building the temple of Zeus Atabyrius in the citadel and took advantage of this position to make himself despot.  Under Phalaris' rule,  Agrigentum attained considerable prosperity and he supplied the city with water, adorned it with fine buildings, and strengthened it with protective walls.

On Sicily's northern coast, the people of Himera elected Phalaris general and granted him absolute power despite warnings by the poet Stesichorus (ca. 640-555 BC), commonly considered the first great poet of the "Greek West", against doing so.  According to Suda, the 10th century AD Byzantine encyclopedia of the Mediterranean world, Pharalis succeeded in making himself master of the whole island of Sicily before finally being overthrown in a general uprising headed by Telemachus, the ancestor of the later tyrant Theron (ruled ca. 488-472 BC).

Phalaris was notorious for his excessive cruelty, including allegedly, the practice of cannibalism, which he practiced upon the very young.

In Phalaris's brazen bull, said to have been proposed and invented by the Athenian brass-founder and sculptor Perillus, Phalaris loaded and shut up his victims through a door in the animal's hollow metal torso, then kindled a fire beneath them, roasting them alive. The victims' shrieks represented the bellowing of the angry bull.  These were channeled and amplified externally through an ingenious and complex system of tubes and stops in the device's "head", which also, according to Phalaris's instructions, released smoke in the form of spicy clouds of incense.

Legend has it that Phalaris made Perillus himself the first person to be executed using his invention. After Telemachus' victory, Phalaris himself was executed in the bronze bull cauldron.

Phalaris orders the death of Perillus

The story of Phalaris' bull cannot be dismissed as pure fiction or fantasy. Pindar, who lived less than a century after Phalaris, expressly associates this instrument of torture with the tyrant by name. A brazen bull at Agrigentum is recorded as having been carried off by the Carthaginians to Carthage. It was later restored to Agrigentum by Scipio the Elder ("Africanus") ca. 200 BC. 

Dante begins Canto XXVII of the Inferno, which takes place in Hell's 8th Circle among thieves who have committed sins of fraud, on this grim note:

The flame was already quiet and erect again,

 Done speaking, and, as the gentle poet allowed

Leaving us, when behind it another one

Was drawing near, the confused sound it made

Drawing our eyes toward its flickering tip.

As the Sicilian bull (which bellowed loud

For the first time when he who gave it shape 

With his file's art was forced to give it his voice, 

Justly) would use a victims cries, sealed up

Inside its body, to bellow -- so that, through brass, 

It seemed transfixed with pain when it was heated;

So, having at first no passage or egress 

From fire, the melancholy words were transmuted 

Into fire's language.

(lines 1-14; Robert Pinsky translation)

Cheerless, cheerless words for a darkening, increasingly cold November day, which I'm grateful and pleased to say has been lived on mostly much happier notes.  I hope it's a good week.

Inferno Canto XXVII:  Dante and Virgil with Guido de Montefeltro among the false counselors, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Holkham Misc. 48.