Two and a Half Things: 2008

Saturday, December 6, 2008

"Whosoever unceasingly strives upward... him can we save,"

For

What

Then?

"... Then history began to accelerate; whereas, in the past, man had lived continuously in the same setting, in a society that changed only very slowly, now the moment arrived when he suddenly began to feel history moving beneath his feet, like a rolling sidewalk; the status quo was in motion! All at once being comfortable with the status quo was the same thing as being comfortable with History on the move! Which meant that a person could be both progressive and conformist, conservative and a rebel, at the same time!

When Camus was attacked as a reactionary by Sartre and his bunch, he got off the famous remark about people who had "merely set down their armchair in the direction of History"; Camus was right, but he did not know that the precious chair was on wheels, and that for some time already everyone had been pushing it forward...

It was then that a certain number of Rimbaud's heirs grasped this extraordinary thing: today the only modernism worthy of the name is antimodern modernism."

Milan Kundera, from "Die Weltliteratur"
The New Yorker, Jan. 8, 2007

I made these small (16"x14"x3") sculptures in 2006. They are narrow paintings that open out of a carved piece of wood. A chunk of landscape on the go. All-terrain birds in flight. A vessel to carry memories into the big unknown. An armchair (or desktop) image of the rolling sidewalk.