Conversations with John Robinson (original) (raw)
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Symbolism in the sculptures of John Robinson
The aim of this article is to raise questions on the place of art in the investigation of Knowledge: representation and interpretation. To this end, we examine symbolism in the context of the Universe Series of Symbolic Sculptures by John Robinson. We also briefly discuss the place of symbols in an evolutionary context.
An Argument of Images Through a Symbolist Lens
Throughout the thesis I take symbolic communication and visual metaphors as starting points for developing a contemporary picture of diverse Craft practices in a small corner of Scotland. As a result, this thesis is both an ethnography of Craft and a craft object, explicitly made to be a theory-laden object of material culture. Both in its analysis and its subject matter, this thesis aims to question a variety of epistemological regimes found not only in anthropology, but also in the North-East of Scotland. The main argument of this thesis is that in order to understand something about Craft and the experiences of its makers it is important to have an understanding of the ways in which they create that world as meaningful: that is, an understanding of the thirdness (or symbolism) that is an active, generative force in that world. In the following chapters I argue two interwoven points: one, that a stash (collection) is a collection of stash (craft materials) and is also a site of thirdness in which symbolic thought and action are vital. And two: that, as such, stash and the craft world in which it is embedded are well served by an approach to visual anthropology that takes seriously a study of semiotics in which poetics become more than a subject of analysis; poetics are also allowed to develop into a method(ology) of engaging both informants and audience in a meaningful dialogue of knowledge production. By using images to contextualize ethnographic evidence and by making these previous points not only with words, but also through imagery, I aim to convince the reader of the integrity of my ethnographic analyses as well as that theories of visual anthropology are as useful for analysing anthropological subjects as for communicating ourselves.
Symbolic Solids or: The Contract of the Architect
José Aragüez (ed.), The Building (Lars Muller Publishers, 2016)
I would like to discuss three of Michael Hansmeyer's recent experiments in computational architecture (Platonic Solids (2009), Subdivided Columns (2010), Digital Grotesque (together with Benjamin Dillenburger 2013)) in relation to what Peter Eisenman has recently foregrounded, in a conversation on the foundations of digital architecture, as what I suggest to call its " architectonic plot " (to borrow a term from drama theory 1): architecture ought to find ways of coping with such miraculous deeds as " saving a void from the negative by making it positive, " or doubling and dividing volumes (cubes). 2 In this formulation, Eisenman was explaining how in his Biology Center in Frankfurt, Germany (1987) he was trying to rid the architectonics of this project from any figure/ground dialectics. His interest was to " use a computer as a modeling tool capable of drafting predefined forms in endless sequences based on logical statements in code " 3. With regard to this, I want to suggest, Hansmeyer's own experiments provide an inverse approach to the same interest (overcoming poststructuralist figure/ground dialectics): where Eisenman works by sequencing predefined forms (form as logical statement), through considering form as symbolically coated by code (symbolical in the mathematical sense of the word), Hansmeyer explores how we can consider form not as logical statement in its coded coating, as an algebraic well for " poly-tomic elementariness " (poly-tomos, Greek for that which can be divided in many ways) – form made up of symbolically coated atomicity or in-divisibility (a-tomos, Greek for that which cannot be divided). This text will elaborate on what is at stake with this suggestion of an architectonic plot that involves operations with negativity, voidness, formality and elementariness, and why consider it with an interest in dramatic method.
A REPRESENTATIONAL THEORY OF ARTEFACTS AND ARTWORKS
The artefacts produced by artists during their creation of works of art are very various: paintings, writings, musical scores, and so on. I have a general thesis to offer about the relations of artefacts and artworks, but within the confines of this article I shall mainly discuss cases drawn from the art of painting, central specimens of which seem to be autographic in Nelson Goodman's sense, namely such that even the most exact duplication of them does not count as producing the same work of art. 1 My view will be that an artwork (such as a painting) and its associated artefact are not identical, and nor is the artefact in any sense part of the painting in question, 2 but that nevertheless it is still possible to maintain the view that paintings are autographic (which view I shall call l the autographic thesis). I shall proceed initially through presentation of some counterexamples to common assumptions as to the relations of artefacts and artworks, and then present an alternative 'representational' theory of their relations. My reason for concentrating on an autographic art-form in this article is because such art-forms potentially present the hardest cases for my 'representational' theory to handle; however, I shall also provide some discussion of non-autographic arts.
Meaning from All Directions: Five Propositions Toward Queering the Figure in the Round
2018
Research question How may queerness be proposed in sculptural language through the format of the figure-in-theround in the absence of bodily figuration? This practice-led artistic research project responds to the question of how queerness can be brought to form sculpturally without using bodily figuration or other tropes historically associated with the category of Queer Art. The project looks to an abstracted, below-surface, skeletal, material queer as a propositional alternative to an explicitly legible, annunciatory queer. These conditions define a critical position that rejects figural, didactic and overtly legible representations of queer identity as being simultaneously lacking, constrictive and reductive. Queer abstraction, a term coined by Judith Jack Halberstam, 1 is proposed instead as an alternative mode due to its radical openness and subversive relation to fixed signifiers of identity. As an anchoring node around which to test this queerly abstract methodology, the sculptural archetype of the figure-in-the-round is isolated as the arena for exploration. Having a continuous history from antiquity to the present renders the figure-in-the-round an ideal framework for the critical investigation of bodily representation and the politics of such figuration, in both historical and contemporary sculptural practices. Bodily representation is appraised as socially powerful in the spatial relations it produces. This research explores which bodies, today and throughout history, have been represented as figures-in-the-round, asking in what manner and in the production of which socio-spatial relations are these representations directed. Sculpture, as producer and product of these relations, is discussed in dialogue with Henri Lefebvre's 2 writing on the production of social spaces and Jacques Ranciere's writing on the politics of aesthetics. Karen Barad's problematisation of the concepts of touch and proximity is also explored as a
Convenors: Claire Jones, University of Birmingham and Imogen Hart, University of California, Berkeley. The history of sculpture has largely been written with an emphasis on free-standing, monumental, figurative, single-authored works created by named sculptors, primarily in bronze, marble and plaster. Decorative arts scholarship has been predominantly concerned with works created by named manufacturers, and with the impact of industrialisation on craft and related issues around mass production, taste, labour and commerce. Yet cross-fertilisations between sculpture and the decorative have played a vital role in the formal practices and aesthetics of art production, bringing sculptors into contact with diverse makers, materials, techniques, forms, colours, ornament, scales, styles, patrons, audiences and subject matter, to produce composite, multi-material, quasi-functional and multi-authored objects. This session will explore the decorative as a historically fertile, parallel and contested field of sculptural production. We invite proposals that address affinities between sculpture and the decorative in any culture or period from the Middle Ages to the present day, and which explore the cross-disciplinary connections between the institutional, biographical, conceptual, visual, material and professional histories of the two fields. Topics might include artistic autonomy and creativity; the fragment and the composite work; figuration and relief; the hierarchy of the arts; copyright and authorship; originality and reproduction; and the languages and histories of making and materials. We also welcome papers that examine sculpture and the decorative in relation to the racialization, nationalisation and gendering of the practices of art, craft and manufacturing. Click here to download a .pdf of this session's paper abstracts Martina Droth (Yale Center for British Art) Common Grounds of Making: Modelling for sculpture and decorative art in 19th-century Britain Amy F Ogata (University of Southern California) Aluminium Orfèvrerie and Second Empire France Margit Thøfner (University of East Anglia) Resonant Tendrils and Furtive Grimaces: The role of ornament in Abel Schrøder’s altarpiece for the church of Skt Morten, Næstved Emmelyn Butterfield-Rosen (Metropolitan Museum of Art) Beethoven’s Farewell: Klinger’s Beethoven-Denkmal ’in the claws of the Secession’ Conor Lucey (Trinity College Dublin) 18th-Century Property Speculation and the Sculptural Interior Anna Ferrari (Victoria and Albert Museum) Beyond the Studio in Interwar Paris: Henri Laurens with Robert Mallet-Stevens, Le Corbusier and Jean-Michel Frank Nina Lübbren (Anglia Ruskin University) Renée Sintenis, Milly Steger and German Sculpture, 1910–33 Angela Hesson (University of Melbourne/National Gallery of Victoria) Sirens on the Sideboard: Fantasy and function in Art Nouveau
Symbolizing Existence – Introduction to the book (Metalithikum III)
in: Vera Bühlmann, Ludger Hovestadt (eds.): Symbolizing Existence - Metalithikum III (Birkhäuser, Vienna 2016)
on the book series 6 introduction -symbolizing existence 14 i a scheme for a fantastic genealogy of the articulable 28 ludger hovestadt i a love affair 32 -ii speech exercises in the third infinity 36 -iii a genealogy of learning to speak 40 -iv understanding one another 41 -v the algebraic stage schema 44 -vi the whole point, o1 > o2 49 -vii the moving point, i1 > i2 50 -viii the mensurated point, s1 > s2 51 -ix the rational point, o2 > o3 53 -x the moving point, i2 > i3 55 -xi the mensurated point s2 < s3 58 -xii the complex point o3 > o4 65
SUBLIME SYMMETRY: MATHEMATICS AND ART
A. V. Borovik, Sublime Symmetry: Mathematics and Art, The De Morgan Gazette, 8 no. 1 (2016) 1-8. ISSN 2053-1451. bit.ly/1UT1o4s This paper is a text of my talk at the opening of the Exhibition Sublime Symmetry: The Mathematics behind De Morgans Ceramic Designs in the delighful Towneley Hall, Burnley, on 5 March 2016. The Exhibition is the first one in Sublime Symmetry Tour organised by The De Morgan Foundation.