Aesthetics of the Invisible World

The 1980s look like the future that we that we can only imagine today.

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The painter does not paint on a virgin canvas.
The writer does not write on a blank page.
The page or the canvas are already covered over with pre-existing, pre-established cliches.

(habits of sight & habits of thought).

The cliches must be scraped away to find a singular vital space of possibility.
For cliche is precisely what prevents the genesis of an image.

(just as opinion & convention prevent the genesis of thought).

Gilles Deleuze

jamreilly

Aesthetic

When Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten was considering the philosophy of aesthetics in the 18th century, he thought of it as the science of sensations. Thus aesthetics is not only about what you see but it is also what you hear, taste, smell and, perhaps most importantly, what you feel.

anormaux

We lose something when we don’t care for our culture. We lose something more when we create culture that isn’t worth caring for. The current popular export of American creatives is made to be disposed of. We are becoming a nation of mankurts - people that cannot recall their native cultural roots and origin - because growing up admiring the beauty of Wal*Mart is an oxymoron.

Print by Max Klinger ~1919

Symmetry in Narrative

Piero di Cosimo’s Misfortunes of Silenus (c 1505/10)

Depictions in narrative order:

The drunken Silenus falling off his horse (center)
Unsuccessfully helping Silenus to his feet by his band of satyrs (half man, half horse) and lustful women (right)
Boys rubbing mud on his forehead (left)

The same narrative relationship can be seen in Perseus Rescuing Andromeda (1513).

The spark of the story, not the climax, is depicted in dramatic fashion as the centerpiece of the visual narrative. Although analogies to time-based media like film are dubious because the viewer is shackled to the movie’s flow of time, a similar structure could be Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton (2007). The climatic centerpiece (the explosion of Michael Clayton’s car) is also the first thing you see in the film and an event you come back to later as the film resets to a point before it.

Paul Rand’s logo for Morningstar.

Aesthetic

Lynn Becker wrote a piece on Tuesday that echoed some of my long-held thoughts on contemporary architecture. One angle: sometimes acts of destruction can break up the monotony. 22 West met that fate earlier in the week due to a massive storm that rolled through Chicago. It blew out two windows in the former Sears (now Willis) Tower. More significantly, it added a little texture to the mind-numbingly ubiquitous glass skyscraper seen above. It’s worth noting that 22 West Washington is the brand-new headquarters of the investment research firm Morningstar, Inc.

This would seem to be something of a fortuitous breath of fresh air - especially for a company as image-conscious as Morningstar. Their founder, Joe Mansueto, has been quoted as saying that their logo is one of their most valuable assets. It is unique, contemporary and thematically decisive. I wish the same could be said about the architecture of the building they now reside in. A lot could be done with the texture and rhythm of this structure - something that I’m sure was overlooked in countless designs and mock-ups. What a great opportunity we have now…

Images taked by Bob Johnson from ARCHITECTURECHICAGO PLUS.

Narrative is transcultural. Specific thought patterns of another culture may be difficult to understand but it is often simple to comprehend their stories.

Narrative might well be considered a solution to a problem of general human concern, namely, the problem of how to translate knowing into telling. — Hayden White