Hello. A bit about this “Gaugain sine graphic:” Boy I dropped the ball on this one, sorry. And perhaps got a little ahead of myself: I had meant to introduce something and took the HI (graphic) road. Any way. This schematic represents my method of "drawing (myself) a picture" of what I might be trying to tackle textually. It’s a HELP. The picture however is not meant to express as if it were an equation an exact formula but rather potential behavioral tendencies and conceptual pathways for content to follow. Maybe that’s still a little vague. Potential is a key word here, though.

I have already implicated Gaugain in the above as our vessel toward a definition of virtue as it might appear in an examination of “the good” and “happiness.” ( It would only be fair to acknowledge that I required such notation in order to fathom my reading; but it also must be said that I resist symbolic logic merely because I prefer pictures for illuminating variables. The scopes through each axis are not meant to mark any exact quality or quantity.)

To begin, then, above can signify or impose a tangent or goal toward which a protagonist or meaning might advance. The core concept for example: does our subject fail himself at the outset due to deception or lack of courage? Or does he fear nothing including full disclosure of his intentions! Credibility would require the latter to be the case. One might expect our protagonist then to advance to the next axis having proven the virtues of fortitude and prudence (for this practice only). He has “made his mark” as it were and he might say he truly has faith in himself---but he must continue to show some amount of facility in the given practice if he is to remain in this position of credibility. His competence therefore is required to advance to the next axis.

Gaugain, we know abandoned his family to pursue his painting. Surely, he disclosed this intention to his wife!? And while this did not exhibit courage as a father or husband, it appears it did in terms of acknowledging his compulsion to do something potentially dangerous for himself and given the ultimate out come in the last axis of authorization. He is exonerated, so to speak, for his personal treachery. But we are getting ahead again.

Let me stop here to allow for response---I must also attend to a personal interruption, AGAIN!

the "shape of things"...

A good many find it difficult to distinguish between "illustrator" and "artist." I find myself referring to Norman Rockwell for example as an illustrator. I think it’s partly semantics here getting in the way---maybe. An illustrator might be referred to as a subset of "artist" couldn’t it? Just not "Fine-" Artist. The "fine-" being another subset. Our attitude or bias too muddles things up.

Is a religious icon art? ...or artifact? And what can we possibly know about the attitude of the maker of such a religious object? Perhaps, like Rockwell, they remained satisfied with the specific task as being the fullness of their intention---representing their religious belief as Rockwell represented an "American icon, " the periodical, the "Saturday Evening Post." Seems to me Rockwell preferred this title, illustrator---

So, if I am certain, then, that any given protest poster or company add or logo is not fine art, and that the visuals may fall under the category of graphic arts; but that I am extremely reluctant to acknowledge they fall under the general title of art, what then? I am forced to concede there is no "art" at all to be found in the graphic arts. The name is just as misleading as what its proponents aspire to create---the name is the mask of the hegemony, you might say, of the marketing community; while, a logo is an obfuscation of the real intent, special influence and/or profit.

So, I would agree: the "graphic artist" would be more correctly labeled as a propagandist!

Another point to be resolved though is that of the many acknowledged "fine artists" many were defined in their time or by a presumed authoritative "ordinary" majority as either "decadent" or "socialist" and therefore not really "art." They have of course been affirmed but this suggests there are occasions, a provision, that artists are not without special intent themselves, whether for fame, money, religious beliefs, or societal/political concerns.

Peter Max. Was he an artist? Or an illustrator. He appears to have linked himself with a cultural phenomenon, the Sixties, not any specific product (except maybe the Beattles "Yellow Submarine, " etc. His work, however, is hard to separate from the form... the Poster, which has potential inferences of propagandist or commercial intent. The poster, after all, is how copyright owners of even "artwork" manage to continue to PROFIT from "art."

Where am I going with this?

Quite some time ago, years that is, I decided to divorce myself entirely as an artist from the economic flaw in our relationship with the arts. It is my own personal curse on myself I suppose. This might explain my presence to some extent on myspace---in-spite of the banners, etc. Gladly, though, Ihave foundsomething Ihadn’texpected---dialogue! And here is where I confess my liking artists that perform live in public (yes, incl. Reverend Bill) or even engage an audience in an auditorium performance---like Joseph Beuys.

the "fabric of life"...

"Seamless," "warp and woof," "web of deceit," "zip it!"

And then there’s a more three-dimensional industry for my graphic take on life and being: how’s "a viscous, seeping ooze" or maybe "tooth-defying taffy."! heh, heh..... more consistent with lava, floods, drooling, bleeding... leaking precious fuel onto the tide flats, or dumping liquid waste on the back roads... huh? They wouldn’t do that would they?! What’s in that black stuff they pave roads with nowadays anyway?!

Objective truth...?

It occurred to me this morning that visual thinking/dialogue was what was needed when trying to complete an argument given the challenge of getting through the little-picture obstructions in the mind of the reader; that too often it is the minutia that de-rail, disallow the reader/writer easy access (much less profound revelation) to the big picture of what we mean to convey. A visual synthesis displays more at once perhaps the elements, allowing the reader to put it back together again themselves if this is at all possible given the success or failure of the argument.

The graphic figures accompanying a text in these circumstances then can even take on the primary role of meaning-conveyance. A textual work perhaps concluded in such a way might better allow for alternate conclusions for the reader and therefore the so-called published work becomes a more collaborative and decisively inter-textual process being that it looks to an open future of thinkers rather than closing the door with a simple re-cap and finalization of past intent.

The text itself in this way at times might be discarded. Consider for example Wittgenstein’s ladder image at the end of his Tractatus. Or perhaps the foreboding image of the apple in Mishima’s Sun and Steel. In each case “fact” is an objective. In the former we manage to see that what we were after was in ”fact” unutterable. In the latter the objective was quite unknowable for having had to destroy it in the process of exploration. These truths if we might call them that, are better understood for the very visual images that were provided us. While the certainty of the visuals are difficult to deny --- it might be said that the text is open to us visually, offering us the opportunity to put Humpty-dumpty back together again.

Is "that" a fact?!

Fact(s) has a compound nature which cannot be expressed (re-played) as each (if we can indeed refer to them as “each” or “it” as a group or singularity) progresses within a multidimensional manifold of facts- and are only in immediate appearance propelled-by-their-own continuum. By my (spiral-) reasoning Fact is such an entangled reticulation outward and inward, somewhat like the meristems of the arbiform that we might visualize stretching into infinitesimal pasts and future events. Why, therefore, do I attempt to isolate "it", consider "it" separate and unto itself, calling it “A” Fact. The word “A” however does not suffice.

The natural elements, too, then are only stable or unstable because ”we” have expectations determined by the speed at which we move in relation to all surrounding facts. We are fixed this way between objects and events, and further are biased toward the object which we can define as unchanging and thus taint what we call elements by dividing them into categories of stable or reactive. Our own perspective however may itself be untrustworthy. Perhaps the so-called unstable elements are bound to a greater eventuality to which we are forbidden cognitive access by our very own slowness as it were. And the elements as facts regardless our characterization of them are always co-mingling and regardless our insistence they stay put by our “standards” they are all compatible in every sense since together they make up the world in its entirety. The idea of an element by itself is somewhat ludicrous, then; and, too, that any past “species” of living “thing” (presumed to be a once visably squirming fact) trapped within any supposed time period by stratification, “it” can not be isolated from the fact of its current state. Words, that is, do not isolate a fact. And therefore we have but come full circle only to find ourselves standing upon quick(er) sand.

The so-called natural world has such an spiral logic in its appearance if we are open to it. Sadly we are biased against this concept. Meaning must not make us dizzy. That is, we are not fond of having to turn around, look here and there at length, least of all crane our necks- but would rather toss up our hands in defeat if denied the path ahead. Should the way to understanding reverse itself or kick us in the behind we are suddenly in denial or are offended by what we have yet to grasp the meaning of: what in fact is going on?! What grand parenthetical statement is chthonic enough or shall suffice for us now on the surface of truth to replace the word “A”? Or, will we ever be satisfied with just being shown a simple caption-less picture?

on Picture Theory of language...

Wittgenstein (from of course the Tractatus): “… thereof one must be silent”

I did not take that as an ultimatum, “shut up.” Rather I read it as a challenge. I read it as “communicate your metaphysics, specifically your exploration of ’ethics,’ in another way.” I’m visually inclined, so of course I was going to hear it in that way.

Picture theory…

If you intend to defend a picture theory of language you must attempt to construct such a language as if this attempt indeed were its origin, not that such a language already exists. But it must be constructed with a numinous (“the world is independent of my will”L.W.) attitude toward the future prospect of it, such as from the beginning as human consciousness would have perhaps have feared first, encountering the echo, and embraced much later (“the world must thereby become quite another" L. W.), the idea of communicating only now without utterance - not just as a child learns gestures from its parents. It may therefore have some correspondences to sign language, but I suspect more to be discovered from universal shapes of events and objects as they occur in all of the observable, studied or discounted, world. But let us assume that our bodies of knowledge today are out of sync as it were, missing the functional links between these disciplines. We must ask is there a universal shape that dissects, and illuminates, from all of these discussions at once and in the same manner. Can we shed our limited specialized views long enough to see whether this is what for some disguises picture theory as personal and absurd, or metaphysics through logic as a dead end?

And so let us ponder what might be the first instance of a self’s recurrent “thou shalt____ because ____”? The suck of air? A sweetness passed from an approaching plane of softness to the greater echo of the sucking. And the anticipation of a favorable response to this more pronounced though reversed sucking (sound). I shall suck harder and get more pleasure… And the stroking… and more of the stroking… The origins of communication are embedded in the experiences of surfaces coming together – in this way closeness validates the utterance, the “I can hear my ‘self’ upon your breast.” And here in this the first image of lingual import must reside: the matrix of penetrating a supple transecting plane. Perhaps here too can be found the paradigms of many origins. The penetration of light waves through the surface of a body of terrestrial liquid- thus perhaps we inherited the helix as our first ladder (where upon to stand and now have the arrogance to have patented it…). Sound itself, at least human utterance, depends upon a penetration through a supple plane, the vocal cords. I could go on, I suppose. But here I will stop… for a human measure of time, for here I think I have shown in brief that the above encounter represents an ideal, a primary picture of conjunction of "fact" and "proposition" into a kind of continuum that can easily cease if the draw were not kept at a rate consistently corresponding to increased satisfaction.