I've been reading Either/Or, dismayed after learning that my copy is vol. 1, only containing "Either", without "Or"; bruh just call title it either smh. I'm tryna get out of the Either fml.
Anyway, I've started the "Immediate Stage of the Erotic" essay and it's super super interesting. He's talking a lot about different mediums of art, the idea behind them, abstract -- concrete, and how ideas interact with chosen mediums. He positions the quality of great works in a dialectic where abstract works reach their full potentiality within their given medium because they articulate a particular-- making them complete; conversely, works formed around ideas with concrete historical groundings can be repeated, but because of this they're necessarily incomplete. Mediums are also either abstract or concrete, the ultimate concrete medium being language. Interestingly, the abstraction or concreteness of ideas and mediums are often mixed, i.e. an abstract idea communicated through writing, or a concrete idea represented in paint. Yet, A (the author writing Either) argues that the best art is realized through the pairing of equivalents (i.e. concrete ideas should be expressed through concrete mediums, vice versa).
This speculation is labeled the "insignificant introduction". In A's words, my enjoyment of this section indicates that I am a "lover", the type who loves useless things (lol)
This chapter was especially interesting to me because I'm an artist and often struggle with my choice of medium and technical ability in contrast with my subject matter. I've tried different mediums but primarily use soft pastels. Initially this medium paired well with the concept of life-energy within the human body (my past obsession), but as my subject matter has changed to something even more abstract I find that the ephemeral ultra-abstract blur of the pastel is ill-suited for the sharper edges of what I'm trying to say.
Very recently I started working on visuals inspired by Clarice Lispector's "the Passion According to G.H". This was my intro to Lispector, and since then she's quickly become my favourite author.
This line that my art is referencing:
"My world today is raw, it is a world of great vital difficulty. Because, more than a star, today I want the thick and black root of the stars, I want the source that always seems dirty, and is dirty, and that is always incomprehensible."
The mention of a "thick black root of a star" touches something in me, and I've been experimenting with black pastel (in place of charcoal) to try and manifest some of that into image
-- But I find that what I've done doesn't quite GET it, yk? It's partially because of my sub-par tools and lack of experience with depth and shadow, but reading Kierkegaard's essay makes me think more about the difficulty of transmuting concepts between mediums. Lispector masterfully harnessed writing to concretely articulate some of the most profound existential and phenomenological insights I've ever come across. My attempt to bring those same ideas back to abstract form seems to actually do a disservice to her unbelievable achievement of working them into something concrete.
She's really incredible, like really fucking amazing.
and I need a new medium lol.
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