NOTES
note taking method, master mind groups, daydreams, ticket stubs, daily pages, day books, sketch pads, tentative drawings, empty cities
Bull by Pablo Picasso
Complexity means “reduction and removal of redundancy”, as first defined by the philospher John Locke (1632-1704): “Ideas thus made up of several simple ones put together, I call complex; such as beauty, gratitude, a man, an army, the universe.”, and as illustrated in art by Picasso in his famous bull drawing.
–-Jon Otto Fossum, Laboratory for Soft and Complex Matter Studies
via Vruz
Pablo Picasso created ‘Bull’ around the Christmas of 1945. ‘Bull’ is a suite of eleven lithographs that have become a masterclass in how to develop an artwork from the academic to the abstract. In this series of images, all pulled from a single stone, Picasso visually dissects the image of a bull to discover its essential presence through a progressive analysis of its form. Each plate is a successive stage in an investigation to find the absolute ‘spirit’ of the beast.
Trees & Forests on Old Russian Maps
“Examples of map symbols used to show trees and forests on old Russian maps (1700s & 1800s) are documented in Izobrazhenie Lesa Na Kartakh by Liudmila Andreevna Shaposhnikova. The title is roughly translated to “How Forests are Depicted on Maps.” The book was published in Moskva, former USSR, in 1957.”
via Orla Joan
The Notebook of William Blake
N50
“This folio is one of the most closely filled in the notebook. In the centre, we see a naked figure of a man, on the point of stabbing himself with a dagger held in his right hand. In a later emblem in the notebook, Blake suggests that those who take their own lives cannot go to heaven, yet here the man is turning his face towards heaven with a hopeful – and possibly ironic – gaze.”
N99 & N98
“We see workings here of several poems for which the notebook has been rotated to enter fair copies of poems. We see workings here of several poems, including ‘Several Questions Answerd’ in the top left, with lines salvaged from previous drafts in the notebook (see N103). To the right of this poem, ‘Let the Brothels of Paris be opened’ is a strongly felt criticism of the overindulgent French monarchy. The poet’s attack on Marie Antoinette in the final stanza (‘The Queen of France just touchd this Globe And the Pestilence darted from her robe’) distorts Edmund Burke’s romantic description of the French Queen and Court in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790): ‘surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision.'”
Study for Metastaseis, c. 1953.
“Metastaseis was inspired by the combination of an Einsteinian view of time and Xenakis’ memory of the sounds of warfare, and structured on mathematical ideas by Le Corbusier. Music usually consists of a set of sounds ordered in time; music played backwards is hardly recognizable. Messiaen’s similar observations led to his noted uses of non-retrogradable rhythms; Xenakis wished to reconcile the linear perception of music with a relativistic view of time. In warfare, as Xenakis knew it through his musical ear, no individual bullet being fired could be distinguished among the cacophony, but taken as a whole the sound of “gunfire” was clearly identifiable. The particular sequence of shots was unimportant: the individual guns could have fired in a completely different pattern from the way they actually did, but the sound produced would still have been the same. These ideas combined to form the basis of Metastaseis.”
(via)
“An impression—city in peril—dead city—equestrian statue—men in closed room—clattering of hooves heard from outside—marvel disclosed on looking out—doubtful ending”
- Demophon shivered when the sun shone upon him. (Lover of darkness = ignorance.)
- Inhabitants of Zinge, over whom the star Canopus rises every night, are always gay and without sorrow. [x]
- The shores of Attica respond in song to the waves of the Aegean. [x]
- Horror Story
Man dreams of falling—found on floor mangled as tho’ from falling from a vast height. [x]- Narrator walks along unfamiliar country road,—comes to strange region of the unreal.
- In Ld Dunsany’s “Idle Days on the Yann”
The inhabitants of the antient Astahan, on the Yann, do all things according to antient ceremony. Nothing new is found.- “Here we have fetter’d and manacled Time, who wou’d otherwise slay the Gods.” [x] Horror Story
The sculptured hand—or other artificial hand—which strangles its creator. [x]- Hor. Sto.
Man makes appt. with old enemy. Dies—body keeps appt.- Dr. Eben Spencer plot. [x]
- Dream of flying over city. [Celephaïs]
‘Schicksalsbuch’ (Book of Destiny)
The outstanding ‘Geomantie’ parchment manuscript of about one hundred pages is more a combination of astrological/astronomical treatise, religious almanac and prediction calendar. About one half of it is directly copied from a manuscript known as the ‘Schicksalsbuch’ (Book of Destiny) which was produced in the 1490s and is itself an assemblage of various astrological works. The images below of moveable disks (volvelle) are from the ‘Schicksalsbuch’, which is much longer than the ‘Geomantie’ manuscript.
From the unparalleled BiblioOdyssey.
Paul Greer 