THE INTIMACY OF READING

ralph stanley and the clinch mountain boys

oil on canvas by tj worthington

A facebook friend posted today his thoughts and experience on a lifetime of reading, looking at the books, in particular, that were important to him, that stay with him. Like I look at a bookshelf and my eye falls on One Man's Bible, by Gao Xingjian, a Chinese dissident living in Paris. I feel the same glow in my heart as when I gaze at the window and see a squirrel at the birdfeeder, tail curled behind its head, nibbling a seed. The spine of the book reminds me of the content, as powerful for me in the time of reading it as Henry Miller's Colossus of Marousi in the time of reading it. James Lord's biography of Italian/Swiss/French sculptor, Giacometti, was important, because I came to know him, admire his mind, his vision, how simply he lived. At the end, Giacometti died and was buried. I closed the book, sat in the chair and cried for half an hour. It was the same as hearing of the death of one of my closest friends. I see a piece by Giacometti today and feel his presence in it. The only tool he used was his pocket knife, which inspired use of minimal tools in my own art making. I use a drill, a saw, a brush, and a palette knife, wood glue. 

philippe petit

I see the title, Man On Wire, and remember Philippe Petit, who walked the wire between WTC towers. I have three newspaper articles I've kept because they said something powerful to me. One was an article from the Village Voice when Andy Warhol was shot. Another, Philippe Petit's amazing event walking the wire. The third, an article from a newspaper about Johnny Weissmuller, a famous Tarzan from the Fifties, kept alive a vegetable in an Acapulco condo on the beach, tubes and round the clock nurses. Couldn't talk from stroke after stroke after stroke, unable to die because heart was so healthy from a lifetime of rigorous exercise. All he could do was give out a Tarzan yell from time to time and run shivers through the whole condo. I think the Tarzan story told me exercise aint what it's cracked up to be. Why was Petit's event so meaningful for me? He walked a wire between two buildings that sway, up high in the wind above the city of canyons. I know that I could not even stand on the roof of a skyscraper, could not step out of the elevator or stair well door. I sure as hell could not stand at the edge and look down at the street two tenths of a mile below. I don't know all there is to know about self, not even close, but I do know that. Him crawling over the edge and just stepping onto the wire rates my total respect. I'd rather read about him than Henry Kissinger. 

johnny weissmuller

The Lance and the Shield, by Robert M Utley, a biography of Sitting Bull, hit me as deeply as the Giacometti biography. By the end, I knew Sitting Bull, the man himself, who he was. I felt something I had never before felt from a biography, that I knew this man, knew him well. His values were mine. He seemed as familiar as reading a memoir by someone I already knew well. Like Wendy Salinger's, Listen, a beautifully written memoir of living through sexual child abuse by daddy, illustrated for me why my friend Wendy was wired tight as a banjo string. Sitting Bull, I felt I knew as well as I knew Wendy. I spoke with a woman friend about it who was somewhat psychic. She told me to ask him. I said I don't know how. She said, Yes you do, just do it. Later, at home, I went into a kind of meditation, settled down, and appealed to Sitting Bull in spirit. He appeared. We were in his tipi, either side of a small fire in the center. We smoked the pipe. I was in awe, hesitant to speak. I was thinking this is about more than a silly question. Eventually, I asked him why he is so familiar to me, why I know him so well. He said, "I am your real father." We spoke a little bit more, though mostly sat in silence. I visited him a few more times, no more questions and answers, only silence. I painted a portrait of him that is on the wall maybe four feet from where I sit. My version looks more like Gregory Peck in brown face. 

The Lance and the Shield was reprinted years later with new title and some places rewritten, Sitting Bull. I read it. And found later, a book of stories from the life of Sitting Bull that were passed down through the family, by his great-grandson, Ernie LaPointe. They're among the book treasures in the house. Another treasure in the house is Ralph Stanley's memoir, Man Of Constant Sorrow, written for him by Eddie Dean, who wrote it in Stanley's own words, as if Stanley, himself, wrote it. I have to credit Dean, because it is so beautifully written. I carried the copy to a show at Fairview and asked Ralph to sign it. I couldn't speak. I knew if I spoke a word I'd break out in tears that wouldn't stop. I asked him to sign it by opening the book and putting it before him. He got it. He wrote his signature in it, and that was all I wanted. I'm not one to ask writers to sign books, but this was necessary. I painted a portrait of him and his band playing at Fairview Ruritan, drove it to Clintwood, Virginia, and gave it to the Ralph Stanley museum in appreciation for his music. Asked if I'd like to meet him, I declined. I said I'd turn to jello. They said, he's just a man. I said, I know. He's also Ralph Stanley. A biography of the Carter Family, Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone, opened their music to me, one of the great gifts of my life. A few days ago I started Philip Glass's memoir, Words Without Music. I can see already it's going to be one of those books that is a treasure for how deeply it speaks to me. 

*

SAYING GOODBYE

giacometti

A few hours ago it came to me for the first time, of all my friends who have died, I've not had a conversation with any them at the end of their lives about glad-to-know-ya, or anything. It has stayed in my mind to the point I've almost come to tears a few times thinking about missed opportunities. At the same time, I can remember thinking about it, but feeling it presumptuous, or seeming so. I was with friend Jr Maxwell in his dying months. Even toward the end giving him tootsie-pop sponges on a stick soaked in water several times a day to keep his mouth wet and provide a bit of water. The times I thought about saying something like, I've held you the highest of anyone I've ever known, rationally more than emotionally, it felt presumptuous. It was saying, You're gonna die. I did not feel like he needed to be reminded. He knew it better than I did. He went with every day like this is what we're doing today. He had his own thoughts on his demise and needed no more. He didn't like anybody invading his mind. I never did with him like Hospice recommends, talk about death and God and Jesus, like nobody gets it about dying. The man was 87 years old. None of however many days he lived was spent in front of a television. He was baptized when he was 11. Grew up in Liberty church in Whitehead. We'd already talked about his belief. He said once he believed the Ten Commandments covered it all. Another time he said he prayed every day. Another time he said he prayed every day to be lifted out of this lifetime. 

giacometti

He didn't need a conversation about him dying. I went with the attitude that my behavior tells my meaning more clearly than talking. I felt like he spoke his version of the deathbed chat the day he said to me a few weeks before his mind went away, "We're more than friends. We're more like brothers." I felt his meaning. There was something to it. In one way of looking at it, close to his way at the time, all of his friends had betrayed him in one way or another in his last years. A niece shouted in his face one day, like louder is better, "Yer loosin yer MIND, Uncle Junior!" There wasn't much he could say. I said, "He doesn't need reminding." She was the same as the one who asked me on the day he died, "Where did Uncle Junior hide his money?" She'd already stolen so much from him, hidden money was all that was left of what she wanted. She wasn't the only one who believed he had hidden money. He had no money at all, lived as cheaply as I do. Every time she was in the house and he wasn't there, she'd find his liquor and pour it out. She thought she was stopping him from drinking, when she was only costing him a lot of money he didn't have much of. She, who lectured him about drinking as if from on high, was a pain-pill and "oxy-codeine" junkie. The ones who wanted money they believed he had hidden were suspecting me of being there to take advantage of him and get his money. They didn't notice their obvious motives were transparent. 

giacometti

Two half-great-nieces were the worst. Neither one of them knew him at all. I called them the Absentee Police. They dropped in for three minutes every month to inspect the house. One day they called Social Services and said there was shit in the bed. SS came to inspect. No shit in the bed. He knew they were there by, "Hello Uncle Junior," and, "Goodbye Uncle Junior." I'd see them drive up the driveway, go to my reading seat and pick up the book I was reading. They came in with such arrogant attitudes I learned to ignore them. They'd go all over the place inspecting while I sat and read. Going out the door, it was, "Don't work too hard TJ!" And I'd reply, "Don't worry about it." Calling them the Absentee Police was my PC way of calling them bitches. I saw one of them around five years later and was still so enraged I couldn't speak. I looked at the ground to say leave me alone, I don't have to put up with you anymore, and will not. Didn't have to put up with them then, though assessed it easier to let it go by than get more bitch-games going. I often remember what an aunt told me years ago, If you don't want it started, don't start it. In the time his mind was fading, a social worker said he seemed down that day. I told her he'd learned too many times who of his friends are not his friends. She looked at him for his assessment of what I'd said. He affirmed it with a nod. Then she turned sad. Every one of them had abandoned him or betrayed him. And then there were the surprises, the ones who showed they really cared about him, ones he had not known cared so much. 

giacometti

Toward the end, these were the ones I called to say if you want to see him one more time, come on today. One of the most moving moments for me was when I called his cousin, Richard Joines, the day before Jr's spirit left the body and told him today is your last chance to see Jr. He was there right away. He lived just over the hill, but two miles by road. They'd made music together, worked bulldozers on big projects together, known each other all the way along. That day, Jr was lying on the side of his bed farthest from the door, where he never slept. Jr was lying there, mind completely gone, body too weak to sit up, like a newborn baby aware of light and dark and not much else. Richard walked around the bed and Jr watched, puzzled by who this could be. He recognized him when Richard approached. Jr's arms went straight up toward Richard and I saw with my eyes two beams of light go from Jr's eyes to Richard's when Jr said, "Richard." The beams were like from a pocket flashlight. I left the room saying to self, this is for them, not me. Richard was moved deeply and thanked me from his heart later for calling. When Jr still had his mind and I had the radio show, I'd play his music from time to time and ask everyone who remembered him to give him a call or drop by. Those weekends he had phone calls all day and sometimes somebody from the past would drop in. Though I never spoke with him about how much I appreciated who he was/is, I was aware at the time of letting my behavior tell it. I asked people in the grocery store who knew him to call or stop by. Every call and visit gave a little light to every boring day waiting to die. He understood better than I did that dying is what we do.       

giacometti himself

*

FINDING LEO TOLSTOY

 

henry miller

 

Driving home from seeing the race Sunday, the history of my life as an employee came forward and I followed a thread that runs through all the work life that started a long time before I started working for pay. It started in childhood seeing daddy laid off during Eisenhower recessions, and during union strikes. He worked for GM in Kansas City as a "ding man," he smoothed the bumps on car bodies in the assembly line. Every recession, every strike he found whatever work he could, driving a milk truck, this and that, awful jobs that paid little and frustrated him along with everybody in the house. The guy he worked for driving the milk truck loaned him money to buy a used 51 Oldsmobile, a beautiful car, yellow and white, and repoed it when daddy couldn't keep up with the payments. That really was a frustration. Next was a big Nash tank that had a similar "modernistic" body style. It was parked in the street in front of the house one night during a storm, an electric wire fell onto the car and toasted it. I swore to myself for the rest of my life that I will never work for a big corporation. I set as my life purpose to only work for individuals or very small businesses. This meant a lifetime of minimum wage inspiring me to determine that I will always live on very little. I must learn frugality. It's not that frugal is in my nature, so I taught self over a long period of years. A guideline I carry in my head from artist Marcel Duchamp, "It's not what you earn ; it's what you spend." I've learned along the way that desires are expensive, wanting is expensive. I've trimmed my desire for a new black Ferrari down to wanting what I have, a 93 Buick Century that runs perfectly with a classic motor that doesn't even burn oil 21 years later. Things go wrong, I take it to the mechanic over something rusted away almost regularly. That's ok. It's better than payments. It helps keep a man working for a living in his own business at home where he wants to live, and each repair improves the car. Win-win. I drive on the interstate and see thousands of new cars with the unconscious thought: everybody has a  new car but me, weep weep. Next thought: everybody is making payments but me, tee hee.

 

alberto giacometti

 

Even though the Kansas Fundamentalist church I lived in throughout childhood filled the child's mind with so much contradiction and general obvious falsehood called dogma, I did get a spiritual education. It took fifteen years to reason it all out of my head. I had to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It took fifteen years to find the baby. I've spent my life reasoning away the nonsense. What I found fifteen years later was I had actually exempted the words of Jesus from everything else I'd thrown out, because they bore out. As was said of him in his day, he spoke with authority. He knew what he was saying. It wasn't just that he was smart; he was way beyond smart, in another league. I didn't know I was testing what he'd said, holding it up to the light of experience, but the whole process ran its course and left me with the words of Jesus. I don't' recall a time I did not question in child's mind why the preacher was always talking about Jesus and love, but nobody in the church liked anybody else in the church. And they sure didn't like anybody outside the church. I asked somebody once about love your neighbor and was told it has a spiritual meaning that doesn't apply to this earth. I thought: What? And left it there. All the kid's real questions were passed off with equally vacant knee-jerk nothingisms to the point I quit asking adults anything that mattered. The people in the church didn't get it. The people outside the church didn't get it. Teachers didn't get it. Parents of friends didn't get it. Parents didn't get it. If we're bowing down to Jesus to pray, and avoid each other, and control each other, what's the use of going to church or bowing down to Jesus if you aren't going to get your heads and hearts out of the Old Testament? The moment I left parents' house I ran as fast as Usain Bolt from church mind. It was slow in receding. I find that in the subconscious I carry a moral code for my life: always do work that benefits humanity, not takes away. I saw GM and the other mass corporations taking from us, depleting us, spoiling our planet of its minerals and gold so a few can live in uber-luxury and the many can work for the very least allowable by law, and that struggled for by labor unions. 

 

alberto giacometti

 

A friend told me about a job opening at a shoe store. He got the name of the store wrong, but I didn't know it. I went where he told me and they, too, had an opening. I felt like shoes are a necessary item for us in civilization. Selling shoes gives rather than takes away. I wanted to experience face-to-face with strangers, people I'd never seen before all day every day. I was the shyest kid in school all the way along. I was shy of everything and everybody. I wanted to learn to speak freely with people I did not know as with people I knew. It made a difference; I look back in gratitude to the man who gave me the job in good faith that a kid just out of high school could do the job. It was a great learning at the beginning of my life. From there on, I could enter the world "out there," anywhere, a passport. The high school graduate was in a state of confusion that could have broke-out of a straightjacket like the Hulk. All kinds of shit that happens to the ignorant jumped on me like fleas on a stray dog. I jumped in a bucket of shit way up over the top of my head and did like the frog dropped into boiling water, got outta that shit right now. Thank you, God, for the US Navy. It rescued the clueless kid of my tailspin life for two years. I hated it for that. But, it took me out of my life at a time an escape hatch was necessary. I went into it knowing I needed an education. The reason I wasn't able to get going with advanced education was I could not read with comprehension. I used every minute of free time reading, remembered the titles of the books taught in Senior English, a class I didn't dare take. It involved a lot of reading I couldn't handle. The day before leaving for the airport to go away for two years, a few years after high school, a kid, a senior in high school, a friend of somebody I knew, handed me a copy of Albert Camus' The Stranger to read on the plane. By this time in the life I can see that kid as an angel unawares. One of many I suddenly see, now that I've noticed the pattern. I don't know his name, couldn't pick him out in a lineup.

 

alberto giacometti

 

The Navy was good practice in doing what I did not want to do. Going by my anti-authoritarian interpretation, it was not to the good of humanity. It was to the worst. I had a hard time committing to a role in a death machine. Couldn't do it; never advanced, never took it seriously, only wanted to read. Every port we stopped, up and down the East Coast and the southern Europe, northern side of the Mediterranean, the others looked for bars, I looked for bookstores. The very last thing in the world I wanted was to be carried back onto the ship. I wanted peace, not mayhem. Found Henry Miller's Colossus of Maroussi in Athens, Greece, 1963, so glad now I wrote the place and date in it. Colossus, like The Stranger, was one of the great books of my life, great in that they spoke to my soul like Ralph Stanley's music. Like Camus, Miller woke me up a step further. I'd read a fair amount in those two years, mostly French Existentialists, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone deBeauvoir, Camus, French underground resistance fiction and plays I felt at home in, resistance the key word. Even crawled my way through Heidegger, even getting some of it, a spot here and there, but followed it. His appearance was toward the end, a kind of graduation test given self upon entering the college phase of  my new life making my own decisions. Again, an angel unawares had confidence I could work in his bookstore. The years in the bookstore, side-by-side, interwoven with the years in school educated a major dummkopf to satisfaction of what I wanted from college, a further understanding of how to get along in this world. Every summer I dove into a stack of books. In the summer I read way beyond what we were reading in school. Like Great Gatsby didn't impress me at all, still doesn't. Even movies of it don't. It was good writing. There is a lot of good writing. A whole lot that I Iike better, like Patrick White, Tolstoy and a great long list. I read War and Peace while school was going on. Couldn't stop. He held me like Stephen King holds his readers. Once I found Tolstoy, this was what I was looking for. Have read several biographies, one by a daughter, one by a son. In this house I can actually put my hands on two volumes of his letters. Henri Troyat's biography brought Leo to life. Why am I not reading Tolstoy now? I'm reading Henry Miller now. Like when reading Tolstoy or Patrick White, Naguib Mahfouz, I don't want to read anything else until I feel like a change. These four are people who illustrate an interpretation of great minds. They were benefits to humanity in their time, and in all time, like Sophocles and Harold Pinter. Nelson Mandela comes to mind.

                                                                                  and



alberto giacometti

 

 

*

 

 

   

ART: SERIOUS NOT SERIOUS

eva hesse

What about Dada? What about Surrealism? What about Abstract Expressionism? What about Pop, Minimalism, Op, Conceptualism, Post Modern? Talking with a guy I've known several years, his whole family, about an art project I'm venturing into involving welding, something I'll be learning as I go. I've wanted to know how to weld all my adult life and never got it done. Now, here it is offering itself to me. Hooray. I'm looking at sculptures made of varieties of steel scraps, wheel rims, motorcycle skeletons. With welder friend Ross, we will make things and put them out by the road for sale. He has all this junk metal that is too light weight to get any money for as scrap metal. Let's have a good time and make some crazy things. Sell them. Friend today said he took a lot of art and philosophy of art---he can't take art that lightly. He has to be serious about art. So he doesn't make any art. I mentioned making some abstractions with the parts. His response was that abstraction was what was happening in the Fifties and has no more relevance since then. I thought: Huh? What? I didn't want to go there, because I believe he has his reasons for his own way of seeing. I've spent my life looking for making art without making art.

cy twombly

The list of questions above were the unspoken questions that flashed through my mind when he said he was too serious about art to be so frivolous with it. I wondered. Twentieth Century art has a serious / not serious divide. The ideal to be serious and not serious to where they cancel each other. Eva Hesse. I talked about inability to do something spontaneous without regard for Art, the kind that is funded by corporations for skyscraper office decorations. I don't want what I do on corporate walls. I used to know somebody who bought for corporate offices in Charlotte and I thought that the best job a man could have. He'd fund a European vacation going around to different cities and galleries and artists studios buying for the Bank. On the other hand, the hand I live my life by, I find it repulsive the major corporations cannot pay workers a living wage, but pay for art in office spaces with millions in their budget, where everybody who works there would prefer Remington prints in ornate frames. I was in a show in Greensboro some years ago and saw a corporate buyer going around looking at things with somebody associated with the show and thought: great job. I didn't want to meet him or suck up to him or anything. Didn't even want him looking at my things. It was at this show I learned that is not the world I want to do my art for. I'd rather sell it at a roadside stall. I'm not breaking new avant-garde territory. Nothing close to it. Just a Joe having fun playing art.

ellsworth kelly

Getting momentum started in the morning toward making some stand up sculptures like John Chamberlain and Tony Smith, though not like either one. We want to make things like swans and other animals and bugs with parts. I want to explore abstraction in what I'll call a Wipe Out series. The whole idea behind it is redneck art, something to put in your yard in front of the trailer. I think of making everything I do Dada. Approach it like nobody has ever done anything like vertical sculpture of any kind. Giacometti had his Surrealist period interrupted by ww2 and he moved to Geneva, just across the border into Switzerland. The artists of Paris had to leave the country. Giacometti in Geneva was alone in his art mind. He decided to start over as if no sculpture had ever been made. He was making first ever. He started carving tiny, one-inch long standing figures, out of soap with his pocket knife. He kept them in small pocket match boxes. He returned to Paris at the end of the war and began making clay figures like he made with soap, carved them with his pocket knife. It was the only tool he used. His brother, Diego, cast them in bronze. I can see I'll be using my art eye, which I can do and nobody will notice. I believe our key word will be humor. All in fun.

giacometti

I found that I have come so far beyond Serious art that I don't even think about art as serious any more. It seems to me like internationally the whole world of art all over the globe is exploring Dada, making it new. My sensing is the next 500 years will run the course of 20th century art again, but all over the world; dada, surrealism, abstraction, pop, minimalism, conceptual. I'm seeing Post Modern the beginning of that cycle again on a bigger scale. First cycle happened in half a year in Zurich, 1915. Next cycle was 20th Century art post-Duchamp for half a century. This is why I suspect the next cycle to be half a millennium. After ww1 Dada transcended into Surrealism through similar excursions all over Europe into the inner realms in art. Abstraction started "officially" with Kandinsky and became a movement in New York after ww2, the same time bluegrass and rock n roll took off. Then the momentum happened in a hurry through the 1960s through minimalism and Pop, Op, et al, until about 1969-70, in my way of seeing the flow. By this time in the world of art, anything goes. This is why I have Found Art images with the blog, photographing things I see out and around, like water hydrants wrapped in black plastic and fixed with black tape. Christo came to Sparta.

christo

I've reeled inwardly since hearing it's possible to be so serious about art you can't do anything. That's too serious. It tells me art is not serious. Maybe I'll be making art for the first time in my life.  I'm seeing this as my own chance to discard what seriousness I have in myself about art. I know I have plenty. To weld something together that looks like a gigantic penguin for the lawn. From what I've seen of the junk parts we'll be using, I am peaking in my designing mind. I already know what I want to do with some of it. I'm ready. In Little Richard's words," I'm ready, I'm ready, ready, ready, I'm ready-y, ready, ready, ready, I'm ready, ready, ready, ready, I'm ready, I'm ready, ready, ready to rock n roll." It's like answer to a prayer I never thought to ask. It's another reminder to myself that I don't have to suck up to anybody about my art expression. Don't have to suck up to a gallery owner. Don't have to suck up to rich patrons at gallery events. I can't do that shit. I cannot look at any art expression having to do with money. To me, they're antithetical. That's not very practical thinking. I feel like the art world is the way it is because it's the nature of the world we live in. I don't care to "make it" or pretend to. It's rather freeing. No two ways about it, I still have much of my own seriousness about art drifting about in my head like space junk. Time to set it free before this lifetime is out. I'll give it the rebel yell of today: Hail Yeah!

tony smith

 

 

 

 

*

SIMPLY COOL

by alberto giacometti



Alberto Giacometti was an Italian artist who went to Paris young, fell in with the Surrealists, then after WW2 when Surrealism was over, he changed everything about what he was doing as a sculptor. He started making these long thin figures of clay that his brother, Diego, cast in bronze. During the war years, which he spent in Geneva, Switzerland, he wanted to get down to making figures as if no one had ever made any kind of sculpture to date. Carving bars of soap with his pocket knife, he made his first figures small enough he could carry them in his pockets, the size of a match. He returned to Paris after the war with a new way of making sculptures and painting.



Today's film was named for him, Alberto Giacometti. French made, it is an hour long documentary about his work. His life and his work were the same. The 2nd part of the film was an hour long conversation / interview with him, which was made in the year he died. He lived 1901-1966 the same year Carter Stanley died. Some years ago I read a biography of him by James Lord, a beautifully written biography. One thing about it, Giacometti's work cannot be confused with anybody else's. He lived in a tiny 2-room place in Montmartre, then where artists lived, low rent. One room was his studio where he did his work, the other room his bedroom. That was his space. He was one of the respected intellectuals of Paris, an existentialist. In Europe in that time existentialist and intellectuals were 2 words with the same meaning. To say someone was an intellectual, you'd say he's an existentialist. The ist on the end is pronounced east. Existential-east. The existentialist writer's name, Albert Camus, is one of the first a lit student must master. It is Ca-moo, accent second syllable, not Kay-mus. Very important to know, like where not to wear white socks.



In my college years when I was wanting to learn about everything going on in international art, though the school had no art department, I took an art appreciation class, but it was so easy I got little from it, and especially so artless. It was all about IMPORTANT art. Learning to be a Wikipedia for information on what's important to know about. Giacometti was the big dog in the world of artists living. Very important to know about Giacometti. Such an exotic name, too. Just right for a Surrealist / existentialist. His name was a great one to toss around at cocktail parties. Have you read...? Have you seen...? Did you know...? You gotta read...! You gotta see...! He's so awesome, a Surrealist AND an existentialist! How much cooler does it get? Like Miles Davis, the essence of cool.



Giacometti was essential knowledge of the time. Then, Picasso was an important name to toss around like you know something about it. DeKooning was the ultimate artist of all time. Then came Warhol debunking abstract expressionism which believed itself to be the highest of the high, pure art. Pop Art came along like a dog, lifted its leg and peed on it. It turned out abstraction was just another way to paint, not necessarily the ultimate. It did seem, however, that every "movement" after abstract expressionism saw itself in relation to abstraction, a new way of seeing abstraction. Art since then appears to me to be working in abstraction, much of it using what we call realism, but in abstract ways. I believe Giacometti's work will appear contemporary for a long time in the future. Not only did Giacometti live simply, his only tool was a pocket knife. No hammers, no chisels. A pocket knife. And not even a Swiss Army pocket tool drawer, just a plain one that looks like it might be a Case. It looks like one he probably carried before, practical size for the pocket, no more than a 3 inch blade. One day it came to him, that's all he needed.



He reduced his figures to the bone, stick figures, the very first way we draw people. He made standing stick figures with fairly detailed faces. When you see who his models are, you can recognize the faces. One was his wife, another his brother, some were friends. Giacometti took everything he did to its simplest possibility and continue to represent the human form. His paintings, portraits, take some getting used to. Masses and masses of scribbles in the face, geometric lines, looking scratched on in a rush, but in fact each line was placed by intent. He painted the entire structure of the face and emphasis on eyes. The eyes are alive in all of them. It's like the eyes are alive and can see, but they're locked onto the canvas by thousands of lines of paint, something like the way a spider wraps a bug like a mummy. Consciousness captured can never be set free. Tied down by all those lines. The man had a great deal to say. What he had to say he said as simply as he lived and did his work.