July 20, 2014

July 20, 2014

Happy Sunday Dear sirs and madams.  As you can gather by now, I’m a man who likes to surround himself with objects, books, music and videos or DVDs.  I really don’t have an interest in the outside world, because it tends to disappoint me on a regular basis.  Even going to my local market is an ordeal where I think myself as sleepwalking down the aisles.  On the other hand I have a great need for specific images and I don’t need a whole narrative behind those images.  I guess what I’m looking for is an image that represents yours truly.  If I can notice the likeness on everyday objects, better yet.

Mrs. Emma Peel never seemed like a realistic person to me.  One of the reasons why I love her so much is that she basically represents a character that doesn’t exist.  I like to acknowledge the fictional aspect of a character and I never mistake or confuse what is the real and the unreal.  A woman walking inside my TV set with a full leather outfit got my interest right away.  On the other hand I never thought of her as being sexy, but beautiful yes.  Her relationship with John Steed plays with the idea that a relationship may have taken place, but I had the impression that it was more of a deep friendship than anything else.  The fact that she is named “Mrs. Peel” suggests that her heart belongs to another man, even though he was dead, it seems that relationship will never fade or change.  I love the beauty of that consistency, and rarely that happens in ‘real’ life.   Also time-to-time she is making sculptures in her home, when Steed pops in for a drink, or more likely a drink with a future adventure in mind.  Mrs. Peel in many ways is not only a visual artist, but also lives her life as an art piece.

One wonders if Mrs. Peel would be invited to Judy Chicago’s installation art work “Dinner Party?” An installation that is endlessly fascinating by the way.  The piece includes figures like Sacajawea, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Sappho, Ishtar, Petronilla de Meath, and so forth.  All females of course, but what is interesting is to meditate on the various individuals and how they link to one another.  A party can come upon us in a very clumsy manner, but a dinner party, where one is expected to sit down formally at a table, is a mixture of social skills with insight into the invited guests.  One gets the impression that Chicago invited these “guests” with profound thought.  Also of great interest is Chicago’s interest in “macho arts” such as auto body work, boat building and pyrotechnics. I can imagine Mrs. Peel sharing the same interests.

Along with Judy Chicago, I also admire the works of Lászió Moholy-Nagy and Nam June Paik, due to the fact that they both have a belief in the integration of technology and industry.   Perhaps June Paik’s take on technology and industry is more human-like and individualistic.  He has been quoted as saying “Skin has become inadequate in interfacing with reality. Technology has become the body's new membrane of existence."  This I think is very true with respect how the world now operates.  Drones has taken over the role of physical bodies in war, and even now, death seems more conceptual than reality.   Which aesthetically, makes perfect sense to me.  Moholy-Nagy made a sculpture that had moving parts that reflected light projecting on nearby surfaces.  This kinetic sculpture deals more with the actual relationship between technology and art, but it's interesting when you compare it with something subjective like Judy Chicago and June Paik’s art and aesthetic.

My feeling of alienation in this world tends to overwhelm me, but alas, through art, and especially the artists above, has shown me another world that I can be focused on. It is not the issue of being positive or negative, but the way the arts have described or frame the world in a certain light that makes it bearable for me to go on.   One of my favorite films is “Vengeance Is Mine, by Shohei Imamura.  It’s based on a true story of the serial killer and con-artist Akira Nishiguchi.  The character is interesting because he drifts into people’s lives, and it seems almost he has no purpose or thought, but lives his life in a series of criminal activities.  The impulse of an artist is to always create than destroy.  Otherwise there is a similar pattern in one’s life with a criminal, but the standards that we set ourselves up with, should be high, ethical as possible, and never fear of the thought of failure.  As a man, I usually look up to Mrs. Peel as an inspiration for my own life.