Posted by Frank Zimmerman on October 24, 19102 at 14:14:43:
In Reply to: Re: T h e G R E A T M A N posted by Bill Wilson on October 23, 19102 at 11:34:08:
: Picasso is a misunderstood and under-appreciated artist whose work is committed to values that also inform the work of Marcel Duchamp (with no issues of influence, which is a silly idea, although permissions are possible). Picasso, that gift to the world, was given as a birth-right his governing value of elasticity. Sophie Germaine had given elasticity a leg-up in mathematico-physics, as part of a study of material qualities that had begun, in the case of elasticity, only late in the 17th century. Before that, elasticity was not studied because it was not a real quality of the world, for only the timeless and immutable and imperishable was real, that is, could participate in a Divine Godhead that was eternal and immutable. Picasso was born with a criterion of existence, so that for him, to be is to be elastic. Listen to Philip Larkin:
: And once you have walked the length of your mind, what
: You command is as clear as a lading-list
: Anything else must not, for you, be thought
: To exist.
: And what's the profit? Only that, in time
: We half-identify the blind impress
: All our behavings bear, may trace it home.
:
: For Picasso, bodying forth elasticity as his axiomatic choice of existence, nothing else must “be thought/ To exist.” He painfujlly and sadly overestimated the elasticity of friends, and of women, but surely flattered them by his assumption that everyone was as elastic as he was. Late in his experiences with Francoise Gilot, he held out and offered her sections of a tangerine, an apt image of the elastic & sectioned relations he wanted with her. I could write a book about the man who lived and painted to bring elastitity into point-blank, close-up sharp-focus as a moral value. Not that many teachers appear that we can afford to be flippant about their lessons. Whatever the relations between P.P. and M.D., and allowing that all materials are elastic to some degree, note that Duchamp cut up bathing caps to make a sculptural installation, he draped flexible coal-bags from a ceiling, he stretched string in the space of a gallery, aware that string resumes its shape because it is elastic; and he preserved semen as yet another way for an artist to make his mark on paper with a sufficiently elastic material. In coping with people in relations like husband to wife and artist to dealer (printer; collaborator), such potentially stiff and unyielding taxidermied relations under his elastic governance participated in the easy-going give-&-take, the frictionless to-&-fro, of their Duchampian elasticizations. The name, Sélavy, is the code-word for the elastic responses to events in which rigidity is possible. Puns are the elasticity of words. The name Rose elastically became Rrose, stretching around Eros. Both Picasso and Duchamp used as a touchstone of elasticity the elasticity of their penises. While Picasso and Cocteau showed theirs to each other, no comparable anecdote has surfaced about Duchamp. No loss. The standard anecdotes of the lives of artists—did they converse? What did they say about each other---are trivial unless the values within the event are defined and combined with the values manifest in the art. Picasso and Duchamp lived and worked seriously on behalf of moral and aesthetic values, here pointed toward with the moral and aesthetic concept of elasticity. A writer has said that I am mistaken, that Picasso was a practitioner of the plastic arts. That man is so peculiarly inelastic, staggering under his inflexible armor, that he becomes my evidence for the need to develop an appetite for elasticity, with Picasso’s the person who bodied it forth in life and in art. Duchamp had some other primal or axiomatic governing values, but none was inconsistent with Picassoesque elasticity.
: nd to the Poster of this question: Make jokes, I'm elastic, I can take them seriously, and I appreciate your stretching of English into French, how elastic it is, but thank goodness as elastic it will resume its shape as though it had not been so stressed:
: : iv azked thiz Queztion befor - Marcel had 'zome ' obzervationz RE: The greatman - Doz any of U heaDY zcolarz hava line into ZUCH ?
Dearezt Willee Wilzon-
I gezz THAT none of me HEADY DuCHAMPion'z know what im BARKing abOUT -FirZT to konfeZZ that ima VIZUAL perZON[ noT A ZCOLar of the MINd ] Yearz Ago whilizt puzhING through Me firZT GATe of Marcelz 'ztool w/bikewheel[& kummin' to gripz w/'corrected & verzionz']a fellOW BEHOLDer ran zomethinG paZT mE ABout:The GREATman diztillMENTZ MD had made of hiz ol'FRIend 'Man Ray'< whO had finallY achived ZOMe ZUCZEZZ <& waz liVing OUT thE AzzentiON THat KOMez w/ the thRONE
Im inTEREZTED to GET an OVERview of thIZ faZE oF MARcel'z L O G I C Z
-Pz: I too-zalute Picazz0 ! a magnificantZTYlizt ! Have U zeEN hIZ LAzt zeLF porTRAIT [@ 93'yrz on EARth-
REmove the PREtenderz
Pzz:Az for yr 'ELAZTic'-
in the FINALaccount of our AGE-
THERMal NUcular H E A T will REmove'evEN our fondezt MENerioiezz
VIRtually for E V E R Pzzz:HAY-Billll
i kan hardly waite for 'ZTiffAN'to hurll hiz VORboze into THiz MIXX-KAN U
& by the TIme 'THe RAiny-BUFfollow putzz IT
toGETHER WE'll B zunning OURzelvez-a LONGway from PHillee'