Thread: Night & Day
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Unread 10-31-2016, 06:27 AM
Ann Drysdale's Avatar
Ann Drysdale Ann Drysdale is offline
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Location: Old South Wales (UK)
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Hmm. The trouble is, the Picasso only"shows" you whatever it is you see when you look at it. That sounds trite but it's exactly what I want to convey. When I was talking about breaking and beating and black and blue, I was talking about the painting, the fragmenting of the image, the use of black and blue to make an image of the "suffering machine" (those are his words and I've put them in Dora's voice, explaining rather than complaining).

I "saw" an artist using his art to make a painting, not a statement as such. By moving the thoughts he suggested, to me, in paint, to words that, for me, replicate them, I am making art from art, as Dora's photos did. Even her famous Père Ubu riffs off Jarry's play as my poem did off her face.

But it's not "critique" as such. I am going to have to admit to failing to be able to criticise your picture as if it were a poem. Because it isn't. I have had several tries and all ended (once, literally) in tears. I can't see rhymes with my eyes, unless they are word eye-rhymes. Although I can see your music I can't re-create it in words that don't sound like a smart-arse, self-serving "this is me, saying what I see" and who in hell cares what it is that I see when it can only come across as a representation of what I hear. I can't move far enough back to create a real, generous critique. You and Picasso and Vermeer can show and show, but, in response, I can only tell.

I'm trying to explain; when I look at something, I can't "see" it until I tell myself what it is I'm looking at and the words I use to describe it turn into a subjective "reality"; like my comment about looking through the blind - which you found alarming, albeit giggle-inducing.

I can't make any sense of it in poetic (critical) terms because it's a different art, and I am not even disappointed with my attemps to "criticise" it; I am horrified and ashamed.

When we collaborated before, we (well, Pat and I) took ideas from your work and made our own art. I can do that. I will.

(I'll return to our private correspondence to help work out a challenge for D&A)
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