Art of RetroCollage

Collage’s Innocent Victims

Eric Edelman — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:53:58 +0000

The knowledge that we have a choice makes that choice possible.

Circumstance defines and shapes the life of every person. Since circumstance thrusts us into the world, we can claim with some justice to be subject to its force. Each of us came into life, at the place and time that defined the initial conditions of that life, without being asked our preference. In that sense, are we not victims of circumstance, and innocent victims at that?

At the end of life, are we not equally victims of circumstance? After lives spent in the shadow of the notion of free will, we face the possibility that we will have as little conscious influence over the end of life as we did over its start.

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Dance of the Collage Homunculus

Eric Edelman — Tue, 07 May 2013 23:05:09 +0000

Each of us enters the world with limited powers. We are born within the bounds of bodies, which both grant and limit the power of our will.

Limitation frames our existence. We live a limited span; we have limited strength; we have limited power to create.

Naturally we resent our limits, and our spirit rebels against all forms of limitation. We see our bounds as bondage. Most of us have desired—if not always acted—to break free of our bounds. We envy the birds their freedom to soar, though they are as bound as we. We have coined their power of flight as a symbol of the free-spirited soul.

Limited to bodily existence, and feeling constrained by it, we have turned to intellect to enlarge our powers. Medicine extends our lifespan; machines multiply our strength; imagination increases our creativity. Imagination creates and makes real the impossible.

When our ancestors asked their first questions, imagination made its presence known by answering them. Imagination gave birth to observations and comparisons; imagination gave rise to dreams, then to legends. Eventually the questions turned back to our bounds and limits: Why do we die? Why are there limits to what we can do? Can we live forever? Can we create as the universe or God creates?

Occultists, the boldest questioners, devoted lifetimes to the search for answers. 2,500 years ago, advances in technology changed the nature of occult study, turning it slowly toward the data collection and testing procedures that have evolved into the scientific method of the present day. Alchemy arose from the occult tradition, but followed the relation between the natural world and the supernatural one. Alchemists sought the Philosopher’s Stone, a talisman that would give them the power to transcend the limits that bind us all: the power to change one form of matter into another (base metal into gold and silver); to extend life; to rejuvenate ourselves; and to create life without recourse to reproduction.

Renaissance alchemists used the name ”Homunculus” (plural “homunculi”; Latin for “little man”) for the artificial human beings they labored to create. Their speculations built on legends, which had originated in past imaginings: the roots of the mandrake plant, forked like the legs and trunk of a man, and whose scream upon being picked killed every living thing that heard it; the notion of spontaneous generation of vermin from rotting rubbish; and the fancy that adult geese had grown from the goose-necked barnacles on ships’ hulls.

The modern notion of the man-made monster that begins with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Sandman,” and Goethe’s Faust came directly from the writings and researches of alchemists on homunculi.

The alchemists achieved none of their goals. They did not find the Philosopher’s Stone. They did not synthesize gold from other elements. They could not extend life. Their recipes for making homunculi failed. But their efforts gave us the gift of chemistry, and advances in pharmacology and other branches of medicine. And the alchemical idea of the homunculus has taken on new life: it serves as a tool to teach the functioning of the body—in particular, the motor and sensory functions of the brain, which we regard as the seat of imagination. In the end, imagination has led us full-circle to the study of itself.

Links to related posts:

The Soul Mender’s Collage

The Welded Collage

Collage’s Alchemical Marriage

Bébé Marie Presents…

His Doll’s Voice: a Collage Sequel to “Bébé Marie Presents”

Collage’s Dwelling in Possibility

Eric Edelman — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 08:52:19 +0000

I dwell in Possibility —
A fairer House than Prose —
More numerous of Windows —
Superior — for Doors —

Of Chambers as the Cedars —
Impregnable of Eye —
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky —

Of Visitors — the fairest —
For Occupation — This —
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise —

—[Poem #657, ca. 1862] Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

All of us dwell in possibility, or some form of it. We believe in time, and change, and the possibility of being in perpetual bliss at some future time.

We stand balancing on the knife-edge of the present. From the clock, the present moment takes up its bearings, discarding them in every second and replacing them with fresh ones. But the bearings are lies: the present goes nowhere in time. The past and future are illusions. There is only the present moment we live in, the eternal now.

If there is paradise, it is found in the only time we possess. The only time that exists, and the only time in which we exist. The dwelling of possibility must become an abode of certainty in the present.

The Cosmic Eye of Collage

Eric Edelman — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 22:11:58 +0000

Sight is the noblest sense, and the starlit sky is the most sublime object we can behold. But what do we in reality see there? Only a kind of large tent, dimly lighted with gas jets. This is the noblest thing the noblest sense reveals. But let the soul appear, and the tent flies into invisible shreds; the heavens break open from abyss to abyss, still widening into limitless expanse, until imagination reels. The gas jets grow into suns, blazing since innumerable ages with unendurable light, and binding whole planetary systems into harmony and life. So infinitely does the soul transcend the senses! The world it lives in is boundless, eternal, sublime. This is its home; this the sphere in which it grows, and awakens to consciousness of kinship with God. This is the fathomless, shoreless abyss of being wherein it is plunged, from which it draws its life, its yearning for the absolute, its undying hope, its love of the best, its craving for immortality, its instinct for eternal things.

—from Education and the Higher Life (1890), by J.L.Spaulding

Collage’s Hide and Seek

Eric Edelman — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 05:57:17 +0000

One of life’s primal situations; the game of hide and seek. Oh, the delicious thrill of hiding while the others come looking for you, the delicious terror of being discovered, but what panic when, after a long search, the others abandon you! You mustn’t hide too well. You mustn’t be too good at the game. The player must never be bigger than the game itself.

—Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007), French philosopher

The Hidden Heart in Collage

Eric Edelman — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 22:59:46 +0000

Who has seen into another’s heart? For who has even seen into her own heart to its depths? The heart impenetrable and inscrutable. A vault full of secret desires, passion, violence, peace.

The rose is a fitting symbol for the heart: red, many-chambered, soft yet enduring. It conceals secrets, within and underneath itself; so one speaks of privileged matters as being “under the rose.”

Behind and beyond all secrets held within the heart and the rose lies their least-known secret: the core of self that is the origin of all secrets.

Collage’s War of Words

Eric Edelman — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:19:35 +0000

Even while verbal battles rage on, there is always time to relax in a pleasant conversation with friendly enemies.

Far from being trivial or time wasting, such informal chats often provide the opportunity to soothe tempers, settle differences, and straighten out misunderstandings. And words, which as weapons once worked to wound, may be rearranged to right wrongs, restore reason, and re-establish respect.

Collage Employment Agency

Eric Edelman — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 23:19:06 +0000

Each day men sell little pieces of themselves in order to try to buy them back each night and week end with the coin of ‘fun.’

—C. Wright Mills, White Collar

…the delicious and ageless pleasure of a useless occupation.

—Maurice Ravel, dedication on the score of his suite of compositions, Noble and Sentimental Waltzes

‘The ignorance of your middle class surprises me. Outside itself, it thinks the world to lie quite ignorant and equal, sunk in a common degradation; but to the eye of the observer, all ranks are seen to stand in ordered hierarchies, and each adorned with its particular aptitudes and knowledge. By the defects of your education you are more disqualified to be a working man than to be the ruler of an empire. The gulf, sir, is below; and the true learned arts—those which alone are safe from the competition of insurgent laymen—are those which give his title to the artisan.’

—Robert Louis Stevenson, The Dynamiter

Prospectus.

Dear Employers,

The Cosmic Employment Guild welcomes you!

We respectfully commend to your notice, our Directory of Members, each a master in his craft and as able-bodied a workman as one is likely to find in this day and age. Moreover, we have little doubt that upon perusal of our little Directory, you will find the requisite men to fill long-felt wants in every department of your establishments.

Full particulars concerning each Member may be had upon application in writing to the Secretary, who, upon receipt of same, will be pleased to furnish all necessary information. Kindly state in your letter the description of each position to be filled, the salary contemplated therefor, and any additional specifications you wish to make. As a rule, your requests will be answered by earliest post.

On behalf of the Guild, I thank you for honouring our humble organisation by your examination of our Directory, and beg you to find herein the expression of our most profound wishes for your continued success. Should you have the slightest concern with regard to any matter touching upon the Guild, its members, its officers, or its operations, I cordially invite you to write to me directly.

With Sincerest Respects,
Ezekiel Polycarpus McInerney,
President,
The Cosmic Employment Guild.

The Living Star of Collage

Eric Edelman — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 11:11:47 +0000

The patterns of the regular five-pointed star and pentagon have inspired and energized civilization for millennia.

In nature, the orbits of planets and planetoids frequently trace stars and pentagons; five-fold symmetry also appears in plants, and in sea life. In mathematics, the parts of stars and pentagons contain ratios equal to the semi-mystical Golden Mean, or Phi, a number with extraordinary algebraic and geometric properties. In history, as graphic symbols, stars and pentagons have represented—and continue to represent—the extremes of good and evil, and many things in between.

There is a certain dynamic and mysterious potential about five-fold radial symmetry, a sense of movement and life that fascinates us. Our eyes dance back and forth across the star, moving from point to point, comparing distances, running from the hollows to the points opposite them and back again, and then to their neighbors. In our gaze, the star itself seems to dance, and almost to laugh.

The Smile in Collage’s Mirror

Eric Edelman — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 11:36:41 +0000

Her portrait is one of the best-known and most readily recognized images in the world. The artist who painted her likeness is as famous as the picture: a restless, ambitious man with many talents, who completed few paintings because his expertise as a civil and military engineer and scientist was constantly in demand among the noblemen of his country.

The sitter came from a prominent but not wealthy aristocratic family. She married a moderately successful merchant. A pun on his surname, del Giocondo, has become the nickname for the portrait: “La Gioconda,” the “Cheerful Woman.” She and her husband raised five children. The couple apparently loved each other; they and their children prospered modestly and lived happily uneventful, middle-class lives, in a turbulent and politically unstable city not noted for uneventful lives. The merchant apparently commissioned the portrait of his wife to celebrate their first purchase of a home and the birth of one of their children. The artist labored over the painting for three years, but regarded it as incomplete. He never delivered it to his client, nor did the client pay him. The portrait remained in the artist’s possession for the rest of his life; when he died in a foreign country, the picture was bequeathed to his assistant, who sold it for a small sum to the country’s king. The painting has resided in that country for nearly five centuries.

Why has this portrait of Lisa del Giocondo by Leonardo da Vinci become so famous, so copied, so caricatured and mocked? By the standards of da Vinci himself, it is not an extraordinary work; critics hold several other da Vinci paintings in higher esteem. The composition of La Gioconda seems static and symmetrical, the background landscape conventional and undistinguished, the sitter plainly dressed and unadorned, and her expression mask-like and inscrutable. How could so plain a portrait of so unremarkable a subject—among the myriad plain portraits of unremarkable people painted during the Renaissance—have inspired such fascination, ridicule, and adoration?

The answer may have two aspects.

The first aspect is related to the modern emergence of mass-media. Although well-known among visitors to the Louvre, the picture began attracting global attention in the nineteenth century, when publishing became mechanized and artwork was first widely reproduced in books and magazines. Around the beginning of the twentieth century, color lithographic reproduction was perfected, making inexpensive art books and prints available to a large audience. In 1911, Lisa’s portrait received unexpected publicity when it was stolen from the Louvre by an Italian museum employee who wished to see it returned to Italy. It appeared in Italy in 1913, was widely exhibited there, and then was returned to the Louvre. Since that time the portrait and the rumors surrounding its disappearance (Picasso and the French poet Apollinaire were once suspects in the theft) have never left the public imagination.

The second aspect is the picture’s plainness. Da Vinci’s genius as a painter imbued an understated portrait of an unassuming sitter with an atmosphere that irresistibly draws the viewer into the picture. A portrait in which the subject gazes straight outwards, at a right angle to the portrait’s surface, gives the impression that the subject’s eyes follow a viewer about the room. This is a well-known illusion. Usually it elicits a briefly disquieting feeling in the viewer, who shrugs it off with a laugh or a shudder, and then moves on to look at other works. But Lisa’s portrait is different: once her image takes hold of our attention, it does not let go for some time. We stare at her and our fascination grows. There is nothing extraordinary about her except her smile, which is as demure as her bearing. The smile is too modest to be joyous, too faint to be smug; what can it mean? Our eyes and imaginations roam outward from that smile across the rest of the picture, only to return to the enigmatic smile. Lisa’s dress and the plainness of her surroundings afford us no clue. We have not solved the mystery, but we sense that it exists.

From that point begin the stories and theories. Frustrated or dissatisfied with an unanswered question, each of us formulates an answer. Artists and writers have ventured many explanations; some serious, some joking. The portrait has inspired many parodies, satires, and appropriated artworks; also many meditations on art and philosophy.

In history, the pull of the Mona Lisa upon our imaginations can be likened to a scene in a theater: its legend, loss, and reappearance shine a spotlight on the portrait; the image of Lisa confronts the audience with a smiling, motionless soliloquy in pantomime. But as in a theater, the image of the actor is finally a mirror in which we, the audience, see our inner lives and selves reflected.

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