Monday, August 07, 2006


posted by Norman at 10:01 AM 0 comments
Saturday, August 05, 2006

There are premises that are alluded to but never quite spelled out in the discourses I've been reading in the Blogs about 'Art' and 'Pornography.' What Art is and cannot be if it is Pornographic. I am pleased to read the bloggers who do their homework, cite and quote in scholarly fashion the writings of philosophers on art, art historians and those who make an art of creating a literature that teaches us to appreciate great artists and the attributes of Great Art. I come by my examination of the metaphysics as to their meanings from another direction. I've spent countless hours making drawings, prints and drawings. I've been an easel painter too. The name given to the direction I took, the process I experienced has come to be called 'facture'.

As I've come to learn 'facture' this recently coined word, I recognize what is being alluded to. But its meaning to me has no translation to those who never made paintings and drawings and prints. It alludes to a process, a REINVENTING OF THE WHEEL. In my case a learning process in which I endeavored to teach myself drawing, painting, and beget a rather custom tailored image-picture that I and I alone could do. That which is made is more than verbal approximation or definition in a dictionary or library reference book. Nor can any literary analogies serve as equivalences or translations.

I DID 'facture' (before ever hearing the word. I knew from my own experiences its attributes, Mathematicians have a word for it, call it 'heuristic.' John Dewey alluded to it too: learning-by-finding-out. I aspired to making Art. And when I made my drawings pornographical, I was in my twenties. I also aspired to making art and teaching it, I devoted my wage earning hours to teaching my students 'how to learn how to learn.'

They did not know which Who I was -that lone WHO who loved the arts and hoped to do Art was making images I knew to be IMPERMISSIBLE. But was this Porn-I-made-become-Art, and this Art-in-its-turn-making-this-Who, (me) writing and avering there BEING such a thing as Art that is pornographic and that the Pornography can be transcendental (the denigrated genre CAN magically become ART)!

Indeed!

And something more too: MY ART MADE ME.
I metamorphosed. Magoo-like, I was this sleepwalker, this Dantesque Visual Poet (as though led by a Muse) made ART. An unWho whose ever present erection signaled to him the 'authenticity' of his home-made porn! He read them, read them as though the drawings were gypsy ciphers,tea leaves at the bottom of her cup: containing 'Secrets' - Freudian, mysterious, archetypes not stereotypes - elusive, nonverbal yet tactile and its meanings hidden in plain sight!

In all the teacups there contained sacred prohibitions, impermissible, taboos, secrets as to...? What / Something. Maybe autobiographical. Elusive, metaphysical! Maybe even cosmic. Important were the repetitive motifs. (see some of it on my web site: http://ufemisms.com) Someway, somehow, I believed there would come more than mere erections and the little deaths. Better were it 'Golden Traces', EUREKAs!...

I sought..., but of more relevance, I FOUND!
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I'll be posting blogs about making art, obscenity, sexuality, to be censured, censored. I will attempt to fill in more as to 'Premises' and the how's and Who determining, having The Authority to presume to say WHAT IS and isn't ART and WHAT IS and isn't PORNOGRAPHY and WHAT IT does SAY OF US and does not say. I hope to talk about The WHO's WE THINK WE ARE and MAY BECOME.

Diverse and assorted metalinguistics and stances. I hope this will be a salon, a meeting place as to these issues....
posted by Norman at 2:10 PM 4 comments
About Me

Norman Shapiro
New York, New York, United States
I'm 77, one eyed, celebrating my 50th wedding anniversary. My wife is my best friend and my greatest fan, I almost went blind totally this year. survived the threat (a detatched retina) and see as good or better with new Rx glasses. No diminishment of my artistiic productivity. I'm reminded of my fragility every day. Life is still full of GOOD surprises too. I've gotten to a now this far that is rich and worth the efforts I make to 'keep on truckin' -much further than I ever expected to. No bliss, no boredome, no abyss. Too much going on.
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Links

Ufemisms Book Art
Metro Mike
Sex in Art
Idaho Center For The Book
San Francisco Center For the Book
Is-it-art-or-pornography-age-old Question
A Brush With Art
Lazy Geisha
Delta Of Venus
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