The framed pieces of wood yield little explosions where bullet holes should be. The ink, paint and blood are splattered all over the newsprint which is now unintelligible. Though the subject is holding a gun there doesn't seem to be a causal relationship between the bullet holes and his gun, indicating that it is his turn and cautioning whoever is at our vantage point: After all, William Tell used a bow and arrow and not a point blank shotgun...
This image is a clean challenge. Clean meaning two things. One is the clean composition of the image itself. The clean white background, the clean way the man is dressed, the clean shiny gun, the cleanly framed images, all conspire to make a clean image.
The second version of clean is more directly related to the challenge, meaning clear. This image issues a clear challenge through the soulful eyes of the man. He holds his weapon in a steady, white knuckle grip, which stands in odd contrast with his dress. If the man didn't look so comfortable with the gun, the gun almost looks out of place. So, the challenge is speaking from within his eyes than with the object in his hand. Those eyes speak a quiet resolve. Those are eyes that know, eyes that have lived, eyes that speak. His silent challenge is only enhanced by the gun he's holding as well as the images behind him, which speak a language of violence as well since the right looks like bullet holes and blood and the left looks like bullet holes in tree bark.
This image becomes a space where the potential for action and action collide. This image lives on the cusp. A cusp of an event that may or may not take place depending on the receiver who may or may not take the old man up on his challenge. He shows no fear in those eyes, only a silent, dignified comportment, ready to act for whatever might happen. This image quietly waits, armed and deadly, regardless of age.
The man holds the gun, his gaze holds our eyes, the frames hold the newsprint and the newsprint hold a story. His head holds his hat. The wood holds the evidence of paintball. The story is covered in evidence.
This image holds the viewer as it holds its images separately and together this is one interpretation of many available. The concepts employed ARE employed for an irrelevant purpose because we have one image and a thousand ways it can now go.
At first glance, one may wonder why this man holding a gun is standing in front of two framed works of art. But looking more closely at the framed images, they appear to be shattered by bullet holes. Paint is splattered over them as if blood is splattered from a gunshot. The man's suit remains spotless and he stands unfazed by the violent images. He IS confidence and cool in the face of potential violence.
The two images behind the man have white spaces which look like they could be made by gunshots. Around each space or hole is a spattering of paint as though the images were bleeding from the gunshots. Is this the maiming of the image beneath the rigid gaze of a viewer who tries too hard to make the image conform to an interpretation? The man with the gun attempts to penetrate the image with his bullets, forcing them to conform to his interpretation and making them appear as he desires. However, the images cannot be entirely encompassed by his interpretation and exist beyond the viewer. In trying to limit the effects of the image, the man is maiming the image. Each bullethole is a piece of the image that had been missed or destroyed by his impressing of himself onto the image as the only interpretation.
This man is not just showing us a gun, he has his hand right on that trigger. It's as if the viewer is about the experience the same fate as the images on the wall. This man either tells us something particular about the conception of these two images on the wall, that he contributed to their becoming, or nothing at all as he could just be a man with a gun in front of two images. The photograph is not evidential. But even though the image itself does not posit a concrete explanation as to the relationship between this man, this gun, and these images, it stands up on its own. It proliferates endless questions, it doesn't spell anything out completely, it provokes, it intrigues. It is itself an event because it requires more than a quick glance; it demands way more attention than that. The image is contained; this man's demeanor is contained, his attire is contained, the frames contain the edges of the wood boards that appear to have been shot at, the outermost frame contains the other frames. This seems counter-intuitive in that a paintball-shot would be the opposite of contained; a paintball-shot is loud, wild, unpredictable, it splatters everywhere. This image communicates so much and so little at the same time, it could never be reduced to a "picture of..."
The old man with a blank look on his face holds a gun against the background of two shot-up looking pieces of art. He gives the viewer no clue as to who he is or what, nor does the artist taking the photo of the picture. The two pieces of art draw my eye as equally as the man with the gun. He is a piece of art in the photo, as obtuse and opaque as the art behind him. The viewer will never know the purpose of any of it.
Everything is oddly framed in this picture. The man is holding a gun; yet he does not seem erratic. The pictures are explosions of color and loud noises; yet they are plainly framed and surrounded by a lifeless backdrop. These odd contradictions of emotions and physical states, makes the image seem almost laughable. This man can’t be harmful, just as the framed images are dulled. The frames of this image subdue its contents.
What is art? Are the framed objects in this image art objects? Is the man in this image an art subject? In begging these questions, this image renders causality -- at least in the realm of art -- moot. It does not matter if this shotgun created those holes, just as it would not matter of X's paintbrush painted Y. Paint was brushed and holes were shot. A process is imaged.
Do frames engender art objects? Images are necessarily framed; are all images art? In framing the world, do our eyes make everything they see into art?
What is style and what are its different forms and implications? The man in this image indicates his particular style of dress and style of art making. This image indicates its style of seeing and, thus, art making. What happens when different styles collide?
This image asks questions. The man extends his ear for answers. Not every answer works; do not offend a man holding a shotgun.
A man is, in a sense, clutching a shotgun with his hands. He clutches a shotgun as two framed artworks clutch him. The unassuming artworks secure the man. He and the artworks dress themselves formally. He and the artworks are framed appropriately? within themselves and adjacent to their immediate surroundings; he frames partially with a three piece suit and they partially with smooth pine bindings. The white in his knuckles demonstrates a tight clinch. His face, through its age, demonstrates experience.
Each of the three bodies clinch themselves with similarly texturized media. The man does so with his suit and shotgun and self. The woody artwork on the left proffers some reliefs on its surface through some different-sized holes and other woodily textured images. The right artwork elicits thatchiness through some different sized holes and some images fused together with interlapping redness. The image clinches through these three artworks clutching themselves and each other.
Look at all the seeing. This could be the apotheosis of seeing seeing (extreme hyperbole). Mr. Burroughs is seeing his viewer seeing him, and this is of course camera seeing. The famed works on the wall—hung to be seen, no doubt—were created, it appears, by shotgun seeing. (Even this shotgun seeing is multifold). Each hole through which Mr. Burroughs’ viewer sees the wall behind the framed works was created with one eye shut, and one eye seeing down the barrel. The shotgun seeing was likely shotgun seeing at close range; shotgun seeing is consummated in becoming a seeing through. With a cheek to the barrel the shotgun seeing sees through the target, and here this seeing through is preserved, framed and seen in its infinite becoming as the seeing through becomes something new every time it is hung anew. Seeing seeing here is infinite, the expression “seeing seeing” gets so slippery. The seeing seeing in this image is inexhaustible.
In this image, I see a very interesting logic. Between the two pieces of art stand their mutual artist. William Burrows literally acts as the connection between the two works in this case. Without him, the two pieces would certainly go together since they are composed of similar colors and styles. With Burrows standing between, the viewer is inclined to see him as their primary connection. The viewer is fooled into ignoring their other similarities.
The apple of the eye. A blast of the canvas. Art as world shattering. Art as being torn open and through. Its material ripped apart in the seems, its insides thin, ruffled, a sheet of paper. The artist standing guard, triumphant over his creation, his murder. Art as the duel force of birth and death. The tool of the shotgun, the power, the finality. The tools of the paint brush splaying the splattered paint: the power, the finality. The beautiful mess. The sensational manipulation of reality with powerful objects: holding life and death in hand. Guarding one’s oeuvre, one’s masterpiece, one’s victim. Prim appearance wedged within a beautiful messy mistake. Art as destruction, in streaks. Keep the eye straight, the target in scope. An inch or two can make all the difference in a game of William Tell.
If a shotgun is just one of William Burroughs' tools for making art, is the viewer about to be one of his canvases? He has his finger on the trigger and his other hand has cocked the hammer and loaded the gun. All he has to do is slide the fore-end forward, pull the trigger and BAM: art. Shotgun art: aural and visual creation united.
A shotgun blast, an explosion of the now, a ripe instant rupturing at the seams. A ravaged canvas, not an origin or genesis but a body and a burden. The raw synthesis of an intricate machine with the color of air. A surrender and a celebration. You cannot look at just the fabricated pastiche, you have to see what lurks past it— the cosmos. These collages are in the world, of the world.
Mr. Burroughs stands silent, hinting at his secret, his ability to rupture, to claw, to unravel order’s fibers. He does not speak. This image cannot go with words; it can be described, but only in whispers that grasp for coherence or meaning that is not there.
William Burroughs, protector, gatekeeper, ethicist of images. Think this image exists only through you? Think you can subjectively suck its vitality and spit out solipsistic nonsense that no one will ever care about? No, Burroughs guards these images on the wall, this image he constitutes, with a long barrel full of consequences. View like a Johnson, not a vampire--or die.
Of course, there are no 'real' consequences for sucking the blood of this image. That is, unfortunately, such a vampiric viewer will not be shot. Burroughs is image himself--he stands in front of the wooden pieces, but he also stands between--indeed, poses--as another object on display. If he can be said to at once guard these images and stand alongside as image himself, then it seems the image as a whole does not require 'real' human-generated consequences. If the human is image himself--not only Burroughs but the viewer as well--then to suck the blood of images is genuinely comparable to sucking blood--images and blood are different, yet coexisting constituents of the human. The solipsistic viewer not only sucks his own blood principle, but in immediate circumstances. The consequences may not be of gross material, but they are indeed real. By failing to amplify an image the viewer misses an opportunity for self-growth, misses an opportunity to take up the image and make something--text, more images, etc., something of affective force--new which both exceeds and reinforces both viewer and image.
Images within images and frames within frames, Burroughs stands guard outside the image and within. Indeed, Burroughs stands in from of the art, but participates in the art at the same time. This sort of inbetweeness doesn’t bother Burroughs though, he’s too cool. He stands calm, collect, confident. He can protect this image. Go ahead, Burroughs suggest, with a slight tilt of the head. Check out my art. Please, take a look at the detail. Don’t just pass it by. Because if you do, you may just miss the fact that he’s got his finger on the trigger. What lovely sight indeed. BANG.
Burroughs uses and holds onto a very unconventional tool of art: a shotgun. The shotgun completely defies the usual and mundane tools of art, paintbrushes. Burroughs holds onto the shotgun tightly with one hand on the trigger. He seems at once guarded and ready to create a new artwork. A fresh canvas lies before him, whatever he is looking at. Perhaps the viewer?
The image presents a paradox; the man, armed with a weapon and having an especially blank stare, communicates the violence of the image. This is supplemented by the presence of the art works that fall on each side of the image. The one on the right is fractured and imbued with blood; the one on the left is equally disheveled. Nevertheless, the stoic expression of the man communicates docility at the same time as it communicates violence. The man appears out of place in the image - his soft expression represents a deep contrast with the violent elements that surround him. The image thus functions to align the man with his surroundings while simultaneously emphasizing his difference from it.
The images to the left and right of the man are shotgun splatters; they are each one way a shotgun blast can go. When a shotgun fires, its shot emits from the barrel in a tight group, but that group rapidly separates with each foot traveled. Those two images are shotgun blasts at multiple levels. There are big holes, splatters, and grazes of the shot (like a bullet skinning a shoulder). How can a shotgun blast have such beautiful and complex forms? Shooting images and shooting guns. Is it just coincidence they use the same verb?
At first glance it would appear that the man holding the gun is standing in front of these pieces of wood, separated from them, protecting this seeing-event. On the contrary, he is in a space of in-betweenness. He is not part of the images on the wall, he stands literally, in-between them, separated from them, yet he is a part of the seeing-event. He stands in-between the images on the wall and the viewer seeing the image. It is a marbling of multiple viewing worlds comingled to create this image.
The holes in the pieces of wood peer out at its audience much like the eyes of the geriatric. His eyes stare blankly back at the camera taking the picture much like the holes. How do these 'eyes' situate the viewer? What is it that is being seen? This is the seeing of seeing ad infinitum.
The stark contrast between the clean artist and the apparent violence in the hanging art poses a different question for me--why could this art be seen as nontypical? Because of the gun shots? Why is this particular image seen to be capturing violence as opposed to 'typical' art?
We spoke in class about the gun becoming the artist's tool, but there are more paths of interpretations that stem from this.
Can we see the artist's tool as a gun? Why does it take the literal tearing of the canvas for violence to be seen? The artist has splattered the canvas with gun shots in the same way he has splattered it with paint...here, there is no difference. Only that the gun shots bring to light the equivalent violence of the paint.
Burroughs is in the middle, framed by two frames. Between a shotgun and the wall behind him, between his creative work and his destructive work, between irreverence and sophistication, between the last shot and the next shot, what matters is that he’s been shooting all along, and that he’s still ready to shoot. He occupies the space available for him and expands it, ‘liv[ing] to the full the contrast of his time’ (I think that’s Barthes, or maybe Benjamin). And at this moment, he’s got his eyes on you.
here's is "thanksgiving prayer": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7_MYrVzU-Y
The image, in positing a shotgun as a paintbrush, recasts the notion of art creation. The image of two framed works of art hanging on bleach-white wall evokes the feeling of a museum. Burroughs' attire, an impeccable grey suit, is consistent with the familiar feeling of museum, a designated site for viewing works of art. The image of Burroughs holding his shotgun, however, unmoors this sense of familiarity. By depicting the shotgun as an artistic tool, the image shifts the terms of art creation.
Great artists steal and make it their own. In this image, two traditional works of art (traditional in the sense that an image that is framed and hung up on a wall is considered a work of art) give way to another work of art. By simply inserting a man with a shotgun within the frame of these two works of art, the "traditional" art is stolen and spun and made to be seen in an entirely different way. And a new, and I think more interesting, work of art is created/remixed.
The pistol is Burroughs' paintbrush, a rough plank of wood his canvas. The roughness and loudness of the two pieces of art are contained within the frames, hanging neatly on a white wall. Similarly, Burroughs is sharply dressed in a suit and hat with his finger on the trigger and hands tightly clenching the gun, as if he's about to go on a shooting spree, beginning with me. This image is chaos and madness all neatly buttoned up. The juxtaposition of these two contrasting affects is what makes this image seem oddly humorous--threatening but calm, pristine but rugged.
Burroughs invites viewers to take a look at his work. His cool, confident, indifferent face opens observations for viewer but his finger in the trigger may give the second thoughts to criticism. Or, Burroughs is just becoming an image with his images, breaking the lines and frames that he had created. By standing in front of his art work, Burroughs becomes one with his images, repeating his creation in a completely different way.
The man in the image appears hyper contrived, seeming more like a mannequin than an individual. The man does not explain the images and even if the shotgun is a means of protecting them, it does not explain very much. He is not separated from the art hanging behind him on the wall, rather they exist on the same plane; he is art. The paintings on the wall and the man work in unison to create the image and in doing so non are privileged.
This image Kills Art as it creates it, resulting in the simultaneous birth and death of creativity. Burroughs cannot stand anywhere else: he is directly in and part of the act of Art Unfolding. But the image does not highlight an act that just happened, or is about to happen: it is happening right before our eyes, jamming the circuit of framed, museum art with live, human flesh. Though the setup is contrived- he stands there, looking into the lens of whomever snapped the picture- the relationship between the framed images and Burroughs makes the image unfold and re-fold with its very own parts, threatening to destroy itself, but freezing --
Framed chaoses. Both paintings in the background are messy, gunshot, and wild, YET they are framed nonetheless. The man in the middle is too, the chaos of a trigger happy man with a piercing glare and a probably loaded shotgun is willfully contained within a three piece suit and fedora. However, containment is not taming the images at all--if anything, it makes them seem more wild and uncontrollable.
The violence of the images is mirrored in the artist. And we can see how the violent energy of the artist's shotgun affected the art itself.
Most conspicuously, the art that he guards is all by itself. It seems to be in an art museum with the blank walls but it isn't clear. The two paintings hang side by side, perfectly symmetrical, in a completely unmarked place. They just are. And so is he. It lacks a certain context, a certain architecture which would constitute the body of narrative. Context is the framework of narrative. It reinforces it just as steel beams reinforce a building. context is like the foundation upon which a building rests. This image lacks that particular type of foundation. And so it is hilarious- as hilarious as a building without a foundation. It serves a different purpose.
There is no context to define him as a guard but thats what he appears to be doing. He simply stands there, challenging the viewer it seems. But a challenge for what? A challenge to face the artist? A challenge to steal the art. A challenge to interpret the art. This would be in a way to take on the art. It would be to take it. But from who? The artist? He does not own it. Even as he stands in front of it it is still taken in by the viewer and therefore not solely the possession of the artist. Images cannot be protected in this way. They exceed their physical form. They are taken up by the viewers that look at them. His efforts are futile.
The artwork, like the man manifest both chaos and order. The paintings portray violent omnidirectional movement, fighting to escape from their cage-like frames. The man exhibits the same inner turmoil, seemingly ready to be released through his weapon. He appears to be guarding his paintings, but could his paintings actually be guarding him? Both paintings are more dominant then the man himself. A painting on each side of him frames him and keeps him contained. Perhaps they are protecting him from himself...
This image mocks the idea of the artist as authority over his or her own work. Bergson standing in front of his paintings with a shot gun is undoubtedly an authoritative pose but even while he is standing in front of it the confrontation creates doubt. Why if it is obvious and right that the author is privileged does privilege have to be demanded. The artist holding the weapon also brings forward the question of the multiplicity of images within the image. While it the gunman confronts the viewer in the image he is confronting them over the back images showing the multiplicity of layers in the image.
Burroughs is like Deleuze's model of the artist who harnesses the forces of the cosmos. He does not make art from scratch, he is simply a manipulator, a conductor, an experimental architect of sorts. He uses his gun to make art that is a process of methodologically controlled chance. Here he shows the means of production and how he uses them (the universe, violence, chance, a gun, paint). The image of Burroughs with his gun-brush is just as interesting as the product of his method.
Ah, Burroughs. If you had seen junky's christmas recently this photo might reveal more to your eye....or is it the point that is shouldn't? Ten thousand GOLDEN speedballs. His madness and greatness is encompassed in this imag. The artist and his tool of DESTRUCTION. What can I say that hasn't been said already? His eyes offer a seeing. A new type of seeing....the sympathetic seeing to his seeing. You imagine yourself with those eyes and are engulfed in Burroughs.
Burroughs IS his art, HE IS part of the display! His peachy salmon-skin tone bleeds into the outer strip of the two frames adjacent. He’s also operating in multiple temporalities, as part of the art enclosed in the frame—something he’s produced in the past, as something blending in between the two frames, and not touching the frames at all.
Is he protecting his art? Protect it from what, he’s already shot through it. Maybe shooting in this image is not what breaks the image, but makes the image. It IS the art itself, it IS a form of creation. In his senile years, he’s still able to reproduce images, as both part of and independent from them. The gun is no longer tethered to the living body, but to give life to a whole new body, a whole new emergence of life—the image. And in doing so, he’s also preserving his image, his life, his body in the image which continues to birth a new concept of how image and gun go.
Each week, we will consider an image. This image may come from anywhere—from a painting, the news, an art photograph, a picture of my child.
Your job is to read this image. You need write only four lines; you may write more. Inflect the image. Give it a spin. Make us see what we may not be seeing. Take up the image, do something with it, then give it back to us—in words.
The goal is multifold. It is to learn to reckon a diversity of images. It is to learn the art of the riff, the spin, the take. And, in the end, I hope we have created an exquisite symphony, a chorus of voices, each distinct, each singing an image in its own register.
ATTENDANCE IS REQUIRED. You may miss 3 classes during the semester. For each class missed after that, your grade will be lowered a full grade—from an A to a B.
EVERY weekend, I will post an image on this blog. By Thursday's class, you must write a response to that image as a comment on this blog. -You will have to create a Google account. -Please use your name in your identity so I know who you are when you post your comment. If you already have a Google identity but it does not reflect your name, please create a new one. -Your comment can be brief; in fact, it should be—anywhere from 3-10 lines. Try to make it pithy, astute, sharp. -These are not optional: each one you miss will translate into the loss of a full grade for your class participation grade.
There will be three papers scattered through the semester; they will be @ two pages long. These are not optional. If you fail to do one, you will fail the class.
Grading -Class participation: 30% -Paper 1: 20% -Paper 2: 20% -Paper 3: 30% -I WILL NOT GRANT INCOMPLETES.
The framed pieces of wood yield little explosions where bullet holes should be. The ink, paint and blood are splattered all over the newsprint which is now unintelligible.
ReplyDeleteThough the subject is holding a gun there doesn't seem to be a causal relationship between the bullet holes and his gun, indicating that it is his turn and cautioning whoever is at our vantage point: After all, William Tell used a bow and arrow and not a point blank shotgun...
This image is a clean challenge. Clean meaning two things. One is the clean composition of the image itself. The clean white background, the clean way the man is dressed, the clean shiny gun, the cleanly framed images, all conspire to make a clean image.
ReplyDeleteThe second version of clean is more directly related to the challenge, meaning clear. This image issues a clear challenge through the soulful eyes of the man. He holds his weapon in a steady, white knuckle grip, which stands in odd contrast with his dress. If the man didn't look so comfortable with the gun, the gun almost looks out of place. So, the challenge is speaking from within his eyes than with the object in his hand. Those eyes speak a quiet resolve. Those are eyes that know, eyes that have lived, eyes that speak. His silent challenge is only enhanced by the gun he's holding as well as the images behind him, which speak a language of violence as well since the right looks like bullet holes and blood and the left looks like bullet holes in tree bark.
This image becomes a space where the potential for action and action collide. This image lives on the cusp. A cusp of an event that may or may not take place depending on the receiver who may or may not take the old man up on his challenge. He shows no fear in those eyes, only a silent, dignified comportment, ready to act for whatever might happen. This image quietly waits, armed and deadly, regardless of age.
The man holds the gun, his gaze holds our eyes, the frames hold the newsprint and the newsprint hold a story. His head holds his hat. The wood holds the evidence of paintball. The story is covered in evidence.
ReplyDeleteThis image holds the viewer as it holds its images separately and together this is one interpretation of many available. The concepts employed ARE employed for an irrelevant purpose because we have one image and a thousand ways it can now go.
At first glance, one may wonder why this man holding a gun is standing in front of two framed works of art. But looking more closely at the framed images, they appear to be shattered by bullet holes. Paint is splattered over them as if blood is splattered from a gunshot. The man's suit remains spotless and he stands unfazed by the violent images. He IS confidence and cool in the face of potential violence.
ReplyDeleteThe two images behind the man have white spaces which look like they could be made by gunshots. Around each space or hole is a spattering of paint as though the images were bleeding from the gunshots. Is this the maiming of the image beneath the rigid gaze of a viewer who tries too hard to make the image conform to an interpretation? The man with the gun attempts to penetrate the image with his bullets, forcing them to conform to his interpretation and making them appear as he desires. However, the images cannot be entirely encompassed by his interpretation and exist beyond the viewer. In trying to limit the effects of the image, the man is maiming the image. Each bullethole is a piece of the image that had been missed or destroyed by his impressing of himself onto the image as the only interpretation.
ReplyDeleteThis man is not just showing us a gun, he has his hand right on that trigger. It's as if the viewer is about the experience the same fate as the images on the wall. This man either tells us something particular about the conception of these two images on the wall, that he contributed to their becoming, or nothing at all as he could just be a man with a gun in front of two images. The photograph is not evidential. But even though the image itself does not posit a concrete explanation as to the relationship between this man, this gun, and these images, it stands up on its own. It proliferates endless questions, it doesn't spell anything out completely, it provokes, it intrigues. It is itself an event because it requires more than a quick glance; it demands way more attention than that.
ReplyDeleteThe image is contained; this man's demeanor is contained, his attire is contained, the frames contain the edges of the wood boards that appear to have been shot at, the outermost frame contains the other frames. This seems counter-intuitive in that a paintball-shot would be the opposite of contained; a paintball-shot is loud, wild, unpredictable, it splatters everywhere. This image communicates so much and so little at the same time, it could never be reduced to a "picture of..."
The old man with a blank look on his face holds a gun against the background of two shot-up looking pieces of art. He gives the viewer no clue as to who he is or what, nor does the artist taking the photo of the picture. The two pieces of art draw my eye as equally as the man with the gun. He is a piece of art in the photo, as obtuse and opaque as the art behind him. The viewer will never know the purpose of any of it.
ReplyDeleteEverything is oddly framed in this picture. The man is holding a gun; yet he does not seem erratic. The pictures are explosions of color and loud noises; yet they are plainly framed and surrounded by a lifeless backdrop. These odd contradictions of emotions and physical states, makes the image seem almost laughable. This man can’t be harmful, just as the framed images are dulled. The frames of this image subdue its contents.
ReplyDeleteWhat is art? Are the framed objects in this image art objects? Is the man in this image an art subject? In begging these questions, this image renders causality -- at least in the realm of art -- moot. It does not matter if this shotgun created those holes, just as it would not matter of X's paintbrush painted Y. Paint was brushed and holes were shot. A process is imaged.
ReplyDeleteDo frames engender art objects? Images are necessarily framed; are all images art? In framing the world, do our eyes make everything they see into art?
What is style and what are its different forms and implications? The man in this image indicates his particular style of dress and style of art making. This image indicates its style of seeing and, thus, art making. What happens when different styles collide?
This image asks questions. The man extends his ear for answers. Not every answer works; do not offend a man holding a shotgun.
A man is, in a sense, clutching a shotgun with his hands. He clutches a shotgun as two framed artworks clutch him. The unassuming artworks secure the man. He and the artworks dress themselves formally. He and the artworks are framed appropriately? within themselves and adjacent to their immediate surroundings; he frames partially with a three piece suit and they partially with smooth pine bindings. The white in his knuckles demonstrates a tight clinch. His face, through its age, demonstrates experience.
ReplyDeleteEach of the three bodies clinch themselves with similarly texturized media. The man does so with his suit and shotgun and self. The woody artwork on the left proffers some reliefs on its surface through some different-sized holes and other woodily textured images. The right artwork elicits thatchiness through some different sized holes and some images fused together with interlapping redness. The image clinches through these three artworks clutching themselves and each other.
Look at all the seeing. This could be the apotheosis of seeing seeing (extreme hyperbole). Mr. Burroughs is seeing his viewer seeing him, and this is of course camera seeing. The famed works on the wall—hung to be seen, no doubt—were created, it appears, by shotgun seeing. (Even this shotgun seeing is multifold). Each hole through which Mr. Burroughs’ viewer sees the wall behind the framed works was created with one eye shut, and one eye seeing down the barrel. The shotgun seeing was likely shotgun seeing at close range; shotgun seeing is consummated in becoming a seeing through. With a cheek to the barrel the shotgun seeing sees through the target, and here this seeing through is preserved, framed and seen in its infinite becoming as the seeing through becomes something new every time it is hung anew. Seeing seeing here is infinite, the expression “seeing seeing” gets so slippery. The seeing seeing in this image is inexhaustible.
ReplyDeleteIn this image, I see a very interesting logic. Between the two pieces of art stand their mutual artist. William Burrows literally acts as the connection between the two works in this case. Without him, the two pieces would certainly go together since they are composed of similar colors and styles. With Burrows standing between, the viewer is inclined to see him as their primary connection. The viewer is fooled into ignoring their other similarities.
ReplyDeleteThe apple of the eye. A blast of the canvas. Art as world shattering. Art as being torn open and through. Its material ripped apart in the seems, its insides thin, ruffled, a sheet of paper. The artist standing guard, triumphant over his creation, his murder. Art as the duel force of birth and death. The tool of the shotgun, the power, the finality. The tools of the paint brush splaying the splattered paint: the power, the finality. The beautiful mess. The sensational manipulation of reality with powerful objects: holding life and death in hand. Guarding one’s oeuvre, one’s masterpiece, one’s victim. Prim appearance wedged within a beautiful messy mistake. Art as destruction, in streaks. Keep the eye straight, the target in scope. An inch or two can make all the difference in a game of William Tell.
ReplyDeleteIf a shotgun is just one of William Burroughs' tools for making art, is the viewer about to be one of his canvases? He has his finger on the trigger and his other hand has cocked the hammer and loaded the gun. All he has to do is slide the fore-end forward, pull the trigger and BAM: art. Shotgun art: aural and visual creation united.
ReplyDeleteA shotgun blast, an explosion of the now, a ripe instant rupturing at the seams. A ravaged canvas, not an origin or genesis but a body and a burden. The raw synthesis of an intricate machine with the color of air. A surrender and a celebration. You cannot look at just the fabricated pastiche, you have to see what lurks past it— the cosmos. These collages are in the world, of the world.
ReplyDeleteMr. Burroughs stands silent, hinting at his secret, his ability to rupture, to claw, to unravel order’s fibers. He does not speak. This image cannot go with words; it can be described, but only in whispers that grasp for coherence or meaning that is not there.
William Burroughs, protector, gatekeeper, ethicist of images. Think this image exists only through you? Think you can subjectively suck its vitality and spit out solipsistic nonsense that no one will ever care about? No, Burroughs guards these images on the wall, this image he constitutes, with a long barrel full of consequences. View like a Johnson, not a vampire--or die.
ReplyDeleteOf course, there are no 'real' consequences for sucking the blood of this image. That is, unfortunately, such a vampiric viewer will not be shot. Burroughs is image himself--he stands in front of the wooden pieces, but he also stands between--indeed, poses--as another object on display. If he can be said to at once guard these images and stand alongside as image himself, then it seems the image as a whole does not require 'real' human-generated consequences. If the human is image himself--not only Burroughs but the viewer as well--then to suck the blood of images is genuinely comparable to sucking blood--images and blood are different, yet coexisting constituents of the human. The solipsistic viewer not only sucks his own blood principle, but in immediate circumstances. The consequences may not be of gross material, but they are indeed real. By failing to amplify an image the viewer misses an opportunity for self-growth, misses an opportunity to take up the image and make something--text, more images, etc., something of affective force--new which both exceeds and reinforces both viewer and image.
Images within images and frames within frames, Burroughs stands guard outside the image and within. Indeed, Burroughs stands in from of the art, but participates in the art at the same time. This sort of inbetweeness doesn’t bother Burroughs though, he’s too cool. He stands calm, collect, confident. He can protect this image. Go ahead, Burroughs suggest, with a slight tilt of the head. Check out my art. Please, take a look at the detail. Don’t just pass it by. Because if you do, you may just miss the fact that he’s got his finger on the trigger. What lovely sight indeed. BANG.
ReplyDeleteBurroughs uses and holds onto a very unconventional tool of art: a shotgun. The shotgun completely defies the usual and mundane tools of art, paintbrushes. Burroughs holds onto the shotgun tightly with one hand on the trigger. He seems at once guarded and ready to create a new artwork. A fresh canvas lies before him, whatever he is looking at. Perhaps the viewer?
ReplyDeleteThe image presents a paradox; the man, armed with a weapon and having an especially blank stare, communicates the violence of the image. This is supplemented by the presence of the art works that fall on each side of the image. The one on the right is fractured and imbued with blood; the one on the left is equally disheveled. Nevertheless, the stoic expression of the man communicates docility at the same time as it communicates violence. The man appears out of place in the image - his soft expression represents a deep contrast with the violent elements that surround him. The image thus functions to align the man with his surroundings while simultaneously emphasizing his difference from it.
ReplyDeleteThe images to the left and right of the man are shotgun splatters; they are each one way a shotgun blast can go. When a shotgun fires, its shot emits from the barrel in a tight group, but that group rapidly separates with each foot traveled. Those two images are shotgun blasts at multiple levels. There are big holes, splatters, and grazes of the shot (like a bullet skinning a shoulder). How can a shotgun blast have such beautiful and complex forms? Shooting images and shooting guns. Is it just coincidence they use the same verb?
ReplyDeleteAt first glance it would appear that the man holding the gun is standing in front of these pieces of wood, separated from them, protecting this seeing-event. On the contrary, he is in a space of in-betweenness. He is not part of the images on the wall, he stands literally, in-between them, separated from them, yet he is a part of the seeing-event. He stands in-between the images on the wall and the viewer seeing the image. It is a marbling of multiple viewing worlds comingled to create this image.
ReplyDeleteThe holes in the pieces of wood peer out at its audience much like the eyes of the geriatric. His eyes stare blankly back at the camera taking the picture much like the holes. How do these 'eyes' situate the viewer? What is it that is being seen? This is the seeing of seeing ad infinitum.
The stark contrast between the clean artist and the apparent violence in the hanging art poses a different question for me--why could this art be seen as nontypical? Because of the gun shots? Why is this particular image seen to be capturing violence as opposed to 'typical' art?
ReplyDeleteWe spoke in class about the gun becoming the artist's tool, but there are more paths of interpretations that stem from this.
Can we see the artist's tool as a gun? Why does it take the literal tearing of the canvas for violence to be seen? The artist has splattered the canvas with gun shots in the same way he has splattered it with paint...here, there is no difference. Only that the gun shots bring to light the equivalent violence of the paint.
Burroughs is in the middle, framed by two frames. Between a shotgun and the wall behind him, between his creative work and his destructive work, between irreverence and sophistication, between the last shot and the next shot, what matters is that he’s been shooting all along, and that he’s still ready to shoot. He occupies the space available for him and expands it, ‘liv[ing] to the full the contrast of his time’ (I think that’s Barthes, or maybe Benjamin). And at this moment, he’s got his eyes on you.
ReplyDeletehere's is "thanksgiving prayer":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7_MYrVzU-Y
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ReplyDeleteThe image, in positing a shotgun as a paintbrush, recasts the notion of art creation. The image of two framed works of art hanging on bleach-white wall evokes the feeling of a museum. Burroughs' attire, an impeccable grey suit, is consistent with the familiar feeling of museum, a designated site for viewing works of art. The image of Burroughs holding his shotgun, however, unmoors this sense of familiarity. By depicting the shotgun as an artistic tool, the image shifts the terms of art creation.
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ReplyDeleteGreat artists steal and make it their own. In this image, two traditional works of art (traditional in the sense that an image that is framed and hung up on a wall is considered a work of art) give way to another work of art. By simply inserting a man with a shotgun within the frame of these two works of art, the "traditional" art is stolen and spun and made to be seen in an entirely different way. And a new, and I think more interesting, work of art is created/remixed.
ReplyDeleteThe pistol is Burroughs' paintbrush, a rough plank of wood his canvas. The roughness and loudness of the two pieces of art are contained within the frames, hanging neatly on a white wall. Similarly, Burroughs is sharply dressed in a suit and hat with his finger on the trigger and hands tightly clenching the gun, as if he's about to go on a shooting spree, beginning with me. This image is chaos and madness all neatly buttoned up. The juxtaposition of these two contrasting affects is what makes this image seem oddly humorous--threatening but calm, pristine but rugged.
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ReplyDeletedespite the cleanly contained eruptions, the well dressed man, this image explodes upon perception.
ReplyDeleteshock. intrigue. the boring and banal flee this scene faster than the speed of the shot.
Here we have a reckoning of the ability of chaos to be dressed up, of the stylistic blast.
Burroughs invites viewers to take a look at his work. His cool, confident, indifferent face opens observations for viewer but his finger in the trigger may give the second thoughts to criticism. Or, Burroughs is just becoming an image with his images, breaking the lines and frames that he had created. By standing in front of his art work, Burroughs becomes one with his images, repeating his creation in a completely different way.
ReplyDeleteThe man in the image appears hyper contrived, seeming more like a mannequin than an individual. The man does not explain the images and even if the shotgun is a means of protecting them, it does not explain very much. He is not separated from the art hanging behind him on the wall, rather they exist on the same plane; he is art. The paintings on the wall and the man work in unison to create the image and in doing so non are privileged.
ReplyDeleteThis image Kills Art as it creates it, resulting in the simultaneous birth and death of creativity. Burroughs cannot stand anywhere else: he is directly in and part of the act of Art Unfolding. But the image does not highlight an act that just happened, or is about to happen: it is happening right before our eyes, jamming the circuit of framed, museum art with live, human flesh. Though the setup is contrived- he stands there, looking into the lens of whomever snapped the picture- the relationship between the framed images and Burroughs makes the image unfold and re-fold with its very own parts, threatening to destroy itself, but freezing --
ReplyDeleteFramed chaoses. Both paintings in the background are messy, gunshot, and wild, YET they are framed nonetheless. The man in the middle is too, the chaos of a trigger happy man with a piercing glare and a probably loaded shotgun is willfully contained within a three piece suit and fedora. However, containment is not taming the images at all--if anything, it makes them seem more wild and uncontrollable.
ReplyDeleteThe violence of the images is mirrored in the artist. And we can see how the violent energy of the artist's shotgun affected the art itself.
Most conspicuously, the art that he guards is all by itself. It seems to be in an art museum with the blank walls but it isn't clear. The two paintings hang side by side, perfectly symmetrical, in a completely unmarked place. They just are. And so is he. It lacks a certain context, a certain architecture which would constitute the body of narrative. Context is the framework of narrative. It reinforces it just as steel beams reinforce a building. context is like the foundation upon which a building rests. This image lacks that particular type of foundation. And so it is hilarious- as hilarious as a building without a foundation. It serves a different purpose.
ReplyDeleteThere is no context to define him as a guard but thats what he appears to be doing. He simply stands there, challenging the viewer it seems. But a challenge for what? A challenge to face the artist? A challenge to steal the art. A challenge to interpret the art. This would be in a way to take on the art. It would be to take it. But from who? The artist? He does not own it. Even as he stands in front of it it is still taken in by the viewer and therefore not solely the possession of the artist. Images cannot be protected in this way. They exceed their physical form. They are taken up by the viewers that look at them. His efforts are futile.
The artwork, like the man manifest both chaos and order. The paintings portray violent omnidirectional movement, fighting to escape from their cage-like frames. The man exhibits the same inner turmoil, seemingly ready to be released through his weapon. He appears to be guarding his paintings, but could his paintings actually be guarding him? Both paintings are more dominant then the man himself. A painting on each side of him frames him and keeps him contained. Perhaps they are protecting him from himself...
ReplyDeleteThis image mocks the idea of the artist as authority over his or her own
ReplyDeletework. Bergson standing in front of his paintings with a shot gun is
undoubtedly an authoritative pose but even while he is standing in front
of it the confrontation creates doubt. Why if it is obvious and right that
the author is privileged does privilege have to be demanded. The artist
holding the weapon also brings forward the question of the multiplicity of
images within the image. While it the gunman confronts the viewer in the
image he is confronting them over the back images showing the multiplicity
of layers in the image.
Burroughs is like Deleuze's model of the artist who harnesses the forces of the cosmos. He does not make art from scratch, he is simply a manipulator, a conductor, an experimental architect of sorts. He uses his gun to make art that is a process of methodologically controlled chance. Here he shows the means of production and how he uses them (the universe, violence, chance, a gun, paint). The image of Burroughs with his gun-brush is just as interesting as the product of his method.
ReplyDeleteAh, Burroughs. If you had seen junky's christmas recently this photo might reveal more to your eye....or is it the point that is shouldn't? Ten thousand GOLDEN speedballs. His madness and greatness is encompassed in this imag. The artist and his tool of DESTRUCTION. What can I say that hasn't been said already? His eyes offer a seeing. A new type of seeing....the sympathetic seeing to his seeing. You imagine yourself with those eyes and are engulfed in Burroughs.
ReplyDeleteBurroughs IS his art, HE IS part of the display! His peachy salmon-skin tone bleeds into the outer strip of the two frames adjacent. He’s also operating in multiple temporalities, as part of the art enclosed in the frame—something he’s produced in the past, as something blending in between the two frames, and not touching the frames at all.
ReplyDeleteIs he protecting his art? Protect it from what, he’s already shot through it. Maybe shooting in this image is not what breaks the image, but makes the image. It IS the art itself, it IS a form of creation. In his senile years, he’s still able to reproduce images, as both part of and independent from them. The gun is no longer tethered to the living body, but to give life to a whole new body, a whole new emergence of life—the image. And in doing so, he’s also preserving his image, his life, his body in the image which continues to birth a new concept of how image and gun go.