the invention of god

alpha gorilla and Michelangelo's Mozes

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo
Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian
Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape

summary

Nine palimpsest drawings were the first output of my Research Residency at the Rietveld Academie, and are made during September 2009 - December 2009. In January 2010 these nine Palimpsest drawings are used as research material for a lecture for a PhD in the arts symposium in The Hague in February 2010.

This is the first chapter of my Surface Research.

After the lecture I had to regenerate the Artistic Research plan. With the idea of being of some importance for the students I organised a workshop "intensive drawing". The workshop worked with the very simple concept about the drawing surface, which is its size. We made drawings after the Golden Ratio and the triangle of Kepler.

Second chapter of my Surface Research.

At the end of the first year of this Artistic Research Residency I made a drawing in advance of the second Research Residency year. Sixteen states of making and destroying and redrawing one drawing are showing the systematically process which I want to use in the second research year.

Third chapter of my Surface Research.

In September 2010 I started the second research year with a creation & destruction project by destroying three canvases. After that four drawings are drawn and destroyed. And finally five photographic self-portraits are destroyed with various techniques.

Fourth chapter of my Surface Research.


After this practical destruction research my research became more theoretical about the subject Idolatry and Iconoclasm. List of literature:

Frans Kellendonk: Idolen. Over het tweede gebod, Meulenhoff Amsterdam 1993

Sven Lütticken: De kunst van het iconoclasme, 2007.

Bruno Latour en Peter Weibel: Iconoclash, Beyond the image wars in science, religion and art, ZKM Karlsruhe 2002

Jan Assmann: Moses the Egyptian, the memory of Egypt in western monotheism, Harvard U.P. Londen 1997

Sigmund Freud: Moses and Monotheism, translated by Katherine Jones, Hogarth Press 1939

Ad Reinhardt: Art as Art, the selected writings of Ad Reinhardt, edited by Barbara Rose, University of California Press L.A. 1975

This literature and a text which is going to be published soon on this blog is the fifth chapter of my Surface Research.

Chapter six is going to be an exhibition in autumn 2011 and will be organised by Alexandra Landré. A publication with texts and images is going to be the seventh and last chapter of my two years of Artistic Research at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Thanks a lot for the opportunity and the hospitality Gerrit !

destructed masterpieces

Erased de Kooning Drawing, Robert Rauschenberg, 1953

Imagine an exhibition of destructed masterpieces,
starting with Rauschenberg’s “erased De Kooning drawing”.

Than a sliced into ribbons Barnett Newman,
a stabbed Dumas and
a burned Tuymans.

After that a totally perforated by machine gun bullets Kiefer,
a buried Nitsch,
a drowned Baselitz and
a torn into rickety Richter.

A butchered Borremans,
a mutilated Monet,
a punched Polke,
an entropic destructed Duchamp and
a pruned Koons.

opposites

doing diderot 20 april 2011 luxor live arnhem

On Wednesday April 20 Richard Sennett (author of "the craftsman") was the key-note lecturer in the Doing Diderot symposium in Arnhem. It was a pity he couldn't be there because he was ill, nevertheless the symposium was interesting.
In the whiskey bar of the Luxor Theatre I presented my research into Idolatry and Iconoclasm.
Next week the text will be translated and is going to be published here on this blog.

Moses / Michelangelo / Freud

Moses of Michelangelo in S. Pietro in Vincoli, Rome

 

Drawing of Moses by Sigmund Freud

Drawing of Moses by Sigmund Freud

Drawing of Moses by Sigmund Freud

 

Drawing of Moses by Sigmund Freud

Moses of Michelangelo in S. Pietro in Vincoli, Rome

selfportrait iconoclasm by cutting out

idolatry                        iconoclasm

figurative                     abstract
pornographic              the void

sublime                       extreme

full                                empty

many                            one

something                   nothing

creation                       destruction

inferior                        superior

anarchy                       utopia

cacophony                  silence

polychrome                monochrome

polytheistic                 monotheistic

a mess                         tidy

dirty / polluted          pure / clean

muddy                        clear

complex                     simple
for many                    for few

a begin                       the end

selfportrait iconoclasm by stabbing

Three stages of a self-portrait stabbed with an awl.
image
picture
statue
figure
representation
portrait
icon
metaphor
diagram
simulacrum
amulet
charm
talisman
fetish
voodoo
potlatch
initiation

selfportrait iconoclasm by sandpapering out

Another three stages of a self-portrait photo which is destructed with rough grained sandpaper. It is more or less precise executed within the contour of the head. Therefore the background in the photo stays visible as a room. Do we call a photograph figurative? There are photos which are abstract. Figurative images are constructed in stone or with pencil or paint. A photo isn't a construction, often a photo isn't a construction but something captured by chance. Even though a lot of styled photo-models are posing during photo shoots in what is construction of images on a high level, those photos we don't call figurative photography.
Does it matter, figurative or abstract images? Yes, it matters. Abstraction to figuration is superior, abstraction thinks. God had no stature, shape, form, figure nor posture when he spoke to Moses on the mountain Horeb, therefore figurative images are inferior. Plato posits that reality is an idea of the higher unknown. So a figurative image is an idea of an idea and therefore unnecessary and superfluous. For Plato and Yahweh it isn't allowed to play and entertain with figurative images because it distracts from the world of ideas and will lead to idolatry. Figuration is inferior to abstraction, abstraction is superior to figuration.
Still we feel this distinction, in art we work with this distinction.
Malevitsj, Mondrian, Newman and Reinhardt are superior to Magritte, Picasso, Dali and Duchamp.
Magritte, Picasso, Dali and Duchamp are inferior to Malevitsj, Mondrian, Newman and Reinhardt.
Magritte, Picasso, Dali and Duchamp is entertainment for the bored "looking for stories" junkies.
Malevitsj, Mondrian, Newman and Reinhardt is pleasure and delight for the spoiled "longing for emptiness" addicts.

selfportrait iconoclasm by scratching out

Scratching out the self-portrait with a cutter through scratching the brilliant top layer of the photographic paper.

selfportrait iconoclasm by blacking out

To recapitulate what was already executed in November last year. From the photos of different stages of the five iconoclastic actions on self-portraits here are three photos of blacking out the first self portrait. A residue of the portrait remains, the portrait became masked. It isn't Voodoo, nor exorcism. It is research, image research.

new office

The two residents at the Rietveld Academie, Ann Meskens and Henri Jacobs, got a new office in the academy. It isn't big news, but we feel comfortable in our new "kitchen" where we can drink our thee and coffee and eat madeleines.
On Thursday March 3 a presentation of my research into Idolatry and Iconoclasm was given in the Researchgroup Art and Public Space at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.
It is my intention to write a recapitulation of this lecture for this blog and to post it as soon as possible.

moses and monotheism by sigmund freud

Volz expresses himself still more explicitly. He says : "that the heaven-soaring work of Moses was at first hardly understood and feebly carried out, until during the course of centuries it penetrated more and more into the spirit of the people and at last found kindred souls in the great prophets who continued the work of the lonely Founder."
With this I have come to an end, my sole purpose having been to fit the figure of an Egyptian Moses into the framework of Jewish history. I may now express my conclusion in the shortest formula: To the well-known duality of that history two peoples who fuse together to form one nation, two kingdoms into which this nation divides, two names for the Deity in the source of the Bible we add two new ones : the founding of two new religions, the first one ousted by the second and yet reappearing victorious, two founders of religions, who are both called by the same name Moses and whose personalities we have to separate from each other. And all these dualities are necessary consequences of the first: one section of the people passed through what may properly be termed a traumatic experience which the other was spared.

MOSES AND MONOTHEISM, SIGMUND FREUD
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY KATHERINE JONES
PUBLISHED BY THE HOGARTH PRESS AND THE INSTITUTE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
1939

short story about IDOLATRY in 5 images

Nicolas Poussin, the golden calf

The best way to make people forget an idolatrous rite is to put another rite in its place.

Enguerand Quarton, piéta

The Christians followed the same principle by building their churches on the ruins of pagan temples and by observing their feasts on the dates of pagan festivals.

Hanri Jacobs, midi / solange, paysage losange

For the same reason, Moses had to institute many dietary and sacrificial prescriptions in order to occupy the terrain held by the Sabians and their idolatrous ways,

Henri Jacobs, quartet

"so that all these rites and cults that they practised for the sake of the idols, they now came to practise in the honor of god."

Henri Jacobs, two drawings of a symbolon

The divine strategy was so successful that the Sabians and their once mighty community fell into oblivion. (Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian)

the idol shop

Illustration from a Moravian haggadah of 1737, based on the printed Amsterdam haggadah of 1712.

Abraham and the idol shop of his father Terah.

Terah, Abraham's father, was an idol worshipper. One day Terah had to leave the store in which he sold idols. He left Abraham to manage the store in his absence. A man came and wanted to buy an idol. Abraham asked him "How old are you?" And the man responded "Fifty or sixty years old." Abraham then said "Pitiful is the man who is sixty and worships idols that are only one day old." So the man left in embarrassment.
Once came a woman with an offering of fine flour. She said to Abraham "Here, take it and bring it before the idols." Abraham stood up, took a stick, broke all the idols, and put the stick back in the hands of the biggest idol among them. When his father returned he asked "Who did this to them?" Abraham answered "I will not deny you the truth. A woman came with an offering of fine flour and asked me to bring it before them. So I brought it before them and each said "I shall eat first." Then the biggest one stood among them, he took a stick in his hand and broke them all." So Terah said to him "Why do you mock me? Do these idols know anything to speak and move?" And Abraham replied "Won't your ears hear what your mouth speaks?"

Midrash Rabbah, Noah, portion 38, section 13, translated by Shai Lavi

second commandment

The exhibition "iconoclash, beyond the image wars in science, religion and art" in the "Center for Art and Media" in Karlsruhe from May to August 2002 is about the second commandment: "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters below". Bruno Latour proposes the following questions:
Are we sure we have understood it correctly?
Have we not made a long and terrifying mistake about its meaning?
How can we reconcile this request for a totally an-iconic society, religion and science with the fabulous proliferation of images that characterizes our media-filled cultures?
If images are so dangerous, why do we have so many of them?
If they are innocent, why do they trigger so many and such enduring passions?