Kate brings up the big question: Do I use words to describe what to do next with the brush? I think the answer is yes. I think our mental processing of words can be very fast, faster, in thought than in expression. When I speak or write I do try to be coherent and that usually means I test or sort words, change them, or at least try to express myself clearly, in sentences. But I think there's a level of language thought that underlies that more formal processing of words. That primary language level is the fast, wordy but not necessarily coherent language that goes on in all our conscious lives. It is mingled with mental images, too. I think the images and words are interconnected or necessary to one another but first place goes to language. I think it's hard wired. Maybe even human infants are using that sort of sound-language before they learn actual words. Very often I will act seemingly instantly or intuitively with the brush. Other times I do think out a move or mark and then proceed as though following directions I gave to myself. But even when it seems to be too quick for words or directions, intuitive, a gut feeling, or 'automatic' I think the act is prompted in a linguistic form, and if i think of images, as I always do, they are already shaped by language. None of this is to say that whatever the process might be it is clear or good upon action. Once the mark is made, a new criticality occurs to affirm it or reject it or wait and see.
I feel a little heretical saying that I think words are primary to thought, indeed, are thought, even before thought is visual or imagistic. After all, I'm an artist. I've thought about this topic a lot. I need to say 'maybe' and 'perhaps' and 'I think' because I'm not really sure if I'm right. I've concluded, for now, that no matter what image we have in mind, it is derived from words and then evokes more words, perhaps more accurate words, and certainly those cause the image to evolve, change and morph. Summary: When I feel the urge to paint a blue shape, I've already said to myself, "put blue there". wc ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thu, July 26, 2012 8:25:44 PM Subject: Re: Henry Adams quote You and Charles Peirce. You use words to describe what to do next with the brush? Kate Sullivan -----Original Message----- From: William Conger <[email protected]> To: aesthetics-l <[email protected]> Sent: Thu, Jul 26, 2012 5:37 pm Subject: Re: Henry Adams quote I'm thinking that all thoughts are accompanied by words. wc ----- Original Message ---- From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Thu, July 26, 2012 12:06:58 PM Subject: Henry Adams quote Artsy6 quotes Adams: "No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous." And Artsy6 then asks: > Do you agree with Henry Adams? > It's hard to agree totally with Henry Adams. He was a shallow guy, with a fondness for a glossy phrase. Certainly his words were slippery in the sense that they slipped easily from his pen, undeterred by prolonged or penetrating intellect. After the Civil War he wrote: "I think that Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man and a fine character and acted conscientiously. It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world." That kicker, "It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world.", has the sheen of something profound, but it's brainlessly wrong, and not a little ugly. Adams's lack of intelligence was consistently reflected in his vociferous and stupid anti-semitism. ("I detest [the Jews], and everything connected with them, and I live only and solely with the hope of seeing their demise, with all their accursed Judaism. I want to see all the lenders at interest taken out and executed.") in the line above, "No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous." he displays his gift for costume-jewelery rhetoric. Here's a fact about "thought": it is not stable; in a respectable mind, it starts as something weightless and, as the thinker reflects, the thought is tested and advanced, it takes on density, heft, and richness. All words are preceded by a thought; the mind then searches for the words to express that thought. But that first thought is not "viscous" at all; indeed it's more slippery-fast than the words it fetches up. But Adams does not recognize the usual growth of thought. This is because he rushes that first watery thought into ink, figures that's that, and gambols on to his next bubble-thought. I won't elaborate on this here, but one could write a page on his notion of "means", which is obviously as befuddled as his notion of "thought".
