27 May 2013
Beauty Book
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Draft 01
I began making ‘beauty books’ at a moment of visual and perhaps intellectual frustration. I wanted no conscious, pragmatic, or professional argument to construct or make: I simply wanted to make a book that was an intuitive reaction to something that had inspired, influenced or intrigued me. I wanted to make something beautiful and for no reason...
M.dixt 27 May 2013
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‘Woman in Space’ T. barber, 2009
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screen shot from ‘Stalker” Tarkovsky, 1979
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screen shot from ‘Stalker” Tarkovsky, 1979
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Poloroid Tarkovsky, 1979
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Azemichi, 1991
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Heterotopia is a concept in human geography elaborated by philosopher Michel Foucault to describe places and spaces that function in nonhegemonic conditions. These are spaces of otherness, which are neither here nor there, that are simultaneously physical and mental, such as the space of a phone call or the moment when you see yourself in the mirror.
A utopia is an idea or an image that is not real but represents a perfected version of society, such as Thomas More’s book or Le Corbusier’s drawings. Foucault uses the term heterotopia to describe spaces that have more layers of meaning or relationships to other places than immediately meet the eye. In general, a heterotopia is a physical representation or approximation of a utopia, or a parallel space that contains undesirable bodies to make a real utopian space possible (like a prison).
Heterotopia M. Foucault - 1966
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‘Diving In’ T. Barber, 2011
‘Rhein’ A. Gursky, 1999
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‘Hip Hop” LA 2011
will not be forced to do terrible and unlawful deeds; but finally, as the trouble has no end, they go forward with him, yielding and agreeing to do his bidding. And they come to the beloved and behold his radiant face. And as the charioteer looks upon him, his memory is borne back to the true nature of beauty, and he sees it standing with modesty upon a pedestal of chastity, and when he sees this he is afraid and falls backward in reverence, and in falling he is forced to pull the reins
Phaderus Plato - 370 BCE
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‘The Milk Maid’ J. Vermeer,c. 1660
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‘Dutch Flower 03” photo taken in NL 2013
‘Dutch Flower 17” photo taken in NL 2013
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‘Dutch Flower 07” photo taken in NL 2013
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‘Dutch Flower 15” photo taken in NL 2013
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Gjon Mili, a technical prodigy and lighting innovator, visited Pablo Picasso in the South of France in 1949, it was clear that the meeting of these two artists and craftsmen was bound to result in something extraordinary. Mili showed Picasso some of his photographs of ice skaters with tiny lights affixed to their skates, jumping in the dark — and the Spanish genius’s lively, ever-stirring mind began to race.
This series of photographs, known ever since as Picasso’s “light drawings,” were made with a small electric light in a darkened room; in effect, the images vanished as soon as they were created — and yet they still live, six decades later, in Mili’s playful, hypnotic images. Many of them were also put on display in early 1950 in a show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
“Picasso” gave Mili 15 minutes to try one experiment. He was so fascinated by the result that he posed for five sessions, projecting 30 drawings of centaurs, bulls, Greek profiles and his signature. Mili took his photographs in a darkened room, using two cameras, one for side view, another for front view. By leaving the shutters open, he caught the light streaks swirling through space.”
Finally, while the “Picasso draws a centaur in the air” photo that leads off this gallery is rightly celebrated, many of the images in this gallery are far less well-known — in fact, many of them never ran in the magazine — but they are no less thrilling, after all these years, than the iconic picture of the archetypal creative genius of the 20th century crafting, on the fly, a fleeting (albeit captured forever on film) work of art. ‘Light Drawings’ P. Picasso, 1949
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‘Light Drawings’ P. Picasso, 1949
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Many and frequent are the defects in the internal organs which prevent or weaken the influence of those general principles, on which depends our sentiment of beauty or deformity. Though some objects, by the structure of the mind, be naturally calculated to give pleasure, it is not to be expected, that in every individual the pleasure will be equally felt. Particular incidents and situations occur, which either throw a false light on the objects, or hinder the true from conveying to the imagination the proper sentiment and perception. One obvious cause, why many feel not the proper sentiment of beauty, is the want of that delicacy of imagination, which is requisite to convey a sensibility of those finer emotions. This delicacy everyone pretends to: everyone talks about it; and would reduce every kind of taste or sentiment to its standard. But as our intention in this essay is to mingle some light of the understanding with the feeling of the sentiment, it will be proper to give a more accurate definition of delicacy than has been hitherto attempted....
Where the organs are so fine, as to allow nothing to escape them; and at the same time so exact as to perceive every ingredient in the composition: this we call delicacy of taste, where we employ these terms in the literal or metaphorical sense. ‘On The Standard of Taste’ D. Hume, 1757
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‘Two Pieces of Bread S. Dali, 1936
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‘In Voluptasn Mors S. Dali, 1951
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Dali and Gala in Port Lligat, a fishing village near Cadaques, before they married., c. 1930
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‘Black Square’ K. Malevich, c.1920
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The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten. In times when history still moved slowly, events were few and far between and easily committed to memory. They formed a commonly accepted backdrop for thrilling scenes of adventure in private life.
Nowadays, history moves at a brisk clip. A historical event, though soon forgotten, sparkles the morning after with the dew of novelty. No longer a backdrop, it is now the adventure itself, an adventure enacted before the backdrop of the commonly accepted banality of private life.
‘The Book of Laughter & Forgetting’ M. Kundera, c.1979
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Poloroid from ‘Stalker” Tarkovsky, 1979
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screen shot from ‘Solaris” Tarkovsky, 1972
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I stand at the window of this great house in the South of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life. I have a drink in my hand, there is a bottle at my elbow. I watch my reflection in the darkening gleam of the window plane. My reflection is tall, perhaps rather like an arrow, my blond hair gleams. My face is like a face you have seen many times. My ancestors conquered a continent, pushing across the death-laden plains, until they came to an ocean which faced away from Europe into a darker past.
I may be drunk by morning but that will not do any good. I shall take a train to Paris anyway. The train will be the same, the people, struggling for comfort and, even, dignity on the straight-backed, wooden, third-class seats will be the same, and I will be the same. we will ride through the same changing countryside northward, leaving behind the olive trees and the sea and all the glory of the stormy southern sky, into the mist and rain of Paris.... 1st Chapter Giovanni’s Room J. Baldwin,1956
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Prada Marfa, Texas
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‘Hands’ S. Neshat, 2005
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Zimbabwe 2011
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‘Association d’apres Titien G. Richter, 1973
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‘Looking Out’ T. Barber, 2010
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The two different feelings of pleasure and annoyance are not so much based upon the quality of the external things when exciting them as upon the sentiment, peculiar to each man, of being moved to pleasure or displeasure... The finer sentiment which we propose to consider here is primarily of two kinds: the sentiment of the lofty or sublime (Erhabenen) and the sentiment of the beautiful. Being moved by either is agreeable, but in a very different way. A view of a mountain, the snowy peaks of which rise above the clouds, a description of a raging storm or a description by Milton of the Kingdom of Hell cause pleasure, but it is mixed with awe; on the other hand, a view of flower-filled meadows, valleys with winding brooks and the herds upon them, the description of elysium or Homer’s description of the belt of Venus cause an agreeable feeling which is gay and smiling. We must have a sense of the sublime to receive the first impression adequately, and a sense of the beautiful to enjoy the latter fully. Great oak trees and lovely spots in a sacred grove are sublime. Beds of flowers, low hedges and trees trimmed into shape are beautiful. The night is sublime while the day is beautiful. Temperaments which have a sense for the sublime will be drawn toward elated
sentiments regarding friendship, contempt for the world and toward eternity, by the quiet silence of a summer evening when the twinkling light of the stars breaks through the shadows of the night and a lovely moon is visible. The glowing day inspires busy effort and a sense of joy. The sublime moves; the expression of a person experiencing the full sense of the sublime is serious, at times rigid and amazed. On the other hand, the vivid sense of the beautiful reveals itself in the shining gaiety of the eyes, by smiling and even by noisy enjoyment. The sublime, in turn, is at times accompanied by some terror or melancholia, in some cases merely by quiet admiration and in still others by the beauty which is spread over a sublime place. The first I want to call the terrible sublime, the second the noble, and the third the magnificent. Deep loneliness is sublime, but in a terrifying way. The sublime must always be large; the beautiful may be small. The sublime must be simple; the beautiful may be decorated and adorned. A very great height is sublime as well as a very great depth; but the latter is accompanied by the sense of terror, the former by admiration. Hence the one may be terrible sublime, the other noble. Immanuel Kant The Sense Of The Beautiful And Of The Sublime, 1774
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‘Mountain View’ T. Barber, 2011
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Screen shot from ‘E La Nave Va’ F. Fellini, 1983
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Bambi Northwood-Blyth T. Barber, 2011
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Bambi Northwood-Blyth T. Barber, 2011
Beauty Book