One more day in Lisbon Town

I had a nice feeling today because I talked quite a bit with João. I still have no time to post properly. I miss the UK for the first time ever. I miss the studios, the chalenge, my projects, I don't want to rest this much. Tomorrow I'm going to start to push myself. I'll run next to the sea. I'll phone a couple of friends I miss a lot. I'll have a good time in the end of the day with Zé. I want to be myself again. I want the world to love me back.

4 days in Portugal

I arrived Friday. My family and Pequenão were waiting for me but I was just a bit too lost to give people any proper attention. Came home and had a nice night talking with my family.
The next day was strange: everything went well but I couldn’t find any strength to phone anyone. I was just hopping people would call me. I knew most of them were away because it was the Easter weekend anyway… I said to no one I was here and still I secretly wished people would start calling me out of nowhere. I found a friend but he was busy as he was going to Switzerland soon. I ended up in a family birthday party. This same day someone I love showed me beautiful things and how wrong I was about my past. It was the most important night of the last few years of my life. I woke up feeling strange because that beautiful girl that helped me so much was speaking Portuguese. How was that possible? Where was I? I calmed down. I learned. I dreamt about dreams. I dreamt about the love I lost ages ago when I left this beautiful country. People are the most important thing. I want to be right next to them in the future. I want to make sure I build something that could keep running for ever and ever.
Sunday came and I kept on eating these wonderful Portuguese sweets. I just couldn’t hold myself. For the first time I ended the day seeing TV. I didn’t see the evil box for so long I couldn’t even remember how bad it is for your health. I learned about Buddha, Nostredamus, lions, snakes and all those superficial information cable channels can give you.
Monday I saw Maria do Céu. I missed her as much as I missed my parents. Zé Boia and Andrea came around and we talked quite a bit. I miss them as well but they are extremely busy, so all we managed was to eat a nice dinner.
Today (Tuesday) I died. I couldn’t move. I wanted to call Rita, Zé, Andrea, João, Pequenão, Matilde, Luis, Pedro, Ivo, Paulo, Hugo, Beatriz, Camané, Mariana, Carolina and many other... But I just couldn’t. Some were away. Other were close but I was feeling bad about myself so I just let myself stay in there... waiting for something to happen. Inês my four year old niece came around and started playing letter games with me. I ate all those things you can’t find in England such as nice cakes and I went to the cinema to see sideways. I still need to meet almost everyone. I still want to be with everyone I met so far and learn more about all these things that have been happening to me. I love these people but I belong nowhere. I’m like a ghost waiting for its soul to be free again – and this doesn’t mean I wish I was leaving again... It means I need to find something here I’ll never find anywhere else.

Craig's photo - this guy is mental!!!!!! 

Academically extremly strong. Emotionally I can't make a comment. Steefel lets himself smile quite a lot but she doesn't do it enough. 

Would this work as a flyer? If it doesn't, it would be just perfect for a colour poster... So many layers of meanings. Try to figure out some of them. 

Craig gave me this CD. I can't stop listening to it and that is why the cd isn't in the case. It's absolutly great, meaningful and funny. No rules. Lots of memories. Just something I have to keep with me until I die. It is about those nights we talk in the pub and then walk a bit around Ghost Town... 

A Ana mandou-me uma prenda espectacular: um bocadinho da casa dela. Uma delícia. Ela domina o quadrado... e conversa imenso como eu. hehehe 

My second Easter book - also Mat's 

My Easter Book 1 - Mat lent it to me... 

Joseph Beuys - Hey what's up? Are you posing for the picture? 

No longer a gap in my bookshelf... 

O stress da partida

Tenho de ir porque já estou em contrarelógio para a minha partida... ou o meu regresso... já nada é facil nem sequer partir ou voltar. Todas as pessoas que gostam de mim querem que faça parte do mundo delas. Perguntam-me se não vou ficar. Mas eu não sei onde é que estou. Passeio por cidades de gente perdida. Nenhuma delas pergunta onde está. Encontro almas e falo com espaços. Faço amigos que me levam para os caminhos que não consigo fazer sozinho. Encontro fotografias de memórias e de projectos futuros. Chamam-me notas escritas que marcam histórias.

Por Londres ou por esta cidade fantasma encontro sonhos que consigo tocar. Dizem-me que dinheiro não será um problema... nem sequer me dão uma data limite para fazer um quadro enorme apenas porque querem o meu melhor. Dizem-me que me podem pôr em contacto com uma galeria em Birmingham. Querem mais projectos. Mais ideias. Mais fluência transcendente transferida para o mundo dos mortais. A minha cabeça explode de coisas boas e vontades mas o tempo encurta mais e mais. Fico esborrachado nesta vida que se limita a uma soma de momentos. Esquecem-se amigos daqueles que pensavamos que iam estar lá para sempre. O que pensamos mostra-se efémero e a metafísica perde a sua eternidade. Os neurónios retorcem-se à procura de novas ligações. Mapas mentais ajudam a encontrar pontes. Problemas e mais problemas que encontram soluções intuitivas em prendas de silêncios. Emprestam-me a minha grande lacuna: o Silêncio de Cage. Navego. Parto. Parti? O quê ou de onde?
A palavra que agora melhor me descreve é: PArtir.
O cd que me ofereceram alimenta-me a intuição menos obvia do processo criativo. Esforço-me por manter o nível. Mas estou sempre a descambar para o racional. E quando quero ser racional perco-me pelo que não faz sentido para todos.

Queria tanto tirar fotografiad de uma autopsia e a touradas e largadas. Mas queria violência toda a brutalidade possível numa superfície... Máxima é a imagem que magoa tanto que faz sangue.

Tenho de arrumar este quarto onde já não se consegue andar.

Vai Manel parte dessa cadeira e vai acabar projectos. Mas eu não sei acabar projectos. Só os sei começar. Será que as coisas têm fim? Fim como objectivo ou fim como termino? Porque um é o oposto do outro. Eu ainda queria muito poder largar tudo o que sou no mundo para que as pessoas ficassem com tudo o que sou. Não preciso de nada do que sou se as pessoas ficarem comigo. Mas não... elas partem para longe de mim a toda a hora. Elas partem-me. É a logica Dantesca das almas que fluem numa termodinâmica infernal. Lembram-se do email em que explicam tudo em detalhe? Será que estou num sistema fechado ou isolado? Vou fugir mais uma vez do que sou. Só no verão é que espero encontrar a calma que me vai deixar dizer: sou eu aqui.

Tanta coisa...

My life in the last few days:

-Framing a big image.
-London: Conheci a Ana
Passeios de conversa
Exhibition (Joseph Beuys, Anthony Caro, Triumph of Painting)
Cyber Dog web site
Ana's sketchbooks
A casa da Ana... uma longa história!
-Sorting out lots of different problems.
-tomorrow science park mural negotiation
-Going back to Portugal on Friday
-Self closing draws
-Exhibition task list

Waking Dream 

Drawing 

Micro?  

Valve, valvula, valvulando... 

Nude descending staircase. 

O Inadaptado - o filme 

The other side of the moon. Composition with black. Monumental on focus. A 3d framing trying to get close to perfection. Painting studio invasion number 2. Anibal get's to Rome. Only one elephant left. 

Bits of my metal... 

Printer's making sex. I didn't know laser printers could copulate A3 inkjet printers... White and grey. 

Fight darkness and remember to improve Santa Maria's memories. 

Inside the white cube, behind the computer. Playing role play games. Light on the plugs please. Give me a Tv. Give me a guitar amp. Give me the drums... let me paint it white. Let me continue the wall in my canvas. It is so perfect, so durty, so difficult to reach. Sorry about this but I'm tired. I won't read it again. Mini Christo. 

The begining of a comment on the white cube, on maeda, on Raushenberg's white paintings, the traditional and the fashionable... computer games, tv and painting. It's just the first aproach. It will change a lot. 

The most important days in my life are usually the ones I qualify as useless. 

THE 4th DIMENSION IN DUCHAMP'S BOXES

An Essay submitted as a requirement for module 220 (BA Hons).
Coventry University School of Design and Visual Arts, 2004

One question with many answers

What ideas, concepts, philosophies and critical writings in your view have been influential for contemporary artists? Illustrate and defend your views citing particular cases you consider being important in the development of art in the 20th century.

Contents

Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1 – The 4th Dimension - Historical Perspective
Chapter 2 - Duchamp’s Boxes
Chapter 3 - The Green Box
Chapter 4 – After the White Box (A l’infinitif)
Chapter 5 - Relativity
Conclusion
Bibliography
Illustration list

Preface

For this essay I was planning to write about “Mathematics and Art” but I just felt that would be more appropriate for next year due to the limitations of word counting. Narrowing the subject more and more I tried to find something that would suit my desires (art and science) and meet the university requirements.
After going through all the questions I could choose for this dissertation’s topic I decided to investigate an influent idea in the 20th century art history (the fourth dimension) within the context of a couple of very influent texts: the Green and the White Boxes.
The fourth dimension is the main subject of my studio practice and it was also through Duchamp (Fig.1 and Fig.10) I first knew about its importance in the art world. This was crucial to make this subject more relevant then any other. I also felt I would regret if I didn’t write this thesis about Duchamp because he is one of the most influent artists in my work and it was also with him I learned the difference between “context” and “content”.
What I wanted to achieve with this investigation was a deeper understanding on Duchamp’s notes and how the fourth dimension influenced the beginning of conceptual art. As a bonus I would inform my studio practice and appreciate the evolution of a scientific myth and concept through time. All the intellectual and artistic “adventures” I’ve been living with Mathew Dalgleish and Ian Hays about Duchamp and extra dimensions would be pushed forwards by these two boxes analysis.
It may seem silly but after writing this essay I felt the need to write notes for my own work too. I realized how crucial that can be for people to understand the rules of irrational intuition. As consequence I started writing my own notes using Leonardo Da Vinci’s manuscripts “typotranslated” and downloaded from the internet as a background to write and draw about my studio projects.

Fig. 1 - Duchamp’s Studio, New York, 1917-1918
 

Introduction

There are several examples of texts that were vital for the course of events through this last century, many of them were written by critics and artists. To explore the importance of writing I decided to research two textual works I believe are still influent in contemporary art.
In this essay I will embrace a subject specific analysis on Duchamp’s Green and White Box. These texts were a great influence in the last century’s art and were studied and scrutinized by both researchers and artists.
The subject I chose to write about was the 4th dimension. This idea is interesting as a popular myth (it used to be) and also as a concept which evolved through literature, geometry, art and physics.
To start developing my ideas I’ll start with an art historical perspective on the 4th Dimension. Then I am going to explore some ideas on the Green and the White Boxes searching for Duchamp’s use of non-Euclidian geometries and 4D references. Finally I will try to succinctly question the way most art criticism, and Linda Henderson in particular, rejects the connections between Einstein’s Relativity and Duchamp’s work.

Chapter 1 - 4th Dimension - Historical Perspective

[The forth dimension] along with non-Euclidean Geometry, played a vital role in the development of modern art and theory. […] once the artistic impact of he new geometries is understood, the art and critical literature of the early modern era regain a unity and a level of meaning that has long been lost.

Henderson, 1993, page 230

The fourth dimension during the 19th century was developed by mathematicians and used in literature such as in Abbott’s Flatland when it was just starting to be scientifically relevant:
Sphere. But where is this land of Four Dimensions?
I. I Know not: But doubtless my Teacher Knows.

Abbott, 1884, Chapter 19

In the first three decades of the 20thcentury the fourth dimension was present in almost every major modern movement. Cubists, Futurists, Constructivists, Dadaists and other artistic circles through out the world were investigating new geometries and properties of this concept.
In the 1920’s Einstein Relativity theory almost banished the spatial fourth dimension from the public imagination, replacing it by the temporal fourth dimension. Even so, one more artistic group was still to come and save this idea and non-Euclidean geometry’s presence in the art world, that movement was French Surrealism.
For many artists such as Metzinger, Gleizes, Duchamp, Dada founder Tzara and the surrealists (just to mention a few) non-Euclidean geometry meant new freedom from traditional ways of thinking. The 4th dimension was also a symbol of the liberation for artists until the 1930’s. It was used widely in painting allowing abstract artists to reject the one point perspective system that was used since the Renascence.
Although non-Euclidean geometries have always been strongly connected to the idea of forth dimension, they never achieved the popularity of this pre-Einstein concept which had many other non-geometric features. At first associated with cubist faceted forms and later on with gravity by Duchamp, the fourth dimension was also related to antigravity by Malevich, spirals by the futurists and even the Platonic realm by Synthetic Cubists. Many artists also added motion as an attribute of the fourth dimension (these included Duchamp, Kupka, Boccioni, Malevich and many others).
According to Lynda Henderson during the 1930’s the fourth dimension was not just limited by the Relativity Theory but also the “increase discouragement of deep space in modern painting” by a formalist art theory. Never the less the Manifeste Dimensioniste was published in Paris 1936. This document was signed by artists from all over the world and from different artistic tendencies, such as: Miró, Hans Arp, Moholy-Nagy, Duchamp, Picabia, Kandinsky, Ben Nicholson, Alexander Calder, Robert Delaunay, etc… A very impressive and extensive list of names approved this attempt to adapt previous viewpoints on the 4th dimension to Einstein’s Space-time.
In the 1940’s the 4th dimension was discussed by Breton, Dali, Dominguez and many other. In a very “surreal” way, time and the “initial 4D concept” were being merged and related to Freud, unconscious, mysticism and attacks on reason.
During the 1950’s and 1960’s very few were still interested in the fourth dimension of space, even amongst surrealists but in the 1970’s some individuals, artists and mathematicians, tried to give visual form to the concept again. A symposium, Hypergraphics: visualizing Complex Relationships in Art, Science and Technology (1978) started the new era of the fourth dimension: computer graphics (Fig.2) and programs were opening new doors to the visual and the mind.

Fig. 2 - Stereogram built using online resources (see illustration list)  

Chapter 2 - Duchamp’s boxes

Fig.4- Duchamp, Wasp or Sex Cylinder, 1913, original lost, facsimile in the Green Box (reproduced in Duchamp in Context fig.105)