2020.02.12
20021201.db Herzog and de Meuron Parrish Art Museum first scheme plan
2006.02.12
African American architecture?
Fields presents a very interesting argument that deals with Hegel's avoidance of ancient Egyptian architecture (i.e., African architecture) when he, Hegel, first writes about art history.
2006.02.12
African American architecture?
Julian Abele was Horace Trumbauer's protégé. Trumbauer had no formal architectural education, but he did pay for Abele's education at the Beaux Arts in Paris, that is, after Abele graduated as the first African-American architecture student from the University of Pennsylvania.
1995.02.12
338. index of the notes complete
I completed the index last weekend, and it was very instructive. The interrelations between topics (and between parts and functions of the body) have become almost crystal clear.
1995.02.12
339. quotation from Myth from the Ice Age to Mickey Mouse
"...since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the definition of myth has been broadened to include sacred history (Heilgeschichte), literary epics and popular genre literature... mythic implications are sometimes discerned in modern scientific theories, philosophical systems, theories of history and political ideologies.
While these modern theories and ideologies are not myths, strictly speaking, they have mythic overtones and implications. They stand where myths once stood. The chief difference between archaic myths and modern theories are linguistic, as Ernst Cassier showed in Language and Myth. Traditional myths are metaphors; they are usually presented in mythopoetic language, partly because rhythm and the repetition of images like "wine dark sea" are useful mnemonic devices. At the same time, many myths, such as the creation stories in Genesis, are archaic scientific theories based on the best information available at the time. Indeed, Mircea Eliade argued that all myths are myths of origin. They tell how the cosmos began, why humanity is sexed, and how nations, classes, families, and occupations came to be. In that way they are archaic scientific theories."
Robert W. Brockway, Myth from the Ice Age to Mickey Mouse (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), p.2.
1995.02.12
340. quotation from Myth and Reality plus note
"Speaking for myself, the definition that seems least inadequate because most embracing is this: Myth narrates a sacred history; it relates an event that took place in primordial Time, the fabled time of the "beginnings." In other words, myth tells how, through the deeds of Supernatural Beings, a reality came into existence, be it the whole of reality, the Cosmos, or only a fragment of reality - an island, a species of plant, a particular kind of human behavior, an institution. Myth, then, is always an account of a "creation"; it relates how something was produced, began to be. Myth tells only of that which really happened, which manifested itself completely. The actors in myth are Supernatural Beings. They are known primarily by what they did in the transcendent times of the "beginnings." Hence, myths disclose their creative activity, and reveal their sacredness (or simply their "supernaturalness") of their works; in short, myths describe the sudden and sometimes dramatic breakthroughs of the sacred (or the "supernatural") into the World. It is this sudden breakthrough of the sacred that really establishes the World and makes it what it is today. Furthermore, it is a result of the intervention of Supernatural Beings that man himself is what he is today, a mortal, sexed, and cultural being."
Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), p. 6 fol.
The above definition of myth does not fit exactly with how I would define the Timepiece. The basic difference is in the Timepiece not being a myth of origin. The Timepiece is a metaphor that combines time and the human body, hence relating the story of human development, past, present and future.
1995.02.12
341. quotation from Myth from the Ice Age to Mickey Mouse plus note
"...What Eliade calls hierophanies (sacred histories) were revealed in illo tempo, "in that time" or "once upon a time" but are realized in the present through ritual reenactment. In that way, for example, the death and resurrection of Christ are made real in the present through the sacrifice of the mass. It is the dramatic reenactment of the holy event which is not a historical event set int he past, from the Catholic Christian point of view, but a real event in any time or place."
I want to relate the idea that the Timepiece places all human development within a very broad spectrum. Although Christ is placed literally at the center of the body, this fact does more to create a guage than to suggest an all pervasive influence of Christ over all human development. The Timepiece is again different than myth in that it does not relay on ritual reenactments to continue the myth. The Timepiece is the entire picture. It is perhaps most appropriate for Christ to be the center because it is the only (major?) religion to profess the total unification of God and mankind. God is unified with mankind when, and only when, He has taken on the entire impliccations of the body. The body is the only absolute symbol of humanity and God was therfore required to take on this symbol in order to be unified with mankind.
Robert W. Brockway, Myth from the Ice Age to Mickey Mouse (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), p.3.
1995.02.12
342. quotation from Myth from the Ice Age to Mickey Mouse plus note
"Myths, according to Campbell, rise from collective experience. This idea is akin to Jung's concept of archetypes which arise from recurrent, common experiences such as the rising and setting of the sun, the phases of the moon, man's experience with woman, woman's experience with man, birth, childhood, youth, maturity, old age, and death, the chase, food gathering and courtship.* Campbell held that all particular mythogenetic zones gave way to a single global mythogenetic zone beginning with the age of Discovery around 1500. The modern zone is the creative imagination of the individual. I do not entirely agree but think that there are still collective mythogenetic zones today though not necessarily in the geographical sense."
* C. G. Jung, "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious," The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 9.1
Robert W. Brockway, Myth from the Ice Age to Mickey Mouse (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), p.3.
Concerning the concepts of archetypes, it is the body itself and its functions that are the most basic archetypes for mankind. The body and birth come before the rising and setting of the sun. If the Timepiece is a "new myth" it is a myth based solely on the human body. Individually, births do not occur more often than the daily routine, but collectively, mankind experiences birth far more often than sunrises and sunsets. The point I'd really like to get across is that mankind should be aware of the change in thinking when engaging with the Timepiece. One must view human development and the human body collectively in order to grasp the true picture. I am here reminded of the story of my "theory of relativity" related to the moon's reflection on the ocean in Savannah, 1979. I think I can actually use that story in the Timepiece, especially to relate the notion of a shift in understanding perception--individual perception vs. collective perception.
It is also interesting that J. Campbell saw a shift in mythogenetics around 1500. I too have recently become much more aware of exactly what was going on around 1500, and it is giving more and more reinforcement to the navel as the second gauge of the Timepiece. (I have been gleaming more information about the Renaissance from the Timetables of History and will relate the information in a subsequent note.)
1995.02.12
343. 'psychoanalysis' from Encyclopedia Britannica plus note
"...Serious and accurate considerations of psychoanalysis led to substantial contributions in at least three separate areas of concrete work...The third contribution is largely the contribution of Jung. The difference between his influence and Freud's arose chiefly from Jung's explanation of the term "libido." Freud had used this term to designate sexual energy; Jung preferred to expand its definition. Linked with this fundamental difference of interpretation was the much greater emphasis Jung put upon what he called the "collective unconscious," which has been described as "the precipitate of humanity's typical forms of reaction since the earliest beginnings." The role of the artist became extremely important for Jung; he was considered a form of priest of the "collective unconscious" because he relates the conscious life of his fellows to its archetypes in the unconscious. This view of the unconscious and its availability to art and literature had no small influence upon 20th-century writers and artists. It was one of several germinal theories which stimulated a great critical interest in myth and mythology... Jung's influence served in a way to counteract Freud's rather narrow view of the artist and the tendency of his followers to analyze art in terms of the artist's physic nature. Jung was in a much larger sense concerned with the art of creation and with its significance as a restatement and reshaping of recurrent mythical themes."
Encyclopedia Britannica (18-726c) under 'psychoanalysis'.
I'll use this passage primarily to establish the idea of the morphology and physiology of the human body as a form of "collective" something. The body is a symbol or (re)presentation of mankind's entire "collective reality." I was already thinking along these lines when I related the Timepiece as a representation of all of mankind's experience (see notes 213, 215).
1995.02.12
344. quotation from Myth from the Ice Age to Mickey Mouse plus note
"It is our nature to weave myths and think in mythic terms. Mythic thinking is imaginative and also imaginal, which refers to image-making... [mythic thinking] is a way of thinking which is at the opposite pole from creative thinking. The analytical thinker takes things apart to see how they are put together. The mythic thinker puts the parts together. He or she is a holistic thinker. Mythic thinking is connected, structural, and linear. Stories always have a beginning, middle and end. Mythic thinking narrates, integrates, and makes whole; it does not fracture experience into fragments. It is not expressionistic. In that way, mythic thinking contravenes some of the dominant modes of the late twentieth century... mythic thinking is metaphorical, sequential, and demands sustained attention span... Myth is personal and individual as well as ethnic and national... the common denominator in all definitions of myth, ancient and modern, is the word "story." A myth is not necessarily a story about gods and supernatural beings, nor necessarily a traditional tale. It is, however, a story."
Robert W. Brockway, Myth from the Ice Age to Mickey Mouse (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 7-10.
All of this passage easily relates to a definition of the Timepiece. I am beginning to become more convinced that the Timepiece is a combination of myth and prophecy.
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