THREE DEAD MOUSE.

I'm working on it as we speak.

Oh, Wikipedia. What would we do without you?

I've been motivated to revisit my old art school thoughts about 'meaning' in Art. The catalyst for this was a comment that was left on this blog by a mystery poster named (appropriately?) "Art." I responded to his/her post -- which you can read in the "FOR SALE" entry -- but have felt the need to flush this idea out a bit more. So, I plan to do a series of posts/blogs that address the issue of whether or not Art has to have 'meaning' to be Art.

This first part is a Wikipedia entry that I just found. And, before anybody starts ranting and raving about the legitimacy of Wikipedia as an actual source, I would like to point out that this is just a jumping point. I just want to bring everybody up to speed on the 'Art for Art's Sake' movement which I believe is a crucial part of my future discussions.

Here we go... This is from Wikipedia:

"Art for art's sake" is the usual English rendition of a French slogan, ''l'art pour l'art'', which is credited to Théophile Gautier (1811 - 1872).

Gautier was not the first to write those words. They appear in the works of Benjamin Constant, and Edgar Allan Poe, in his essay "The Poetic Principle", argues that:

We have taken it into our heads that to write a poem simply for the poem's sake [...] and to acknowledge such to have been our design, would be to confess ourselves radically wanting in the true poetic dignity and force: — but the simple fact is that would we but permit ourselves to look into our own souls we should immediately there discover that under the sun there neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified, more supremely noble, than this very poem, this poem per se, this poem which is a poem and nothing more, this poem written solely for the poem's sake[1].

Gautier, however, was the first to adopt the phrase as a slogan. "Art for art's sake" was a bohemian creed in the nineteenth century, a slogan raised in defiance of those who — from John Ruskin to the much later Communist advocates of socialist realism — thought that the value of art was to serve some moral or didactic purpose. "Art for art's sake" affirmed that art was valuable as art, that artistic pursuits were their own justification and that art did not need moral justification — and indeed, was allowed to be morally subversive.

In fact, James McNeill Whistler wrote the following in which he discarded the accustomed role of art in the service of the state or official religion, which had adhered to its practice since the Counter-Reformation of the sixteenth century:

Art should be independent of all claptrap —should stand alone [...] and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism and the like.

Such a brusque dismissal also expressed the artist's distancing himself from sentimentalism. All that remains of Romanticism in this statement is the reliance on the artist's own eye and sensibility as the arbiter.

The explicit slogan is associated in the history of English art and letters with Walter Pater and his followers in the Aesthetic Movement, which was self-consciously in rebellion against Victorian moralism. It first appeared in English in two works published simultaneously in 1868: Pater's review of William Morris's poetry in the Westminster Review and in William Blake by Algernon Charles Swinburne. A modified form of Pater's review appeared in his Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), one of the most influential texts of the Aesthetic Movement.

The Latin version of the slogan, "ars gratia artis", is used as a slogan by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and appears in the oval around the roaring head of Leo the Lion in their motion picture logo.
It is well to remember that "art for art's sake" is a European construct and a product of the industrial revolution. For example, in many cultures, image-making is a religious practice. Before photography, but after the rise of a middle class in Europe, art was not only "decorative" but the only way that people documented what objects looked like.

Each of these paintings are roughly 2' x 4' in size.

Erika (GF) and I had a party last friday. I got very drunk. While I was drunk I talked to my friend Mr. Thomas White about the possibility of putting on a show together. I'm hoping to talk to him about this while sober. You can check out some of his art work by clicking here or by clicking on his name in the 'links' section of this blog.

This is an old photo that I took WAY back in the day. I haven't actually done any "photography" in a long time, partly because I'm lazy and partly because I have a hard time taking it seriously. Anybody with a digital camera, an eye for composition and photoshop can make a sweet looking picture. Myself included.

Why don't you take me to the graveyard. Where I tried to sell my soul. You said I shouldn't go but the truth is never far. Satan is on the radio. The Devil has a talk show and he's in movies too. So, kill me at the midnight show. I don't want to be here anymore. Bury me six feet down. Life will be better underground. Let me drop dead. Drop dead. I'm tired of the voices in my head. Let me drop dead and die because I hate being alive. I've been told it'd great to be alive but everyone knows that's a fucking lie. Kill me at the midnight show and let me die. Satan is a good friend of mine.

Knocking! "Would you answer your phone? Please. Would you please answer your fucking..." Ring. Ringing. Again. Aesop bangs on the door again. The hallway is poorly lit. Dim. The wallpaper is peeling. The carpet needs cleaning. Down the hall there is yelling; a once-loving couple fighting over nothing. Nothing. The phone rings. Again. Aesop bangs on the door. "Answer the God-damn phone!" He pauses for a second. The phone stops. Apologies. The phone is no longer ringing. Aesop's instantaneous migraine disappears. An eye. Just down the hall. An old woman stares through her door; slightly ajar. Aesop notices and glances back. The door closes. Quiet. Silence. The once-loving couple. Silent. The phone is no longer ringing.

Intrigue. Intrigued. Aesop stops thinking. The door. Aesop starts thinking. He places his hand on the door-knob and turns. The door opens quietly. Why did I do that? Intrigue?

I've just been commissioned to create a piece for a good friend of mine. I'm going to be creating another four part series (I just finished a quartet for my apartment... pictures up shortly) out of which one painting will be sold. The remaining three I will be holding on to for an upcoming show and hopefully selling at a later date.

The series subject is boxing/prize fighting. I won't get into too much detail about it now but I wanted to post some of my reference pictures. The paintings are going to be loosely based on these images. These pictures aren't in any particular order but they feel (at least to me) as representative of the various stages of a fight. Does that make sense? Does any of this bullshit that I'm spewing make any sense? Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah.

There are the two pictures of the fight actually happening. The idea here is that there is a back-and-forth, a give-and-go. One fighter gets a punch and then the other fighter gets a punch. Pretty basic stuff, really. There is the picture of the guy wrapping his fists. I see this as the "before" picture. I like this picture because it shows the fighter in a somewhat introspective moment in time. I like the idea that he could be thinking of so many different things. It's a very calming picture. The last picture depicts a fighter who appears to have no energy left in his body. He could be the winner of the fight but odds are he is not. This is another very calming picture that says a lot and nothing at the same time.

I like the contrast between the two 'action' pictures and the two 'thought' pictures. I've never been a huge fan of boxing or fighting in general when it comes to "sports" but I like the balance between the calm and the chaotic. Oooh. Again, does any of this make a lick of sense?

I'm still trying to figure out which colour schemes I'm going to be working with on these. At first I thought of going with something cliche like black and blue (ugh) or maybe red, white and blue (double ugh). I wouldn't mind trying to use a different scheme for each of the paintings. That way they could stand on their own OR be combined in a series. The basic idea, the basic themes behind these paintings is Victory VS. Defeat/Pride VS. Shame, etcetera. It would be nice to find colours that could help represent these themes in each particular picture.

I'm not super-pumped on my recent foray into applying meaning to my work. I used to despise the notion that art had to have meaning. But lately, for some reason that I can't quite place, I've found that most of my ideas, my paintings/drawings, are being created with a particular focus. It used to be that I would create something for the pure aesthetic look of it.

Anyway, we'll see where all of this goes. I'm going to post updates with pictures as this project progresses. I should (hopefully) have this series finished before December 15th, 2006. I will at the very least have one image complete as this was the deadline I imposed on myself to deliver the commissioned piece.

Aesop Morrigan. Sitting at his desk. New apartment. Box after box after box after box. Unpacked. Litter in an empty, sterile space. The desk – covered in paper and ashes and fast food wrappings and beer bottles and pencils and, in the middle, a typewriter. Nobody uses a typewriter anymore. His (Aesop's) father gave him the Underwood Five when he was fifteen. Aesop, that is. Aesop was fifteen when his father gave him the Underwood Five. Aesop's father was a clerk for some government agency that, to this day, is still a complete mystery to the XXXXX family. The father. Ulysses was his name. Matthew was his name. John was his name. Ulysses was not his name. Ulysses stole the typewriter after being fired (LET GO!) on his son's birthday. Aesop. Aesop Morrigan. One of many Morrigan children. Five. Aesop turned fifteen and got a typewriter. Half the world doesn't even know what a typewriter is. Fuck technology. Aesop always thought himself a bit of a luddite. He likes film. Hates video. Likes analog. Hates digital. He likes knowing how things work, how things don't work. How do we work? How is not the question. The typewriter. Despite the cold surface, the broken return, the sticky keys, he loves it. Aesop cherishes his typewriter. Underwood.

A phone rings. That's right. There is a phone. It's not in Aesop's apartment. The phone rings again. It's coming from next door. The phone rings again. Again. Aesop is getting annoyed. Mad. Annoyed. Hand to forehead. Temples. The phone rings again. Aesop pushes away from the desk and slides backward in his chair. It cracks a bit. Creaks. Any more abuse and the chair will probably break. Collapse. The phone rings again. Again. Again. Answer the fucking phone! Again. Answer the fucking phone! Again. Again.

Purpose without meaning.

He was just sitting there. Crunch. Crunch. One piece after the other. Pretzel. Cheerio. Pretzel. Melba toast. Cheerio. And then it happened. His mouth, dry. What to do? Drink. Swish. Swish. "This is boring." He thought. Write another word. Boring. Pretzel. Cheerio. Swish. Swish. "I suppose I could do some work." He thought about that a bit more... "No." Drink some more. Melba toast. Melba toast. What is this? Chex? Crunch. Crunch. He looked at the wall behind his computer screen. A cat. A cat holding some kind of automatic rifle. "Yeah," he thought (again) "Yeah, that's me. I'm a cat with an auto-fucking-matic rifle!" Swish. Crunch. Swish. "I'm a fucking cat... With a gun."

And then a piano fell from the sky and killed him. The piano crushed the cat with the automatic rifle. Shame. Crunch. Crunch. Swish.

Jeffrey Mitchell is an artist. A writer. A painter. A creative. He was born. He was born on May 2, 1980 in a hospital (like most newborns) in Canada.

Jeffrey Mitchel is a retired state police lieutenant. Twenty-five years of law enforcement experience. He used to be the Vice President of the Texas Narcotics Officers Association. From 1986 to 1991 he worked in El Paso, Texas. Jeffrey Mitchell, the Canadian artist, lived in El Paso during this period.

Mr. Jeffrey Mitchell of Atlanta, Georgia is thirty-eight years old and works for Manhattan Associates, Inc. as the Divisional Executive Vice President.

Dr. Jeffrey Mitchell is a Clinical Associate Professor for the Department of Emergency Health Services at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Dr. Mitchell is responsible for the development of the Critical Incident Stress Debriefing process which is used by over three-hundred communities throughout…

Jeffrey P. Mitchell is a partner in the Toronto Labour and Employment Group at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP. He graduated from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1996 and was called to the Ontario Bas in 1998.

None of these people. None of these people are me.

Victor jumped out of his fourteenth storey bedroom window. This is true. He jumped out because he was afraid of being eaten alive by giant, booger-based life forms. This is not true. He actually jumped out because he was hopelessly addicted to jumping out of windows. Again, not true. On his short trip (from the fourteenth floor to the concrete located at the base of floor number one) Victor realized something. On his short trip. Victor realized a number of things. As he passed the eleventh floor he noticed that he was not an ordinary human being. Most people think that they are not ordinary. They think they are gifted in some way, but this is usually not the case. Just ego. Victor was different. Victor was no ordinary human being.

As he plummeted past the seventh floor he noticed wings protruding from his shoulder-blades. Wings! On his back! These wings did not just grow from nothing in a matter of moments; these wings had been attached to Victor since birth. This is true. At this exact moment Victor realized that, although he had wings, he was not an incredibly observant individual. Very true.

Upon reaching the third floor it became evident that these wings could be used to prevent his seemingly imminent death. He was, after all, seconds away from a bone-shattering face plant into pure, evil concrete. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until Victor made contact with the immovable surface at the base of floor number one that he realized he probably should have flapped his wings a bit.

The moral of the story is that if you have wings you’re probably insane. Nobody has wings. Jumping out of a window is a pretty stupid idea unless you actually have wings and (again) nobody has wings.

Dave woke up. He was sleeping. Was. His eyes glued shut. He rubbed them for a few seconds – a moment or two – in an attempt to dislodge the sleep from his eyelashes. Letting one of his legs fall off the side of his bed, Dave escaped the comfort of the plush sleep square at an agonizing pace. The cold parquet floor pierced his body like a shot of rusted adrenaline. He was up. Upright and out of his linen womb. Stretch. Stretch a bit more. Ah. Dave’s eyes were finally open.

And there! On the floor. Dead. A dead mouse. A dead rodent. Dirty. Diseased.

Dave picked up the dead mouse and put it in his mouth. Chew. Dave ate the dead mouse. He was really hungry.