Beside the artist statement
By Adela Toplean | May 31, 2008 - 10:02 am - Posted in life 'n art

I like beautiful things to the point of obsession. Most of the times, I am unable to make a clear difference between beautiful and useful. To me, beautiful is useful.

Since we’re in the XXIst century already and it would seem completely ridiculous to discuss beautiful matters in, say, Dorian Gray’s terms, I find it difficult and painful to approach this theme. To talk about the anti-aesthetics of our late modernity is also pointless. Although, sometimes, I can take some pure aesthetic pleasure from, say, grotesque and terrifying images (the ones that Lyotard called “sublime”), I find myself quite old-fashioned when it comes to evaluating beauty.

I am, for instance, a “proportion-freak”. In my “real life”, I care dearly about proportions. And equilibrium. Whenever I decide to disregard proportions in my paintings, I do it with a precise purpose: to contradict and deny myself, and NOT for reaching a certain anti-aesthetic ( ergo: trendy and salable) effect.

My “art” is often a way of raising against myself. I paint what I don’t like; and I’m enjoying it; just like a sheer masochist. Being surrounded by my own paintings is often a torture. Most of the works are made precisely for disfiguring and distorting certain ideals I have. An immediate purpose of my “art” is to set limits to what I long for. To temper my obsessive need for perfection. To help me come to terms with a deficient life. To help me fight the essential tendency of rejecting myself and others. My “art” is my shock therapy. And my cross.

PS: David Bowie’s “Pablo Picasso” from Reality is a musthear!! Just try it.

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On Humor
By Adela Toplean | May 29, 2008 - 4:29 pm - Posted in life 'n art

I would like to know more about the sense of humor. About the significance of the distance one takes from one’s self in order to be able to launch a self-irony. About humor as a self-defense mechanism. About humor as a way of being in the world. For the time being, just a few thoughts about it:

I have to say I haven’t met a single optimistic person producing good humor. The creative humor was invented by pessimist or nonadaptive people, as a part of their adaptative process. And it is often a way of disguising a keen critical sense that is, of course, less and less welcomed in society.

So no, funny people are not innocent people. Firstly, because humor is a direct consequence of a non-concordance or of a lack (be it physical, social, behavioral, etc.), and no innocent people will EVER notice (and denounce) a lack of any kind. And secondly, because funny guys are vainglorious. Terribly vainglorious and oversensitive. By telling a joke, they want you to acknowledge both the signified non-concordance AND their ability to signify it in such a mastery manner.

They are people of awareness. And, for telling their jokes right, they need fully aware interlocutors. Not everybody can produce or receive a good laugh. A good laugh is entirely explained by a very “non-innocent” term: conspiracy. It’s all about a “subversive interaction” happening between the joke-teller and joke-listener: a shared art of hinting. They both need to see the same things at the same time. To put it less clearly: two (or more people) are contemplating in a perfect concordance a non-concordant phenomenon that was showed to them in a twisted way. To put it more clearly: few things are more pathetic than right jokes told to wrong people.

If it’s possible to have a vision of Paradise, I think we shouldn’t count on heavenly jokers. A joke is a joke in a world of failings, shortcomings and coping efforts. A funny guy is a funny guy because he’s dramatically aware of what he isn’t.

PS: I’ve always been a huge Debbie Harry fan. But I’ve never been so deeply involved in Blondie’s music as I am these days. Try “Nothing Is Real But The Girl” for the beautiful, well-built harmonies, and “Man Overboard” for the killer intro! And Leonard Cohen, as always…

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Reaching for sophistication
By Adela Toplean | May 26, 2008 - 10:38 pm - Posted in life 'n art

Five things not to be admitted in public: 1. you hate raw fish, 2. you can’t really do much with your iPhone (except downloading the 1002nd useless gadget), 3. you never really knew what DKNY stands for, 4. you couldn’t really tell the difference between weather and climate, and 5. you actually fell asleep during Kurosawa’s Kagemusha.

People gladly excuse your misspellings and long mails, bad breath and loud talking, forgetting their names and writing on the business cards. But not the above points. No.

Some things in our (public) life tend to gain a cosmological value. They become a part of the dynamics of the universe. Some on their merits, some by chance, some by contiguity, and some by Steve Jobs.

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Basically Essential
By Adela Toplean | May 20, 2008 - 8:18 am - Posted in life 'n art
The best thing about intelligent people is their being genuinely interested in simple matters and fundamental structures. They are drawn to essentials. To whom they react naturally and efficiently.
The more self-evident and common sensical a thing is, the more we need an intelligent mind to bring forth the “degenerated” relevance of that thing. We have reasons to believe that a commonplace is actually a relevant thing that, due to its routine usage, “has fallen from grace”.
I have no intention to get ridiculous by approaching philosophical matters that are largely beyond me; just wanted to stress that our life stands and falls with our ability to discern between essential and unessential things. It’s a matter of self-discipline with immediate consequences for our insomnia, for our moral life, daily routine, sex behaviour and art-making. Really.

PS: I am told to transform all my old paintings so that I can integrate them in a coherent collection for some future exhibition. You have a couple of examples below this post. And another one above. The above one is called “Hot Citynight”: a claustrophobic, hot and monotonous, unspecific atmosphere. Nothing’s for real, nothing stands for itself except the feeling of heat – a supreme, heavy, suffocating heat. I’ve tried to paint a sensation, not a silhouette looking through a window.

PS2: Do me a favour and watch this girl again (terrific video, much better than Roy Andersson’s latest film) and again! I am so proud of my musical intuition. I have recommended her before she even started to make it big inside or outside Sweden. Why is Lykke Li so convincing? I don’t know. She just turns out to be so. She’s so “self-evident”. She didn’t sing anything I could have listened to gladly. But she has a very… sophisticated way of proving her essentialness. She’s an attitude. Congratulations, Lykke Li!

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F-f-f-f-fashion
By Adela Toplean | May 16, 2008 - 5:46 pm - Posted in life 'n art
Fashion is not a joke. Fashion is real. It’s a serious, insidious and mature matter, like war, sex or architecture.
Its power is absolute. And absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Fashion has become our favorite dictator which means that we honor and obey its norms, especially those that contradict our personal taste. Fashion is in such a manner that, by being, it simply paralyzes our free aesthetic will. Those bad-clothed guys, the dissidents who refuse to obey, are sent in concentration camps, to form, while expecting their social death, some sort of weird peripheral structure together with voodoo practicers, overweight seniors, freaks from Russian circuses, and Michael Jackson. The despotism of fashion has gone beyond limits lately. Have you heard of the babyboom (not the post-war one, but the XXIst century’s one, widely spread all over the Hollywood Hills)? Sure you did. We read it in People every single day. And in lots of serious anthropological and sociological publications. The phenomenon is frightening, the popular taste and lifestyle has been, all of a sudden, massively redirected towards having as many babies as possible. Nothing wrong with the babies, of course. But EVERYTHING is wrong with the MOTIVATIONS of those dedicated followers of fashion who decide to have babies only because is a hip thing to do. Nothing is more vulgar (and humanly destructive) than mixing our existential choices with fashion edicts. But that’s EXACTLY what we do. We desperately ran into the stores looking for those horrible and disadvantageous high-waisted pants (for God’s sake, we don’t even know how to wear those pants correctly!); and then went home in a rush and made yet another baby with our best friend, or neighbor, or whoever came our way.
I’ve seen girls crying because they found themselves in the “worst dressed” category of some worthless magazine. The same girls use to sob for two days whenever they see a gorgeous “maternity-style” dress.
Fashion has the power to force upon us the most inhuman ideas EVER without meeting any resistance. Since I have invoked the vulgar mixing between existential matters, human choice and fashion trends, I guess the logic conclusion is this : the autocracy, the uniformity of fashion is an indicator of how frail we’ve become as human beings and HOW LITTLE we are in touch with our inner selves. We’re no more and no less than what we wear. We’re so alike and so many, half of us could just as well be dead and God won’t even notice.

PS: And now please excuse me, I have, like every Friday, a DVD to watch: End Of The Century – The Story Of Ramones. Who wants to join?

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On Evil, Lies, and My Cup of Coffee
By Adela Toplean | May 12, 2008 - 7:02 am - Posted in life 'n art
I am reading a book about evil in general and lying one’s self in particular. While reading, I am constantly underestimating it. Strange, isn’t it? At the end of every chapter I say to my self: “I shouldn’t read the next one, it can’t be as relevant as the one I’ve finished”. But every chapter proves to have at least two pages that amaze me, upset me and challenge my reasoning.
It’s that kind of book I could have never bought it myself because it is written by an American psychiatrist who wants to make himself understood at any price. And it has a couple of case studies; so the little theoretician (or devil) in me wonders after every impressive dialogue: did this guy actually tape all these? or rewritten the discussion after the patient went home? how did he pick this particular case, or dream, or discussion? how did he know, at that point, which dialogue was illustrative enough for being written down? do I really need to read all these (sometimes cheap) therapeutic tricks instead of getting back to my “serious” treatises? don’t we all know everything about lying ourselves anyway? and why do I have to read commonsensical observations about evil that I’ve already met in fairytales (the famous definition of evil = life in reverse), theological and philosophical writings, novels and real life?
I’m honestly wondering all these right now, while blogging. The book is 5 centimetres away from my left hand and my cup of coffee is on it and every shrink in the world would tell me that I had a “secret” intention of “instrumentalizing” this book in a “desperate” attempt to diminish its relevance. The book is, yes, to some extend, disturbing; and yes, to some extend, worthless. If you leave it, you feel guilty. If you keep it, you feel like wasting time. So I’ve decided to put my cup of coffee on it and see what happens down the road.

OK. I am reading…
The book is called People of the Lie and its author is M. Scott Peck. As we’re already told in the beginning of the book, the evil is often discussed in highly abstract contexts that easily make it irrelevant. I agree. This book is a radiography of its very concrete, everyday forms. That’s its decisive advantage. Recommended.

PS: New canvas above called “Pseudo II”. Yesterday night, when finished it, I hated it with all my heart. Today, I feel nothing.

PS2: If you’d care at all about rock ‘n roll, punk and women, you should have a complete Blondie discography somewhere in the house. Absolute favourites today and always: “I’m Gonna Love You Too” (from Blonde and Beyond), “Diamond Bridge” (The Curse of Blondie) and the way-too-cool “Hanging on the Telephone” (from whatever Best of you might have at hand).

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1000 Cats
By Adela Toplean | May 7, 2008 - 7:24 am - Posted in life 'n art
Yesterday I’ve read an article on how to define religion scientifically. Written by an evolutionist. It is not sure, he said, that humans are the only ones who can relate to unseenable realities; animals perhaps can do it too; they have rites, they live in communities, so they may be religious after all. He mostly quoted Darwin. And other “rigorous” scholars from the modern evolutionist caste.
The author is a reputable anthropologist, professor at a reputable university as we speak. Believe me, he is. The article is written in what I usually call “cognitivist style” (a couple of insipid definitions taking the place of captatio benevolentiae, short paragraphs separated by spaces each of them forming an independent idea, the avoidance of complement clauses, adjectives and parentheses, a couple of colourful schemas and diagrams for illustrating matters that have been previously explained in words, a summary written in a military tone and a quick conclusion repeating, almost word by word, the first paragraph.) He doesn’t tell you opinions, he tells you facts. Scientific, useful facts. You couldn’t do without them. You find out, for instance, that your religious impulse has to do with your wanting to mate or earn more money. Everything stands and falls with the understanding of religion in terms of irrational adaptation to the world within. To cut a very long story short, the article is grotesquely narrow. There’s a sort of burlesque dignity in all that (however false) rigour that leaves you speechless. If you happen to come from a different school of thinking, you find out you’ve been a plain idiot, no better than the worst religious fanatic. Paraphrasing – out in the blue – Charles Bukowski, the way to end a post like this is to become suddenly quiet…

PS: My iPod can’t stop from playing Petty’s “One More Day, One More Night” from Echo album. Why, I don’t know. Another thing I don’t know is this: how religious Lizzy, my cat, is? Mr. Anthropologist, how ir/rational her adaptation to a warm keyboard is? And another question for you, Mr. Scientist: can 1000 cats type a psalm in 1000 years?

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Jungle Rules
By Adela Toplean | May 2, 2008 - 12:22 pm - Posted in life 'n art
It’s harder and harder to humiliate a woman nowadays. She won’t let you. You will pay with your head for the slightest intention to make her feel bad. By contrast, it is easier and easier to make fools out of men. The act of falling (in love) has never been more popular and more feared in the men’s world. Once you fall, you’re a dying person. And you’ll soon notice you’re alone on that lonely road. No one joined you down there. Your helplessness and wounds stir the flies and the crows. The sky is getting darker. The storm’s coming closer.
Someone I know is getting a divorce. In many ways, I am witnessing a funeral. In many others, I am witnessing an Eugène Ionesco play. It is, of course, unfair to judge people by their moments of crises. I have a deep understanding (and respect) for any moment of failure, for those “charged” situations that, in an instant, can make your life turn to stardust or mud.
There’s something else that I would like to point out; something that is just as old as the institution of marriage itself: the irrepressible tendency of the woman to marry that man who can make the more attractive socio-economical offer. She makes an almost genuine connection between his social status and his testosterone level. If you suggest it’s all about her mind tricks, she won’t believe you. She’s in love. That’s right, she is in love, without previously falling in it; she jumped on it. And she would make everything that’s womanly possible to make him fall for her. If she succeeds (and she often does), he’s a lost cause. A woman has no mercy for victims; at the same time, no one knows better than her to get the victim out of the cruelest tyrant, and show it to the whole world. A woman can convince every man in the world that he needs her help. Badly.
The man, at his turn, lost his focus. A heavily career-oriented guy will get the blame for his computer addicted kids and for his wife’s love affairs. A family father will get the blame for every single luxury car the family couldn’t afford, as well as for a badly done laundry.
I am not a specialist in the history of domestic ideas, but my guess would be that there have never been so many contradictions in the social institution of marriage as there are today. On one hand, we experience a crisis of marital conventions, and on the other hand, nothing scares us most than the freestyle-marriage. We deny the rules, but we can’t get personal either. Fewer and fewer married people feel responsible for each other’s weaknesses. Whenever a weak point comes out, they prefer to lick their wounds in solitude; on the other side of the bed, they suspect a half-sleeping hunter.
Marriage has become a jungle. And the only rule in use is, of course, the jungle rule. You are not supposed to fall, get weak, get drunk or get sick. Unless you want to get killed or, worse, mutilated and shown in the market place as an handicapped freak, on Sundays, when people come back from church.
What a woman wants from a man after she marries him, is unforeseeable, even to herself. Her desires change from day to day, from trend to trend. She has never been more unpredictable; or more feared. What a man wants, it’s irrelevant. He just tries to react, run or rage against. He might not look like a natural born victim, but with a little help from her friends, he will discover deep in himself some amazing innate abilities for turning into one.

Epilogue: I don’t expect my readers to agree with me. Each of us have access to different truths and realities, don’t we? At least that’s what the postmodern philosophy tells us. I am a little bit tired of all this hysterical, overexposed subjectivity, to be honest. It’s a worn out perspective. It gets weaker, and more ridiculous, with every day. As Leon Wieseltier wrote, you just can’t understand the world from the perspective of a personal wound. We perhaps need an “objectivizer”. And a little bit of honesty; not much, about a teardrop-size would be just enough.
The other day I thought of a definition of truth (and I honestly apologize for being so daring): the truth is a scale representation of a certain dimension of the world. If I was a bad cartographer of the woman’s role in modern marriage, I’m sorry. That’s the geography I had access to.

PS: New drawing above: “What Am I Thinking Of”.

PS2: Yesterday evening I’ve watched the Rolling Stone’s dvd Bridges to Babylon (1997). Deeply impressed. It might be the best RS dvd ever. And Keith has his biggest fan in me. Can he read these days, I wonder? :)

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