Kenny Wilson's Blog

Category: Literature

  • ‘Yellowism’ Explained!

    I found this blog when looking for images of Duchamp and decided to copy and post it here. It links to my ‘Vandalising Rothko’ piece and at the time I had no idea what Yellowism was! I found it very interesting so I reposted it in full. It is clear that Vladimir Umanets was very influenced by Duchamp. I want to make it clear that I do not necessarily agree with what’s written here, I’m not sure I can even understand it! However, I believe that Umanets was motivated by a strong force and the question “What Is Art For?” is still a valid pursuit. He showed courage and commitment to do what he did but I’m not convinced by his philosophy at this stage.

    Here’s an interesting post from Interdome about the treatment of Umanets i.e. giving him a two year prison sentence for defacing the Rothko:

    As a case study, let’s look at Ai’s Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn.

    On the surface level, the photo set appears to mock artistic fetishism: Ai looks like he could not possibly give a fuck as he lets the valuable artifact shatter on the ground. There’s a sublime disregard in the pictures; it’s art against art like Kruger’s sentences are ads against ads. But as an artist, Ai can’t destroy art, he can only make more. From one urn, he gets three pictures. If I went into the Hirshhorn, grabbed one of the photos off the wall, and let it fall to ground like I didn’t give a fuck, I would be arrested and taken to jail. It’s only freedom of expression if you break something you own, otherwise it’s vandalism.

    One true vandal learned this lesson (or taught it) very publicly when Vladimir Umanets was sentenced to two years in prison for writing “a potential work of yellowism” on a Mark Rothko painting in London’s Tate Modern. Yellowism is the idea that if anything can become art regardless of its use value, then we could imagine a third category of stuff past art, in light of which the art/non-art distinction dissolves. Both are equally potential works of yellowism, just like a soup can and a urinal are equally art objects. Umanets writing “a potential work of yellowism” on a Rothko is the same as Duchamp Sharpie-ing “a potential work of art” on a toilet while he takes a piss. Except Umanets isn’t an artist. We know he’s not an artist because he’s in jail in England, and England, Ai would remind us, has freedom of expression.

    Umanets wasn’t looking for freedom of expression, but freedom from expression, out from under the artistic injunction to replace what you destroy. He wanted to break without buying, but that’s not in liberalism’s deal. And no one cries for a vandal.

    Because Umanets is a vandal and not an artist, there won’t be any complaints from the U.S. State Department. Because this is England and not Russia, there won’t be a Human Rights Watch report, as there was for the band Pussy Riot when they were arrested for trespassing. Even anti-capitalist arts writers called for his head on a platter.

    Anonymous asked: FUCK OFF PLEASE

    x

    29 Mar 2013 / 0 notes

    ►► The Authors of the Death
    by Marcin Lodyga

    When looking from art perspective, one can say that yellowism is a dead territory where the richness of meanings and interpretations is reduced to one – to yellow. But one needs to remember that yellowists don’t announce the death of art. Art is and will be alive forever. They rather say that yellowism is dead, inert, homogeneous mass without creativity. Authors of the manifesto and definition of yellowism are the authors of the death – yellowists are the authors of a single interpretation. This death is positioned outside of art, like mirror.

    Roland Barthes in “The Death of the Author” says: “To give a text an Author” and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it “is to impose a limit on that text.” Barthes argues against the method of reading that relies on aspects of the author’s identity — their political views, historical context, religion, ethnicity, psychology, or other biographical or personal attributes — to distill meaning from the author’s work. Yellowists want to impose a limit on the text, on art, and on ordinary reality too, but not by giving a “text” an author. Paraphrasing Barthes I say: To give a “text” a YELLOW and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it is to impose a limit on the text. Barthes demands the death of the author (author disappears) because the author’s identity limits the text, the reading. In yellowism case author also disappears and yellow – the necessary “limitation” appears instead of the author.

    Inside yellowism the artistic kingdom of meanings and interpretations is erased together with the author. It doesn’t matter WHO made a piece of yellowism because all pieces were, are and will be about yellow only. Yellowism is permanent, boring, inert, homogeneous flat, ‘dead’ mass. Always was and always will be. Like in the forest where all the trees (meanings) ‘look’ the same – wherever you go you are in the same place anyway. A thousand kilometers left, two meters right or backwards – you are always in the same place. In yellowism the nature of the authors has “the identity of the indistinguishable forest”.

    Barthes conclusion: “the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the Author.” Yellowism conclusion: the death of meanings and the death of the author must be ransomed by the birth of single meaning – yellow.

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    Marcin Lodyga
    “Sounds from the chamber”
    piece of yellowism
    for public audition in yellowistic chambers only
    CD / audio recording of a walk through Miroslaw Balka exhibition Gravity made in the gallery space
    executed in 2013

    Anonymous asked: please can you explain the relevance of all the tits and bums on this site to yellowism. Is yellowism tits and bums? is that the context everything is reduced to?

    x

    5 Mar 2013 / 1 note

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    Anonymous asked: At least Marinetti was funny..

    x

    4 Mar 2013 / 1 note

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    ►► Luncheon on the grass
    (on the grass: Arthur Danto, Roy Turner, Joseph Kosuth, Marcin Lodyga)

    What makes the difference between a Brillo box and a work of art consisting of a Brillo box is a certain theory of art. It is the theory that takes it up into the world of art, and keeps it from collapsing into the real object which it is. – Arthur Danto. But to expose the irrelevance of this idea when attributed to the tradition, we have only to ask what “real object”, “Le déjeuner sur l’herbe” by Manet collapses into when the implicit theory which supported it is refuted. – ask another thinker Roy Turner (Philosophy Now magazine)

    Marcin Lodyga starts: If “Le déjeuner sur l’herbe” by Manet was placed in the context of yellowism, inside a yellowistic chamber, then it would stop to be a work of art and it would become a piece of yellowism – a pure expression of yellow color in the form of Manet painting. Inside yellowism the painting by Manet is not a work of art. We have only to ask what piece of yellowism “Le déjeuner sur l’herbe” by Manet collapses into when the implicit context of yellowism which supported it is refuted. The answer: it collapses into a work of art, it becomes a work of art again, it gains its previous status.

    Painting is a kind of art. If you make paintings you are already accepting (not questioning ) the nature of art. One is then accepting the nature of art to be the European tradition of a painting-sculpture dichotomy. – nervously said Joseph Kosuth (“Art After Philosophy”). Dear Joseph – Marcin replies – in the context of yellowism – which is NOT a kind of total, huge conceptual art work, as you would consider it probably, painting is not a work of art. You said: “Art is the definition of art”, I say: yellowism is the definition of yellowism.

    text by Marcin Lodyga
    27/02/13

    The Flaneur art blog- Should Umanets really be jailed for 2 years for defacing a Rothko? #yellowism –

    flaneurphotos:

    New Post has been published onhttp://flaneur.me.uk/12/should-umanets-really-be-jailed-for-2-years-for-defacing-a-rothko-yellowism/

    Should Umanets really be jailed for 2 years for defacing a Rothko? #yellowism

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    26 Feb 2013 / Reblogged from flaneurphotos with 5 notes / yellowism

    Interdome: As a case study, let’s look at Ai’s Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn. On the…

    interdome:

    As a case study, let’s look at Ai’s Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn.

    On the surface level, the photo set appears to mock artistic fetishism: Ai looks like he could not possibly give a fuck as he lets the valuable artifact shatter on the ground. There’s a sublime disregard in the pictures;…

    26 Feb 2013 / Reblogged from interdome with 4 notes / yellowism


    fixedgearbikesyeah asked: NO ONE CARES

    x

    9 Feb 2013 / 1 note

    justiceismine asked: Yellowism is neither art, nor anti-art but a cause. Some might ask if Yellowism is needed or say it’s pathetic/stupid but I say it deserves it’s place as did Jackson Pollock for example, which he did not get at his time.

    x

    6 Feb 2013 / 3 notes

    spacecowboysparklefingers asked: No one is going to drink your yellow kool-aid. Your totalitarian snake oil ideology has been ineffectual and irrelevant since De Stijl/Neoplasticism tried it. There is no dialogue here, you won’t even respond to this with anything more than an “X”. Please don’t write on anymore Rothko’s (or any other pieces of art for that matter), they are not yours to write on, and some people really enjoy them. No one wants you here yellowism, go home.

    x

    6 Feb 2013 / 1 note

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    Marcin Lodyga
    “You can start painting again, in yellowism”
    yellowistic draft
    signed and dated on the front
    poster printed for the occasion of Duchamp season in Barbican, London
    150 x 100 cm
    executed in 2013

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    ►► Rome outside of art
    by Marcin Lodyga

    Yellowism is not dadaism or neo-dadaism. If you think that yellowism is dadaism then actually you are a dadaist, because you try to devalue yellowism and make it meaningless. Dadaists were nihilists and they “promoted” nonsense. The fact that in yellowism everything means yellow leads to the wrong conclusion that everything means nothing and therefore yellowism is perceived as nihilism /dadaism. This is the big misunderstanding. The real consequence of yellowism existence is the philosophy of ONE and the vision of many different isms (existing outside of art) which can be reduced to (one) yellow-ism anyway. Although yellowism clones exist under different names – they are yellowism. In the future: many one-perspective “worlds”. Not only one “world” full of perspectives (meanings), many various subjective interpretations – like in postmodernism, especially postmodern art, but also many separate “worlds” (greenism, blueism, chairism) with one perspective each, concentrated on one meaning only. Yellowism, divided into many isms, will be positioned away from the forever developing, “organic” realm of art.

    The total flattening announced by yellowists is more humanitarian than dadaism because it doesn’t leave people with nothing – inside the desert of meanings where you can watch only the wrecks and corpses of culture. Yellowists save one meaning (yellow) for everything and also they let you live in the “yellowistic totalitarian illusion of many”- you can exist in autonomous groups called greenism, blueism, chairism or skyism etc. but you will be a yellowist anyway. All roads lead to Rome. The universal Rome – the absolute truth will be always outside of art.

    Dadaists are nihilists, they do not offer anything, they don’t show a new perspective, new possibilities, they replace everything with nothing. » Dada (…) wants nothing, absolutely nothing, and what it does is to make the public say ” We understand nothing, nothing, nothing “. “The Dadaists are nothing, nothing, nothing and they will surely succeed in nothing, nothing, nothing.” « 391, No. 12, Paris, March 1920 Francis Picabia who knows nothing, nothing, nothing.

    Nihilists say that without absolute, universal, and transcendent values, there can be no real values at all. Friedrich Nietzsche, however, argues that the lack of such absolute values does not imply the absence of any values at all. Nietzsche “permits” the values of many different and even mutually exclusive perspectives. This is called “perspectivism” – all ideations take place from particular perspectives. This means that there are many possible conceptual schemes, or perspectives in which judgment of truth or value can be made. This leads (me) to postmodernism. Postmodernism is the consequence of Nietzsche’s perspectivism but is nihilistic. The proliferation of alternative perspectives, beliefs and values makes that postmodern society is foundationless.

    This what we see in the galleries is the result of postmodernism or post-post modernism, or postpostpostmodernism, whatever. Many perspectives, many points of view, not one grand and universal but many interpretations closed inside the circle called “art”. In the future artists will resign from art, will abandon this circle. Art full of many perspectives will still exist but will be surrounded by – isms. Some artists will never leave the territory of art but there will be yellowists, greenists, chairists looking at them from outside – located in one perspective circles.

    All the other isms are actually yellow-ism because, they have the same architecture, logic. Finally they can be reduced to yellowism, flattened to yellow-ism. However, people will need this totalitarian illusion of many isms, they will construct their own contexts, for example greenism,redism, chairism or godism, and they will be happy inside the isms but all the new one-meaning worlds can be always considered as yellowism.

    Yellowism doesn’t replace (like dadaism) all the values with nothing, yellowism gives one sense instead of nonsense. Yellowism presents the vision of many autonomous territories around multiperspective art. Yellowism saves the ONE – whatever it is: blue, green, chair and offers the new grand philosophy of ONE.

    Marcin Lodyga
    18.01.2013
    London

    mysar: yellow posterby rasym aka. mysar

    mysar:

    yellow posterby rasym aka. mysar

    19 Jan 2013 / Reblogged from mysar with 3 notes

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    Marcin Lodyga, Khadija Davies
    Portrait of Members of Art & Language with Caps, in the Style of Jackson Pollock
    yellowistic draft
    signed and dated 18/01/13 on the front
    magazine cover, pink ink
    22.4 x 28.6 cm
    Executed in 2013

    The authors of manifesto and definition of yellowism Marcin Łodyga and Vladimir Umanets at The British Museum in London (January 2012).
    © Sylwester Kolton.

    ►► Discipline and punish.The birth of the black hole

    Yellowists see the whole domain of reality and the whole domain of art as gigantic readymades which can be transported into the context of yellowism. Yellowism is a specific prison, a ghetto in which you are free from freedom, in which the freedom of interpretation doesn’t exist. Every content placed in this territory defines yellow color. It requires a noetic discipline. You have to respect the internal yellowism law. Yellowism is a bit like a black hole – most of the information about the matter that went into forming the black hole is lost. In the end yellowism only remembers the total mass, charge, and angular momentum. The physical form of objects and beings transported from art and reality is preserved, but all the forms carry only one, always and forever the same, identical message. You can observe that something is moving inside, you can watch pieces of yellowism free from the past and future; there is a movement but there is actually no time.

    Yellowists don’t punish art, they don’t take a revenge on art or reality. Manifesto of yellowism is not a death sentence for art. Yellowists don’t destroy and don’t create. Yellowism is not vandalism and it’s not a form of creation. There is no postmodern, Derrida’s deconstruction, any destruction or creative construction inside yellowism. There is something else: flatstruction. Everything is flattened to yellow, all interpretations are ironed to one flat surface, to one meaning. The total flattening (flatstruction) is a state of permanent homogeneity. Yellowists don’t create and they don’t destroy, they make everything flat therefore, inside yellowism, deconstruction, creativity, vandalism, surrealism or fascism or anything else is flattened to one, to the expression of yellow.

    Artists push the boundaries of art and are imprisoned in their seeming freedom. Yellowists are free outside of art. They resigned from art, they overstepped the boundary and the fact that everything can be about yellow gives them the almost cosmic freedom.

    text by Marcin Lodyga

    ►► A dead animal

    Today you can overstep the border, you can be a bit like Alice through the looking glass, you don’t have to, together with other artists, push the boundaries of art further anymore, now it’s time to cross it and discover the another, still unknown for many, space called yellowism. Of course, you can stay where you are and run your artistic life in harmony with the motion of postmodernism. Yellowists don’t announce the end of art; they say in manifesto: art is a forever developing whole. They don’t promote a slogan: “art is dead”, they rather say that yellowism is dead and always was dead and always will be dead. Therefore they don’t want to replace art with yellowism. They just introduce a new autonomous territory, specific environment which is parallel to the context of art. They give you a vision of time in culture when the resignation from art will be a trend. Yellowists show you the possibility of alternative existence in which the fact that you abandon art is considered as the most creative decision. It doesn’t matter what the condition of art will be after twenty or hundred years – yellowism will be still the same. Any changes and any progress around yellowism are and will be, metaphorically speaking, like a tank of formaldehyde for a dead animal.

    text by Marcin Lodyga

  • Infinity Blue a poem/song by Kenny Wilson!

    This is a poem/song I wrote in 2005. It was inspired by the name and the view of a restaurant on the island of Skiathos in Greece. I was trying to connect with the space between consciousness and sleep, that space when thoughts drift without any idea of rationality, when words just connect with each other and everything makes sense! I composed a backing that I recently rediscovered and will record it again!

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    The first time that I saw you
    I was dressed in black.
    The last time that I saw you
    You said you won’t be back.

    Oh Infinity Blue

    There were times
    When I thought I could be with you
    To be a real lover
    And always be true.

    Oh Infinity Blue

    The angels came down once
    And they spoke to me.
    They gave me a message
    That would set me free.

    Oh Infinity Blue

    The sun it was setting
    It set in the east.
    And somewhere inside me
    It unleashed the beast.

    Oh Infinity Blue

    I walked through the centre line
    Of what’s right and wrong.
    And I tried to find freedom
    In the words of a song!

    Oh Infinity Blue

    The words they controlled me
    They forced me to stand.
    When I was lost at sea
    They showed me the land.

    Oh Infinity Blue

    And as I was waiting
    For wisdom to come.
    The words came and showed me
    The warmth of the Sun.

    Oh Infinity Blue

    Between what is lost
    And what cannot be
    The words are like diamonds,
    The words set you free.

    Oh Infinity Blue

    I was looking for mercy
    I was looking for love
    The words they came to me
    Like a snowy white dove.

    Oh Infinity Blue

    I looked in your eyes
    And I found mystery
    And love, peace and mercy
    Was our destiny!

    Oh Infinity Blue

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  • Poem: The City Was a Golden Sea by Kenny Wilson

    The city was a golden sea
    Where angels played with destiny
    The clouds were bouncing snowy white
    And disappeared into the night
    I came upon a diamond orb
    That glowed satanic ghostly white
    What has become of all these things?
    “The City changed” the angels sing

    The city was a golden sea
    Where people learned what they must be
    The stars were like daggers in the sky
    That stuck like needles in my eye
    Is this the meaning of the word
    That linked the real to what’s absurd?

    The city was a golden sea
    It changed my life it made me free
    I chose to wander aimlessly
    Amongst the ancient symmetry
    And there I found the meaning of the word
    That linked the real to the absurd

  • Film Review: Les Miserables

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    Original illustration from the book of Cosette. Notice the huge broom held by the tiny girl. This image has been used extensively to promote the musical and the film.

    It had to be done. I had two free tickets for Showcase Cinema De Luxe, Leicester last Sunday. Haven’t seen the Hobbit yet or Jack Reacher but I decided to opt for Les Mis. The reason for this isn’t because I’m a big fan of the musical. I’ve never seen it! I’ve been intending to see it for the past thirty years but never made it! I’m going to make a special effort now though. No, the reason is that it is my favourite book of all time. Written by Victor Hugo in the 19th Century it is a literary tour de force, one of the best books ever written.

    It is incredibly long, over 1500 pages in English and covers a multitude of things. You find out about the Paris sewer system, the language (argot) of the Parisian underclass, discussion about Napoleon and the monarchy and many other things. The main story though is that of Jean Valjean and his progress from criminal and convict to prosperity as a business man and factory owner and eventually as a benefactor and saviour of Cosette, daughter of a woman who works in his factory, Fantine, who falls on hard times and dies. While all this is happening Jean Valjean is pursued by police inspector Javert who becomes convinced that the mayor is in fact the same man as Valjean who had broken his parole years before and needed to be arrested and put back in gaol. The reason for breaking his parole is missing from the film and is quite an important omission. After getting away with stealing the Bishop’s silver he steals a small amount from a young, poor boy. He becomes totally disgusted with himself and tries to find the boy to give it back but can’t find him. The boy reports it to the police and that is how he broke his parole. This is why Valjean feels that Javert is justified in pursuing him!

    The story is quite melodramatic although brilliantly told and is similar to the kind of themes used by Thomas Hardy and Balzac. The characters are very well drawn and serve to bring out the moral ambiguities of the story. Javert is possibly the most interesting character. Although he appears to be remote and cruel and obsessive, his motives are born out of total honesty and respect for the law. Jean Valjean actually respects this about him even though his aim is to bring him down.

    Later on the narrative becomes about the love story between Cosette and young middle class revolutionary Marius who is rescued by Valjean from the barricades of the 1832 rebellion against the restored monarchy. This is NOT the French Revolution as many people think but an event that might have been forgotten were it not for it’s inclusion in the book of Les Miserables. It was a storm in a tea cup. At the end of the story both Javert and Valjean, in very different ways, experience a kind of redemption and the world is left a better place. Apparently, Hugo based the two characters on the same person and this is a reason why they are so intrinsically linked. They are two sides of the same man.

    In many ways the film is very good and it has really affected audiences emotionally. It is impossible to make a film of the book without seriously compromising the story in many ways but the basic meaning of it remains. I would say the second half is much better than the first although there are some strong episodes in the first like the opening galley scene and Fantine’s rendition of I Dreamed a Dream. I found this very powerful even though the song has become devalued and over familiarised by the Subo and X Factor effect (or was it the other one. Can’t remember!). Anne Hathaway’s performance as Fantine is astonishing! Despite winning Golden Globes recently I think Russel Crowe and Hugh Jackman are miscast. I think Crowe would have been better as Valjean and Jackman as Javert. An earlier French version had Gerard Depardieu as Valjean and John Malkovich as Javert. This is a superb version and worth seeing if you can get hold of it. Somehow I ended up with a DVD of it that had been given away free with the Daily Express and I have never knowingly bought the Daily Express so I don’t know where I got it from! It is a condensed version of a TV series and gets very close to the original story with some brilliant performances.

    Seeing the recent film has renewed my interest in seeing the live theatre production. Film rarely captures the atmosphere and excitement of a live show but, with the live singing on set which is a first, this film is moving in the right direction. Although flawed I think this film is well worth seeing.

  • Poem: Since You Went Away by Kenny Wilson

    Since you went away
    The silence fills my room
    My head feels like a tomb
    And I am lost inside.

    Since you went away
    I see a hollow grin
    The emptiness within
    The groom without a bride.

    Since you went away
    The air smells just like death
    I struggle for my breath
    There’s nothing here but grief

    Since you went away
    There are no truths to hear
    I live alone in fear
    I’m like a fallen leaf.

    Since you went away
    I can do nothing but cry
    I no longer ask why
    I just live from day to day.

    Since you went away
    Strangers haunt the street
    I gaze down at my feet
    There is no place to stay

    Since you went away.

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