The New Alexandrian Library (South Africa) Boekie Collection. Blog 2. Marie Wintzer - Leda or The Search for Beauty and De Villo Sloan - Principles of Hology.

[cheryl penn]

Leda – Or The Search for Beauty by Marie Wintzer.

Minxus  tirelessly walks the arduous road in Search for Beauty.  Marie wrote and told me that she had visited an exhibition in Japan featuring the work of Leonardo Da Vinci.  That visit inspired this series on beauty.    

In Greek mythology, Leda was the daughter of an Aetolian king and a Spartan mother.  Her daughter was Helen of Troy, hatched from an egg after being seduced by Zeus disguised as a swan.  Sound like a triangle? There’s ALWAYS a triangle when Zeus gets involved.   

Marie was worried the photos were dark.  But that’s the other side of beauty isn’t it? The darkness.  Women trying to fit into some sort of expected mold of beauty. Da Vinci worked on Leda about a year after he finished the Mona Lisa, but as far as I am aware, the original painting is lost although numerous drawings are extant.  Her myth was a popular motif during the Renaissance.  John Keats wrote:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty ,—that is all.

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Marie wrote:

Considerable progress has been made on the Road to Truth and Beauty. Truth is always more tricky than Beauty. Beauty will be a piece of cake.

Principles of Hology - De Villo Sloan

Once again I am faced with MinXus-Lynxus work - the PROOF Copy. 

Holism in science is an approach to research that emphasizes the study of complex systems. This is NOT Holism, its Hology, but it sure is complex. It has a manifesto (see discussion below). It has a following and a history and a Finnish Connection.   It has upside-downess and poetry. (Just as an aside, the  term holism was coined in 1926 by Jan Smuts – a South African…)  

Hology has asemics and seated torn fragments. It has fitting tips and Visual Poetry.  It is Red and strong and although it has place for Lager hip Size, it also makes provision for Petite Haunches. But thats the part you cant see.  De Villo tore the pattern, I cut the page.  Is Hology about Torn Patterns?

A long while ago De Villo wrote a poem. About a little hoarse. The size of a dog. It grazes on the blushing plain.  My favorite line - I could sleep in the footnotes. Printing on gloss paper suits methylene blue solubility.

The tooooooo page:  Toooo short, toooo long. Its better to hide in the Red Shadows of Hology, where the writing of the unconscious explains things to sleeping maidens hidden on half pages.

Meta-L.  I’m thinking Meta-Language? Metalanguage - a language used to make statements about statements in another language. 

Language language language, so what’s a language?  Well I guess it’s the complex system we as humans have designed to communicate.  Bearing in mind the numerous incompatible schools of linguistics, I’m not even going further!  Suffice it to say, this branch of language belongs to MinXus-Lynxus, a branch of, um, I’m not certain what but it has its own whole (hole)  history, art forms, manifestoes etc. 

Its a mental faculty you see, this Meta-L, which I think dislocates language from any sort of signification.  It takes letters and tears them and places them over images and crosses them out, creating a sort of hieroglyphic state – the way the pages look just before sleep overtakes Text and images become blurry. 

I think this is The State of Minxus?  Of course the rules for studying language are abstract, something like the visuals of Meta-L?  This is no formal system of signs governed by some sort of grammatical rule, rather, it’s text in a state of flux. The MinxFlux.  

AND I'm placing this publication in the Meta-F category Metafiction - fiction that draws attention to its own fictionality. 

Nancy said to the elephant if you don't stop pointing at the peacock he will dwindle into asemic writing and enter the shadowlands. He will disintegrate and become a Post-literate Peacock. Reader Berate - why aren't you following???

Diane Keys sent me a TINY boekie – a boekiejie?

Its made from “Some trash elements sent to me by Stewart Chabilois (Sorry DK – claiming the 15 Trashpo Amendment here – which states – all interpretation of writing of an undecipherable state, deciphered, will not be the responsibility of the decipherer). 

Something like the Was of Chloroplast – The Was of  Chloroplast is the thing that causes the Exhibition of Spinach.  And its Interchange – the blueprint for the circulatory and roductive systems.  And when I’m big I want to be one of those – I think it’s a bit simpler than being human! 

[cheryl penn]

Jan will be mighty pleased :-))) X GIVE ME BACK MY CROWN!! I earned it with hard work! So I have an antique MinXus stamp - excellent.

[De Villo Sloan]

Wow, thanks Cheryl. You're photography is the real art here. Good to see the complete version of Marie's piece.

 

I think Holism is an experiment in chance operations. Completely unknown to me at the time of its (second?) creation is the connection to physics, systems analysis, etc. But of course now I'll say Holism in art rests upon this foundation in science. And yes - Jan Smuts is now the Godfather of Holism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holism

 

The crown-less mink (and I notice not one of the coveted tangerine minks) is meaningless. That's just one of the older stamps.

 

Thanks again.

[cheryl penn]

O - and I have a question - it concerns crown-loss

[vizma bruns]

A meta-L fridge from the 50s. I see it.

[De Villo Sloan]

I'm really looking forward to your music piece, Nancy!

 

Oh, I sound so dumb, yes there are many opportunities for double-page spreads other than the centerfold in. I am so technically inept w/ sizing, binding, etc. I could never make it work, outside the centerfold. I leave a gutter between pages currently. Now G-Man can say I've trained monkeys.

 

When I scanned the little NBS gallery in my head, I could not find a double-page spread. I called her vispo chapter "sustained" & "continuous" but it was page-by-page composition, if you follow my drift. 

[De Villo Sloan]

Will this be a refrigerator?

[Nancy Bell Scott]

Now that you mention it, DVS and Vizma, staples interrupting a double-page spread of work generally wouldn't be a good choice (I like staples but used more whimsically and unexpectedly, as part of the art itself). For other boekies, trashbooks, the vispo chapter, etc., I've tended not to take advantage of the center double-page spread, and who knows why? (It's probably cowardice, or at best semi-consciousness, rather than smarts, DVS.) The current music boekie that is almost finished has 7 double-page opportunities, if you consider ones not central to still be opportunities. And 3 of those *are* each double-page works--but not the center one! Of all things. More to think about.   

[cheryl penn]

All this discussion and I'm the lucky one who gets to HAVE the actual pages :-)  - BUT there may be more copies forthcoming? The other very successful thing about this book is the gloss photographic paper the work is printed on - it seems to add further depth to the work.  The exhibition is confirmed for the two biggest art venues in Durban - and I may just exhibit books at the one - so keep them coming!!!

[De Villo Sloan]

No Vizma - if you ever do one of these collab book things, or maybe you have, those centerfold pages are a challenge. Maybe you were joking - but the stuff looks like hell with staples. I'm glad you bought it up, even if it wasn't your intent.

[vizma bruns]

Silly me, I got it mixed up with centrefolds. Blame the English as a second language again.