On the Need for Impractical People

From ‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of culture,’ Katharine Brisbane, The Sydney Morning Herald, 04.01.92

We have been asked to stop thinking of ourselves as the Lucky Country and become the Clever country. Years ago, a Cambridge don commented, of a promising student: “His problem is he doesn’t know a clever idea from a good one.” To be clever is for politicians and practical men. I want to see us a Good Country, a country that thinks widely, acts resolutely and sees beyond passing fashions in economic theory or brutal solutions to financial crises. A creative country, in fact.

Our artists and thinkers have a leading role to play in this. For a start we should give up the language of business and bureaucracy, of profit margins and achievable goals, and return to the language of the mind and the heart. The pursuit of perfection, for a start. To be a writer or an actor or a dancer is hard, and the work is not done without thought, or pain, or wisdom. And it is work that depends on trust, a teamwork, and respect of every part of human life, imagination and experience. So I beg you, stand up and say what you believe, without fear or favour, so we can be the good country, a creative country, in which all our creative qualities can find a respected place and we can believe in ourselves again.

Louis Esson said all this in his play The Time is Not Yet Ripe back in 1910, in Sydney Barrett’s election speech. Sydney is a Fabian Socialist standing for the blue-ribbon seat of Wombat, and he is trying to tell the crowd what he believes. “Talk practical politics” yells a heckler.

Barrett replies: “Haven’t you had enough of practical politics? What does your practical man do? He establishes a jam factory or opens a coalmine. What is the good of that? We can do without coal, and nobody wants jam. Or he irrigates a splendid desert for the production of lucerne and dried apricots. And you applaud him for it - fools! Why, the curse of this country, and every other country, is the plain practical commonsense man with his low standards and narrow outlook. We want poets, dreamers, builders of ideals. The national need is a thoroughly unpractical man.”

First proposal for a course on mysticism and art theory at the WEA, Sydney, 2009

Auguste Rodin, ’Le Penseur’, 1904, bronze, Musée Rodin, Paris. A testament to mystical ‘reason’.

17.02.09 I took my proposal for my course 'Cubism and its Mystical Heritage' to the WEA (Workers' Educational Association) in Sydney

30.09.09 In reply to my query, I received an email from the WEA thanking me for my application and stating that they would be in touch later in the year.

I never heard from the WEA regarding my course proposal again.

My proposal is below

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'Cubism and its Mystical Heritage'

Outline

Through an extended lecture focusing on a period in visual art history, I would deal with a theological/mystical current of the greatest significance running through Western culture that has been ‘ignored’, ‘forgotten’.

My primary intent would be to explicate the philosophy of Plotinus and exemplify his significance and impact through an analysis of a pivotal moment in Western art. My secondary intent would be to stimulate those attending to think not only about this, about the concepts used and their significance in our culture, but about some of the ramifications of that current, in particular:

- the relations between this current and dominant classes and their ideologies

- the relevance of this current to the full potential of the brain - towards a better understanding and positioning of ‘reason’ in relation to ‘lesser’ brain functions (e.g. ‘the emotions’).

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There is a ‘lost’ or more precisely, ‘buried’ theological tradition in Western culture - of most interest to me, in its philosophy and visual arts - running from, to take a useful cut-off point, Plato to the present. It is identified by what god is not - ‘the ineffable’, ‘the inexpressible’ - ‘the rhetoric of purity’, ‘the rhetoric of silence’.

In philosophy the key figures for my purpose are Plato, Plotinus, Nietzsche and Bergson. But there are many others - including Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida and other postmodernists (this tradition overhung Lyn Gallacher’s talk on postmodernism on Radio National’s 'Artworks' 06.07.08).

In the visual arts Plotinus’ philosophy and particularly his immensely significant simile of the sculptor labouring at his material finds expression, for example, in the work of Michelangelo and Rodin, in Gerome’s 'Pygmalion and Galatea' and in twentieth-century Modernism.

Since my primary philosophical focus is the philosophy of Plotinus, I would begin with his inspiration - the philosophical theologian Plato. I would substantiate and expand on this assertion through reference to his dialogues - particularly their mystical elements.

I would then spend some time on The Enneads because:

- Plotinus, in terms of his influence, is one of the most significant philosophers of the West - his importance is certainly comparable to that of Plato. That he has been ‘overlooked’ is the most extraordinary failure by academic philosophers and this ‘overlooking’ has not been accidental - it goes to the heart of a ‘patriarchal’, one-sided understanding of ‘reason’ - something that feminist philosophy has to some degree addressed.

- key concepts of his philosophy will be central to my argument. Their echo and specific recurrence in the work of later philosophers, particularly and most importantly for my argument, in that of Nietzsche and Bergson has, again, been misunderstood.

I would then look at the mysticism at the core of Nietzsche’s philosophy - what, e.g., links The Birth of Tragedy to The Anti-Christ:

- his aesthetics of life was directly based on that same simile of Plotinus’ which is almost literally repeated in the Birth of Tragedy.

- it is commonly understood that Nietzsche, by writing that we have ‘killed’ god, argued for the end of god. This, again, is a great error which has had great consequences, most important and profitable to consider. Nietzsche in fact argued for the opposite - another god, ‘Dionysus’.

The last philosopher I would look at would be Bergson whose philosophy is saturated with Neoplatonism. The ‘life’, ‘vision’, ‘duration’ and ‘movement’ etc. of which he wrote did not refer to this world but directly, through the use of those same concepts in The Enneads, to ‘another world’ at the core of which was god the self.

I would then move to ‘the pivotal moment’ of Modernism - Cubism - and argue that its concern is not with this material world but with the expression in art, through particularly the influence of the philosophies of Nietzsche and Bergson, of Neoplatonism, of the philosophy of Plotinus.

Cubism is the attempted evocation of a particular reading of god, not of the material world.

I would argue, through the analysis of form and content of examples, that the purpose of that art was not for the viewer to better aesthetically ‘grasp’ people and objects in this world, but in ‘another’ and by so doing, to engage us with this mystical tradition which has ‘god’ as self at its heart.

Suggested reading

Plato, The Republic, Trans. D. Lee. Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1984

Plotinus, The Enneads, Trans. S. MacKenna. London, Penguin, 1991

F. Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, Trans. S. Whiteside, London, Penguin, 2003

F. Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, Trans. R. J. Hollingdale, London, Penguin 2003

H. Bergson, Creative Evolution, Trans. A. Mitchell, Lanham, 1983

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Planned Learning Outcomes

Through a focus on a ‘pivotal moment’ in Western culture, attendees would become aware of a theological/mystical current running through our culture to the present, and of its significance. They would become aware of the tremendous importance not only to the work of philosophers and artists who came after him of the ignored philosophy of Plotinus and question both its significance and its ‘forgetting’, but in so doing question, towards a more rounded understanding of the concept, their understanding of ‘reason’ itself.

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First proposal for a course on the impact of mysticism on art and art theory at the Centre for Continuing Education, the University of Sydney, 1999

Second proposal for a course on the impact of mysticism on art and art theory at the Centre for Continuing Education, the University of Sydney, 2008

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Second proposal for a course on mysticism and art theory at the Centre for Continuing Education, the University of Sydney, 2008

Michelangelo, ‘The Atlas Slave’, marble, c. 1530, Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze, Florence

30.07.08 Sent course proposal titled 'Cubism and its Mystical Heritage' to CCE by registered mail and by email

10.11.08 Between these dates I made several calls to the CCE to find out what was happening with my proposal. I was eventually told that both copies had been lost so I re-sent my proposal by email and took two hard-copies to the CCE, giving one to the woman at reception and she signed each page of the copy I kept.

19.12.08/7.45pm. Was rung and asked about my teaching experience. When I replied that I have not taught this course before, I was told ‘don’t ring us, we’ll ring you’ and I never heard from the CCE again regarding my proposal.

17.02.09 Took proposal to the WEA (Workers’ Educational Association) in Sydney. I never received a final reply.

My second proposal is below

*   *   *

'Cubism and its Mystical Heritage'

Please describe any other information about yourself that you think is relevant to the course proposal

The subject has been a focus of mine for many years and through my degrees.

Course outline

Through an extended lecture focusing on a period in visual art history I would deal with a theological/mystical current of the greatest significance running through Western culture that has been ‘ignored’, ‘forgotten’.

My primary intent would be to explicate this current and exemplify its significance and impact through an analysis of a pivotal moment in Western art.

My secondary intent would be to stimulate those attending to think not only about this, about the concepts used and their significance in our culture, but about some of the ramifications of that current, in particular:

- the relations between this current and dominant classes and their ideologies

- the relevance of this current to the full potential of the brain - towards a better understanding and positioning of ‘reason’ in relation to ‘lesser’ brain functions (e.g. ‘the emotions’)

Format

The format would be an extended lecture/discussion using slides, with break, over 3 hours

Strategy for learning and teaching

The strategy would be to make what was delivered as relevant and interesting as possible to those attending. Discussion and the input of those attending would be most important.

Outline

There is a ‘lost’ or more precisely, ‘buried’ mystical tradition in Western culture - of most interest to me, in its philosophy and visual arts - running from, to take a useful cut-off point, Plato to the present. It is identified by what god is not - ‘the ineffable’, ‘the inexpressible’ - ‘the rhetoric of purity’, ‘the rhetoric of silence’.

In philosophy the key figures for my purpose are Plato, Plotinus, Nietzsche and Bergson. But there are many others - including Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida and other postmodernists (this tradition overhung Lyn Gallacher’s recent and good talk on postmodernism on Radio National’s Artworks).

In the visual arts Plotinus’s philosophy and particularly his immensely significant simile of the sculptor labouring at his material finds expression, for example, in the work of Michelangelo and Rodin, in Gérôme’s 'Pygmalion and Galatea' and in twentieth-century Modernism.

Since my primary philosophical focus is the philosophy of Plotinus, I would begin with his inspiration - the philosophical theologian Plato. I would substantiate and expand on this assertion through reference to his dialogues - particularly their mystical elements.

I would then spend some time on The Enneads because:

- Plotinus, in terms of his influence, is one of the most significant philosophers of the West. His importance is certainly comparable to that of Plato. That he has been ‘overlooked’ is the most extraordinary failure by academic philosophers and this ‘overlooking’ has not been accidental - it goes to the heart of a ‘patriarchal’, one-sided understanding of ‘reason’ - something that feminist philosophy has to some degree addressed.

- key concepts of his philosophy will be central to my argument. Their echo and specific recurrence in the work of later philosophers, particularly and most importantly for my argument, in that of Nietzsche and Bergson has, again, been misunderstood.

I would then look at the mysticism at the core of Nietzsche’s philosophy - what, e.g., links The Birth of Tragedy to The Anti-Christ:

- his aesthetics of life was directly based on that same simile of Plotinus’s which is almost literally repeated in the Birth of Tragedy.

- it is commonly understood that Nietzsche, by writing that we have ‘killed’ god, argued for the end of god. This, again, is a great error which has had great consequences, most important and profitable to consider. Nietzsche in fact argued for the opposite - another god, ‘Dionysus’.

The last philosopher I would look at would be Bergson whose philosophy is saturated with Neoplatonism. The ‘life’, ‘vision’, ‘duration’ and ‘movement’ etc. of which he wrote did not refer to this world but directly, through the use of those same concepts in The Enneads, to ‘another world’ at the core of which was god the self.

I would then move to ‘the pivotal moment’ of Modernism - Cubism - and argue that its concern is not with this material world but with the expression in art, through particularly the influence of the philosophies of Nietzsche and Bergson, of Neoplatonism, of the philosophy of Plotinus.

Cubism is the attempted evocation of a particular reading of 'god', not of the material world.

I would argue, through the analysis of form and content of examples, that the purpose of that art was not for the viewer to better aesthetically ‘grasp’ people and objects in this world, but in ‘another’ and by so doing, to engage us with this mystical tradition which has ‘god’ as self at its heart.

Reading:

Plato, The Republic, Trans. D. Lee. Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1984

Plotinus, The Enneads, Trans. S. MacKenna. London, Penguin, 1991

F.Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, Trans. S. Whiteside, London, Penguin, 2003

F. Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, Trans. R. J. Hollingdale, London, Penguin 2003

H. Bergson, Creative Evolution, Trans. A. Mitchell, Lanham, 1983

*

Learning outcome

Through a focus on a ‘pivotal moment’ in Western culture, attendees would become aware of a theological/mystical current running through our culture to the present, and of its significance. They would become aware of the tremendous importance not only to the work of philosophers who came after him of the ignored philosophy of Plotinus and question both its significance and its ‘forgetting’, but in so doing question, towards a more rounded understanding of the concept, their understanding of ‘reason’ itself.

Evaluation

I would refine my presentation of the subject matter to make it as attractive and significant as possible to those who were interested in it. An expansion of the presentation would be one way to do this. The provision of processed material might be another.

*

First proposal for a course on the impact of mysticism on art and art theory at the Centre for Continuing Education, the University of Sydney, 1999

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First proposal for a course on mysticism and art theory at the Centre for Continuing Education, the University of Sydney, 1999

Plotinus (204/5-270), Anonymous, white marble, Ostiense Museum, Ostia Antica, Rome

In 1999 I submitted a proposal to teach a course titled ‘Art and Ideology through Modernism’ to the Centre for Continuing Education at the University of Sydney. My referees were a professor in the department of fine arts at the university and a prominent Australian art writer.

After numerous phone calls to the CCE because I had received neither decision nor even communication from them, I rang and asked the woman who answered the phone if they had made a decision.

She asked me my name. She had a look, came back to the phone and said that it appeared my proposal had been lost. She then asked me the name of my proposed course. When I told this provincial fool, she said, as though my proposal was a joke, ‘That course wouldn’t suit our demographic’ and hung up.

My proposal was also rejected at the same time on a similarly myopic basis at the equivalent section of the University of NSW. At first the person who recommended the courses was very keen but when I told her I had terminated my enrolment in disgust at the College of Fine Arts (now known as UNSW Art & Design), that was the end of the matter.

My reasons for terminating my enrolment at CoFA (the title of my thesis was 'Neoplatonism and the Cubist Aesthetic') included the breaking of the agreement I had made with the head of the college - which was the basis of my accepting their offer of a place in their Masters by research program - that I be allowed to complete a performance piece I had worked on for three years during my BA there, together with my thesis; that for two and a half years, in fundamental breach of the university's regulations, no-one would supervise me, rejecting me as a philosophical novice and 'auto-didact', while they all waited for me to drop off and go away, and the refusal to allow me to upgrade to a PhD - i.e. to process a full thesis - when all the evidence could not have been stronger in support of my wish to do so (including my doing subjects I was not required to do), after years of effort during the heyday and decline of that stage of capitalist ideology known as 'modernism' and the rise and fall of the subsequent fashion - 'postmodernism', to develop the basis for nothing less than an entire cultural re-reading, an honest and necessary cultural re-reading exposing the functioning of class and class ideology - a 'spiritual re-reading' of which is now being taught at the CCE by a later graduate of the same college, which 'spiritual re-reading' the CCE refers to on its website as ‘ground-breaking'.

I never received any written communication or email from either section of both universities declining my offer and thanking me for having put my proposal to them - both rejections only occurred as a result of my phone calls to them.

My proposal is below

*   *   *

Philip Stanfield

9.8.1999

The University of Sydney

The Centre for Continuing Education

Proposal for course - Summer 2000

'Art and Ideology through Modernism'

The course over six weeks of one-hourly papers and discussions will entail an investigation of the relationship between art and ideology focusing on Modernism. Because of both the need to establish the philosophical basis of my argument and the significance of that basis, the first four weeks will be spent on four key philosophers and the last two on Cubism, pivotal to Modernism (itself a period of capitalist visual ideology). I will use images to illustrate my argument and to facilitate discussion.

Through papers on the four philosophers, it is my intention to set out a current both philosophical and ideological which is fundamental to Modernism and to identify key elements in that current. I will then apply this theorising to an analysis of Cubism. I will use Cubism (in one sense, literally) to illustrate my argument. I will argue that Cubism was pivotal to Modernism because it enabled the maintenance of a particular visual ideology. I will question the failure of art theoreticians to recognise and address this philosophical and ideological content of Modernism.

Week 1: Introduction and Plato

Identification of course purpose. Why I have chosen these four philosophers - what are those elements they have in common on which I intend to concentrate? In what ways is this philosophical current ideological? How is this current related to Modernism? Why have I chosen to discuss Modernism through Cubism? Plato’s theorising as it bears on art.

Suggested Reading: Plato. The Republic. Trans. D. Lee. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.

Week 2: Plotinus

It has been argued that through his mysticism, Plotinus may have been an even greater influence on Western thought than Plato. I will discuss his philosophy based on the three hypostases in detail, with the aim of giving some indication of how much can be gained from a thorough study of the system of this ‘forgotten’ philosopher, particularly in relation to Western art and Modernism.

Suggested Reading: Plotinus. The Enneads. Third ed. Abridged. Trans. S. MacKenna. London: Penguin, 1991.

Week 3: Nietzsche

Nietzsche is recognised as an important figure in the history of Modernism. An exploration of differences between the form of Nietzsche’s thought and its content, and of common misunderstandings of his philosophy as they bear on my argument regarding Modernism - e.g. that in asserting that God is dead, Nietzsche argued for the death of God. Nietzsche’s aesthetics of self.

Suggested Reading: F. Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy. 1872. in The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner. Trans. W. Kaufmann. New York: Vintage, 1967.

Week 4: Bergson

Henri Bergson had an enormous influence on the development of Western culture at the turn of the twentieth century. His philosophy is generally misunderstood as an attempt to enable a deeper understanding of the physical world in accordance with scientific developments at the time rather than having, as it did, a spiritual purpose which gives meaning to terms central to his philosophy such as ‘life’, ‘vision’, and ‘movement’. How Bergson ties in with the current I am arguing for and how his philosophy bears on Modernism.

Suggested Reading: H. Bergson. Creative Evolution. 1907. Trans. A. Mitchell. Lanham, 1983.

Week 5: Cubism

Having identified and addressed the elements of and developments in a current connecting the above four philosophers I will move through the development of Cubism by Picasso and Braque, arguing that this art, as with Modernism as a whole, cannot be understood without an understanding of this philosophical current. With the assistance of slides, a number of works by Picasso and Braque will be discussed. Why is Cubism generally and correctly believed to be pivotal to Modernism in the visual arts? Developments in form become developments in content. If ideology is a system of beliefs delimited by interests (Morawski), what are the beliefs implicit in Cubism and whose interests are represented by this art? How has this been achieved? Patrons and buyers of Cubism.

Suggested Reading: N. Hadjinicolaou. Art History and the Class Struggle. London: Pluto, 1978.

Week 6: Cubism and conclusion

Concluding analysis and discussion of Cubism and of the ways in which Cubism maintained and facilitated the maintenance of the visual ideology of capitalism.  The relationship between Cubism and the later development of Modernism will be discussed and exemplified.

Suggested Reading: V. Kandinsky. Concerning the Spiritual in Art. (1911) New York: Dover, 1977; The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985. Exhibition Catalogue, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, New York: Abbeville Press, 1986.

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Second proposal for a course on the impact of mysticism on art and art theory at the Centre for Continuing Education, the University of Sydney, 2008

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