UCLA Lecture 1967 - The Renaissance to the Present

The ideas of the Renaissance began in the 1300s in Italy and they have to do with the rediscovery, not entirely lost at any point, but essentially the rediscovery of Greek and Latin texts. A literary frame of reference.

That's important because it has to do with people's relationship to written records, meaning writing, literature throughout art history. Throughout the study of history--the very concept of history, the way we accept that or relate to it now--has to do with the written word, the medium of writing. This is an orientation that's fraught with implications, most of which remain un-examined by people who are historians, academics, scholars, art historians. It places a value and an emphasis upon certain kinds of events and certain attitude towards life. And what's important in life. What's worth recording?

For example it's very difficult to document, to record, non-material culture. Art history traditionally deals with art objects; works of art, things, risks, painting, a piece of sculpture, something tangible, palpable; the documents of art history relate to those things. They're contracts for payment, commissions, they're letters from artists, patrons, etc., critical appraisal of the work, mentions of the travel, writings. And we have these all the way back to, or from, ancient civilization.

Pausanias wrote in Latin of his travels, he was a Lowell Thomas of Rome and kept a diary, and he's one of the essential sources for what we know about ancient temples, architecture, city planning, things like this; who people were, what their customs and traditions were, their myths. There's a literary orientation, then, to the Renaissance; it's focused upon the revived interest in and knowledge about Greek and Latin texts. It has been said to have begun with Petrarch, Boccacio, and a whole school of scholars in the later 1300s—humanists they are called—the spread from concern with literary style and form so that by the late 1300s there was a style of writing poetry, in Latin, in Italy, but people recreating competence in a language that had persisted, but in a different style. Church Latin had developed to a different style of language. There were imitations written of first century Latin poetry, styles of Cicero Quintillian would imitate. Vocabulary is very self-conscious; an attempt to revive the spirit of an age that was seen as glorious and golden. Long before Keats wrote that famous line "the glory, grace and grandeur that was Rome.”

The period of time in-between was seen as a Dark Age. Petrarch articulates this idea first about the middle of the 14th century in a poem called "Africa." This establishes a historical perspective, a point of view. A time—now—that is separated by a gulf of different time from a period—then—and hence a revival, a going back to and reviving the values that have been lost or that have changed in the meanwhile--revival. And it's curious; it's full of ambivalences, contradictions, since Petrarch considered himself a good Christian. The period that supposedly was the dark ages was the period after the coming of Jesus Christ and the establishment of the church, a period that he reveres, seeks to recreate, is the period which, in traditional religious histories, was a period before Grace. Petrarch lives with this contradiction. In the 1400s, the idea of a revival, which is not new by any means as suggested in the court of Charlemagne, there was a concept a renovatio imperium Romanoro, a self-conscious attempt to revive the spirit of the empire of ancient Rome. Which is why when Charlemagne had himself crowned in the year eight hundred he thought of himself, he called himself, a Roman emperor. The Holy Roman Empire; the Holy Roman Empire--you know, neither holy nor Roman nor indeed an Empire.

In the 1400s, this notion spread to the arts, to architecture. 1420s, with people like Machatio in Florence; Florence is one of the centers. Painting, fresco painting, sculpture. It's not as though something starts fresh from nothing; in the 1200s there is already a tradition with the Pisano in Pisa, sculptors who are conscious of classical models for their human figures, proportion; the style of poses relate to classical sculpture. In architecture, there is a constant reference to the ruins, the remains, of Roman architecture that are around, can still be seen, continue, of course. But something new does happen in the 15th century.

Later in Italy, in the south, south of the Alps, it spreads to music so that you get a really modern Renaissance concept of music, a style of music filtering down from the north. From the Netherlands. Around 1600 and 1580, Claudio Monteverdi in his several books of madrigals; step by step the sort of modernization of music. He built upon tradition of musicians who were centered, among other places, and perhaps foremost, the Cathedral of St. Mark's in Venice, which imported its professional musicians, its choir masters, from the Netherlands. Composers, musicians such as Villiart, before Monteverdi. In the Netherlands, as the art historian Irwin Panofsky demonstrated in his book which I mentioned to you, Renaissance and Renaissances, the art seemed to go the other way around; its music, in which a new spirit is expressed first in the early 1400s, and people like Giobasia, who is perhaps the subject of a portrait by Jan Van Eyck. Van Eyck. Hubert and Jan Van Eyck; brothers, extraordinary, creative, innovative artists, at work in Flanders in the Netherlands,1420s.

What's new about Renaissance art, in subject matter, styles, orientation and self-awareness? Hard to pin down but you can see something when you look at a lot of pieces, a lot of these ideas are summed up in books, like Jansen, History of Art. What you wind up with are a pack of clichés and a cliché is true. But it's somehow very difficult. I think it's difficult for you people who perhaps don't have an extensive familiarity with works of art--not all of you do anyway--difficult to kind of pin it down and say, well, what really makes renaissance art different from late medieval art? And if you have a good knowledge of works of art, at least photographs or illustrations of them, then it might even be more confusing because you can find individual examples that seem to possess many of the qualities of the Renaissance. And it's the kind of game that requires a great deal of time and effort and creates incredible anxiety with students who begin to study the history of art.

One of the reasons that I found introductory courses in art history don't really work very well is that they do this instead of illuminating. They attempt to give you rules of thumb, make down little notes, tags, a few stylistic keywords so that when you look at a work you can tell whether it's Renaissance or not, that kind of thing. You do don't you? Isn't this the game? It's okay. It's not a bad game. I mean this is the way you learn things. You learn to to articulate your perceptions, try to make some sense out of what it is you see. That's okay. And there's no other way. There's no other way. There are many other techniques. There is no other way to learn than to see and to attempt to make sense out of what it is you see, so that you can progressively articulate your perceptions, understand, and become more aware of them, make finer distinctions, sophistications. We're familiar with that process, aren't we? So you start with basic broad concepts in general and you proceed to refine them.

One way to do this is to show you slides and examples so that we collectively can look at reproductions of works of art and sharpen our perceptions that way. On occasion I've done this, several classes like this. It's a way; it's pleasant and nice to look at. Lot of things you can say about them. What I'm concerned with now is developing other ways. I'm concerned now less with takeaways, techniques and rules of thumb, than I am with ideas of substance. What really happens.

A more honest evaluation of this process of history and historical concepts provides a basis for criticizing what's usually done in introductory art history courses. If you want to be a professional art historian you have to look at a lot of works of art. You have to see them in addition to seeing reproductions. You don't have to see all of them. You have to see many, you have to spend a lot of your time looking at architecture, painting and sculpture. Perhaps also listening to music, reading poetry, studying languages plus developing a methodology of research and research techniques to learn respect for accuracy and the truth. And ways to the truth. To learn integrity, and honesty, that you don't say things you know aren't true. And if you think they may be true or they are hypotheses you're honest about it and you say it's a guess or a hypothesis; you supply your evidence, you cite your sources, you give your reasons, the intellectual structure. The discipline the practice of art history historically has its roots in the 19th century. Although Boccacio himself very early on, you see, begins to develop a critical, historical point of view.

One of the first real large histories of a kind was written by the great Florentine sculptor Lorenzo Ghilberti. It's called the Commentari, commentaries, in the 1430s. Later in the middle of the sixteenth century, 1556, another painter a mediocre painter, named Vasari compiled an even more ambitious kind of art history, his Lives of the Artists. And like Ghilberti, and even Boccacio here to some extent before him, Vasari was interested in the biography of the people, the lives of the artist was a history of art, biographically oriented. You wrote an art history by writing about the lives of the people who were artists. It's really only in the 19th century that you begin to get modern art history based upon concepts of style and stylistic evolution.

Their models are Darwinian theories of evolution, of Spencer, middle of the 19th century, in terms of content, in terms of the methodology, the technique of the intellectual discipline; the model is literary criticism so that art history proceeds in the same way that criticism of poetry and literature proceeds, by examining the documents which, in the case of art history, are monuments to the works of art themselves as the primary object of study. The documents for art history are these supporting written commentaries, critiques; all the paperwork that relates to them.

As a field. art history develops in literature their writings of earlier art historians, their opinions, dating attribution--whether Brunelleschi or Ghilberti was responsible for a given design, for example, of the dome of Florence cathedral. It was a contest, a competition, it was held in Florence; who was going to design the dome. Brunelleschi and Ghilberti both submitted designs. Of course, we know which was which and that kind and thing, and Brunelleschi won because he developed new technique. Construction was easier more efficient, cheaper to erect a dome. Earlier in 1401, there was a competition who was going to design the doors, the great bronze doors of the Bapistry in front of the Florence cathedral the Duomo. The Bapistry, a little separate building; bronze doors were to be cast as competition. Various sculptors and artists submitted individual bronze plates, the door to be composed of several of these. The subject was the sacrifice of Issac and Brunelleschi's and Ghilberti's examples have survived. Ghilberti won that competition because he developed a new technique for casting pieces in bronze--a single piece, whereas Brunelleschi used an older technique where the figures were cast separately and then bolted on using a lot more bronze, which is more expensive. Florence, being oriented towards Commerce, was shrewd, respected costs and expenses. So in both cases, they awarded the contract to the artist who had made technological advances to enable them to complete the contract at less expense. Interesting alliance between technological progress and artistic creativity.

It's the artists who were in touch with the technology of their times whose creative mentalities forced these technological advances or created them, invented them; the context of the society was such that it could support these innovations, even though it was something new and untried, if it made sense and looked like it was going to work and they'd back it. The rationale was economic because the patrons and people who were paying for this were the, in that case, the wool guild. Florence was the center of the world trade so they were hard nosed men of commerce. They knew the value of Florin, coin, this suggests one of the kind of constants that in turn catapults a criticism of conventional art history; a radical critique of the way Art History is usually taught and what it really means.

I'm currently working on an article in which I’m trying to explore some of these issues, but they're new. You know, I write articles about ideas that are new, its an important medium for me work them out. It's also what I like to teach about; that has to do with the theory or concept or self-image as a teacher in the process of education. It's quite apart from the incidental subject matter. It would be true if I were teaching a course in international economics or international law. I'd be in a lot more trouble there, because fields are a little tighter. Maybe not.

Since art history is within the tradition of the humanities that goes back continuously in western civilization to the 1300s, at which time there developed the university, in Bologna, in Paris, it's a what, eight hundred year tradition of the humanities. What that means is that you get into a subject and explore; its basis is the free inquiry into ideas. There's not a trade. The humanities are different from the sciences as they develop particularly in the last hundred fifty years where you may indeed have a given body of essential information, data. The humanities is much looser, more in terms with meaning, interpretation, relationship, rather than anything like objective data. It's not a trade. And classes, studies in the humanities’s not participation in trade school; I'm not teaching you how to do something, really, perhaps at a graduate level you may indeed take a student who desires to be a professional art historian, who wants to know the tools of the trade, the methods and how you actually do research, and which are the basic books, and where you put commas and how you indent footnotes, and that kind of thing. In that sense, you know there's a lot of information that can be efficiently conveyed but very seldom is. It's too bad. Like I said, I think there's a place for a trade school type course for graduate art historians, but that's not our problem here.

The theory of general liberal arts, liberal education, is that you explore and expand and open up new areas of human knowledge, what the history mankind has provided, examples, remain to study. The history of art's a great field for that, so great, so broad, that you take your pick and get into certain areas, not in others. Survey skims over the surface picks the masterpieces, right? This Is what a book does very well, it's what Jansen does, for example. So we're all old enough to read, we know how to use books. I've told you about this book and if you want this point of reference and you have accurate data, you have dates, you know how to spell the names you can associate with photographs, which are generally pretty good. It has a bibliography for further reading, and I invite questions; we want to hear more about something more you don't understand this or that I can explain it to you. Or should be able to. Or tell you where you might look to find explanation. To take data and to impart it to you and have you copy down here is absurd. It's not just absurd; it's absurd in the context of a civilization that sponsors and fosters absurd activities.

Awful lot of pressures on you in your life, if your life is anything like my life, that try to make you absurd. That's what a lot of your education does, teach you to stop being a child and stopping free and creative and exploring, and to become absurd, to do absurd things; and you do them for so many years, are taught not to question, taught to sit there and to take it, to behave like this absurd machine. But you do become absurd. You lose your sense of joy and discovery, humanity, you act and respond like machines. I know you do you. I know because I know these forces on my life too, essentially the same forces. This kind of indoctrination, training in absurd processes, has nothing to do with this core of the humanities in its eight hundred year tradition in terms of its own ideals, to which it has not always lived up to be sure, but the ideals are there anyway and they’re real and of value.

And the Essential notion is that perhaps no data can be conveyed or whatever data is conveyed, is essentially trivial or incidental incidental, not necessarily trivial, it may be important. But what this experience is, when students and teacher are together, is something in this vital process. And what you get is the human being, and you see me at work, and some of this rubs off. You pick up the harmonies and rhythms, the ideas, the involvement or the style or whatever. Maybe some data too. Eventually that that is important. That's the stuff and you've got to get it and you've got to get it straight. You've got to get lots of it. You've got to get it in some order. But like the conventional approach to art history has been to provide this data. And to accept conventional schemata, conventional relationships, cliches; and among these the most famous is the Renaissance. That is why in your catalogs you find this course from the Renaissance to the present survey, and the deeper I go into it, the more I think about it, the less I think that means.

Take another period; take the Gothic. There exists a book of some 800 odd pages by a great art historian, the late Paul Frankel, entitled The Gothic: eight centuries of literary resources and interpretations; eight centuries, the same period of time as the tradition of humanism, education. And what that book does is to examine what the Gothic means to all these different people throughout eight centuries. What it did mean; conflicting, contradictory interpretations of what Gothic is or was. What the Gothic meant in terms of the Gothic revival in the 19th century, which was something totally different than it meant in the Ille de France in the 14th century, when the great cathedrals like Chartres, Namian, Notre Dame d' Paris, San Denis, were being built. What the Gothic novel means; Walpole. What Gothic tales like Isak Dinesen, what Gothic means there. I don't know if Frankel cites Isak Dinesen, it just occurred to me, but there's probably things he hasn't covered. It's covered a lot. It's a monumental work and its lesson is that really it's Frankel as a humanist that's the content of that book and not the data or the subject matter of the Gothic as being something that you can derive a rule of thumb, so that you can recognize a Gothic cathedral and not make a social faux pas when you go on your tour of Europe next summer. And there's a whole level of distinction between that kind of consciousness, between the two kinds of consciousness; the kind of consciousness that is that of a scholar who is interested, involved and engrossed in a very complex and very difficult field that requires breadth and a precision in information, and the tourist. And it's precisely in terms of the basic issues that the questions, the positions are irreconcilable.

Now despite the fact that I've been an academic practicing professionally for some eight or nine years, upon occasion I still consider myself to be a practical man, because it's been important for me to maintain a human relationship with students and with people from whom I learn, and I've done this perhaps at the cost of some kind of focus on my work apart from this radically, fantastically changing human context of the last eight or nine years, this revolutionary period which we live. And as such, I know that there are very few people in this room or in any other room composed of 75 students who give one damn about the kind of intellectual involvement, the kind of life of the intellect as exemplified by great scholars and humanists such as Paul Frankel or Irwin Panofsky, now both dead. That's okay. I'm still on the fence because that's a lot of my life and a lot of my time and it still is. And I like it. I like my work and I like some of my friends who value highly the life of the intellect. There are joys in that life that I suspect cannot be found in many other ways.

So I know that something essential in terms of our relationship is a charade, is a sham, is a guise, is a role. You play to it and I play to it and we understand each other, even though we very seldom talk about it. And I would guess you very seldom talk about it with any of your teachers. And so you say well, that's all right, just tell us a little bit about art. Keep us amused for a while. Open up a few doors, do the best you can. A few ideas here and there. Turn us on a little bit; and I usually try a lot of ways. And now I'm speaking about all of the last eight years; it doesn't matter that I haven't shown you a movie--I've shown movies to other students. It doesn't matter that I don't cook you dinner. I probably will cook dinner for students next couple of weeks. I'll try that too, because I'd like to do it. Because I like being here with you. I don't know many of you; starting to.

Like what is it.? What Can it be? Because you ought to, you ought to know that it can be so much more. But in order for it to be more, students have to pick the teachers and perhaps teachers their students. But I think it comes in that order. And none of you had any idea who I was or what I stood for when you signed up for this course. And nothing in the system makes that kind of knowledge possible. Next semester it may be possible in a way that it wasn't possible this semester. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. But look. Even so so much of our formal relationship's conditioned by an institution that functions in ways that for the most part can only be characterized as utterly absurd. I've talked about the architecture. I've talked about this room. I've talked about the kind of relationships and the kind of decisions that have been made for us by which we have no freedom, no choice, but how we have to relate to numbers, times, schedules. I mean we don't we all know this. And recognizing it, there's perhaps a little to be done. You go ahead and do the best you can anyway. OK.

What is the best that can be done? Like in some way, it's trying to get to you who I am. And what I'm all about and that's where the humanities have it in terms of relevance to people, where technical schools cannot have it or can only have it against far greater odds. Like if you're learning how to be a dentist, man, you have to know your drills, you have to know where to drill, you have to know a lot about teeth, the structure of teeth, about techniques, the ways of working and you got to learn this and everybody has to learn it if they're going to be any good. Medical school; in Medical School the same thing. Practice of Law, professional schools; learn to be a realtor, you know, you learn real estate law and how to cheat; sell insurance. Go to work for Kaiser and go in the young executive training program and you know, they're gonna give you the things that you're supposed to know, see; do it. And the commitment is not, and does not claim to be, the kind of intellectual process in a human being that can be somehow transmuted, transmitted, transmuted--both--changed in character when it becomes part of your head. It's not something that can be taken out and given very subtlely.

So, OK, talk about the ideas and things that I'm involved in. Ask for some feedback. Point out a few things. See what you do with them. Talk about endings, say, listen got to go hear them, and I don't know if I can be there or not but I'm there. If you're there and I get some feedback, you see how tough it is. Don't you? People don't give. Real uptight. No, Godamn; you know I love you. I know, you know because I know that's what you've been taught to do. I know you're at the end, and you're all at the end, see, you're going down the homestretch like you've been through so much of that system and you're so dead. You know when you're alive, like you've learned to keep that alive and to guard and protect it. Be very careful about letting any of that light shine out and you'll learn not to trust your teachers and you learn to be tight, because that's the way you survive. And that's why you've all survived, in part, unless you've been very, very fortunate and had a few loving teachers at some point that have given you a certain kind of inspiration and strength to be able to give and take chances, and open up. And you and I both know that there aren't many like that. And tomorrow and Thursday you can't do it. You can't turn it on, because that's part of who you are; and to come to terms with that involves, you know, deep problems that you don't need me to tell you about. That's part of finding out who you are. You know I can't bend your heads there. I can raise a few issues; you can only get into them yourself. And anyway that's your business.

You know like if we become friends, now, like really close, you know in a sense then it can become part of my business, too. But no matter how close you become with any other person, like you've got such a room inside it's so private, and so alone, and always is that its very presumptuous to think that you can get into it, or should. Ultimately, we're all alone. That's the first line in my article. Short of the ultimate, though what do you do? You've got to get together, you've got to try to help each other, to be a little kinder, a little more loving. And like maybe that doesn't matter, because from the cosmic point of view, as I've said before, like destruction and creation--totally neutral.

And that's an important point of view to be aware of, not to lose. Because that's what provides the possibility for its sense of humor. Knowing there's nothing to be done is the point from which we can start to act. In the fires that destroy all being at the end of the Kalpa, what survives? Ultimately knowing that good and evil, creation-destruction, caring and not caring are equal, permits us as contending parties short of the ultimate to choose. Every time we reach that ultimate point in states of consciousness, we're in a critical situation; we can choose. Crisis, crossroads; take your choice which way you gonna go? Forward, backwards, left or right. Crisis mean crux, cross, crosswalks, crucial; every time you can choose you're free. Every time you do choose, you affirm your freedom. Every time you affirm your freedom, you affirm life. The more you are there, the more aware you are the more intensely alive you are. It's high pressure. That's what it's all about, isn't it? Everything you do is a matter of life or death. Where's your consciousness?

You mean you weren't aware of that? You mean your consciousness hasn't been awakened? I mean you didn't know that everything you do is a matter of life and death? That every moment you have a choice? That you're at the crossroads? You a little anxious about the crossroads? And you don't want to like to choose all the time, you want to rest for a while? Okay. That too. We have our rhythms. Some of us have more psychic energy than others. Some of us have more psychic strength than others. Very few people I guess go into those ultimate waterless deserts as Karl Jaspers called them and fewer still stay there for very long. Because that's intensity in life. And our civilization, our 5000 years of culture, especially the last five hundred years of it since the Renaissance, militates against intensity. Intensity is not popular. Why are beige cars the most popular car this summer? How in the 50s did something like “gray flannel suit” come to mean lot more than describing an article of clothing? And then when you do find intensity and you find puce velveteen being worn more to the office doesn't that mean something else than it would have meant in the 50s? It means that a new sham, a new charade, and new guise, a new costume, a new mask, personae--masks--we've got a thousand of them don't we, all hanging up in a closet. We've got our favorite ones. We're fragmented, man, we're different people, with different roles. A lot of this overlaps in who we are in our person. But like, look at what that culture's made us do. Perform the most amazing circus tricks; magicians changing, mutation.

You talk to that guy and you're a different chick then when you talk to me, and you know those roles. And the people who get ahead play them better and are more clearly fragmented. I mean think of the incredible psychic energy it takes for an insurance salesman in his day, his relationship to his children, his relationship to his newspaper, to his food, to what he does in the bathroom. Think about an insurance salesman taking a shit. What kind of relationship to his own natural body process does he have? You think he's aware, know what he's doing? I mean, there's this body functioning, doing something that all bodies do. I mean does he realize that he's performing the essential creative act, which is part of an ecological relationship of a human being to the earth and to the fertility and sacredness of the earth? This is a ritual, and that it's a purification ritual. You think he thinks about that? When He wipes his ass, does he think "dirty..eech!"? Gets a little piece of shit on his finger, “eech!.” I mean you see how deeply our cultures divide us from who we really are, what we do and where we belong? What's your relationship to the earth? Do you understand these things? Where is your consciousness?

I mean we live in a country and at a time where modern plumbing is a great convenience; I use it but I am also aware that I have paid deep, perhaps exorbitant, prices for that kind of comfort. In fact, the price that I pay for that, and I'm getting perhaps the maximum returns because in France, like, the plumbing isn't so modern, see, and you pay essentially the same price. You don't get much for your money back. So like American plumbing it's really nice. But what's that price? Because that has to be related to what our culture has done to us and our awareness as human beings and our relationship to the earth. And when a culture serves to split you off in that way you pay psychically and you keep paying all your life, till you can somehow get it back, get back in touch with who you are, where you belong. What we’re doing.

Forget about that social fragmentation when the insurance salesman goes to the office and he brings his family problems into the office and when he goes home he brings his office problems back in the family, because you know he's used that as counters of roles to offset each other. Desperate. Fragmented. Split up. Not whole. Not whole, not healthy; whole and healthy are etymologically related in many languages, like Arabic, Salaam, Hebrew Shalom; Shalom means whole because something that's whole is healthy, it's together. Why do you think the revolutionary talk of the kids and the heads and the hippies and radicals and revolutionaries talk about getting it all together? Make a commercial product out of it for Bonnie Delaney and friends right? See all those little subtle contradictions? We've got to get healthy again and each one of you has to get healthy and we've got to help each other.

And you get healthy around your core, around where you are. I can't tell you who you are. Be careful of people who try to. But like one thing you ought to know is that any educational system that encourages you to perform ritual absurd acts is not going to get you very far to finding out. That's why the humanities still have a value. That's one of the only shots, it's one of the only ways left in our society where somebody can show you because he can manifest it. That's why the history of art since the Renaissance or since civilization must be seen in the context of art's subservience to commerce, art's subservience to politics, art's subservience to religion, and why none of that means very much in terms of other ways it can be.

Those Indians who were here yesterday had an option that was different because more than being a teacher or a humanist, remember, I suggested to you that I'm an artist, because art is really the way in which you make that manifest. And the way our art has changed, now in the 20th century, in the last five hundred years, and the last one ten-thousanth of the time when man was man, is an incredible revolution. And the art history that deals with that, and its nature and why it's different, all the art of the last 5000 years, picks up from examples like Florence and the 1400s. What about the creation of art in a social and cultural context in which it's not subservient to the decisions of the wool merchant's guild or economics but where it lives as the essential creative human act in and for itself above economics? Ghilberti's panel didn't get selected because it was the superior work of art. Contrary, a lot of art historians including Richard and Trudy Krauthammer who wrote a basic monograph on Ghilberti, argue that Brunelleschi’s was more creative and adventurous stylistically, aesthetically. See, didn't get selected for art reasons.

Now I'm talking about a cultural revolution in which art can mean that thing that's closest to us of primary importance. That I think happens and that I think is a point of view from which we have to really examine what we're doing in terms of any conventional art history and why I'm concerned with radical issues. They get to the root of your being and my being. The only reason I'm up here is that my consciousness has begun to deal with these. I hope yours has now.

Kurt von Meier
Circa 1967