Defining a word that people just feel can go in so many directions, and I think one of that is the sublime. Maybe in the very far future, it turns out to be somewhat very simple; like a medical chart that is a clear summary of the change of some physical aspects of your body, a state that is possible when certain amount of chemicals are implied; just like how nowadays there are chemicals that are used to make you calm down or less sad. But from the 18th century till today, sublime is still a term that is being discussed and defined in various ways. My attempt through this paper is to define the sublime by observing artist Bas Jan Alder and Ray Johnson who implied death as a piece of their art, referring to the two essays, On the Track of the “S” Word: A Reporter’s Notes by Anthony Haden-Guest and Turned Upside Down and Torn Apart by Thomas Mcevilley of the Sticky Sublime.
Ray Edward Johnson
“On January 13, 1995, Johnson was last seen jumping off a bridge in Sag Harbor, Long Island, in an apparent suicide at age 67. Given the carefully crafted circumstances surrounding his death, many view this act as Johnson’s final performance. Johnson’s suicide offered the first opportunity to fully examine his life and his work of the previous fifty years.” [3]
The final art piece that Johnson left us behind is full of mystery. Contrast to his work that was usually always calculated, the art of his final death shifts everything that he did for the last 67 years of his life. “Richard Lippold, who was Johnson’s lover for many years … said when Johnson jumped off the bridge, “Now that I think of him after his death, I don’t think I really knew who he was. … Who was this man?” (73, Kimmelman) The final “event” throws his work to a mysterious, permanent stage full of unknown.
Bas Jan Ader and his Revival
“Dutch/Californian artist Bas Jan Ader was last seen in 1975 when he took off in what would have been the smallest sailboat ever to cross the Atlantic. Bas Jan Ader was born to idealistic ministers in the Dutch Reformed Church on April 19, 1942. In 1975, Ader embarked on what he called “a very long sailing trip.” … Six months after his departure, his boat was found, half-submerged off the coast of Ireland, but Bas Jan had vanished.” [4]
The work of Bas Jan Ader finally started to gain public interest recently. “There have been a number of recent exhibitions of his work, including a European traveling retrospective in 2006-2007 with stops at the Camden Art Center, London, the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, and the Kunshalle Basel.”[5] Just like Ray Edward Johnson, his disappearance seems to be the final touch of all his work. “He just shows. This absence of explanation produces a strong paradox: it is as if he is staging, … [He] leaves us with the disturbing feeling.” [6]
Conclusion: Death and the sublime
By observing the two cases that implied death as art as above, how can death, disappearance be translated into the form of sublime? What are the similarities? Does their work of art—death contain both beauty and the sublime?
Death is a place where it is the final end and perhaps an entrance to a new stage of another life that is unknown. It has the possibility to share opposed meanings at the same time. Death is black but also white, the end but also a beginning, painful but also a final relief of life, the feel of left behind and the feel of nothing left behind, shown but unrevealed, known but unknown, imaginative but very realistic, and so on. The characteristic of it—holding the same amount of extremes dangling on each side seems to match exactly with the nature of the sublime is thought. What is sublime compared with death?
Death as an experience is something that no one can explain until his or her last breath of life. Sublime is somewhat like that or in-between. Sublime is “something like in-between dancing and dying, a thing that implies death—[sublime is] a beauty that implies death.” (Haden-Guest, 55) According to this in-between ness, and looking throughout the what art is historically, what kind of relationships between the sublime and beauty do the Bas Jan Ader and Ray Johnson’s final piece have? Why are their death not just simply up on an obituary notice but considered as a piece of art?
Art seems to be always inescapable with beauty. The “oeuvre” from Ader’s such as the “Fall” or video installations, artwork and documentations of his work, including his last postcard, seem to be a continuation of his final work that proved the portion of “beauty” ness. Johnson’s left behind studio after his death, which was packed neatly—all the work of painting faced backwards except one, and his play of numbers with “his death on January 13, 1995, at the age of sixty-seven (6+7=13 , 13, his numerological bent)”(73, Kimmelman) gets part of the whole play and the viewer receives the delicate touch of the craft, beauty that they left behind. It is this part of their act with beauty—the formality, pleasure, wonder, etc, all the things that beauty contains—that makes it differ from just a normal guy who simply made a decision to suicide; that would not be the case to be considered as art. But what the when the death part played the final role in their art, it made everything sublime.
Art tends to be alive when there is a spare amount of sublimity by being new and fresh sometimes being disturbing compared with art just filled with beauty. Throughout time, the sublime part grows less and less, and as the newness disappears—the disappearance is not totally gone but looks like it crawled into the portion of beauty. So the mental terror from the new gradually slow down and the sublime shifts to a different place while beauty becomes the trace of the past sublime. In other words, if there are 10 or 20 more Ray Johsnson, or Bas Jan Ader that finish their life with death as an art, will their work / death still be categorized as the sublime? Or will the sublime ness fade down and shift to what we call the new trend of beauty? This question may imply to other works of art that is categorized as sublime. But actually death, as an exception, is not something that can be easily repeated or followed. Maybe that is why it stays powerful as the experience of sublime when people face Ader and Johnson’s work. Then, going back to work of art without death but sublime, what if it is easy to be reproduced by new technology or so on in the future? Is that kind of sublime that can be transferred to the new standard of beauty the real sublime? Or is it something else? If the root of beauty and sublime is totally different and something else, are they able to coexist? Or as I mentioned, are they just shifting to something else? According to Mcecilley’s comparison of Longinus, Kant and Burke—the different idea of the coexistence of sublime and beauty:
“Burke insists that they are different and irreconcilable. Kant softens it up to the point of reconciling them. [Longinus thought of those two could not function] as collaborators or even coexist.” (73, Mcevilley)
In conclusion, the sublime and beauty that implies death seem to be “essentially different”(73) as Longinus thought of the two. The beauty of the death comes after the sublime—rather than starting together; like Bas Jan Ader and Ray Johnson’s “death” work both became documented as a film after their performance—the sublime is documented, published, and announced as an art form that is polished with beauty. The death itself remains as the sublime but as the form of art takes part the beauty emerges and coexists with the sublime. The sublime that gets to be reproducible in the art world can be transferred to the new beauty just like how a mass-produced “can” or shit became art and was transformed to the new beauty but the sublime ness may disappear if they are repetitively overused. But until there comes out a brilliant thing that can save us from death, Ader and Johnson’s work will still remain as the art of sublime.
Bibliography
[1] Sticky Sublime, On the Track of the “S” Word: A Reporter’s Notes, Haden-Guest, Anthony
[2] Sticky Sublime, Turned Upside Down and Torn Apart, Mcevilley, Thomas
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Johnson
[4] http://basjanader.com/
[5] Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous, Jan Verwoert, ISBN 1-84638-002-2, May 2006
[6]James Roberts, ‘Bas Jan Alder: the artist who fell from grace with the sea’, frieze no. 17, summer 1994, p. 34
[7]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bas_Jan_Ader
[8]The Accidental Masterpiece On the Art of Life and Vice Versa, Penguin Books, 2005, Kimmelman, Michael
Ray Edward Johnson
“On January 13, 1995, Johnson was last seen jumping off a bridge in Sag Harbor, Long Island, in an apparent suicide at age 67. Given the carefully crafted circumstances surrounding his death, many view this act as Johnson’s final performance. Johnson’s suicide offered the first opportunity to fully examine his life and his work of the previous fifty years.” [3]
The final art piece that Johnson left us behind is full of mystery. Contrast to his work that was usually always calculated, the art of his final death shifts everything that he did for the last 67 years of his life. “Richard Lippold, who was Johnson’s lover for many years … said when Johnson jumped off the bridge, “Now that I think of him after his death, I don’t think I really knew who he was. … Who was this man?” (73, Kimmelman) The final “event” throws his work to a mysterious, permanent stage full of unknown.
Bas Jan Ader and his Revival
“Dutch/Californian artist Bas Jan Ader was last seen in 1975 when he took off in what would have been the smallest sailboat ever to cross the Atlantic. Bas Jan Ader was born to idealistic ministers in the Dutch Reformed Church on April 19, 1942. In 1975, Ader embarked on what he called “a very long sailing trip.” … Six months after his departure, his boat was found, half-submerged off the coast of Ireland, but Bas Jan had vanished.” [4]
The work of Bas Jan Ader finally started to gain public interest recently. “There have been a number of recent exhibitions of his work, including a European traveling retrospective in 2006-2007 with stops at the Camden Art Center, London, the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam, and the Kunshalle Basel.”[5] Just like Ray Edward Johnson, his disappearance seems to be the final touch of all his work. “He just shows. This absence of explanation produces a strong paradox: it is as if he is staging, … [He] leaves us with the disturbing feeling.” [6]
Conclusion: Death and the sublime
By observing the two cases that implied death as art as above, how can death, disappearance be translated into the form of sublime? What are the similarities? Does their work of art—death contain both beauty and the sublime?
Death is a place where it is the final end and perhaps an entrance to a new stage of another life that is unknown. It has the possibility to share opposed meanings at the same time. Death is black but also white, the end but also a beginning, painful but also a final relief of life, the feel of left behind and the feel of nothing left behind, shown but unrevealed, known but unknown, imaginative but very realistic, and so on. The characteristic of it—holding the same amount of extremes dangling on each side seems to match exactly with the nature of the sublime is thought. What is sublime compared with death?
Death as an experience is something that no one can explain until his or her last breath of life. Sublime is somewhat like that or in-between. Sublime is “something like in-between dancing and dying, a thing that implies death—[sublime is] a beauty that implies death.” (Haden-Guest, 55) According to this in-between ness, and looking throughout the what art is historically, what kind of relationships between the sublime and beauty do the Bas Jan Ader and Ray Johnson’s final piece have? Why are their death not just simply up on an obituary notice but considered as a piece of art?
Art seems to be always inescapable with beauty. The “oeuvre” from Ader’s such as the “Fall” or video installations, artwork and documentations of his work, including his last postcard, seem to be a continuation of his final work that proved the portion of “beauty” ness. Johnson’s left behind studio after his death, which was packed neatly—all the work of painting faced backwards except one, and his play of numbers with “his death on January 13, 1995, at the age of sixty-seven (6+7=13 , 13, his numerological bent)”(73, Kimmelman) gets part of the whole play and the viewer receives the delicate touch of the craft, beauty that they left behind. It is this part of their act with beauty—the formality, pleasure, wonder, etc, all the things that beauty contains—that makes it differ from just a normal guy who simply made a decision to suicide; that would not be the case to be considered as art. But what the when the death part played the final role in their art, it made everything sublime.
Art tends to be alive when there is a spare amount of sublimity by being new and fresh sometimes being disturbing compared with art just filled with beauty. Throughout time, the sublime part grows less and less, and as the newness disappears—the disappearance is not totally gone but looks like it crawled into the portion of beauty. So the mental terror from the new gradually slow down and the sublime shifts to a different place while beauty becomes the trace of the past sublime. In other words, if there are 10 or 20 more Ray Johsnson, or Bas Jan Ader that finish their life with death as an art, will their work / death still be categorized as the sublime? Or will the sublime ness fade down and shift to what we call the new trend of beauty? This question may imply to other works of art that is categorized as sublime. But actually death, as an exception, is not something that can be easily repeated or followed. Maybe that is why it stays powerful as the experience of sublime when people face Ader and Johnson’s work. Then, going back to work of art without death but sublime, what if it is easy to be reproduced by new technology or so on in the future? Is that kind of sublime that can be transferred to the new standard of beauty the real sublime? Or is it something else? If the root of beauty and sublime is totally different and something else, are they able to coexist? Or as I mentioned, are they just shifting to something else? According to Mcecilley’s comparison of Longinus, Kant and Burke—the different idea of the coexistence of sublime and beauty:
“Burke insists that they are different and irreconcilable. Kant softens it up to the point of reconciling them. [Longinus thought of those two could not function] as collaborators or even coexist.” (73, Mcevilley)
In conclusion, the sublime and beauty that implies death seem to be “essentially different”(73) as Longinus thought of the two. The beauty of the death comes after the sublime—rather than starting together; like Bas Jan Ader and Ray Johnson’s “death” work both became documented as a film after their performance—the sublime is documented, published, and announced as an art form that is polished with beauty. The death itself remains as the sublime but as the form of art takes part the beauty emerges and coexists with the sublime. The sublime that gets to be reproducible in the art world can be transferred to the new beauty just like how a mass-produced “can” or shit became art and was transformed to the new beauty but the sublime ness may disappear if they are repetitively overused. But until there comes out a brilliant thing that can save us from death, Ader and Johnson’s work will still remain as the art of sublime.
Bibliography
[1] Sticky Sublime, On the Track of the “S” Word: A Reporter’s Notes, Haden-Guest, Anthony
[2] Sticky Sublime, Turned Upside Down and Torn Apart, Mcevilley, Thomas
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Johnson
[4] http://basjanader.com/
[5] Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous, Jan Verwoert, ISBN 1-84638-002-2, May 2006
[6]James Roberts, ‘Bas Jan Alder: the artist who fell from grace with the sea’, frieze no. 17, summer 1994, p. 34
[7]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bas_Jan_Ader
[8]The Accidental Masterpiece On the Art of Life and Vice Versa, Penguin Books, 2005, Kimmelman, Michael
at 2008/04/16 08:20
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