tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2184013616761601882.post5575381879538904987..comments2023-09-02T06:36:39.900-07:00Comments on Immanent Terrain: Snow Day Lectures (II): Nietzsche and the Over-manSaishigohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03607365131404996126noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2184013616761601882.post-83015521629617755782010-02-20T17:20:11.857-08:002010-02-20T17:20:11.857-08:00RE: "The artist’s relation to their artwork i...RE: "The artist’s relation to their artwork is a good demonstration of this: the challenge from a Nietzschean perspective is not to be misled into seeing the artwork as an expression of the artist’s will. There is not an entity we call an “artist” who decides to will a painting into existence. Rather, the activity of painting itself is the expression of a will to power that produces both the painting and painter at the same time: the painter as such emerges through the activity of painting, and not once and for all, not through the painting of this or that painting, but over the course of years or decades and in conjunction with a body of work. What then is the difference between an oeuvre and the artist? There is none in terms of will to power: they are an expression of the same force, the same will. The artist accumulates an oeuvre and, in the process, a self."<br /><br />This last section resonates strongly, it seems, with Tarkovsky's viewpoints on the role and work of the artist. I'll attempt to paraphrase from memory (as I don't have the book in front of me) a section from "Sculpting in Time": He remarks that modern art has taken a (tragic) turn away from communicating the divine force within life via the artist, and has instead become the self-reflexive vocation of "suspect characters" who believe art's purpose to be an affirmation of the artist's Self. Hence, haute conceptual art practice today is exemplified by those great hoaxes of "fake artists" for whom marketing/hype is their medium (as opposed to paint, photography, etc) and who achieve wild success by manipulating the context of how artists are viewed and received by the public.<br /><br />Those who focus on the process of producing a work of art (or a philosophical concept), on the other hand, cannot help but adhere to the notion of the will to power that "produces both the painting and painter at the same time." If one is committed, the work demands a rigorous application of one's maximum abilities, reaching always into the unknown/becoming (i.e., Deleuze's plane of immanence, or Bernard Cache's inflection image).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com