Stanley Cavell on the Aesthetic Autonomy of the Photographic Image

"Photography overcame subjectivity in a way undreamed of by painting, a way that could not satisfy painting, one which does not so much defeat the act of painting as escape it altogether: by automatism, by removing the human agent from the task of reproduction."

Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed

Source: Cavell, Stanley. The World Viewed : Reflections on the Ontology of Film. New York: Viking Press, 1971. Print.

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Lyotard's Caution on Taste

image credit: © Greig Roselli 

"There could be no greater misunderstanding of judgments of taste than to declare them simply universal and necessary."

Jean-François Lyotard, Analytic of the Sublime, p. 19.

Poetry: Gone with the Wind, among others — Leuven, Belgium

In this poem, which I wrote when I was a college student at the Catholic University of Leuven (K.U.L.), and living as a seminarian at the American College, I tap into feelings of aesthetic taste, sharing intimacy — and I used the phrase "stones of erasmus" for the first time! 

     Erasmus was a student in Leuven during the counter-reformation. One can still see the dormitory house where he supposedly lived and studied. There is a saying among students that only if the stones of Erasmus could speak! What would they say?  

photo credit: spirit of paris

After a film,
poster and reflections
neatly crisp

Intently, furtive glances, to the right, then gone …
left man passes, consume in a bite, then a girl
with glasses, lashes and a bic light
smokes.
Curly Q’s and then somberness of night.
But, still the poster glows … the Trocadero, a movie
de l’amour and Vertigo, a fright:
An image of a man, a stale lacuna, a ghost of film noir
gazing, not apart, partly connected.  Dreams and visions
speak aloud to wet, litter caked streets.

Rotted lemon luminaries haze a path,
dulling humid low land streets, scarcity curtains pulled upwards,
A Peugeot passes, the stones of erasmus clamor to get out.
The posters gleam yet; characters speak and a stomach,
somewhere thirsty growls — it is filled and then …
in upward windows aching, she dresses for a silent figure fantasy.

A flicker, then bed, holding a teapot, languidly.
Une regard to a postcard, to consume.
Speeches to please, to sugar, then the tongue licks,
alors, madame …
then laugh,
like a box of potpourri; charming
half-dead, withered, enchanting

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