In his thesis, Castriota reveals that the grammar of Celtic ornament which appears as "patterns" in Jacobsthal's work and which was continued by Sir Cyril Fox and Martyn Jope is not really a grammar but a glossary of ornament. A grammar is what is followed by the artist in the commission of the work. In his forthcoming supplement to Jacobsthal, Vincent Megaw will not be including patterns at all and he explained to me that people will have to use their eyes. This is good advice and I think that patterns can not only emphasize a particular view, but can prevent alternative views through its labeling and context in the work.
The need to break down motifs further into elements is not well reflected in the published patterns by Jacobsthal and Jope who not only include motifs as patterns but combinations of motifs, especially with continuous decoration. Fox restricts his patterns to single motifs, alone.
Early Celtic art has no published manifesto of its aims as we frequently see in modern art movements, and its narrative content, in the rare incidences where we suspect that such is being presented, is based on mythologies that if committed to writing later are so changed that reconstituting the original stories is impossible. On top of everything else, the separation of artistic and mythological elements, as with separations of "Church and State" was just not any sort of consideration in prehistoric art and cultures.
On Monday: dealing with elements and motifs. Have a great weekend.
I was a little concerned with the subject matter of yesterday's post because I had just located, purchased and downloaded a PhD thesis I had been looking for for quite a while. It is David Richard Castriota's Continuity and Innovation in Celtic and Mediterranean Ornament. A Grammatical-syntactic Analysis of the Processes of Reception and Transformation in the Decorative Arts of Antiquity, 1981 thesis submitted to Columbia University, published by University Microfilms International and available through ProQuest.
With my study of Coriosolite dies I had decided, in 1985, to break up the design motifs into design elements and I was not sure how Castriota dealt with motifs in his thesis. It turns out that I did not need to be concerned as in his abstract he says:
"The extension of the concept of grammar in language to the study of the visual medium of ornament must span a large formal gap. Consequently this approach requires relatively objective and consistent bases or criteria if it is to prove useful. The more familiar art historical concept of the motif is a valid one, but it is a flexible term which applies to many art forms of varied configuration, type and complexity. As such the term "motif" is not sufficiently specific or precise to enable a consistent basis for formal analysis on the analogy of grammar. In addition, many ornamental forms characterized as motifs are clearly made up of smaller components. Therefore it is necessary to utilize a more graphic and geometrical method of pattern recognition to distinguish and characterize the fundamental formal components of ornament."
Once I had obtained my elements from the motifs my interests were, first, to use changes in the designs to determine a more focused chronology than was possible before using the usual sort of coin classification system which looks only at a few features and second, to reconstitute meaning from the motifs and elements. Apart from identifying specific design elements and trying to establish their original meanings, I had no interest in classifying the elements any further. Castriota, however, must do so in order to fulfill his goals which was how Celtic art developed and evolved. So he explains (also part of the abstract):
"The study of the Celtic transformations of Southern ornament requires a more objective and consistent means of formal analysis. Patterns are intelligible as groupings of basic two-dimensional components or elements. These may be arranged with an areally discrete structure as proximate, tangent, or conterminous forms, and also as a really continuous series, connected by juncture. These arrangements may be characterized more precisely on the analogy of the syntactic structure of words in language, as paratactic and hypotactic connections. Larger aggregates of elements consist of serial arrangements, as strings , and more elaborate structures, perimetral and complex aggregates, and still more elaborate closed string aggregates, network strings, and valenced mass compositions."
A classification system is not an anatomy of related groups of objects but a system applied to a group of objects for a specific application and the value of any classification system is dependent on how well the system is able to meet the goals of said system. Classifications, then, are to a degree subjective because the researcher determines the qualities that are taken into consideration.
We are taught to read at a young age and soon become familiar with such terms as "vocabulary" and "grammar". If and when we gain an intellectual interest in art, we tend to look for similar structures in its understanding because, although stressing literacy, no one has ever taught us how to look.
Yet words are nothing more than a map of a viewpoint; a description of a reality as seen or imagined. Someone had to be looking at some part of the process. Sight, of course, is just one of the senses, and we experience reality through all of them. Evolution tends to favor people who do not block out ambient sounds with headphones while crossing road and railroad tracks. Even if you are distracted and looking the other way, you can at least hear the train.
As our survival depends on something similar, we have a tendency to prefer situations that we can sum up in a glance and make decisions based on the whole picture. Whenever we experience this sort of survival kick in, we describe it as "being in the zone". In this state, all of the complex calculations are unconscious, learned, and automated. This works just fine for my dog: he likes routines; he dislikes novelty and anything sitting on the sidewalk that was not always there is to be distrusted. For humans, it is a rare experience as we have to do so many different things and it becomes impossible to do many of them so well as to experience "being in the zone". For everything else, we have to pin down facts with words like butterflies pinned to a board.
So we start with an ABC approach as if learning to read, and even use letters, just for the familiarity. A motif is a design bearing a meaning. Imagine that each letter in the word "motif" is one of those plastic fridge magnets, and they are all lying in a box at different angles and in random order. This is an easy puzzle: we already know our letters and which side is up, and there is no other word that they can spell but "motif".
In using letters as design elements we have already adopted an entire classification system for these design elements. In this case, it is the English language. The problem in interpretation in prehistoric examples of motifs is that they and the elements they are constructed from are following a classification system very different from the English language but yet broadly-related to the structures of written language itself. You might say that they are the antecedents of written language that can contain other qualities which have never been adopted into written languages.
The trick to understanding is to first reveal the underlying system.
I had intended to do something on Steampunk but after reading Peter S Wells, How Ancient Europeans saw the World: Vision, Patterns, and the Shaping of the Mind in Prehistoric Times, Princeton University Press, 2012, that will have to wait. Wells speculates about doing the sort of things that I have been doing and writing about for thirty years. In chapter nine, he compares the layout and something of the styles of the Celtic La Tène 1 scabbard from Hallstatt (detail illustrated right) with the "procession plate" of the Thracian work for Celtic clients, Gundestrup cauldron (illustrated below). While such layout and style could have influenced thinking, such thinking would have been outside of the culture. The Greeks, for example, seeing the two examples would think of mainly Thracians, but perhaps also of Etruscans: people who were still following something of the styles that the Greeks had followed in an earlier age. It might be seen as slightly barbaric or just "old fashioned", but it might have also been seen in a better light by people interested in "ancient wisdom".
Within the culture, however, such compositional devices act as a familiar roadmap through the composition. In the procession plate to the left, it is read from right to left on the bottom and then left to right on the top. This would confuse an ancient Egyptian used to reading hieroglyphs from the direction that the figures face. The branch forms a register to tell the observer that the scene is divided into two "episodes" and the large figure on the left spans both of the episodes and is also the director of the scene.
Meaning, however, existed prior to the artist creation and the latter is an expression of it. While the mythological subjects of both examples are related, they are not the same. A better parallel to the wheel turner on the scabbard is the wheel turner on the cauldron, but its significance apart from its use just as one of the elements on the scabbard composition is ignored, even though it is discussed by Jacobsthal and the Megaws deemed it important enough to get a colour plate in Celtic Art.
In this series I will discuss the vocabularies and grammars of decorative art focusing on the Celtic but drawing from other cultures as well. It is related to semiotics but the latter approaches the subject deductively, by offering, first, its own grammar. I can only work with this material in an inductive manner.
I think that next year, if I feel the urge to take a vacation, it will be to one of those places
where the closest thing to a life and death decision is whether to go down to the restaurant or phone for room service. I am finding some irony in the fact that British Columbia's wildfires were a concern in getting to the Upper Fraser but not so much for where we were going as it is a rather damp area with low fire risk, yet it was the part of the journey with the highest fire risk that resulted in having to turn back. There was no fire but hours of rain over a 150k stretch of highway and with low nighttime temperatures. This was just what the province needed, but it was not so good for campers. First no campfires were permitted, now the problem would be to get one started at all.
What really did it, though, was that the storage box Monte built onto the top of his 4WD, was not waterproof. I did not know about that until the rain started. With a wet sleeping bag and clothes, I had no choice but to call off the trip and turn back. Only fools allow enthusiasm to get in the way of safety issues.
A pleasant surprise was that coydog Tristan traveled very well. He seemed not to trust people as much as he did at home and would not let anyone get too close. He knew he was in unfamiliar country that must have had different smells, and he was taking no chances. He would be the perfect companion for a long distance trucker.
Just before the rain started, I took the above photograph at North America's most famous Glacier, the Athabasca Glacier. The glaciers are definitely shrinking. There was another good view down the road, but it was blocked with screens so you could not see it unless you paid for the bus tour that took you behind the screens.
This might be the last posting for about a week to ten days as Monte and I are off to the Upper Fraser River in British Columbia next week to find (or create) a route to his property there. If we drive into Prince George some time I can find a Wifi hot spot where I can try out my tablet's Blogger app. Other than that, I will have only satellite GPS, messaging and emergency beacon.
(page 113-115 and about the first Le Catillon hoard).
For some reason, my digital camera's output to my computer has stopped working so I have to buy a card reader for it today or I will be stuck using my tablet's camera. I also have to get a blue tooth speaker with more oomph than what I have right now, which would not scare off a ground squirrel, let alone a bear. I also have to move my collection and other valuables to a friend's safe before I go, get some fishing tackle, get groceries and bake some pasties for the trip.
I might not be able to publish any blog comments past early next week and until I return, so be patient. There are still no wildfires between where we are going and the coast from where the prevailing winds blow, so the air quality should be good. Wish us luck!
Are you old enough to remember Myst? 1993 was an important year for gaming with the introduction of Myst and Doom. Yesterday, in a fit of nostalgia, I bought the latest version (realMyst with free roaming option). It comes with some caveats: depending on whether you opt for playing with lesser graphic detail, you will find that it runs a little slow. It does not bother me much, Myst was far from a fast-action game and you cannot even die in it. You can also decide whether you want to break from the original point and click on established paths and go free roaming instead (you can neither pass through solid objects nor fall off the cliff). I tried the free roaming, but might go back to point and click to better experience the original game. The story remains the same, though.
The graphics are richer because they can be. Originally, it had only 256 colours, but the developers wisely did not use the usual garish 256 colours out of the box, but created custom 256 colour palettes for each scene. Myst was highly praised for its artistry: the original had an appearance somewhere between a watercolour drawing and and a Japanese woodcut. As a game, it contrasted (almost archetypally) with Doom: Myst being ethereal with puzzles to solve, and Doom being action/violence. When I first saw Doom, in 1993, I must admit to being concerned about such violence in a game. I really took to Myst, though.
Sometime after I get back from my trip to the backwoods of British Columbia I will be starting a series on the archaeology of modern popular culture, and Myst will get the ball rolling. In the meantime, watch this interview with the originators of Myst and Doom (caption by Vimeo):
DOOM MYST 20 Years After from NYU Game Center on Vimeo.
There are few games as important or influential as DOOM and MYST. While DOOM founded what would become one of the defining genres of video games, MYST introduced a huge new audience to the digital art form.
Join us for an evening with two of the most important creative forces behind these two world changing games, John Romero (DOOM) and Rand Miller (MYST), as they discuss their visionary works. The free-wheeling conversation, moderated by Frank Lantz, director of the NYU Game Center, will find the two legends meditating on their subsequent careers, sharing their thoughts about the development and future of the game industry, and commenting on the legacies of each other’s work.
Inspiration can come from anywhere. A few days ago I was attempting to learn how to fly a radio-controlled drone quadcopter so we could spot routes from the air on our expedition to the Upper Fraser. At first I tried flying it indoors but it would crash into something within a few seconds of taking off. I decided to take it outside. That seemed to work: with all of that extra space it took twice as many seconds to crash into something like a tree, the fence or the house. When it comes to anything mechanical, I'm all thumbs. I soon realized that my flying a drone was going to be just as successful as when (in my younger years) I tried to learn how to rehair violin bows. It did not last a day: I made something of a mess of cutting the impossibly small piece of wood that holds the hair in place; then the hot hide glue stuck to my fingers, the piece of wood and about $20 worth of horse hair (not just any horse hair, but the most expensive kind). I decided that Monte should be the pilot on this trip. Not being very good with my hands seems a strange claim for someone who used to make something of a living from being an artist, especially when it came to pen and ink drawings which were excruciatingly detailed. I thought about this again after the qaudcopter fiasco: it's not so much about being bad with my hands, I'm bad with my fingers. I could do very consistent cross-hatching with a pen, but the motion is created by the wrist, not the fingers. In painting large pictures, it was gesture that got the paint on the canvas: often a sweep of the whole arm, sometimes just the forearm. My fingers had nothing to do with my art past unscrewing the pain tube, and even I can handle that. I had no problems with gesture and had success with dancing and acting. Painting, to me, belonged with those two. I gave up painting when I realized I would never become another Cézanne, and I gave up pen and ink when I realized I would never become another Domenico Gnoli.
Domenici Gnoli bridged surrealism and pop-art: some of his paintings suggest someone who had become fascinated by a detail of a bowler hat in a René Magritte painting, but it was his pen and ink that really got to me. That was what I had been trying to do with the medium all along. I just did not realize it at the time. His pen and ink was surrealism and the paintings were mainly pop art. It was shortly after I discovered Gnoli when he died a far too early death like another great artist draftsman; Thomas Girtin. Joseph Turner had said that he might not have become so great had Girtin lived. In their younger years, they shared the same work with Turner's watercolour over Girtin's drawing.
Take a close look at some of Domenico Gnoli's drawings (tip: click on each image). Then watch the following video for more of his work:
Forest routes between Eaglet and Hansard Lakes in the Upper Fraser, British Columbia, view is about 50,000 feet (click to enlarge)
Yesterday was quite productive: I was able to plot several potential routes through the forest to reach Monte's quarter section. These approximate routes have been entered into my inReach Explorer and I can navigate along them while leaving locational messages for friends and relatives back home. This area is in the middle of the sub-boreal spruce zone and has the largest, unspoiled, river systems in the world.
The route lines are approximate as I wanted to be able to zoom on on the photographs in places. The photographic information, however, is ten years old and a lot could be now growing over those roads if they are rarely traveled. Bridges can be out and roads washed out during flash floods after storms. The routes that humans pick are also chosen by animals like the moose and the grizzly bear. I'm hoping that the latter are well fed despite the recent lack of moisture in the area, as it is only the predatory bears that will want to approach humans. If you make enough noise, most bears will move away from you. Young male grizzlies who are "strutting their stuff" can also be aggressive, but the breeding season is over. The hunting season has yet to begin, so we are unlikely to get accidentally shot.
Finding these routes was a surprise: maps we had looked at before had none of the old logging roads marked, not even the highest scale government maps. I was on the Delome site synced to my inReach Explorer as the gizmo, itself, carries only a featureless route map. Pairing it wityh my tablet, though, I can plot routes over better maps. The above screen shot was above a Google Earth image, but when I first saw the roads appear it was as I zoomed in on the relief map. Funnily, they do not appear on the third map type: the road map. This is what I first drew over. I placed the two way-points on Camp 27 Road
The lower way point marks the start of the route that I thought we might be able to take, and the upper way point does the same for the route that Monte plotted. Both were uncertain routes, and we thought that we might have to cross areas that had no logging roads, but might have a few hunter's ATV trails we could hack or chain saw our way through with the 4WD.
Monte was overjoyed when I phoned him about it and sent him copies of the maps. He told me that he had heard such a map existed, but had not been able to find it in three years.
The lake from which one of Monte's creeks issues is visible above the higher route line. It runs though the deepest ravine in the area which reaches Monte's land about 140 feet below at the base of a high hill that looks like it should have a hillfort or a castle on it. Monte's hill overlooks the lake that feeds his creek., and all the lands to the south. I'm hoping there is bedrock visible in the ravine or in the creek on Monte's land. There is gold in the area and we are bringing a pick, shovel and gold pan. If there's no gold visible in the pan, then the fishing rod gets unpacked. Have to check out the resources. Did I mention that the grizzlies really like to follow the creeks as well as roads and cut-lines?
After waiting months for my some of my pensions to be processed, I can finally start buying books again. It should not come as a surprise to anyone who has read my previous blog about it that the Festschrift for Vincent Megaw would be the first major purchase. I first learned of its existence in an email from Vincent, himself. Yet, I had a problem: should I buy the hard copy or the e-book? The reason I had a problem is because I had started to think about the question too early. So, if you ever find yourself in any dilemma stop thinking about it and trust to Providence.
Providence visited me in the guise of my daughter and my son-in-law, who were concerned about my forthcoming (second) expedition to the backwoods NE of Prince George, British Columbia. Where we are going, there is no cell-phone reception. Last time, we went in on foot but this time it will be by 4WD. My limited experience with this mode of transportation leads me to believe that a 4WD allows people to become stuck in far more remote places than can easily be reached on foot. It really does not matter that you have a winch when you are stuck in the middle of some muskeg and the only tree close enough is a very young sapling. My son-in-law suggested renting a satellite phone, but I bought an inReach Explorer, instead, which has both GPS features and a satellite messaging system (including an SOS button for the world's major search and rescue service). This cost me about twice what the rental of a phone would have cost, but one more expedition will pay for that. I also have an option to suspend the service costs for any number of months for only $4.95 per month. As this gizmo can be paired with tablet, I bought one of those, too. Previously, I had thought of buying an e-book reader, but the tablet serves well for that, and e-book readers cannot install the Google Earth app for Android. Limited functionality compared with the desk top version, but still useful for the expedition as the maps just do not show the sort of roads we will be traveling on through the forest. Even then, a lot can change in the forest on logging roads that have not been used since being captured by Landsat years ago, as we found out on the first expedition.
So, I started buying some books and music for the trip on Google Play (Jack London seemed appropriate for the reading material). I thought I would see what they had in books on Celtic Art and there was Vincent's birthday book. If I ordered the hard copy it would probably not arrive in time for the trip; a hard copy would add weight; one can select and copy in an e-book for taking notes and giving quotes; simple touch-operated translation for the French and German papers; it was cheaper as an e-book; the books are not just downloaded to my tablet, but I can also access them from any computer from the Google site; bears cannot eat on-line digital files. What dilemma?
I thought that I might write a review of the book when I get back from the trip, but this is such an important collection of papers that any attempt at an expository review could hardly do it justice. The introduction in the book is the first chapter, and it spends enough time to do a good job of that. Why the publishers do not offer that introduction as a free sample is beyond me, it would sell many copies. There are some papers that will inspire some commentary for this blog and talking about one or two of them might even take the form of a series. My only complaint is that the book is formatted fine for hard copy, but the small print and double columns make it less than ideal for an e-book as the publishers did not bother to do anything but convert it to PDF. In better format was Peter S. Wells, How Ancient Europeans Saw the World (which I also bought). There, even the table of contents are links and it is single-columned with readable text I don't need to zoom.
What surprised me completely about Vincent's birthday book is when I read what people I knew had to say about Vincent, and also reading the same from people I did not know, but have read and have discussed some of their ideas with Vincent. It gave me the strangest sensation of eavesdropping. Of course, many will be drawn to this book because one of the contributors is John Collis, who might be fairly described as being Vincent's arch rival, at least in matters of Celtic identity. Collis does say though, that "the written word actually hides a friendship between us goes back many years!" Vincent has said much the same to me about John Collis in email. This book has many levels.
