Praeterita

"In the age of the individual's liquidation, the question of individuality must be raised anew."---Theodor Adorno.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

"The task of art today is to bring chaos into order."---Theodor Adorno.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

"Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth."---Theodor Adorno.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

"The web of domination has become the web of Reason itself, and this society has become fatally entangled in it."---Herbert Marcuse.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

"Art continues in late capitalism. It might be the case that it is co-opted, but again that would mean something in terms of the recipient of art but not to the work of art itself."---Herbert Marcuse, from a 1978 interview.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

"The utopia in great art is never the simple negation of the reality principle but its transcending preservation (Aufhebung) in which past and present cast their shadow on fulfillment. The authentic utopia is grounded in recollection."---Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension .   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

" Art breaks open a dimension inaccessible to other experience, a dimension in which human beings, nature, and things no longer stand under the law of the established reality principle. Subjects and objects encounter the appearance of that autonomy which is denied them in their society."---Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension .     Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

"Liberating subjectivity constitutes itself in the inner history of the individuals—their own history, which is not identical with their social existence."---Herbert Marcuse, T he Aesthetic Dimension .   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

"With the affirmation of the inwardness of subjectivity, the individual steps out of the network of exchange relationships and exchange values, withdraws from the reality of bourgeois society, and enters another dimension of existence."---Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension .   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Not that anyone cares,  but this one should have been posted already but ended up saved as a draft instead. "... art by itself cannot under any circumstances change the social condition. And that is the necessary anbd essential powerlessness of art, that it cannot have an effective, direct impact on the praxis of change. I don't know of any case in which you could say that art has changed the established society. Art can prepare such change. Art can contribute to it only via several negations and mediations, the most important being the change of consciousness and, especially, the change of perception."--- Herbert Marcuse from a 1978 interview .   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

"Q.  Then the function of art is always one of mediation? A.  Yes. A mediation, but also more than that because art can represent the image of the human condition as it is rooted above and beyond the social sphere, which was my main point in relating art to Eros; art represents conflicts, hopes, and sufferings which cannot in any way be settled by the class struggle."---Herbert Marcuse, 1978 interview.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

"I have at the beginning of  The Aesthetic Dimension  outlined what social determination of art I think does indeed prevail: it is, essentially, the material, the tradition, the historical horizon under which the writer, the artist, has to work. He cannot ignore it. He lives in a continuum of tradition even when he breaks it. This social determination affects any work of art. But, as I said, it does not constitute its substance."--- Herbert Marcuse, from a 1978 interview .   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

"The truth of art lies in its power to break the monopoly of established reality (i.e., of those who established it) to define what is real. In this rupture, which is the achievement of the aesthetic form, the fictitious world of art appears as true reality." --- Herbert Marcuse, Aesthetic Dimension .   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Start with a cat lying on a chair in front of you. When he moves, draw that. When he moves again, draw that again. Then turn the sketchbook upside down and draw the other cat into it. Turn the sketchbook again, and without thinking or interfering in the process, start drawing automatically, letting lines connect to other points in the drawing. If a video is playing on your laptop, look at that and do some blind contour drawing from it into the original drawing. Take a photo of it, and put it on your blog.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

It's strange to see what comes out when you start drawing just before you go to sleep: I hasten to add that this is not a self-portrait. Though I did have someone specific in mind.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader