Ritual

re this topic; [whose art is it anyway?] See also: -[Ritual in Performance Art Act]- or: -[Performance Art - Ritual]- [Cultural Art] [Art Periods] [Flying Gallop] (prance image) [Meso American Art] [South American Art] [Pacific Islands Art] [Art Periods] [Art Movements] [(art) concepts] [Time Line]

Ritual

Note: I deal as best i can with the "trade offs" that we as artists make when trying to incorporate ritual into art in the article in Perf Art Act: -[Ritual in Performance Art Act]- In this section: {Intro} {} {} {} {} {} {Refs} {Links}

Intro


Refs

I have taken the liberty of duplicating the following here:

References

(this section only) Having been formally (B grade, a gift me thinks) through a course in ritual - just a survey one. I think that a good "self-paced" course in ritual could be gleaned from the following: Eliade, Mircea. Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries. 1957. Trans. Philip For artists of all kinds, Eliade is THE book. He was the first to range far and wide and even his detractors have to admit that even when he is wrong - he's still right. As the saying goes: The opposite of simple truth is a simple lie. But the opposite of a profound truth, is another sort of profound truth. Langer, Susanne K. (1957, 3rd Ed.) Philosophy in a New Key - A Study in the Symbolism Reason, Rite, and Art. Harvard Press. Cambridge (Massachusetts). It is so heartening to me that she is (finally!) getting the respect that she so richly deserves for her work. During the "cold war" she was seen as almost under-mining the good, strong approach to TRUTH - which must surely, Shirley, reside in the "hard sciences", better living through pesticides and chemicals, and of course: To pave the entire world in Concrete. Enjoy a bit of Eliade and Langer today - you'l be glad you did! - frank, fleeding @ hotmail.com Now for the more formal "ritual" studies as anthro: Turner, Victor (1969). "Liminality and Communitas" in "The Ritual Process". New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Turner (along with Van Ganep) are seen as the founding fathers of ritual studies in Anthro. Very readable and very human. Van Gennep, A. (1960). The Rites of Passage. Chicago, Ill: The University of Chicago Press. This is a reprint of his original 1910d work. Don't let that date fool you - he's a refreshing blast from the past (eg, the fact that no one needs a passport to travel from country to country :) and he builds a sturdy foundation. Think: da Vinci on "scafolding" or van Gogh on "black and white". Grimes, Ronald L. (1996) Readings in Ritual Studies. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. This is a "catch all" sort of book with a superb wealth of both breadth and depth. Rituals in "Super Tuesday" (voting day) as well as reprinting many of the classic papers. With that simple bookshelf, i think that you will find (as i did) a new and beautiful path to viewing the sculpture (in both open and closed forms) that IS ritual among the humans. I have to end with a personal favorite (mainly because he went to the same school that i did) - even though it is (for me, personally) a difficult but rewarding book to work through. I'd say that his book is a bit easier than Rapport's works are in the same way that Taylor's books on relativity are easier than say those of Slater and Frank. Armstrong, Robert Plant (1981). The Powers of Presence: Consciousness, Myth, and Affecting Presence. Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania Press The key concept is synthesis vs. syndesis. Which i (still trying to get grip on - i dip into the book quite often) take to be a view of the time-dependent and time-independent forms of art/ritual/etc. Probably because Hegel has given us such a clear new "dialectic" in his formula: Thesis (gives rise to its opposite) --> Anti-thesis And hence in terms of evolution: Thesis + Antithesis ---> Synthesis (new thesis) Thus, the process of change/growth/evolution are clear as historical consequents of previous conditions: Synthesis. Well, that's as much is clear to me. Syndesis is more in the realm of being outside of time (change/growth/evo/etc). e mail me with your thoughts, frank fleeding @ hotmail.com --30--

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