See also:  -[Why art?]-
            [Action Painting (art technique)`

The Span of Imagination

The physicst Lord Kelvin (after whom the temperature scale
is named) said, "If you can measure something, then you 
can say something about it."

Unfortunately, the one thing that art is NOT ameniable to
IS measurement. Yeah, sure: We do it all the time: A painting
is 36inches high by 48inces wide. We buy a 16-ounce bottle
of gloss varnish, or a 20 pound bag of Armadillo White clay.

We pick up a #2h pencil, no - wait a minute a #4H - you can't
get much more measury than that. Is 'measury' a word?  Hmmm.
Well, it is now.

We craft impossible things to delight, confuse, and sometimes
to anger people - i can not think of any other reason that
Heartfeld would have collaged a picture of Hitler cutting up
Europe and then putting the title: Don't worry - he's a vegatarian.
on it. Is that gramatically correct?  Shouldn't it be:

    "Don't worry - he's a vegatarian." - on it. 
?

Or what of this curious glyph:

      And, so, we sit around passing the time and confusi
   on grows . . . . an incredible sense of what is the pu
   rpose if you know what I mean. What Tzara might have c
   alled a feeling of oildrums and peonies. Amid this dol
   or, what is art? The seas seem calm. Deception. A feel
   ing of perhaps this is a 
   sign of          growing   A person said to us: "How c
   old; pe          rhaps a  an you hope to convert peopl
   n indic (grace)  ation o  e if they don't understand w
   f not a          dmittin  hat you're doing?" Another a
   g something that should   sked if we were getting mone
   be said, of not properly  y from the highway departmen

      -- extract from "Semi-constructs of the Secre'tarie
                       du Registre"  -[by Clarke & Essary]-

It all seems so complicated,
and yet as we all know we just
hand children crayons or paint
brushes - and then as if they 
were million-year old grand masters
of art: They create.

And of course, we go back to -[Picasso's]-
comment:

   All my life i have been trying to
   remember what it was like to be a child.