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.