[Damn i got too many words about word-less-ness]
Back in 2004 I started selling my art on the street in new orleans and we had to file with the city, we have to be 'official & registered' get our picture taken, printed onto a little name tag, all the ritualistic beauracratic niceties for the city to make
some money. When I first started I was selling next to a woman named Geri and she had these heavily outlined bright paintings with a sign that said 'HAPPY ART' At the time I was primarily doing black and white work that people always commented were rather 'dark'.
We had a running joke that I'd hang a sign next to hers that read 'MANIC-DEPRESSIVE ART' When I went to go file with the city to get my license I had to fill out a blank that said:
Business Name.__________.
Manic-depressive art sounded kind of limiting, (and wordy right?) so I wrote 'Nameless Art'...Then I liked that so I named my website after it...then i learned a bit more about the art world and the importance of 'name recognition' and I liked it even more (some kind of funny negation happenin there.)
Over the years I end up in conversation with strangers and we'll wade a bit deep, talk about Rumi or things we can't talk about and are trying to, then its been fun to hand 'em the card with Nameless on it and everything seems all tied together. I'm drawn to biblical symbolism, and you've got Adam naming the
animals, and then there was the word and the word was made flesh...I've been compiling lists on scraps in my brain and on paper of all the implications of nameing....here are a few:
"Many have surged forward in modern history, after long epochs of namelessness and bitter obscurity, to claim and to enjoy (as people enjoy things now) a name, a dignity of person, a life such as belonged in the past only to gentry, nobility, the royalty or the god of myth. And that this surge has, like all such great movements, brought misery and despair, that it's successes are not clearly seen, but that the pain of heart it makes many people feel is incalculable, that most forms of personal existence seem to be discredited, and that there is a peculiar longing for non-being. As long as there is no ethical life and everything is poured so barbarously and recklessly into personal gesture this must be endured. And there is a peculiar longing for non-being. Maybe it is more accurate to say that people want to visit all other states of being in a diffused state of consciousness, not wishing to be any given thing but instead to become comprehensive, entering and leaving at will." (Saul Bellow from 'Mr. Sammler's Planet)
"The more high-profile names you've sold to over the years, the greater your chances of getting shows. An impressive client list is a great ally." (Art Business website)
"Tigers die and leave their skins; people die and leave their names."
~Japanese Proverb
"Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit." ~Salman Rushdie
"Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name BZJXXLLWCP is pronounced Jackson." ~Mark Twain
"Names are an important key to what a society values. Anthropologists recognize naming as 'one of the chief
methods for imposing order on perception." ~David S. Slawson
“We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.” --Alan Watts
"The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth, while naming is the origin of the myriad things."--
Lao-Tzu
some money. When I first started I was selling next to a woman named Geri and she had these heavily outlined bright paintings with a sign that said 'HAPPY ART' At the time I was primarily doing black and white work that people always commented were rather 'dark'.
We had a running joke that I'd hang a sign next to hers that read 'MANIC-DEPRESSIVE ART' When I went to go file with the city to get my license I had to fill out a blank that said:
Business Name.__________.
Manic-depressive art sounded kind of limiting, (and wordy right?) so I wrote 'Nameless Art'...Then I liked that so I named my website after it...then i learned a bit more about the art world and the importance of 'name recognition' and I liked it even more (some kind of funny negation happenin there.)
Over the years I end up in conversation with strangers and we'll wade a bit deep, talk about Rumi or things we can't talk about and are trying to, then its been fun to hand 'em the card with Nameless on it and everything seems all tied together. I'm drawn to biblical symbolism, and you've got Adam naming the
animals, and then there was the word and the word was made flesh...I've been compiling lists on scraps in my brain and on paper of all the implications of nameing....here are a few:
"Many have surged forward in modern history, after long epochs of namelessness and bitter obscurity, to claim and to enjoy (as people enjoy things now) a name, a dignity of person, a life such as belonged in the past only to gentry, nobility, the royalty or the god of myth. And that this surge has, like all such great movements, brought misery and despair, that it's successes are not clearly seen, but that the pain of heart it makes many people feel is incalculable, that most forms of personal existence seem to be discredited, and that there is a peculiar longing for non-being. As long as there is no ethical life and everything is poured so barbarously and recklessly into personal gesture this must be endured. And there is a peculiar longing for non-being. Maybe it is more accurate to say that people want to visit all other states of being in a diffused state of consciousness, not wishing to be any given thing but instead to become comprehensive, entering and leaving at will." (Saul Bellow from 'Mr. Sammler's Planet)
"The more high-profile names you've sold to over the years, the greater your chances of getting shows. An impressive client list is a great ally." (Art Business website)
"Tigers die and leave their skins; people die and leave their names."
~Japanese Proverb
"Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit." ~Salman Rushdie
"Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name BZJXXLLWCP is pronounced Jackson." ~Mark Twain
"Names are an important key to what a society values. Anthropologists recognize naming as 'one of the chief
methods for imposing order on perception." ~David S. Slawson
“We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.” --Alan Watts
"The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth, while naming is the origin of the myriad things."--
Lao-Tzu