Iain Cameron's Diary
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2003-03-09 - 8:22 a.m.

I went to Burnsaton on Thursday � on the Trent Valley. Its really interesting the way the limestone hills come down to the valley from the north and then just stop � a very sharp boundary. Going back I went along the valley to the Roman Road from London to Hollyhead and followed that South East up over the ridges to Tamworth � not be confused � which is on a tributary of the Trent which collects water draining off a broad basin around Birmingham including the River Blythe � near the headwaters of which the Templars built Temple Baslsall in the 12th century in the Forest of Arden.

The presentation at Toyota Burnaston was very professional and I was able to recycle the material yesterday when Stefan and I met up with the new training organisation in St James. I started pulling a thread on �key skills� at this meeting which I am very excited about.

Today we have moved Vita�s large metal two storey bed from her old small bedroom to the new north facing studio one. It was hard work but we have almost reconstructed it � a couple of bolts have to be replaced.

James mailed from Paris with reactions to the Louvre � he said that he went with Caroline because his mate Traff wanted to �muse in his room like a ponce�. Traff is into Nick Drake, I believe. Ah la vie bohmienne. I mailed back about the leadership programme last night on Hitler.

I mentioned F R Leavis a couple of days back and this brings to mind the thought that art is meant to be a means of cultivating our response. So I was interested to read in the London Review of Books that the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art had to withdraw a piece of sculpture by Ed Kienholz because it tended to make people vomit. Another response to visual art is to start crying � and this is what the Rofthko Chapel tends to do. Morton Feldman wrote a piece for the consecration of the chapel although, unusually, it is less likely to bring tears than the paintings. Generally music is thought more likely to provoke weeping than painting.

It all goes back to Kant who argued that the response to painting should not be emotional but should be affective � in his words �an agitation of the mind�. So what kind of response would Kant have recommended to watching the film of Pollock while listening to the Smiths doing feedback and free improv, I wonder? The article says that the trouble with the Kantian view � that art is distinguished by it provoking mental agitation � is that it opens the possibility than anything is art provided it is offered with the intention of provoking mental agitation. Often the best way of signalling this intention is by sticking it in an art gallery.

Interestingly Jim Dine � I bought a guide to his work in the Detroit Institute of Art last week � started in the NYC art/ecology game for example by pioneering happenings. But he came to Europe and went back into figurative representation. Oh by the way James said he thought the Mona Lisa was small and dark. What Caroline thought is not recorded � or whether she found no mental agitation at all , just a bodily reaction perhaps?

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