Thesis Situation

“You can work, or write, even for only 500 people. To be a poet for me means this. I don't believe in this kind of fake cosmopolitanism. One can and must remain faithful, although not necessarily to a style. One cannot forget that the paintings we see in museums are, like the tip of an iceberg, representations of people's emotions incised on the surface of a canvas.” -Jannis Kounellis, 2007


Introduction

To express the subjective human experience in objective terms is poetry. To do the same in art is Jannis Kounellis. Although the word poetic frequently accompanies works of Kounellis, the term is rarely explicated. Meager definitions circle the term, tiptoeing around firm assertions of meaning. Words like metaphor, rhythm, and craft are used to justify labeling his art poetic. Never have Kounellis’ poetics been approached as a theory; as a means to an end, instead of the end. Traditionally, Kounellis’ visual poetics are presented as art objects that appear both mysterious and arbitrary. Only after poetics are redefined does Kounellis’ art appear in its most authentic form, as objects of subjectivity.
Kounellis has mastered the language of visual poetics, a language more complex than codified imagery, rhythmic presentation, or lyric objectification. Kounellis’ art is an integration of artistic inspiration and poetic construction. His work, crafted manipulations of iconographic materials and linguistics, demonstrates a deep rooted understanding of traditional poetic intention. Intention, that above all else, boasts the ability to express a balance between subjectivity and objectivity. Kounellis, aware of poetry’s role as a communicator of the otherwise inexpressible, employs poetic theory in his own work to explore personal ideas of identity and tradition; transforming his subjective experience into highly effective objective art.





















A Basic Approach to Poetics

Poetry is art of the mouth; as divine as the tongue, teeth, and lips that shape the words for the ear to swallow. Art is food, visual feasts on which the eyes subsist. Both nourish the mind and stimulate the intellect. Sensory ecstasy occurs when poetry is artistic, but something else, a phenomenon, happens when art is poetic. Sensibilities of time and space, tradition and rebellion, identity and purpose, are questioned; not by the eye, but the mind. Theories of visual poetics develop to reconcile what the eye sees with what the mind processes.
To understand Kounellis’ artistic application of poetic theory requires first an understanding of basic poetics. Addressing this idea of poetic theory poses a myriad of problems, none of which are simple. Paradoxically brilliant yet tragic, the successes and downfalls of a craft such as poetry lie in the tradition of artistic license. This freedom allows the process of writing to remain organic, original, and too frequently inaccessible. Essentially unbound by rules, the author’s poetic intention, although ever present, is frequently neglected in favor of an egocentric interpretation by the reader.1 A fine line between tradition and experimentation must be cautiously walked by contemporary poets.
In that sense, it is not irrelevant to liken poetry to painting. Assuming the content of the art is essentially subjective, the manner in which it is interpreted is dictated by societal expectation. Similarly, regardless of the form painted on the canvas, it is still limited to some degree by the size and shape of the canvas on which it is painted. This demonstrates the impossibility of complete abstraction, and ultimately forces artists to work within a system of boundaries that dictate the meaning of their art. Poetry functions in a parallel fashion. Content and form have the potential to vary infinitely, but effective poetry follows guidelines that are simultaneously explicit and unspoken; thus aiding the reader’s ability to correctly interpret the poem’s intention.
Explicit poetic guidelines typically fall on the side of traditional verse. Structuralist theory, which analyzes poetry in a more traditional fashion, dictates that form, rhythm, meter, etc., are inherently more important than the semantics of the poem.2 According to this theory, without proper form or a structure that facilitates analysis of the poem as a whole, the poem fails. The sonnet, for example, is one of poetry’s most well known forms and depends on historically determined rules to ensure each sonnet is read according to the poet’s intention. This traditionally medieval verse follows a strict set of rules regarding meter, rhyme, and stanza length.3 Unlike its predecessors, contemporary poetry functions in a more abstract manner.
Symbolist theory, a modern approach to deconstructing the multiplicity of semantics in poetry, depends less on precise rules and more on understood conventions—conventions that highlight the subject instead of focusing on the form.4 By prioritizing the subject over the form, the poet allows for creative experimentation with various literary devices. It should be noted that form-based poetry does not by any means neglect subject matter, but is simply less flexible regarding the structural presentation of the poem, and therefore decreases certain poetic license. Without the structural regulations, literary devices such as metaphor and imaginative departure can be explored beyond the bounds of expectation.5 The poem can fall around the page in any shape, provoking as it does questions about the author’s formal choices. The poem, therefore, becomes reflexive not just of itself, but of the poet as well.





















Kounellis Defines Poetics

It is quite relevant to recognize the poet when discussing the movement from subjectivity to objectivity, from experience to symbol. It is, after all, his or her identity that defines the ultimate construction of a poem. Writing on the topic himself, the final three lines of Kounellis’ I Have Never Killed Anyone, but Am Prepared to Do So, read:

I wish for the return of poetry with all available means:
through practice, through observation, through solitude, through
words; through images; through subversion.6

Perhaps unknowingly, Kounellis promotes a symbolist reading of poetry (and therefore a symbolist reading of his art). These compelling lines reflect Kounellis’ own interpretation of poetry. He asserts that poetry has no life separate of the poet. By listing actions first as a way to revive poetry with “all available means,” he is implying action must be taken. The objects of those actions are nouns associated with artistic creation. Only people, with their subjective experiences possess the tools necessary to actively create, save, or redefine dying arts.
Kounellis knows an individual ideology is necessary to make appropriate decisions regarding which words to write, which images to create, and when to subvert authority and expectation. There can be, according to Kounellis, no poetic potential without the beliefs, likes, or experiences of the poet. The existence of the art object is only possible when informed by the artist’s subjective experience, even if that subjectivity is not overtly referenced.
A poem approached under the pretense of understanding the subject through deconstruction of symbols, metaphors, and formal poetic choices, creates a deeply complex world in which the poem functions. This is the self-reflexive world in which Kounellis’ art is not just found, but in fact thrives. Kounellis’ art is nothing if not symbolic, if not reflexive. His work depends on an underlying poetic discourse of identity and tradition, which is accessible only after the iconographic elements have been deconstructed.
Qualifying Kounellis’ art as objective manifestations of his subjective experiences is perhaps not an immediate reaction when first addressing his body of visual work. Further complicating attempts to analyze his work is the fact that measuring the subjective is impossible. No single element or symbol is finite enough to provide clear insight into the artist’s thought processes. This means a linear timeline from Kounellis’ experiences to the production of his art cannot be accurately recreated.
Through a comprehensive exploration of visual symbols and their various meanings, Kounellis’ broad subjective motivations can however be decoded. Even then, unfortunately, interpretation is problematic. Inevitably the focus becomes a question of what each visual piece symbolizes. Arguably, it is important to know iconographic details because they have a function as meaningful parts of the whole. Ultimately, though, it is the whole that is most important. Kounellis’ poetics are only relevant when applied to his body of work in totality. Only by implementing a broad critique of his portfolio does an underlying theme present itself. The theme motivating Kounellis is the active exploration of his identity.

Others Define Kounellis

In his essay entitled, “Kounellis,” Giuliano Briganti demonstrates the prevailing definition of poetics as is typically associated with Kounellis. He argues that the artist

“worked tenaciously and dangerously during the Seventies at conferring an image value, that is an expressive poetic formal value to his iconography of Artista Povera. On the one hand, his immediate reference to the primary, the natural, the material or rather, to the element (earth, fire, coal, lead, gold) together with life (humans, live animals in the ‘installations’) show how he was attracted to the symbolic and mythical. On the other hand, his constant reference to the human scale (beds, doors, tables, clothing, coat racks) indicate how, at the same time, he was obsessed in his search for a structure, a form.” 7

It is not wrong to make such assumptions about Kounellis’ work, and on multiple levels this analysis is very strong. However, it neglects Kounellis’ identity. Instead of asking how the materials affect Kounellis, or why he provokes his audience with such specific symbols, the author merely lists generic items of interest and themes common to Arte Povera. Of course, this is not to say Kounellis’ art does not reflect an interest in “elements,” “life,” or “the mythical.” It does, but allowing Briganti’s argument to serve as the explanation of Kounellis’ poetics renders the artist’s work, and his intentions, superficial.
The words superficial and Kounellis have most likely never been juxtaposed, especially considering the complexity of meaning his work embodies. This complexity, likened to perpetually deconstructing semantics, can be read as hundreds of manifestations of one idea: a meditation on his identity. To understand the evolution and revelations Kounellis has consciously and subconsciously made about identity and tradition over the past four decades, Briganti’s notation of symbols must be forgone in lieu of questioning how those symbols represent the essential Kounellis. Labeling his work poetic, and citing symbols as proof without addressing the subjective relevance of these symbols, disrespects the artist.
In the hierarchy of creative potential, the artist is greater than the symbol he employs. Without the creator, nothing is created; therefore, Kounellis’ work must be approached on a deeper level than superficial analyses of iconographic material. There is a new responsibility to the artist that must honored—one that endorses a reciprocal relationship between the artist’s identity and his or her art, neglecting neither one in favor of the other. It is time to replace the expected definition of poetics and find proof in Kounellis’ work of a new one.













The Art of Identity

The Italian word for oil is olio. Few can appreciate this more than Jannis Kounellis. An immigrant to Italy at the age of nineteen, the artist’s incorporation of the word olio established him as an Italian artist during the late 1950’s. During a time when Italian industrialization was increasingly more important to the culture than the once revolutionary art scene, a teenager from Greece breathed new life into the art world with one simple, yet symbolic word: olio. Indicative of his merging identities, the moment in which that work was conceived, Kounellis freed himself of history, embracing instead what he would later call tradition.8 Depending on language to act as an identifier and memory as a motivator, Kounellis’ Untitled, 1958 (illus. 1) served as the catalyst for a lifetime of work addressing subjective poetics.
Dynamic and intellectual, the artist’s first exhibition in Rome, 1960, set a standard of artistry to be met or exceeded by Kounellis with each successive show.9 The perpetual reproduction of Kounellis’ early art demonstrates the quality of and regard for work produced during his formative years as an artist. Still highly progressive, and relevant to contemporary culture, the most important quality of the art is its prolonged and sustained relevance to Kounellis’ identity as an artist. Identity that is not based on birthplace, residence, or country of citizenship; but based on a relationship with tradition.
The question of identity that Kounellis is most often confronted with concerns his association, and lack thereof, with Greece. Born in Piraeus, Kounellis spent the first nineteen years of his life in the Mediterranean country, experiencing during that time both World War One and the Greek Civil War. Yet, no overt reference to recent Greek history has been made by Kounellis in his art, and this remains an area of great biographical mystery. The artist speaks rarely of the country, mentioning it only to negate misperceptions that he identifies with its contemporary culture. Notoriously, the only Greece with which he identifies is Ancient Greece.
Ancient Greece, Kounellis claims, is not history but is the root of all tradition; and “that the Classical world is universal.”10 To clarify that statement even further, Kounellis states that history is a social structure set up in retrospect, unlike tradition which naturally pervades the essence of all existence.11 Essentially, to glorify tradition is to honor one’s own identity. Kounellis’ visual poetics, the subjective made objective, therefore cannot escape referencing tradition. Inherent to his subjective experience is a connection to the ancient traditions of art. The foundation of Kounellis’ identity is how successfully he expresses this connection to tradition. What makes his visual poetry superior to less enlightened artists is Kounellis’ recognition of those traditions, which allows him to manipulate the manner in which he glorifies them. Subsequently, the symbols Kounellis chooses to represent tradition naturally function as complex reflections of himself.
Kounellis has on many occasions assumed the image of Apollo. His dawning a mask of the Greek god of arts, the god that carries the sun across the sky, and the god that delivers prophecies of truth, is a bold proclamation of identity on behalf of Kounellis. Forgetting for a moment that Kounellis places the mask on his face, even just by likening himself to the image of Apollo implies the artist believes himself to be a modern glorification of tradition. Once the mask covers the face of the artist, his identity no longer just references tradition, it embodies it.
The underlying poetics of an image like that of his 1973 installation, Untitled (illus. 2) speak of broken history, yet of a thriving tradition. In the image, Kounellis sits behind a table on which the broken pieces of an Ancient Greek sculpture are situated. On that broken body of the sculpture a raven is perched, and in the corner a flautist plays. The artist, surrounded by symbols of the traditional arts (visual art, poetry, and music) holds the mask of Apollo to his face. In front of him, the arts are inanimate, but the living creator, the visual poet breaths life into them from behind—blowing through and sweeping them off their feet. Kounellis brings not only his physical presence to the installation, but his subjective experiences as well. In both theory and practice the poetics of Kounellis are captured in the installation.
A less obvious example of the application of Kounellis’ poetic influence can be seen in his Untitled, 1969 (illus. 3). Perplexing as it might appear, an egg balanced on a metal plank protruding from a cast-iron sheet is poetic. Apart from the predictable iconographic references relating to eggs (life, fragility, nourishment), cast-iron (industrialization, modernity, capitalism), and the possible combination of meaning that exists between the two, this piece is the visual equivalent of the concept of an ars poetica. On the surface this piece comments on the juxtaposition of fragility, strength and the confusion of modern political, social, and cultural tensions. More abstractly, a poetic reading of the piece provides insight into Kounellis’ deeply complicated relationship with tradition and its influence in his work.
Kounellis’ decision to display the egg on the cast-iron pedestal forces his audience to question how the egg got there. Obviously the audience recognizes the artist placed it on the protruding metal tray, the real question is what led him to do so? What is Kounellis asking his audience to consider? The artist is asking his audience to accept the egg as a poem. Returning to the point a poet cannot function without his or her poem, and the poem cannot exist without its poet, Kounellis correlates it to the obvious question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”
The cyclical deconstruction of that question, an egg not existing without a chicken and the chicken not existing without first an egg, parallels the conundrum of poetry. Does the symbol exist separate of the poet, or is it the poet’s subjectivity that absolutely informs the symbol? Is it tradition that defines identity or the collective identity that determines tradition? Here, Kounellis presents himself as the chicken, and his egg as art, both metaphorically, and literally. As the chicken and creator, he refuses to submit to predetermined associations of symbolism. The egg, in its most subjective form, is no longer an emblem of life or its fragile quality, it is the personification of Kounellis’ poetic theories. Kounellis, as the visual poet, is the sole possessor of the experiences necessary to transform his subjective vision into objective art, and he exploits those experiences as a challenge to the art world. The artist’s challenge to other creative individuals: do not serve the symbol, make the symbol work for you.




Conclusion

As the time between Kounellis’ debut and his current work increases, so does the complexity of his poetics. No longer is it relevant to simply reference his reverence for tradition, or how his identity is determined by the influence of tradition. Now, it is critical to reflect on what elements from his past have been reappropriated to redefine his constantly evolving identity. Iconographic elements so important to establishing his identity, now reinforce the artist’s belief that tradition is identity’s motivation. Fire, cotton, steel, and wood now support Kounellis’ identity twice as strongly as they did when first incorporated in his art. His subjective experience has evolved to now include a multiplicity of associated meaning with the symbols he presents to his audience. No longer are those symbols just affected by Kounellis’ artful manipulation, they embody the tradition of identity Kounellis’ poetics address.
The ancient fire that illuminated mythical Mount Olympus, is captured and burned under Kounellis’ Untitled, 1969 (illus. 4), then moved to a plate between his teeth, the flame flickering between his temples (illus 5). Situated on the same cast-iron apparatus as the egg, the candle that burns under the phrase, “Freedom or death - Long Live Marat - Long Live Robespierre” over time undergoes a metaphoric metamorphosis. By 1989, the cast-iron display is replaced with the face of the artist, and with that image the artist likens himself to great historical philosophers. In the process, Kounellis recognizes, honors, and then rejects tradition in favor of his own personal ideology. This exaggerated linear evolution is emblematic of how Kounellis’ poetics develop as a direct function of his identity. The more tradition Kounellis recognizes and creates, the more definite his identity becomes. As the strength of his identity increases so does the efficiency at which his subjective translates into objective.
The effectiveness of his poetics has grown both formally and subjectively over the course of Kounellis’ career. His relationship with tradition, and subsequent relationship with identity, has become increasingly intimate as the artist’s portfolio has grown. This intimacy has fostered the necessary environment appropriate for experimenting with both the form and subject of visual poetics. As Kounellis has discovered, each successive visual risk taken over the course of forty years has not only benefitted his personal artistic portfolio, but has helped reshape the definition of visual poetics for the entire artistic community.






























References


1 Solomon Fishman. Meaning and Structure in Poetry. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 1956. p. 455.

2 Solomon Fishman. Meaning and Structure in Poetry. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 1956. p. 456.

3 William Sharp. The Sonnet, It’s Characteristics and History (Part 2). 10 January 1997. http://www.sonnets.org/sharp-b.htm.

4 Solomon Fishman. Meaning and Structure in Poetry. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 1956. p. 457.

5 Solomon Fishman. Meaning and Structure in Poetry. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 1956. p. 456.

6 Mario Oodeogneto et al. Echoes In the Darkness: Jannis Kounellis Writings and Interviews 1966-2002. (Great Britain, 2002). Trolley Ltd Publishing. p.56.

7 Giuliano Briganti. Kounellis. Kounellis. Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam 1991). p. 76.

8 Mario Oodeogneto et al. Echoes In the Darkness: Jannis Kounellis Writings and Interviews 1966-2002. (Great Britain, 2002). Trolley Ltd Publishing. p.247.

9 Stephen Bann. Jannis Kounellis. (London, 2003). Reaktion Books. p. 70.

10 Mario Oodeogneto et al. Echoes In the Darkness: Jannis Kounellis Writings and Interviews 1966-2002. (Great Britain, 2002). Trolley Ltd Publishing. p.238.

11 Mario Oodeogneto et al. Echoes In the Darkness: Jannis Kounellis Writings and Interviews 1966-2002. (Great Britain, 2002). Trolley Ltd Publishing. p.247.








Work Cited

Bann, Steven. Jannis Kounellis. (London, 2003). Reaktion Books. p. 70.

Briganti,Giuliano. Kounellis. Kounellis. Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam 1991). p. 76.

Fishman, Solomon. Meaning and Structure in Poetry. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 1956. pp. 455-457.

Oodeogneto,Mario et al. Echoes In the Darkness: Jannis Kounellis Writings and Interviews 1966-2002. (Great Britain, 2002). Trolley Ltd Publishing. pp.56, 238, 247.

Sharp, William. The Sonnet, It’s Characteristics and History (Part 2). 10 January 1997. http://www.sonnets.org/sharp-b.htm

Images Cited

Illustration 1, Untitled, 1958. Bann, Steven. Jannis Kounellis. (London, 2003). Reaktion Books. p. 70.

Illustration 2, Untitled, 1973. Kounellis. Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam 1991). p. 9.

Illustration 3, Untitled, 1969. Kounellis. Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam 1991). p. 39.

Illustration 4, Untitled, 1969. Kounellis. Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam 1991). p. 40.

Illustration 5, Untitled, 1989, Bann, Steven. Jannis Kounellis. (London, 2003). Reaktion Books. p. 119.

This Blog's Namesake

2006


Sudden as Breath Collapsing


In the home you left, I am scoring pink
ripe grapefruit flesh - pulling our wallpaper
from spackling in pulpy sheets.

As it lands on the beige carpet,
fawn paint reveals itself
and I think of our first summer;
the grass you laid in too long,
the blush of your burnt skin
flaking for days, rubbed off to expose
the lightest tan.

I press my cheek to the drywall
expecting heat of blood under skin,
the cold startles my flushed face
and I find myself
no longer concerned with
sweat or sun.

I cannot help but imagine
stretching the skin of your back
across our ceiling. I picture it cooling
as your shadow melts away, your vertebrae
evaporating in the foundation, and you,
leaving only a tan in the wake of your absence.

Later, as the wall between our room
and that grass caves, as
hammer pulls nail from stud,
I hear you crumble behind me
sudden as breath collapsing.

Upon Departure

Upon Arrival

Holding the marble up to the light, she says,
“Before, it was just glass, but against the sun,
it is an entire universe.”
and suddenly--dancing in the warmth
of illumination-- I see
a thousand pockets of air,
a thousand breaths in the tiny sphere’s life.


Upon Departure

I wonder, as she pulls the marble back
into the shadows of her palm,
if the many villages--the nuanced worlds--
are, at present time, recovering from
the blinding trauma of their
quick thrust into the foreign heat.

Casually, she drops the marble
into a small satchel, brown and leather
dangling on the sharp bone that is
the meeting place of her shoulder and her neck.
I do not hear much of what she says next,
instead I ponder--to what gods those villagers
must question such cruelty.

Adventures

As the house settles into the missing weight
of one man and his suitcase,
lukewarm coffee cools on the table.
Around the porcelain mug,
still sticky from the man’s lips,
she wraps her hands
to save his breath
on the greasy surface.

When the absence of heat
in the cup is certain,
she wakes her fingers and disturbs
the morning’s long embrace
between china and bone fiber.

Fingers curl in and out,
as a nest of blood
rushes to heat the white veins of her
half moon hands-
like two dusty homes
abandoned by once loyal tenants-
they lay silent, shaped by the dirtied
edge of the man’s remains.

Days pass. Stale breath
hovers above the cup, and
as he did, evaporates.
Still, in his absence
she envelopes the porcelain, heats it
with skin, and forces knuckles
tighter with each breath.

And when finally the man returns, parched
from his journeys, his many lives,
he sees her, cradles those crescent
hands, and knows.

A poem for my friend, Moon.

“The moon would make a better
lover than you
for he has many lives, and you
sun, have but one,” his mistress mused
casually, weightless
as the heat of the day rescinded it’s occupation
of the midday sky

and his fever,
crept slowly to the intersection
of spine and hip.

How many bodies have you swept away?

I haven't written in months. Perhaps, two or three--but, the poems are coming more infrequently now that I'm a "grown up" with a "real job"

Writing in college was required---many many poetry courses!
I wrote at least a poem a week. That is upwards of 30 poems a year.
I have only ever liked 10 or so of my poems, but I've been told I'm a good poet.
A simple poet, I'd prefer.

I plan on posting poems---both complete and incomplete once a week.
In a similar way to being held accountable in college, I need motivation to maintain a passion and fine tune a craft.

My hope is to read more poetry as well. I'll post and reflect as frequently as I can about the new poets (and old favorites) I discover and of course, adore.