Episode 16: Daniel Ramirez and Buzz Spector

The Lorado Taft Midway Studios is home to the University of Chicago's Department of Visual Arts and Creative Writing program, housing classrooms, offices, and studios for students and faculty. The converted and relocated barn was formerly the art studio of sculptor, author and educator Lorado Taft (1860–1936).

Taft designed a number of large-scale public projects, beginning with sculpture for the Horticultural Building (1893) at the World's Columbian Exposition, and including Blackhawk (Oregon, Illinois, 1911), The Columbus Fountain (Washington DC, 1912), The Fountain of Time (Chicago, 1922), and Alma Mater (Urbana, 1929). Taft was also an active member of the Chicago cultural community. In 1907 he opened the Midway Studios as a traditional atelier, training young artists who worked as his student assistants. 

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) is regarded by many as the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century. His father, Karl Wittgenstein, was a leading figure in the Austrian iron and steel industry, and the Wittgenstein home was a center of Viennese cultural life, with regular visits from Sigmund Freud, artists Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, and composers Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler. Wittgenstein went to England in 1908 to study aeronautics, but by 1911 his developing interest in purely mathematical and logical problems led him to Cambridge to study with Bertrand Russell. Following this, he pondered philosophical problems in an isolated retreat in Norway. In 1913 he returned to Austria and joined the Austrian army at the outbreak of World War I. During a period of captivity in a prison camp he wrote the notes and drafts of his first important work, “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” (1921). 

Following its publication, he gave away his fortune and worked as a gardener, teacher, and architect in and around Vienna. But he returned in 1929 to Cambridge and to philosophy. Over the course of time Wittgenstein revised his philosophical approach significantly, turning from formal logic to ordinary language. This development of his thought would eventually be expressed, posthumously, in “Philosophical Investigations” (1953). Wittgenstein died from cancer in 1951.

For a slightly irreverent but informative introduction to Wittgenstein, check out “Existential Comics”:

“Existential Comics,” by Corey Mohler

Stephen Toulmin (1922–2009) was a British philosopher, author, and educator. A student of Wittgenstein, Toulmin devoted his works to developing practical arguments which can be used effectively in evaluating the ethics behind moral issues. His most influential work is the Toulmin Model of Argumentation, which employs six interrelated components used for analyzing arguments.

Buzz Spector, “Efface Nabokov,” 2014. Altered Book (edition of 5). Courtesy of Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis.

Buzz Spector has produced many art works related in some fashion to books, including reconstructions of libraries, found and altered volumes, and works on paper made out of elements from dust jackets. See more images of his work on the Bruno David Gallery website, or watch this short 2009 documentary about an art installation by Spector at Cornell University:

Title page of “De divina proportione” by Luca Pacioli, published 1509 in Venice by Paganino Paganini. Courtesy of History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries; © The Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

Written by Luca Pacioli (c.1447–1517) and illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), “De divina proportione (On the Divine Proportion)” was first printed in 1509. It explores mathematical proportions and their applications to geometry, visual art and architecture. Explore the book here.

Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) was a French composer, organist—and ornithologist. Regarded as one of the major composers of the twentieth century, his music is rhythmically complex and harmonically adventuresome. Messiaen’s musical language is derived from a number of varied sources, including Greek metrical rhythms, Hindu musical tradition, serialism, and birdsong. It has also been noted that his whole work and life were deeply influenced by Roman Catholicism.

BBC Music has a rich multimedia site devoted to Messiaen.

Watch a brief history of musical notation:

Read a discussion of Messiaen’s fascination with symmetries of rhythm and pitch. This video explores Messiaen’s modes of limited transposition:

“Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus,” or “Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus,” is a suite of twenty pieces for solo piano composed by Olivier Messiaen in 1944. The work poses tremendous challenges of technique, interpretation, and stamina to a performer—the work lasts about two hours in its entirety. The piece was written for Messiaen's second wife, Yvonne Loriod, heard here performing the work in a 1956 recording: 

Daniel Ramirez, “No. XVII: Contemplation of Silence” (detail), 1980. Etching, aquatint and embossing. Courtesy of the artist.

MOCRA presented Daniel Ramirez’ “Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus: An Homage to Olivier Messiaen”, in Fall 2004. Ramirez says of the series,

“I have chosen the French composer Olivier Messiaen’s piano compositions, ‘Vingt regards sur l' Enfant-Jesus (Twenty Contemplations on the Infant Jesus),’ as the theme for theses prints so that I may pay homage to a man and to an art form that has been a great source of inspiration to me.

“In ‘Vingt regards,’ Messiaen took up the same ideas of Dom Columba Marmion (‘Le Christ dans ses mysteres’) and Maurice Toesca (‘Les Douze regards’) wherein they spoke of the contemplations of the shepherds, of the angels, of the Virgin and of the Celestial Father. ‘Vingt regards,’ according to Messiaen, is an adaptation of these four themes while at the same time an addition of sixteen new contemplations. In speaking about the contemplations, Messiaen has said that ‘. . . More than in all my preceding works, I have looked here for a mystical love, to be varied, powerful and tender, sometimes brutal, responding to multicolored commands.’ I too, in these twenty intaglio prints, have tried to formulate such a language—a language befitting the sublime nature of the subject.

“The first phase of this work began with a small series of pencil drawings and then was extended into the medium of printing. It was in the process of creating these images that an appreciation of the various intaglio techniques (etching, drypoint, electrically-vibrated drypoint, mezzotint, engraving and aquatint) became a dominant factor in the series. This was especially true when I realized that if I ignored certain relationships inherent within the medium, the language I sought would be severely limited. Some of the formal elements, such as line, space, and texture, that were peculiar to intaglio, revealed new possibilities when combined with blind embossing (a depressed element printed without ink). Accepting this interchangeability as a challenge and an opportunity to explore, I found that my visual interpretations often changed dramatically from the earlier drawings.

“It was during this change and while attempting to synthesize idea and emotion with the process that I experienced the fine line which connects form and expression, when personal meaning and the medium function as one. It was a moment in which I was able fully to appreciate and experience a sense of the self, the medium and the unexpected.

“I hope that with these twenty contemplations I have given to Olivier Messiaen the respect and admiration he so richly deserves, and that I have remained respectful of the medium of music which he loves. J.S. Bach labeled one of the canons in his ‘Musical Offering,’ ‘Quaerendo invenietis’ (‘By seeking, you will discover’). Perhaps Messiaen would agree that Bach could have added ‘the unexpected’ as well!”

Constantin Brancuși (1876-1957) was a Romanian-born sculptor, painter, and photographer who is considered a pioneer of modernism and one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th-century. He sculpted numerous variations on a limited number of themes, such as heads, birds, and fish. With their smooth surfaces and an emphasis on pure basic forms, they were simplified almost to the point of abstraction. Learn more about Brancusi and his work on the Museum of Modern Art website.

Haptic perception describes perception based on the sense of touch, especially the active exploration of surfaces and objects by a moving subject. Haptic technology is a major area of innovation.

Ramirez refers to two bowing techniques employed by players of stringed instruments. Arco refers to producing notes by drawing the bow across the strings; pizzicato refers to producing notes by plucking the strings with the finger:

Two works from the “Celestial City” series are in the MOCRA collection.

Daniel Ramirez, “Caelestis Praesepe (Celestial Manger),” 1989–1990. Acrylic on canvas, oak, steel. MOCRA collection. Photo by Jeffrey Vaughn.

Daniel Ramirez, “Caelestis/Spatium/Res (Celestial/Space/Object),” 1988. Acrylic on canvas, aluminum, steel. MOCRA collection. Installed at MOCRA in “MOCRA at 20 - Part Two, The Second Decade” (2014). Photo by Jeffrey Vaughn.

Olivier Messiaen’s “Couleurs de la Cité Céleste (Colors of the Celestial City)” is a 1963 work scored for solo piano, woodwinds, brass, and percussion. He was inspired to write this work by a passage from the Book of Revelation that describes a wall of many colors in the heavenly city. Typical of Messiaen, the score includes elements of plainchant, Greek rhythms, chorales and birdsong.

A tierceron star is a configuration found in complex rib vaulting, a feature of Gothic architecture. Learn more about Gothic architecture in this article from the Khan Academy.

Source: Architecturaltravels blog