Henry Miller wrote Tropic of Cancer and many other less controversial, but perhaps even books.
He was for a time a surrealist, but he was always more of an individualist.
He writes as candidly about the way he worked as he did about his sexual adventures as a young msn in some of his novels.
He has a section on writing and a section on painting.
He wrote in a loosely surrealistic style. He composed in stream of conscious method and then "applied the ax" in editing. Writing was an exciting, sophisticated craft to him. It was not about what was said, but about how it was said...how the words were juxtaposed. The goal for a literary artist was to be visionary and healing.
Painting, though he painted surrealisticaly to an extent, was entirely an act of play. It appeared to be what he did in combination with writing, to keep the other part of himself alive and to keep the writing from overwhelming himself and sucking him dry.
I have a feeling that some designers here would enjoy and might benefit from reading this remarkable man's account of being alive and working in these two arts. I suspect designers, like writers, could use a second creative activity that would be nourishing.
The Real HM!
I totally agree - and it continues to surprise me that Miller's reputation has never really recovered from the bashing it took in the 70s from now largely discredited critics.
Judging by your comments I guess you have 'The Angel is My Watermark' in mind where Miller decribes his approach to painting..........
"During the leg experiments the stomach has become dilapidated. I patch it up as best I can--until it looks like a hammock. Let it go at that. If it doesn't look like a horse when I'm through I can always turn it into a hammock"
?
Perfect.
That's him...:-)
Miller's sentences move from the very conventional to the utterly unexpected in a very short span. His meaning opens out without entirely losing coherence. He routinely finds different ways of saying things.
His artistry is that in this migration from the conventional to the unconventiona within sentences, sometimes even beween two words, his narration continues forward.
So many surrealists are startling, but they are actually quite static. Also, many surrealists say things in ways that could be much more efficiently said in conventional language. Miller was a sufficiently original and authentic thinker that many of his sentences just could not be said another way without losing a lot of the pleasure and meaning of his narration.
I have never been a big fan of surrealists, because they too often bog down the artistic experience with symbols that actually get in the way of the story. Miller's stories require his technique.
After reading the passage you quote, I was triggered to try to think of a designer who has a similar effect on me. Unexpectedly, the designer that leaped into my mind was none other than Hans Wegner. So many of his designs start at conventional origins and emerge formally in ways that in my minds eye, at least, migrate from the conventional to the unconventional and leave one looking at a form that looks startling and yet inevitable and right. There is sometimes symbolism in his work but it never gets in the way of the elegance of the design and never, never supercedes it in importance.
Miller IMHO designs irreducible surrealistic novels.
Wegner IMHO designs irreducible surrealistic furniture.
If I recall, Wegner admitted some influence by Picasso, who in most of his phases made use of some surrealist composition.
The book I read indicated that Henry Miller, though he felt quite different from Picasso in his painting and his writing was nonetheless insightful about the same quality in Picasso's paintings and sculpture, and came out of the same Parisian art millieu as Picasso.
Sorry I can't be more clear about this sensation that I have felt regarding there being some similarity between Miller's prose and Wegner's furntiture, but that's the best I can do so far.
If
SDR,
I don't know much about Wegner's personality, so I don't know if he was a manly man or not.
Henry Miller was definitely NOT a manly man. He characterized himself as a wirey fitness nut about as far from Ernest Hemingway's boxer as he could get. He says he was constantly falling in love with and marrying women. He was a satyr, but never a stud, aggressive, never a macho guy. He stayed home with his babies in Big Sur and cared for them for a few years--maybe the world's prototype stay-at-home dad. He loved to cook and was, judging by his painting, definitely in touch with his feminine side.
He probably does write and paint like a man, but it seems a like a highly sensitive man expressing him self nonlinearly through his feminine side as much possible.
He did love, almost idolize women in a major way, however.
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