A Writer's Discourse
TAKE on art|July - December 2017

There are two moments in Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus that I come back to often. The first is an epitaph that Socrates uses to explain bad writing, which he recites (and I will now quote) in full:

Stephanie Bailey
A Writer's Discourse

A maid of bronze I stand on Midas’ tomb,

So long as waters flow and trees grow tall,

Abiding here on his lamented grave,

I tell the traveller Midas here is laid.1

Socrates says it makes no difference what order these lines come in — essentially the text will always say the same thing. The only role for this bronze figure, inanimate and solid, is to mark the place where a dead body lies. It represents the opposite of what Socrates considers to be good discourse, which should be “constructed like a living creature.”2 This live body is articulated in another moment in Plato’s dialogue when Socrates likens himself to a vessel through which words pour in as if from some external and forgotten source.3 This brief admission feels like a breaking of the fourth wall—a moment when Plato the writer punctures through the scene he has constructed to reveal it for what it is: a construction. After all, the words that poured into Socrates in Phaedrus did not come from Sappho or Anacreon, as he supposed in the text. Rather, they came from none other than Plato himself, the author who speaks through the mouths of the many bodies he created for the purposes of his dialogues.

Bu hikaye TAKE on art dergisinin July - December 2017 sayısından alınmıştır.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

Bu hikaye TAKE on art dergisinin July - December 2017 sayısından alınmıştır.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

TAKE ON ART DERGISINDEN DAHA FAZLA HIKAYETümünü görüntüle
Complete Love
TAKE on art

Complete Love

It’s 2011, late summer. All over Europe, young people are occupying central public squares to demonstrate for more social justice. In Berlin, their agenda is different. The completists gathered at Alexanderplatz aspire for justice primarily on an intimate level. They believe that only when the redistribution of material wealth includes equal chances of finding sex and love — no matter how elderly, disabled, or ugly you are — communism will become real.

time-read
10 dak  |
July - December 2017
Delicate Animals
TAKE on art

Delicate Animals

The humidity is sabotage and my skin is undone. I’ve always had a preference for dryness. While other women fear wrinkles, I never mind the beginnings of a crease. They seem cleaner, those intersecting lines. But then I’ve never been afraid of getting older, of being an abstraction.

time-read
5 dak  |
July - December 2017
Falling In Love (Again): India's Weaves Story
TAKE on art

Falling In Love (Again): India's Weaves Story

India’s love affair with handwoven cloth shows no signs of abating. Open any fashion magazine or newspaper and weaves get ample play. Designers up and down the country extol the virtues of weaves, proudly brandishing their innovative work with weavers to contemporise motifs and palettes. This is laudable but hardly surprising.

time-read
4 dak  |
July - December 2017
Technologies Of Elegance
TAKE on art

Technologies Of Elegance

As soon as you enter the exhibition space in Bikaner House, the display ahead sort of takes your breath away. It’s a carefully crafted mise-enscène, filled with dangling screens, suspended sequins, overflowing jewellery boxes, glass displays, and more. And yet, in spite of the exquisite setting, and the props that inhabit it, your focus never wavers from the clothes, which form the essence of the exhibition.

time-read
6 dak  |
July - December 2017
why do artists write on art?
take on art

why do artists write on art?

once, there were newspaper reviews. they connected art writing to the artist and to an audience, with immediacy.

time-read
2 dak  |
july - december 2016
A Writer's Discourse
TAKE on art

A Writer's Discourse

There are two moments in Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus that I come back to often. The first is an epitaph that Socrates uses to explain bad writing, which he recites (and I will now quote) in full:

time-read
4 dak  |
July - December 2017
The Smuggler: A Mural By Sadequain
TAKE on art

The Smuggler: A Mural By Sadequain

The story goes that Sadequain (1930 – 1987), living in Karachi, was exhausted and in poor health. He was offered a stay at a government rest house at Gadani in 1958, so that he could recover. Gadani is located in the province of Balochistan on the Arabian Sea, a few kilometers west of Karachi. It must have felt quite remote from the city back then. The western coastline of Pakistan has long been infamous for underdevelopment and for unregulated trade activities with West Asia.

time-read
4 dak  |
July - December 2017
Ghosts Of Ghan-Town
TAKE on art

Ghosts Of Ghan-Town

Landing gracefully on a rock, the camel tucked in its wings And wondered if this was perhaps Miryam Springs? This parched and desolate landscape was not what he hoped to find What of the flourishing settlement he had once left behind? 

time-read
1 min  |
July - December 2017
Kerala Boy
TAKE on art

Kerala Boy

The Kerala boy stands alone, facing the sea or what looks like the sea. Water is never far from his feet. His eyes are dark and his hair is blacker than the best Tellicherry pepper. He is an inch taller than most and a little long in the tooth. He likes the language of protest. He likes the flavour of a season called ‘Left’.

time-read
4 dak  |
July - December 2017
Fictioning The Landscape: Robert Smithson And Ruins In Reverse
TAKE on art

Fictioning The Landscape: Robert Smithson And Ruins In Reverse

That zero panorama seemed to contain ruins in reverse, that is – all the new construction that would eventually be built. This is the opposite of the ‘romantic ruin’ because the buildings don’t fall into ruin after they are built but rather rise into ruin before they are built. –Robert Smithson, “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey”

time-read
6 dak  |
July - December 2017