Ann Ledy’s Untitled from 1980 is a recording of the artist’s response to the philosophical concepts fundamental to her world view. Thus, the following selection of passages by artists, scholars, and philosophers — and the subsequent notations by Ledy — are in, of, and about her drawing.
- Plato describes the universe by constructing it and making it grow.1
The purpose of art, according to Shklovsky, is to force us to notice. Since perception is usually too automatic, art develops a variety of techniques to impede perception or, at least, to call attention to themselves.2
“defamiliarization”; Shklovsky
the habitual way of thinking is to make the unfamiliar as easily digestible as possible. Normally our perceptions are “automatic,” which is another way of saying that they are minimal, i.e., learning is largely a matter of learning to ignore. Ex. “We have not really learned to drive an automobile until we are able to react to the relevant stoplights, pedestrians, other motorists, road conditions, and so on with a minimum of conscious effort–without actually noticing what we are reacting to–“3
A plane figure bounded by a single curved line every point of which is equally distant from the center.4
What can be done with the English language? Use it as material. Material of five kinds: letters, syllables, words, phrases, sentences. A text for a song can be a vocalise: just letters. Can be just syllables, just words; just a string of phrases; sentences. Or combinations of letters and syllables (for example), letters and words, et cetera.5
Croce = Philosophy of language and philosophy of art are the same thing. P 142. ie: the science of art and that of language, AESTHETIC and LINGUISTIC, conceived as true sciences, are not two distinct things, but only one. –general Linguistic, in so far as what it contains is reducible to philsophy. –same 6
1. The source for this note is not included in Ledy’s drawing, but it is possibly from Francis MacDonald Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato Translated with a Running Commentary (originally published London: Kegan Paul, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1937), 31. (http://tinyurl.com/3bedbtc)
2. Ivor Armstrong Richards, Science and Poetry (originally published London: Kegan Paul, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1926). Viktor Shklovsky was a Russian theorist from the twentieth century.
3. Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis, Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays (University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 4. (http://tinyurl.com/443rbsg)
4. The specific source for this definition of a circle is not included in the drawing.
5. John Cage, from an essay in the journal Semiotext(e) 3.2 (1978).
6. Benedetto Croce, Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic (originally published in Italian in 1902). (http://tinyurl.com/3j62j57)
Ann Ledy Biography
