Journal of Literature and Art Studies

Volume 3, Number 1, January 2013 (Serial Number 14)

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Publication Information: Journal of Literature and Art Studies is published monthly in hard copy (ISSN 2159-5836) and online (ISSN 2159-5844) by David Publishing Company located at 9460 Telstar Ave Suite 5, EL Monte, CA 91731, USA. Aims and Scope: Journal of Literature and Art Studies, a monthly professional academic journal, covers all sorts of researches on literature studies, art theory, appreciation of arts, culture and history of arts and other latest findings and achievements from experts and scholars all over the world. Editorial Board Members: Eric J. Abbey, Oakland Community College, USA Andrea Greenbaum, Barry University, USA Punam Madhok, East Carolina University, USA Carolina Conte, Jacksonville University, USA H. S. Komalesha, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India Mary Harden, Western Oregon University, USA Lisa Socrates, University of London, United Kingdom Herman Jiesamfoek, City University of New York, USA Maria OConnell, Texas Tech University, USA Manuscripts and correspondence are invited for publication. You can submit your papers via Web Submission, or E-mail to literature.art@davidpublishing.org, art.literature@yahoo.com. Submission guidelines and Web Submission system are available at http://www.davidpublishing.org, www.davidpublishing.com. Editorial Office: 9460 Telstar Ave Suite 5, EL Monte, CA 91731 Tel: 1-323-984-7526, 323-410-1082 Fax: 1-323-984-7374, 323-908-0457 E-mail: literature.art@davidpublishing.org, art.literature@yahoo.com Copyright2013 by David Publishing Company and individual contributors. All rights reserved. David Publishing Company holds the exclusive copyright of all the contents of this journal. In accordance with the international convention, no part of this journal may be reproduced or transmitted by any media or publishing organs (including various websites) without the written permission of the copyright holder. Otherwise, any conduct would be considered as the violation of the copyright. The contents of this journal are available for any citation, however, all the citations should be clearly indicated with the title of this journal, serial number and the name of the author. Abstracted/Indexed in: Database of EBSCO, Massachusetts, USA Chinese Database of CEPS, Airiti Inc. & OCLC Chinese Scientific Journals Database, VIP Corporation, Chongqing, P.R.C. Ulrichs Periodicals Directory LLBA Database of ProQuest Summon Serials Solutions Subscription Information: Price (per year): Print $420 Online $300 Print and Online $560 David Publishing Company 9460 Telstar Ave Suite 5, EL Monte, CA 91731 Tel: 1-323-984-7526, 323-410-1082. Fax: 1-323-984-7374, 323-908-0457 E-mail: order@davidpublishing.com

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Journal of Literature and Art Studies

Volume 3, Number 1, January 2013 (Serial Number 14)

Contents
Literature Studies
The Processualities of Literature Herbert Grabes Cultural Disjunction in B. Mukherjees Wife tefanovici Smaranda I Celebrate Myself & I Sing Myself: Romulus Bucur on Romulus Bucurs Ditties Romulus Bucur The Research of Value of Female Costume in Ethnic Group Construction Based on the Social Gender TAO Hui, CHEN Dong-sheng 16 9 1

20

Art Studies
Fine Artists of Panay: A Pioneering Study of Their Works and Lives Lucell A. Larawan The Glazed Tile Techniques of the Seljuk and Beylik Periods smail Yardmc Primordial, Sacred, and Secular Architecture: Jan Patokas Theory of the Work of Architecture Milo evk 42 25

52

Special Research
Is Fengshui Science or Superstition? A New Criterion for Judging the Value of Knowledge Systems ZHANG Yong-feng, DAI Wei 61

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836 January 2013, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1-8

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Herbert Grabes

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The Processualities of Literature

Justus-Liebig University, Giessen, Germany

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the processual aspect of literary works of art deserves much more attention than it normally receives by readers, critics, and theorists. The most important reason for this is seen in the fact that texts since the advent of print culture have been disseminated and passed on in written form and that in the medium of writing the processual character of language is only insufficiently taken care of by a cultural convention of arranging and approaching the presented signs in an particular sequence. Whereas in an oral culture the dynamic processuality of a speech or recitation was directly experienced by the listeners, the spatial arrangement of signs in writing enables and even entices readers and critics to read this or that part of a written text in a sequence of their own making. What remains out of focus is that in doing so they miss the particular semantic profile and aesthetic character of the work as created by the authora procedure particularly hurtful in the case of literary works of art. There is hope, however, that this will somewhat change by our moving towards a performance culture. Keywords: processuality, processual experience of reading, sequentiality, textual sequence, narrative sequence, linearity of writing

The Processualities of Literature

That literaturelike musicis a temporal and processual art that can unfold its semantic and aesthetic potential only in a sequential manner seems to be so much taken for granted that it gets no special attention. That this processuality, however, does deserve closer scrutiny is due to the very fact that it normally is not in the foreground of the readers consciousness nor focused on by critics or literary theorists, although it is a central aspect of the experience of literature.

From Processuality to Processualities in Print Culture

One of the major reasons for this may lie in the fact that the readers voicing of literary texts has been progressively silenced by dissemination and transmission through print culture. The earlier primacy of orality and manuscript culture meant that the audience of a bard, storyteller, public reader, or priest had first-hand, often communal experience of the dynamic and processual character of literary works. Written texts appear more like material objects whose elements are simultaneously given and which can be approached by the individual reader in manifold ways according to his own liking. The spread of literacy, after all, enabled individual and introspective reading in the Bible rather than requiring that it be read sequentially from beginning to end. What thereby remains hidden is the fact that the notational system of writing depends not only on a linguistic and a
Herbert Grabes, professor emeritus, Institut fr Anglistik, Justus-Liebig University.

THE PROCESSUALITIES OF LITERATURE

cultural code in order to function effectively, but also on a conventional rule determining the sequence in which spatially arranged linguistic signs are to be apprehendedin the West from left to right along a horizontal line, from the top line down to the bottom line on the page, and from the front page to last one, consecutively, in the physical order of a pamphlet or books composition. Though writers usually compose their works in the expectation that readers will respect this rule, being readers themselves they also know that one can leaf through a book and read a passage here and there to get a feel for the way it is written, or that one can, overcome with curiosity, break the rule and read the ending of a detective story early on in order to find out who done it. Written literary texts, like all written texts, allow for a variety of processual experiences, and this is a major reason why the title of the authors talk mentions the processualities, not the processuality, of literature. It is also why J. M. Camerons (1962) minimalist definition of a poetic text as these words in this order (p. 145) is indispensable if one wants to ensure textual identity, provided it pertains not only to their spatial arrangement but also to their apprehension according to the above-mentioned cultural rule or social compact. It is only in this case that we are reading in terms of a mental processing of the text as presented by its author; in all other cases, reading is actually also writing: What we read is then a text we ourselves, in the process of apprehension, compose from elements of somebody elses text. While this may not always be of major importance, it certainly is so in the case of a literary work of art, because of its aesthetic dimension. In many ways, such a written text is like a musical scoreand one would certainly not speak of the same work if a conductor had an orchestra play parts of the score of, for instance, a Beethoven symphony in a different sequence. There are, of course, still manifold interpretive options when a score is played in its given sequence, and as we shall see, the same holds true for the individual readings of the same printed literary text.

Experimenting with Processuality

How important the conventional rule of a particular sequential apprehension of signs normally is becomes evident when authors experiment with multiple sequences or even leave the ordering of the parts entirely to the reader. Since the advent of Modernism there has been a major trend of writing against time (Grabes, 1996) that first led to a weakening of sequential structure by fragmentation and collage and the concomitant suggestion to deviate from the traditional rule of apprehension. Well-known examples are Andrej Belyjs cubist novel Petersburg (1913), T. S. Eliots The Waste Land (1922), and William Faulkners The Sound and the Fury (1929). At a later stage, the imperfect sequential notation of texts by their spatial presentation in writing was exploited by offering the option of reading the parts of a literary text in several sequences and thus to create several works on the basis of one written text. In the blurb of the 1962 Weidenfeld edition of Nabokovs Pale Fire, the book is called a do-it-yourself detective story, because the reader can decide the sequence in which the various parts of what is presented as a critical edition of a narrative poem are read. Or Julio Cortzar in his novel Rayuela (English: Hopscotch (1966)) suggests in the introduction two sequential patterns, so that there can be two works created from the same text. The first one consists of a linear reading of the chapters 1-56, leaving out the chapters 57-155 which are therefore designated as being expendable; a second reading (and work) includes these chapters, beginning with chapter 57 and continuing with the one mentioned at the end of each chapter. A similar strategy is used by Michel Butor in Boomerang by having parts of the text printed in different colors, so that one may either follow the sequence of parts in one color only or read the whole book without paying heed to the coloring. Even

THE PROCESSUALITIES OF LITERATURE

in such cases, however, the possibilities which the works openness makes available always work within a given field of relations, as Umberto Eco has pointed out in The Open Work (1989), adding that [t]he author is the one who proposed a number of possibilities which had already been rationally organized, oriented, and endowed with specifications for proper development (p. 19). This, however, no longer obtains when the potential sequences of apprehension become practically countless, as was the case when experimentation reached a further stage in the postmodern era. B. S. Johnson went so far as to present the 29 chapters of his novel The Unfortunates (1969) loosely in a box, with only the first and last marked as such, and Mark Saporta in his Composition No. 1 (1962) offered his readers no more than a batch of unnumbered pages, printed on one side, which according to the authors instruction on the cover of the box may be read in any order. The reader is requested to shuffle them like a deck of cards. Like other postmodern innovations, such a far-going abandonment of authorial control had already been attempted in early modern times by the Italian and Russian Futurists. In Zang-Tumb-Tumb (1914), for example, Marinetti demonstrated his poetics of free words by abandoning even syntactical sequence and promoting multiple relations between single words, and Mayakovsky in his early poems also for that purpose arranged the words on the page in a spatial design.

The Empowerment of Readers and Critics by Spatializing

Such radical experiments remained, however, rare exceptions, and they rather confirmed than actually weakened the normal procedure that authors use the sequential presentation as an important structuring device. They can therefore not serve as a justification for the frequent use of spatial metaphor in narratology that began with Joseph Franks early essay Spatial Form in Modern Literature (1945) and was continued by critics like Sharon Spencer (Space, Time and Structure in the Modern Novel, 1971), Joseph A. Kestner (The Spatiality of the Novel, 1978), and Jeffrey R. Smitten and Ann Daglistany who edited the critical anthology Spatial Form in Narrative (1981). That it was less the special character of modernist literature than the turn towards structuralist thought in literary theory and criticism that was responsible for this spatializing can be closely observed, for instance, in the employment of architectural metaphor in Grard Genettes chapter on Literature and Space (La literature et lespace) in Figures II (1969). What further played a role is the widespread and well-established practice among literary critics of taking particular elements or parts of a literary text out of their sequential placement and arranging them, for purposes of illustration and discussion, in a way that, they think, best serves their particular interpretation. This is a major reason why interpretations of a literary text can sometimes differ radically. Such critics forget that the specific meaning of elements and parts of a text depends on a given placement and that in order to grasp it one has to write a travelogue of the sequence of discoveries in the reading process rather than present a mapping of a territory of ones own creation. Apart from critics and students preparing for an exam, readers do, after all, read for the experience of reading a text and not for having read it, just as a piece of music is normally listened to for the experience of listening, and not for having listened to it. Of course, different readers may be particularly attracted by different things on the way, but at least the sequence of apprehension as planned by the author stays intact and there is a chance that the aesthetic dimension of the literary work of art can be experienced. For, contrary to Roland Barthes view that written texts are orphaned, their fate is only then left to the whim of critics with autistic leanings when they are no longer read in the sequence determined by the author. It is not the case that the

THE PROCESSUALITIES OF LITERATURE

birth of the reader must be at the cost of the author (Barthes, 1977, p. 148); the author must die only for the birth of a critic who gives up being a reader of somebody elses text, because he/she wants to be an author himself/herself, creating a text of his/her own from the text he/she pretends to interpret.

Processualities in Reception Theory and Possible Worlds Theory

What is at stakeat least with regard to literary texts, because of their aesthetic dimensionwas already worked out in detail as early as 1937 by the Polish phenomenologist Roman Ingarden in his The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art, revised and published in German in 1968 and in English in 1973. What Ingarden focused on therein was the structure of the sequence of parts in a work and the temporal perspective in the concretization of the literary work of art, aspects that were investigated even more thoroughly by Wolfgang Iser in Der Akt des Lesens from 1976 (English The Act of Reading, 1978) when reception theory became stronger after the main aspects had been stressed by, for instance, Riffaterre (1971):
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of a reading which moves in the same direction as the text itself; i.e. from the beginning to the end. Unless this one way movement is respected, an essential aspect of the literary phenomenon will be misunderstoodfor a book unfolds (as in antiquity a volumen was literally unrolled), and the text is subjected to progressive discovery, a dynamic perception which is constantly changing, where the reader not only moves from surprise to surprise but also sees, as he moves progressively forward, a change in his understanding of what he is reading as each new element confers a new dimension on earlier elements, which it repeats and develops. (pp. 327-328)

What makes it worth taking up the subject again now is not primarily the fact that the processualities ineluctably bound up with the literary work of art are still not adequately taken into account in most of the now prevalent versions of literary theory; it is above all advances in the field of cognitive psychology and the heightened awareness of the cultural conditioning of individual worldmaking and understanding that permit a better description of what takes place in the experience of literature and also compels correction of earlier views. One of the most important innovations arising from the symbiosis between psychology and mind science is the so-called schema theory, involving the conceptualization of more complex patterns such as mental models. This has to do with what Marie-Laure Ryan in her article on Possible Worlds Theory (2005) called the principle of minimal departure, which stated that when readers construct fictional worlds, they fill in the gaps [] in the text by assuming the similarity of the fictional worlds to their own experiential reality (p. 447). The schemata and mental models acquired early in life by readers to help construct their view of the everyday world with objects, happenings, characters, and their actions in time and space will also be used in the creation of an imagined worldmaking motivated and guided by their reading of a literary text. More recent mind-science experiments yielding insight into the neural activity of the brain show that schemata and models based on oft-repeated activation of certain neuron patterns derive not only from real-life experiences but also from imagined ones. Accordingly, readers not only use their previous reading to cope with fresh encounters, but also create further templates during reading which they may subsequently apply in real-life experience. This has a number of consequences for an understanding of the reading process in general and for the processualities of literature in particular. It entails, namely, that the schemata and models readers use are only in part quite general and to a great extent culturally conditioned. According to the relevance theory of Sperber and Wilson (1986), this also pertains to the selection of a particular schema as the most relevant among several (Strasen, 2008, p. 156). It

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is thus logical that the readers cultural conditioning should influence the experience of the literary work of art. This is all the more so because a readers selection from his archive of schemata and models also involves options for synthesis and integration and therefore has direct consequences for the reading process as such. As both Ingarden and Iser have shown, the readers relation to the text is not that of an observer to an object but that of engagement in a process of constant interaction and continuous synthesizingin Isers terms, that of a wandering viewpoint. What is called a viewpoint must not, however, be taken as an empty, merely formal, and quite general ability to integrate a plurality of newly observed and memorized elements. It is the full mental capacity of the reader, comprising the individual archive of integrative patterns and the formation of complex systems as well as the agency of choosing between available options under the influence of cognition, acquired habits, and desire. For this reason, the process of reading is not long obstructed by gaps in the chain of textual information or when contradictory data have to be dealt with. Such gaps will either be filled or jumped, depending on the coping strategies available to the individual reader. What takes place is a sequence of transformations, each determined not only by the knowledge of the world acquired through real-life experience or previous reading, but also by the cognitive set applied in sense-making strategies as well as by the affective stance towards what is encountered and coped with. Emotional factors must be taken into consideration along with cognition, because, as Ruthrof (1981) has pointed out, reading is always problematic in terms of the texts unfolding situations to which the reader is juxtaposed as he constructs them. [] Reading, not unlike writing, is coming to terms with such situations (p. 72).

The Dynamics of the Reading Process

To grasp the true complexity of the reading process, one has to reckon with the fact that, ideally, it is not only all the textual information from what has already been read that goes into each new transforming synthesis but also all earlier transformations, along with their individual features, and that the same pertains to the ever new formations of the horizon of expectation. As there is no tangible information yet regarding what will happen in the future, its creation in the imagination is determined to an even higher degree by the readers preferred schemata and mental models, especially those regarding causal chains of events, story-lines, and typical patterns of human behavior. Worth special mention with regard to the subsequent replacement of expectations by information in the reading process is a profile of more general validity. When getting into a text, readers, in their sense-making, initially rely to a large extent on schemata and models of their own preference; then, as information accrues by reading on, the initial choice of schemata and models is partially or wholly confirmed or contradicted, and after a while some macro-schemata emerge as optimally functional. As Strasen has pointed out in investigating the stability of schemata, from then on the readiness to acknowledge, or even the ability to notice, contradictiory, or more radically differing new evidence diminishes to such an extent that instead of the necessary restructuring of what is already there, the new evidence is suppressed. The author came across a pertinent example of this strategy when dealing more recently with a new view by Margit Sichert of Marsha Normans shocking play night, Mother (1981). It showed that in the 26 years since its first publication, the authors of all interpretations succumbed to the strong initial support in the play for traditional schemata motivating suicideto such an extent that quite contradictory evidence coming later was ignored completelyor most probably not even noticed. A

THE PROCESSUALITIES OF LITERATURE

decisive factor here may well have been the fact that the theme of child abuse that was later hinted at was taboo until recently, which brings us to the cultural conditioning of the processualities of literature.

The Impact of Cultural Embedding

Most of the insights into the reading process that have been presented so far bear out the fact that though processual structuring as such may be of a quite general nature, the actual processes taking place in the mind of particular readers tend to be understandably quite individual in detail. One could therefore argue with good reason that there are as many different processes (and consequently as many concretized literary worksthough not texts) as there are readers. Fortunately, however, this is not the whole truth: As readers who have grown up in the same or a similar culture share not only a significant portion of their cognitive set or archive of schemata and mental models, but also of affective patterns and their expression, authors can be confident that readers from their own or a similar culture who apprehend their texts in the given order will react to them in their fictional worldmaking in such a way that their semantic specificity and aesthetic quality are accessible and shareable. The plot thickens, however, when readers belong to a culture whose shared schemata and mental models are quite different from those of the author. Even when the text is read closely in the sequence established by the author, the result can be totally opposite from what was intended. I. A. Richards, one of the first person to study the influence of the readers universe of discourse on the actualized meaning of a text, reported in the 1930s that when teaching Shakespeares King Lear in China, his students started laughing, because the high esteem for old age in their culture made it inconceivable for them that an old man who acted as stupidly as Lear could be anything but the protagonist of a comedy. And it remains an open question whether such a severe lack of cultural fit can be mended by commentary, because it also includes a basic emotional stance. Thus, the fact that our fictional worldmaking is to a considerable extent culturally conditioned guarantees literary communication between members of similar cultures, but creates problems when author and reader belong to quite different cultures. This and many more aspects of the cultural ways of worldmaking are discussed in a recent critical collection with the same title edited by Vera and Ansgar Nnning and Birgit Neumann.

Textual Sequence, Second Readings, and Aesthetic Experience

Yet, for all the readers contribution, the complex synchronous meaning that results from a final synthesis of all intermediate stages of sense-makinga synthesis that our desire for coherence demands, despite sometimes quite contradictory evidenceremains largely dependent on what the text has schematically offered. Here is Ruthrofs (1981) description of what happens at the end of a first reading:
With the readers response to the last word of the text, the reading process, and, consequently, also the story undergo a decisive change. The readers forward orientation, his accumulation and his protentions and his openness for the gradual modification of his concretizations are suddenly replaced by an attitude of preparedness for the experience of a meaningful total configuration. (p. 76)

This configuration starts changing again at the start of a second reading, and this is one of the most convincing pieces of evidence for the processualities of literature. But there is no consensus about whether a second reading enhances or diminishes the aesthetic experience of a literary text. What can be assumed is that the archive of schemata and models activated in the readers processing of textual information and imagining of the

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fictional world will have at least changed somewhat, as the renewed process of reading takes as its point of departure the final synthesis achieved at the end of the first reading. For that reason, the aspect of the what in the renewed fictional worldmaking will take less of the readers attention and there will be a stronger focus on the how, the strategies by which it is motivated and guided by the text. Some theorists hold that this reflexive aspect is an indispensable precondition for an aesthetic apprehension of a literary text, hence for the experience of the literary work of art. Othersfor instance, the late Susan Sontag, in her plea for an erotics of art (1966, p. 14)fear that the analytic approach connected with the reflexive mode will destroy too much of the imaginative potential and impact of literature (take away the magic, so to speak), by revealing the magicians tricks. The author personally shares the optimistic view tendered by Kleist in his essay on the puppet theatrethat when reflection is maintained to its end, or to perfection, the natural gracefulness can be again experienced in the artificial construct: we have to eat of the tree of knowledge a second time to fall back into the state of innocence.

Conclusions
What remains to be looked at are the consequences for literary theory and literary studies of the fact that we also have to cope with the processualities of literature, not merely with the relatively stable materiality of written texts as objects. First, it does not mean that the study of these objects, as material notations of these words in this order, has become less important. It is these notations, after all, that like a musical score guide the particular processes they motivate and of which they are a base. These notations or texts as objects that are transposable into different contexts are also responsible for the fact that there are plural literary processualities rather than a single processuality. Further, the insight that the experience of the literary work of art is highly individual is not borne out by empirical investigation of actual reading processesat least not in the present state of cognitive psychology and mind science. Instead, two other options seem promising. The first, in the field of literary theory, pertains to the important role played by sequentiality in the constitution of the literary work by means of an interaction between text and reader. What happens in this interaction is a constant synthesizing of past and present information with the aim of fictional worldmaking and a constant restructuring of these syntheses during the reading process. Whereas traditional structuralists move from the literal spatiality of the distribution of signs in the physical text directly to the metaphorical spatiality of the synchronic structures of meaningignoring the fact that in order to get from the one to the other, readers have to apprehend and process the signs in a particular sequencethe task of an adequate kind of structuralism will be to develop models of how particular sequences of signs are transformed into particular synchronous systems of meaning by processes in which each later stage ideally incorporates all earlier stages. This, of course, is a tall order, also for the critic, who, in interpreting particular works, will have to pay much more attention to sequencenot only in detective stories, but also in general. The other feasible option, or rather, urgent demand is to take properly into account the fact that the schemata and mental models suggested by textual signs and structures, along with those employed by readers in sense making, are to a large extent culturally conditioned. This entails a sharper focus in cultural research on the study of the cognitive sets, emotional patterns, and hierarchies of values that are dominant in a given culture. When we know more about the schemata and mental models prevalent in the culture in which a literary text was composed, we can much better imagine the calculated impact of the details of the fictional world (re)presented and of the

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presentational strategies involved. Such an investigation will, of course, have to encompass not only literary texts but also other text sorts that have, or have had, a major influence within the respective culture. So, what finally seems desirable for literary studies is an investigation of the creative processes that are applied to texts as material objects, the cultural processes within which these texts were created, and the cultural processes within which these literary studies are conducted. In any case: processes.

References
Barthes, R. (1977). The death of the author. Image, music, text: Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath (pp. 142-148). Glasgow: Fontana/Collins. Butor, M. (1964). The book as object (Le livre comme objet). Repertoire II (pp. 104-123). Paris: Gallimard. Cameron, J. M. (1962). The night battle: Essays. London: The Catholic Book Club. Cortzar, J. (1966). Hopscotch. (G. Rabasso Trans.). New York: Pantheon. Eco, U. (1989). The open work. (A. Cancogni Trans.). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP. Frank, J. (1978). Spatial form in modern literature. Sewanee Review, 53(1945), 221-240; 443-456; 643-653; revised in: Spatial form: Some further refelctions. Critical Inquiry, 5, 275-290. Genette, G. (1969). Literature and space (La literature et lespace). Figures II (pp. 43-48). (Collection Tel Quel). Paris: Seui. Grabes, H. (1996). Writing against time: The paradox of temporality in modernist and postmodern aesthetics. Poetica, 28, 368-385. Ingarden, R. (1973). The cognition of the literary work of art. (R. A. Crowley & K. R. Olson Trans.). Evanston: Northwestern UP. Iser, W. (1978). The act of reading: Theory of aesthetic response. Baltimore, M.D.: The Johns Hopkins UP. Kestner, J. A. (1978). The spatiality of the novel. Detroit: Wayne State UP. Kleist, H. von. (1810). On the puppet theatre (ber das Marionettentheater). Retrieved from http://academic.udayton.edu/bradhume/hst348/Kleist.htm Nabokov, V. (1962). Pale fire. London: Weidenfeld. Nnning, V., Nnning, A., & Neumann, B. (Eds.). (2010). Cultural ways of worldmaking: Media and narratives. Berlin: De Gruyter. Riffaterre, M. (1971). Essays on structural stylistics (Essais de stylistique structural). Paris: Flammarion. Ruthrof, H. (1981). The readers construction of narrative. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Ryan, M.-L. (2005). Possible-worlds theory. In D. Herman, M. Jahn, & M.-L. Ryan (Eds.), Routledge encyclopedia of narrative theory (pp. 446-450). London: Routledge. Sichert, M. (2009). Psychodrama im Extrem: Marsha Normans Familientragdie night, Mother (1981). In H. Grabes & K. Schwank (Eds.), Recent American drama: AuthorsDevelopmentsInterpretations (Das neuere amerikanische Drama: AutorenEntwicklungenInterpretationen) (pp. 75-92). Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. Smitten, J. R., & Daghistany, A. (Eds.). (1981). Spatial form in narrative. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell. Sontag, S. (1966). Against interpretation. Against interpretation and other essays (pp. 1-14). London: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Spencer, S. (1971). Space, time and structure in the modern novel. New York: University Press. Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell. Strasen, S. (2008). Reception theories: Critical, linguistic or cultural approaches and cultural models (Rezeptionstheorien: Literatur-, sprach- und kulturwissenschaftliche Anstze und kulturelle Modelle). Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier. van Dijk, T. A. (1979-1980). Cognitive processing of literary discourse. Poetics Today, 1, 143-159.

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836 January 2013, Vol. 3, No. 1, 9-15

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Cultural Disjunction in B. Mukherjees Wife

tefanovici Smaranda
Petru Maior University of Trgu Mure, Trgu Mure, Romania

After experiencing racism in Canada, where multiculturalism emphasized ethnic differences and fixed identities rather than allowing for cultural interaction and hybridity, the author, B. Mukherjee, moves to the USA whose biculturalism favors cultural interactions and fluid identities. Here she experiences the transformative powers of cultural interactions and frees herself and her work from the static power of cultural disjunction. Her personal experience highlights the need of immigrant characters to connect to the mainstream and not to be isolated from it. The paper explores the problem of cultural adaptability and integration as experienced by Dimple, the main character in Mukherjees novel Wife (1975). Based upon contemporary research on cultural and social identity formation, the paper analyses Dimples inner struggle of identity in the context of her immigrant status, and it relates her ultimately tragic response to loneliness and alienation resulting in cultural disjunction, non-adaptability, and non-assimilation. Keywords: enculturation/acculturation, multiculturalism/biculturalism, cultural disjunction/cultural interaction, static/transformative, dialogic confrontation/hybridity

Introduction
Immigrant Identity Formation-Theoretical Framework Only connect! Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no more. Only connect, and the isolation that is life will die (Forster, 1992, Chapter 22, emphasis added). The author will use Forsters epigraph to his novel Howards End (1992) as a catchphrase in Bharati Mukherjees analysis of Wife (1975); the catchphrase is meant to attract attention to the power of enculturation and acculturation as bicultural constructs in immigrant identity formation. B. Mukherjees personal experience highlights this need of immigrant characters to connect to the mainstream and not to remain isolated from it. Unlike other postcolonial writers, her own struggle with cultural identity and immigrant status is presented as a gain and not as a loss. Her fiction is a mirror of the good and bad cultural experiences, first as an exile from India, then as an Indian expatriate in Canada, and finally as an immigrant in USA (Alam, 1996, emphasis added). Characters constantly interact in and disjoin cultural and social space in an effort to show the positive effects of immigration. B. Mukherjee entitled herself an Asian American writer, refusing hyphenation. After experiencing racism in Canada, which did not allow for cultural fusion and where she felt marginalized and alienated, she rebuilt a new
tefanovici Smaranda, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Philology, Faculty of Sciences and Letters, Petru Maior University of Trgu Mure.

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CULTURAL DISJUNCTION IN B. MUKHERJEES WIFE

transformative self in America where she found her new home. According to Mohanram, cultural identity within American scenery is constructed via difference rather than sameness. He argues that identity is first and foremost psychological: We begin to construct our identity only when we perceive difference, or when we perceive our identity to have been eroded or eluded in some way. Pure or essential identity does not exist because we begin to construct identity only when the process of erosion has begun, when pure identity has already been adulterated in some way (Mohanram, 2000, p. 4, emphasis added). Indians are for instance perceived as different by cultural markers (skin color, accent, saris, jewels, behavior, customs, etc.) that highlight difference (linguistic, racial, behavioral, etc.) from other ethnic groups or from the white majority. According to Ilie (as cited in Marin, 2007, p. 27), academics examining postcolonial intellectuals in exile contend that immigrants go through a process of deculturalization or loss of cultural identity. Leaving a culture that is well defined historically and geographically makes re-assimilation difficult. The issue of reincarnation and rebuilding of selves is possible in Mukherjees view through perceiving cultural difference (biculturalism) and not through cultural diversity (multiculturalism). To accept diasporic identity is to accept both places, to be bicultural, which minimizes the negative effects of dislocation and expatriation. The American female writer B. Mukherjee sees salvation only as a fusion of cultural opposites. A dialogic cultural encounter and conflict starts between the native Indian culture she belonged to and the new American culture; it is a conflict in terms of language, physical appearance, attitude, behavior patterns, customs, and beliefs which does not result in merging or mixing. It is a two-way transformation in which a new hybrid (both enculturated and acculturated) culture emerges in which each culture retains its own unity, while both are mutually enriched. Hybridization reorganizes social spaces structurally and culturally. Homi Bhabha discloses the status of contemporary culture that in the process of negotiating power and identity, revealing ambiguity, displacement and disjunction, is in a middle passage, a site of newness, of displacement and disjunction that transcends fixed identifications and opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that entertains difference without an imposed hierarchy (as cited in Page, 1999, p. 5). As opposed to the reliance on the fixity and stereotypes of colonial discourse, postcolonial discourse for Bhabha creates access to time and space outside the linear and the ordinary: We find ourselves in the moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion. This interstitial perspective allows us to simultaneously return to the present, renew the past, and touch the future on its hither side (Bhabha, 1994, p. 5). Mukherjee distinguishes between biculturalism, which favors cultural interaction (the case of America) and multiculturalism, which favors cultural disjunction (the case of Canada). While biculturalism implies change by fusion of cultures, multiculturalism favors separation of cultures and fixed identities, suppresses the individual, and highlights ethnicity. This ethnicity favors cultural inheritance (the immigrants identification only with her past culture), which results in marginalization, isolation, and alienation. Deleting the past, on the other hand, triggers along failure and alienation as well. No cultural hybridization is encouraged, the immigrant having to choose between the native ethnic and the new American culture. Stereotyping is strongly propagated as well as idealized images of that ethnic group, which, if not intensify, at least maintain difference.

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Diasporic identities in the view of cultural theorists like Stuart Hall are thought not as an already accomplished fact, transcending history, place, time, and culture; instead, it is viewed as a continuous process and always constituted within. Hall regards cultural identity as a matter of becoming as well as of being. It belongs to the future as much as to the past (as cited in Dempsey, 2010, p. 34, emphasis added). Cultural interactions are transformative, while cultural disjunctions are static. If the two cultures are stereotypically fixed in time and space, change cannot take place in the present. Multiculturalism favors being which implies static and suppressed identities; neither culture intends to open up; they both remain fixed with no possible negotiation. On the other hand, biculturalism favors becoming, encouraging individual, non-stereotyped individualities. WifeCultural Displacement, Disjunction and Alienation In Wife, which, according to Alams categorization (Alam, 1996, p. 7), belongs to the second stage of creation, when she faced Canadian racism, Mukherjee writes about a woman named Dimple Dasgupta, who is the classic example of an Indian woman in exile who fails in her psychological transformation to achieve a new life in America; she cannot bridge the gap between conventional and nonconventional, between enculturation and acculturation. Although suppressed by patriarchal norms, she attempts to be an ideal Bengali wife. She marries a young engineer, Amit Basu, and moves to America. Her attempts to become Americanto learn to speak American English by watching television, for examplecause her to question her own cultural values, and even her own happiness. These are questions she might have never asked herself back in her hometown Calcutta. Still, despite her efforts, she cannot adjust to her new life. The disjunction between the life Dimple leads and that which America seems to promise her on television (Sushma, 2007, p. 48) deepens the gap between reality and imagination. She finds her husband responsible for her unhappiness although she stubbornly imagines she is a happy person like the soap operas characters. She cannot sleep at night, thinking of the mistake she has made marrying a man who has no job and hence could not offer her the glamorous life she sees on TV. She can perform but one fixed identity. She can be either Indian or American. This lack of cultural fusion is visible in the choice of her name as well. Dimple is defined by Oxford English Dictionary as any slight surface depression (Oxford Dictionary Online, n.d.)1, while her family name, Dasgupta, a combination of das (servant) and gupta (protected), reduces her to the same traditional role of a submissive Indian wife. Acculturation becomes impossible for immigrants like Dimple. She cannot adopt the behavior patterns of the surrounding American culture. Neither can she bridge the two cultures, Indian and American. Americanness is a cultural identity she cannot perform; for instance, when Amit takes his wife Dimple out to dinner, she loathes eating with a knife and a fork, preferring to eat with her fingers, Bengali-style, in a restaurant (Mukherjee, 1975, p. 22). Cultural differences and disjunctions can be expressed through language, clothes, behavior, symbolism, etc.. One important cause of this cultural disjunction can be the lack of an understandable language. Like other immigrant writers, Mukherjee cannot cut all the links with her past. Language is a medium of expression to connect her to her Indian heritage and also is a tool to empower women. Although the characters from her early novels (describing her sad experience in Canada) apparently enjoy a sense of liberation (they travel physically),
1

Retrieved from http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dimple.

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they are in fact lonely, confused, and statically conventional. Dimple is such a case, conveying this sense of loss and dependence on others powers: She studies hard for her BA exam while waiting to be married to a suitable groom for without a BA she would never get a decent husband (Mukherjee, as cited in Scott, 1996, p. 296). Mukherjee describes Dimple as an isolated woman, because she does not speak much English:
By the time I started writing Wife, Id become more North Americanized and that change comes through in the writing. I am not at all an autobiographical writer, but my obsessions reveal themselves in metaphor and language. When I was writing Wife, a limited third-person point of view seemed more natural and comfortable than an omniscient one. I was totally engrossed in Dimple. I knew I wanted to stay close to Dimplean immigrant wife who starts to question her traditional valuesand show the immigrants world through her. And since I was telling the story of the traumatic changescultural, psychologicalthrough Dimple, the language, too, was Dimples; it was more intense, less authoritative, and stately than in The Tigers Daughter. (Mukherjee, as cited in Mukherjee, & Edwards, 2009, p. 16)

Meena Sen, Dimples Indian friend, is also a static and stereotypical character who admits she has headaches when trying to understand native English speakers. Pannas Indian husband, Amit, also admits he does not understand the language spoken in New York. Such cases become part of an insular community: What they can perform is only their Indian parts, e.g., Dimple trying to buy a cheesecake in a butchers store, which made her run from the store eyes closed, hands covering her mouth and nostrils (Mukherjee, 1975, p. 60). They keep on totally relying on their past which provides them with security in a foreign land. The same applies to Ina Mulick, a friend of Dimples, despite being in America for such a long time. She sticks to the same continuous and static identity and does not dare to change it for a fluid and dynamic identity. Im always a Before, she seems to be telling us all the time. Once she removes the Indian past in order to anchor into the American present, she cannot remember it anymore. The more she tries to retrieve it the more comparisons she makes between the two cultures instead of trying to achieve a beneficial cultural fusion between the two. Likewise, Dimple cannot adjust her Indian cultural heritage to the newly acquired American culture. She stubbornly distinguishes between India and America, often through unfeminine means such as force or violence. Before going to America, Dimple finds out she is pregnant. She uses all verbal and physical force to reveal her non-acceptance of performing her duty as a wife and future mother. She did not want to carry any relics from her old life (Mukherjee, 1975, p. 43), not even a baby; she jumps rope until she forces a miscarriage. A child is a reminder of her Indian past and the traditional role of motherhood, on the one hand; on the other hand, the child could hybridize the two cultures, being born of immigrant parents. The disjunction between expectation and reality created by cultural displacement can become too wide ending up in alienation. Dimple is such a case: She is in an arranged marriage with Amit whom she hardly knows, is taken away from the only home she has ever known, and is thrown into New York, the most multicultural American city. Full of frustrations, she puts her faith in the New World and would like a total change in her life. As soon as Dimple and Amit have settled in their new homeland, America, it becomes clear that Dimple is the victim of double marginalization: First, as a recent immigrant to USA, she finds it hard to adjust to American culture; second, as the wife of an Indian man, she is expected to respect Indian marital conventions, which confine her to a life within the four walls of a cramped flat.

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She has to choose between preserving her cultural identity with no possibility of personal development or giving up her Indian cultural identity and enjoying her newly acquired American freedom. She refuses and is refused cultural interaction. Day after day, she is sitting in the flat with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Traditional Dimple is kept isolated in this flat so it is only normal that she is fascinated by Ina Mulicks independence. When she is invited to a pizza by Ina and is suggested to wear American clothes of a collection, Dimple refuses her with an awkward, Im sorry. She also feels uncomfortable when eating chicken pieces with fork and knife at her husbands invitation to dinner. Despite her background of a Bengali college educated girl, the essential problem is lack and insufficiency of communication, hence her impossibility to act as a negotiator and linker of cultures. Significantly, her problem does not lie outside her, but within her. She would remain a foreigner wherever she might go: Her isolation is rooted not merely in loneliness, in isolation, or cultural differences, but in her estrangement from her own past and her own inner being (Jain, as cited in Sushma, 2007, p. 45). The present and the past do not interact in Dimples life. Her problems with adaptation are not due to a cultural shock, as her husband thinks, but far more deeply, in her psyche. Marriage itself, along with cocktail parties and love, although so longed for, would not free her or fill her with passion, as she lacks the wealth and inclination for higher life and passion (Sushma, 2007, p. 45). She is unable to move beyond the past, despite her willingness to engage in the present; she cannot anchor her new life starting from a usable past. She cannot use racist discrimination experienced in a Queens shop, gender discrimination at home, and class discrimination at meetings with white feminists as tools to empower herself (Chen & Goudie, 1997)2. She remains isolated from beginning to the end, because she does not interact directly with people, neither does she speak much English, although she tells herself that she is learning American English and is getting to know Americans from TV programs and soap operas. She soon realizes she can fit into neither culture. She ends in depression, madness, and eventually murder. A weak personality type, she becomes alienated from both worlds, and falls into a state of immigrants psychosis, unable to distinguish between nostalgia and reality, between longing and suffering (Verhoeven, 1996, p. 1). Dimples confinement to Queens Indian community, not being allowed by her husband to work, her preference for watching TV, her futile efforts to make friends with children, all contribute to her distorted sense of reality. The result is cultural disjunction, no communication, fear to leave her flat, sleeping all day and suffering from insomnia at night. She thought marriage would bring her love and freedom. When she confronts the reality of her married life, she fights against depression by reading English magazines to improve her English. Once she reads a letter from a female reader who supports the idea of arranged marriages and opposes divorce: Are you forgetting the unforgettable Sita of legends? Let us carry the torch of Sitas docility (Mukherjee, 1975, p. 28). Her psychic disease deepens and she starts dreaming of catching fatal diseases like Leukemia. Causes are multiple, the media and New York adding to her frustrations. The more estranged she becomes from reality, the more neurotic she becomes. First she wants to become Sita, the ideal wife of Hindu legend (Mukherjee, 1975, p. 6). Soon, although an Indian by birth and education, she cannot fulfill this docile and submissive role anymore. Then she starts using violence. She horribly misshapes a pregnant mouse (Mukherjee, 1975, p. 36). She
2

Retrieved from http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v1i1/BHARAT.HTM.

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has an impulse to flush a gifted pet goldfish down the toilet bowl (Mukherjee, 1975, p. 40). Her neurosis makes her envision men with broken teeth and dirty fingers who dug into her body in a dark suburban garage (Mukherjee, 1975, p. 34) and has strange visions of her unborn baby with wrinkled skin like a very old mans and a large head filled with water (Mukherjee, 1975, p. 43). The criminal and violent thoughts culminate with the killing of her tyrannical fetus she was carrying by means of a skipping rope. The gap between reality and fantasy widens. Her behavior becomes schizophrenic when she compares her favorite show on TV, The Guiding Light with the shows of her friends (Indian and American alike) who speak exclusively about violence and death. She fancies at night ways to kill herself, and later ways to kill her husband. TV becomes the voice of her consciousness. Although she becomes aware of her addiction to the TV voice of madness (Mukherjee, 1975, p. 176), she acts like a character in a TV series (Mukherjee, 1975, p. 195), comparing herself to a soap opera wife. From the sleep walking stage, feeded also by the violence propagated by her friends and the mass media, to the fulfillment of her criminal plan, there is a small step. After having a quite innocent illicit relationship with Milt Glasser whom she likes, because he builds up a bit of confidence in her, she kills her husband by stabbing him seven times, in apparent repudiation of the Hindu marriage bond signified by the seven ritual steps taken by the couple at the time of marriage (Leong, as cited in Sushma, 2007, p. 55). The TV screen and Dimples private screen merge in the novels final sentence: Women on television got away with murder (DSouza, as cited in Piciucco, 2004, p. 184). Linda Sandler considers the novel as the story of a woman who is trapped between two cultures, and who aspires to a third, imagined world offered by the media (as cited in Sushma, 2007, p. 54). In any traditional society, women are usually considered as caretakers and preservers of culture and tradition. When they are exposed to a radically different set of cultural values, they experience a cultural shock, which, in turn, produces a sense of alienation that prompts them to explore ways to reconcile with their shifting and evolving identities. Wife is Bharati Mukherjees first portrayal of America as a whole, a culture defined by a crippling multiculturalism that emphasizes ethnic difference and permits segregation, thereby preventing hybridity (Rang, 2010, p. 11)3. The enforced difference and isolation of the Indian community in Wife ultimately destroys Dimple. Wife is the sad story of an immigrant woman who fails to achieve a new life. However, it is the first major work of Bharati Mukherjee to explore differently what it means to be a minority in an alien culture and to become an American.

Conclusions: A New Life

Frustrated at Canadas policy of multiculturalism with its emphasis on cultural diversity and subsequent cultural marginalization and isolation, Bharati Mukherjee finds her roots and emotions as an American writer in USA. It was an instant kind of love, as she confessed in Bill Moyers televised interview (Moyers, 1990). She started believing in empowerment through cultural assimilation. Her later works show this increasing optimism at the possibility of successful integration, as her characters learn how to survive after traumas of self-transformation, both in appearance and mind, on their way towards Americanization. Dimple is nothing but

Retrieved from http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/655.

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the wife of a boiler maintenance engineer in the same way as Mukherjee in multicultural Canada was no more than the wife of a Canadian writer. But, if Mukherjee and her female characters are timid, submissive, and passive in the second stage of creation, they will evolve in the third stage of creationwhen Mukherjee fulfills the role of an accomplished immigrant to USAwhen they become independent, assertive, and dynamic, fighting for their right to get out of their conventional roles. This is the case of Panna Bhatt, the female character of a later short story written by Mukherjee, entitled A Wifes Story (1988). Mukherjee now writes as a successful and independent mainstream American writer who entitles herself, I am an American, not an Asian-American. Fully re-assimilated, Mukherjee does not feel the cultural oppression anymore. She is an immigrant in a country of immigrants. Her way towards Americanization is given voice by her female characters. Her successful character from A Wifes Story (1988), Panna, experiences profound liberation (physically and mentally), which results in cultural interaction and hence positive cultural assimilation unlike Dimple from Wife whose role is to act only as a conventional Hindu submissive wife (only physically liberated); her response to loneliness and alienation results in cultural disjunction, non-adaptability, and non-assimilation. To give an interpretation to Forsters words that fits this research, the author would say that cultural interactions are transformative (as in Pannas case), while cultural disjunctions are static (as in Dimples case). The power to connect enculturation and acculturation and to interact culturally is what leads to fluid identities. Diasporic identity can be rebuilt by bridging native and adopted cultures. Unlike the fixity of the classical (post)colonial discourse, for Mukherjee cultural assimilation is empowerment. Biculturalism (old/native and new/adopted culture) and hybrid cultures (see Americas case) that entertain difference and not sameness, without necessarily imposing hierarchies (mainstream or minority) can transform, in Mukhejees view, immigration into a gain with positive effects and not into the stereotypical postcolonial lament.

References
Alam, F. (1996). Bharati Mukherjee. New York: Twayne Publishers. Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. London & New York: Routledge Classics. Chen, T., & Goudie, S. X. (1997). Holders of the word: An interview with Bharati Mukherjee. Retrieved from http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v1i1/BHARAT.HTM Dempsey, E. (2010). Recovering the self: A journal of hope and healing (Vol. II, No. 2). USA: Loving Healing Press. Forster, E. M. (1992). Howards end. England: Penguin Books. Marin, N. (2007). After the fall: Rhetoric in the aftermath of dissent in post-communist times. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.. Mohanram, R. (2000). Shifting continents: Colliding cultures. Netherlands: Editions Rodopi B. V.. Moyers, B. (1990). A world of ideas II. New York: Doubleday. Mukherjee, B. (1975). Wife. Boston, M.A.: Houghton Mifflin. Mukherjee, B. (1988). A wifes story. The middleman and other short stories. New York: Grove Press. Mukherjee, B., & Edwards, B. C. (2009). Conversations with Bharati Mukherjee. USA: University Press of Mississippi. Oxford Dictionary Online. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dimple Page, P. (1999). Reclaiming community in contemporary African American fiction. USA: University Press of Mississippi. Piciucco, P. P. (2004). A companion to Indian fiction in English. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers & Distributors. Rang, L. (2010). Bharati Mukherjee and the American immigrant: Reimaging the nation in a global context (Masters thesis, University of Tennessee). Retrieved from http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/655 Scott, J. S. (1996). And the birds began to sing: Religion and literature in post-colonial cultures. Netherlands: Rodopi B. B.. Sushma, T. (2007). Bharati Mukherjees fiction: A perspective. New Delhi: Sarup and Son. Verhoeven, W. M. (1996). How hyphenated can you get?: A critique of pure ethnicity. Mosaic (Winnipeg), 29(3).

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836 January 2013, Vol. 3, No. 1, 16-19

DA VID

PUBLISHING

I Celebrate Myself & I Sing Myself: Romulus Bucur on Romulus Bucurs Ditties
Romulus Bucur
Transilvania University, Brasov, Romania

The present paper, in spite of its quite scandalous title, is just a serious reflection, from the inside, on a certain part of the poetry of a contemporary Romanian poet (the author of the paper himself), in the line of a tradition starting with Poes Philosophy of Composition (1846), passing through the avant-garde and ending, for the moment, in Andy Warhols self-promotion. The analysis from the inside and the honest reflection of the interplay between poetry, music, and contemporary popular culture might lead to a better understanding of the poetry made at the end of the 20th centurybeginning of the 21st century. The corpus analyzed is a series of poems written between 1994 and the present day, under the generic title of ditty, published in several books (between which a bilingual pamphlet, Ditties/Cntecel(e), 1998), and the paper speaks about their genesis, their poetics, and hopes to help the process of their interpretation, as well as to bring a new interpretation of the poetry/music relationship. Keywords: Ditty, popular culture, urban, poetics, confessional poetry, cultural quotation

A Brief Characterization of Bucurs Situation in Contemporary Romanian Poetry

One legitimate question that could be asked from the very beginning is simply Who is Romulus Bucur? Otherwise formulated, is this author so important to anyone but himself? A brief answer would be that he is one of the founding members of Cenaclul de Luni (Mondays Literary Group), lead by Romanian critic Nicolae Manolescu, and one of the authors of one cult books of the generation of the eighties, the collective volume Cinci (Five), together with Ion Bogdan Lefter, Bogdan Ghiu, Mariana Marin, and Alexandru Muina (Bucur, Lefter, Ghiu, Marin, & Muina, 1982). It can also safely be claimed that he got his share of literary prizes, that he enjoys a certain notoriety within contemporary Romania poetry, present in some reference works, such as Simion (2004), that major Romanian critics wrote about his books etc. On the other hand, it can also safely be said that he is, just as asserted in the very title of his latest book, just a secondary character (Bucur, 2009): in counter-distinction to the co-signers of Bucur et al. (1982), he is absent from most of the important reference works dedicated to Romanian literature, such as Pop (2007) or Zaciu Papahagi, & Sasu, 1995). As regards, the authors interest in visual poetry perhaps is worth mentioning his early discovery (in high-school years) of Apollinaire and cummings. Although this does not seem to have any connection with music,
Romulus Bucur, Ph.D., lecturer, Department of Literature and Cultural Studies, Transilvania University.

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their complementary conceptions open the perspective of a syncretic poetry; one of the first results was a poem, written in 1978, Nu tragei n pianist (Dont Shoot the Piano Player), and made into a short film at the beginning of the eighties (Bucur, 2010).

Objectives of the Present Paper

The present paper, in spite of its quite scandalous title, is just a serious reflection, from the inside, on a certain part of the poetry of a contemporary Romanian poet (the author of the paper himself), in the line of a tradition starting with Poes Philosophy of Composition (1846), passing through the avant-garde and ending, for the moment, in Andy Warhols self-promotion. The analysis from the inside and the honest reflection of the interplay between poetry, music, and contemporary popular culture might lead to a better understanding of the poetry made at the end of the 20th centurythe beginning of the 21st century. Corpus Used The corpus analyzed is a series of poems written between 1994 and the present day, under the generic title of ditty, published in several books, among which (Bucur, 1998) bears this very title; also, a series of earlier poems might be considered, and the paper speaks about their genesis, their poetics, and hopes to help the process of their interpretation, as well as to bring a new interpretation of the poetry/music relationship. It sould be noted also that Diaconu (2002, pp. 93-99) selected as examples a series of poems representative for their musical references, speaking also about a diffuse musicality (Diaconu, 2002, p. 100). In the published version of his Ph.D. dissertation, Vakulovski (2010) considered that [S]ynthesis, combining written text (in various languages) with video and audio text is one of the main features of this book (p. 71). Theoretical Premises As a theoretical foundation, besides the already mentioned Philosophy of Composition, the remarks of two major poets and theorists of 20th century poetry can be added, namely that of Ezra Pound:
No man writes much poetry that matters () When a man is not doing the highest thing, the saying the thing once and for all and perfectly () he had much better be making the sorts of experiment which may be of use to him in his later work, or to his successors. (Pound, 1968, p. 10)

And T. S. Eliot, who, in his essay From Poe to Valry (1974) refers to the relationship between a poets theory about his own poetry, and his practice, irrespective of its degree of general validity (Eliot, 1974, p. 376).

A Few Examples
In the first place, it has to be mentioned the function of music in this poetry. It may be the starting point of a poem, the state created by listening a song, such as in sentiment pe o melodie, s zicem de (Feeling Built upon a Song, Say By) (Bucur, 2008, p. 56), or by reference to a singer (and a poet, too), such as Leonard Cohen, in HIC & NUNC, INC. (Bucur, 2008, p. 14). Actually, the song alluded to it was Buffy-Sainte Maries Universal Soldier, covered by Donovan. Or something like a discreet background, half present, half absent, such as in Should the void between words/be filled with music? (Bucur & Crtrescu, 1994, p. 8). Also, the kind of music envisioned by the author should be mentioned: it is pop/rock/folk music, that is, part of popular culture, such as in

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The Guitar Man, a web of intertextual references: a double allusion, to the song with the same title by Bread, and to Wallace Stevens poem The Man with the Blue Guitar: you wont drive crowds wild/with it/and it isnt/even blue (Bucur & Crtrescu, 1994, p. 21), then to visual arts (Picasso), plus the reference to a famous reportage by Geo Bogza1, ara de piatr (A Land of Stone). From allusions to musicone more example would be Salat de fructe (Fruit Salad), with reference to Bourvils song Salate de fruits (Bucur, 2008, p. 28)the next step is cultural quotation: again, a poem such as Dincolo de oglind (Through the Looking Glass) (Bucur, 2008, p. 79) ends with a quotation from Leonard Cohens Chelsea Hotel #2: We are ugly but we have the music. Earlier instances of such quotations are: the idiot cassette repeating/sylvias mothar said (Bucur & Crtrescu, 1994, p. 19). The turning point occurs in 1994, with the first poem entitled ditty (Bucur, 1998, p. 7); nothing about music in it, except the title. It aims at reconstructing an urban scenery, with fast-foods, long-distance calls, shop windows, and people in the streets, ads, in short, an updating of the atmosphere created at the beginning of 20th century by Apollinaire, in his poem Zone. Gradually, a certain common characteristic appeared: a sort of Allie McBeal/Winnie the Pooh character, playing an encouraging song in his/her head (or listening to it on a Walkman or music player), while walking in the street, contemplating shop windows, looking at people and at ads, thinking of their problems, and having a sandwich or a Coca-Cola. In short, the outward aspect of contemporary urban people; the inside it does not seem to matter, so the music they listen to becomes extremely important. From such a virtual play-list we can mention, almost randomly, Dont Worry Be Happy, Toms Diner, Twist in My Sobriety, and other similar songs. A certain change occurs, when radio becomes a character too (Bucur, 1998, pp. 9, 11), that is, when something that is randomly played becomes the pretext of a poem (or, at least, gives it some background), and, further, when the author attempts to re-create various musical genres by means of the poem: rock2 (Bucur, 1998, p. 15), rap (Bucur, 1998, p. 17), jazz (Bucur, 1998, p. 5), chanson (Bucur, 1998, p. 25; Bucur, 2008, p. 90), or blues (Bucur, 2008, pp. 110-111). In this poem, for instance, one can notice the cultural quotation, from Whitman (I celebrate myself and I sing myself), introduced as a graphical image, a graffito, and the linguistic hybrid: The poem is written half in Romanian and half in English, in the idea of capturing somehow the blues-spirit.

Conclusions
Generally, the poetry of Romulus Bucur has been labelled as one of the Romanian hypostases of confessional poetry. Its characteristic aspect, nevertheless, is the attempt at reconciling visual and auditory perception, combining them with cultural memory, so as that an updated version of the objective correlative (Eliot, 1921) is obtained. But this is far beyond the authors capacity of foreseeing.

References
Geo Bogza. (n.p., n.d.). Goodreads. Retrieved from http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2767339.Geo_Bogza Bucur, R. (1998). Ditties/Cntecel(e). London: Slow Dancer Press. Bucur, R. (2008). Selected poems 1975-2005 (Poeme alese 1975-2005). Braov: Aula.
1 2

Geo Bogza. Goodreads. N.p., n.d. Retrieved from http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2767339.Geo_Bogza. For this poem, there is a multimedia version too (Kinema, Opera Prima, 1996), more close to the authors intention of creating a syncretic poemclicking on a certain place of the poem brings the chorus of Alright Now, of the band Free.

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Bucur, R. (2009). A score of secondary characters (O seam de personaje secundare). Bucharest: Tracus Arte. Bucur, R. (2010, Dec. 5). Dont shoot the piano player (Nu tragei n pianist). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD6x6Hl7od4 Bucur, R., & Crtrescu, M. (1994). Translations from the Romanian of Romulus Bucur & Mircea Crtrescu. Dublin: Dedalus Press. Bucur, R., Lefter, I. B., Ghiu, B., Marin, M., & Muina, Al. (1982). Five (Cinci). Bucharest: Litera. Diaconu, M. A. (2002). Postmodern poetry (Poezia postmodern). Braov: Aula. Eliot, T. S. (1921). Hamlet and his problems. The Sacred Wood: Essays on poetry and criticism. (n.p., n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw9.html Eliot, T. S. (1974). Eseuri. (Romanian translation). Bucharest: Univers. Kinema, I. (1996). Opera prima. Intermedia 10-96. CD-ROM. Manolescu, N. (2008). The critical history of Romanian literature (Istoria critic a literaturii romne). Piteti: Paralela 45. Pop, I. (Gen. ed.). (2007). Analytical dictionary of Romanian literary works (Dicionar analitic de opere literare romneti). Cluj-Napoca: Casa Crii de tiin. Pound, E. (1968). Literary essays of Ezra Pound. New York: New Directions. Simion, E. (Gen. ed.). (2004). The general dictionary of Romanian literature A-B (Dicionarul general al literaturii romne (A/B)). Bucharest: Univers Enciclopedic. Vakulovski, M. (2010). A group portrait of the generation of the eighties (Poetry) (Portret de grup cu generaia optzeci). Poezia, Bucharest: Tracus Arte. Zaciu, M., Papahagi, M., & Sasu, A. (Gen. eds.). (1995). The dictionary of Romanian writers (Dicionarul scriitorilor romni) (Vol. I). Bucharest: Editura Fundaiei Culturale Romne.

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836 January 2013, Vol. 3, No. 1, 20-24

DA VID

PUBLISHING

The Research of Value of Female Costume in Ethnic Group Construction Based on the Social Gender*
TAO Hui
Wuhan Textile University, Wuhan, China; Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China

CHEN Dong-sheng
Minjiang University, Fuzhou, China

The social gender theory is a historical analysis method which is benificial to explore the system of human organization activities around maleor female activities. Historically, the process of human socialization is also a process of social gender institutionalization. Therefore, the paper tried to analyze the connotation of ethnic womens costume from the social gender perspective to help people realize further the womens state in sexism society and value in ethnic group constructing and developing. Firstly, the paper sets forth the characteristic of group of ethnic people female costumes. The next, the paper explored the costume how to set up a system of ethic standard in inner group so as to maintain the social order. Subsequently, the paper points out, with the rapid evolution of society, more and more ethnic people men participate cities construction and outer social activities. Consequently, most of minority men wear modern clothing instead of their traditional clothing, only women still insist in wearing the traditional clothing. Finally, according to research above, the authors consider that ethnic people female costumes emerge strong gender content which reflects more constraints rather than equality between men and women. Besides, it is certain that women have irreplaceable value in ethinc group construction and development. Keywords: ethnic group, female clothing, social gender, development

Introduction
As an important part of traditional culture, ethnic costumes concentrate relatively to reflect people culture, gender culture, and decoration art. Particularly, womens costumes are vivid and various, which present their ethnic group culture and custom. Many experts and researchers have taken relevant researches around clothing based on esthetics, sociology, anthropology, ethnography, and so on. With the development of feminist research, a new perspective of research emerges that is social gender. The social gender theory is a historical analysis method provided by, which argues social gender is a system of human organization activities. Every culture has its own social gender system and organizes the people to work on standard of male or female activities, in another words, the process of human
This paper is funded by Ministry of Education of China (No. 10YJA760047). TAO Hui, M.A., full professor at Fashion College, Wuhan Textiel University; Ph.D. candidate at Textile and Fashion Faculty, Jiangnan University. CHEN Dong-sheng, Ph.D., full professor at Faculty of Clothing and Design, Minjiang University.
*

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socialization is also a process of social gender. Actually, in the sexism society, to women, the rights to express their opinions are quite limited, and in the existing bisexual society, unequal social gender is obvious. Ethnic people womens clothing are vivid is just to embody the unbalance of clothing gender culture from certain significance. With the social gender theory to analyze the connotation of womens costume color and style are beneficial us to realize the essence of ethnic costume and womens state in sexism society as well value in ethnic group construction and development. To Strengthen the Coherence of Group As one of carrier of non-verbal communication, costume conveys an information which my wearing represents my ethnic identify. In many ethnic people living area in China, womens clothing always attract peoples attention, not only the unique style but also the rich color as well the marvelous decoration which are always highlights, and compared with the males costume, the female costumes are preserved more complete and stable. According to the research, almost ethnic people females costumes have an outstanding characteristic of group (see Figure 1); when they take part in some collectivity ceremonies, most of ethnic people women always wear clothing with the same style and pattern, especially, the unitive color which emphasizes the coherence to distinguish own group from other groups and effectively ensure the group construction not to be interfered. Besides, all rights and obligations can be developed in inner group so that they can keep the group stability. Huayao Dai people living in a village of Xi Shuang Ban Na area of Yunnan province. The embroideries of girl costumes are almost same around neighbor villages. They have a criteria which the chief of girl in villages allocates the patterns and no one can do against that. Again, when white Miao people, living in Zhaotong area of Guizhou province, make the batik for their dress, they always use whorl patterns which have never been changed although women have created other patterns like birds, plants, beasts, and so on. Because the pattern of whorl records the history of white Miao people ancestors who were living in the bank of river. They use the whorl as symbolization of their ancestors and group history, meanwhile, they also keep the highly coherence of group to distinguish from other groups.

(a) Married women costume of De ang people, the more the colorful waist bands, the more the wooer.

(b) Miao people hundred birds clothing for ceremony, the highly united color tone.

(c) Tuliang group of Zhuang people; they wear the black costume to distinguish themselves from other people.

(d) Short skirt Maio people of Guizhou province.

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(e) Ji nuo people Wearing rainbow.

(f) Hua yao Dai people in Yunnan province.

(g) Ai ni people in Yunnan province.

Figure 1. The coherence of ethnic people female costume to embody the different group.

To Embody the Ethic of Group Ethic is one of part of social culture which is not only to adjust conflict between people benefit but also conceal and restrain peoples appetency in order to set up a social system. As a material carrier of culture, it is no doubt that ethnic people female clothing has the function of ethic which can directly or indirectly reflect social ethic criteria and behavior standard in different ages and social groups; people can get information where she is from, how old she is, whether she has sweetheart, how about her skill for weave, what state of her marriage, and so on. We can find the information from above-mentioned womens costume, as well as womens head ornament, necklace ornament, chest ornament and waist ornament, and different color and style strongly shows the social criteria of groups (see Figure 2). For example, to Hui people, the scarf color of cover head is quite different in different age, for maid it should be vivid color like blue, the marriage women wearing black one while the old people is white. In many ethnic groups, there are some ceremonies for children mature, such as wearing trousers ceremony, wearing skirt ceremony, wearing hat ceremony, holing tooth ceremony, and dying tooth ceremony. The wearer by changing the clothing show other people they have got the rights to participate sociality for love. The young women of Hani people distracted in Pinxin County and Mojiang County will embroider camellia, peony, and cuckoo under right clothing called apntment flower which is symbolization of single and metaphor for expecting sweet heart to take this flower.

(a) Girls of Huayao Dai people dyeing their tooth black to show growing up.

(b) Jim girl of Yi people wearing Jiguan hat to reflect mature.

(c) The girl of Alu branch of Yi people dyed red tooth means mature.

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(d) The old women of Hui people wearing white head scarf.

(e) The maid of Hui people wearing blue head scarf.

(f) The married women of Hui people wearing black head scarf.

(g) Tattoo face for married women of Dulong people.

Figure 2. Different decoration to set up and strengthen the ethic criteria.

To Undertake the Development of Group In the society of sexism, men participate outer social activities more than womens, so men pay more attention to social function of clothing, because it represents the symbolization of social class, fortune, and dignity. Particularly, with the frequency of economy activities and development of society, more and more ethnic people men abandon their ethnic costume to wear modern clothing but women still wear their traditional dress (see Figure 3). Therefore, the male clothing of ethnic people is simple relative to women. During the development of ethnic people clothing, the phenomena which mens etic versus womens emic orientation is more and more outstanding. For instance, the tendency of Xijiang Miao people males etic versus females emic is breaking the culture rule of gender clothing balance and construct unbalance gender clothing model, men wear the fashion or suit like most men in the world and enjoy the harvest of material civilization and diverse creation, but they hope their women still maintain the traditional clothing, because they believe their women wear traditional dress more beautiful than modern one. We cannot stand to ask that if the male think traditional dress is more beautiful why they take off by themselves, from another aspect, why women can accept the reality? Whether they volunteer to undertake the duty of ethnic group development? Obviously, the answer is negative, because those women are limited at home and do traditional jobs and far away the modern society. Besides, man are afraid the loss of their existing positions. Therefore, they encourage their women stay at home to continue their traditional job, like weave and batik. That is why nowadays, we have just found some ethnic people feature from womens costume instead of mens.

(a) White Miao people women costume with a whorl pattern which records their ancestors history and remind themselves to remember.

(b) The contrast between women wearing traditional clothing and man wearing modern clothing.

Figure 3. The female dressing undertake the ethnic group history and development.

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THE RESEARCH OF VALUE OF FEMALE COSTUME IN ETHNIC GROUP The clothing of women in Naxi people living Lijiang river of Yunnan province wearing a decoration named

Draping star and wearing moon is a symbolization that they worship for sun, moon, and star, meanwhile it praises the moral of Naxi women who undertake the strong workload and never complain. Similarly, it reflects that women often undertake important role to keep a special ethnicity traditional culture. Modern men and conservative women existing as a phenomena, which reflects adequately the unbalance of clothing and relation of unequal gender rights, that is, clothing as a symbolization of ethnic identity is fixed on women and makes them to undertake to develop the group history.

Conclusions
The presentation manifests that the construction and development of ethnic people costume are dynamic, and the female have undertaken the important role during the group construction and development as well as ethic. Utilize the social gender theory to anaylze ethnic people female costume will benefit us to understand deeply the essence of female costume rather than just superficial style. We can find whenever in the past or present, ethnic people women undertake the important role all the time; various ethnic costumes not only embody their diligence, intellectuality and tolerance but also womens obedience and passiveness. Besiedes, it is worthwhile to note the unbalance gender system resulting in the excessive restraint to women, while coloful costumes are just camouflage. Therefore, when we enjoy the ethnic peoples colorful clothing especially womens dressing, we should use multi-angle of view to observe it, not only share the female wisdom, but also realize their important position and value in ethnic group construction and development, in particular, when we highlight the protection of ethnic people traditional culture based on the current globalization.

References
ANN, L. Z. (2011). How to protect cultural heritage of national costume?Thinking from the investigation about Miao dress. Journal of Nanjing Arts, 1. CHE, Y. C. (2000). The research of ethnic people costume ethic. The Journal of Yunnan People College, 7. HU, Q. Y. (2006). Analysis of Yunnan ethnic people costume culture based on ethnography. Culture Research, 6. MO, F. S. (1994). The features of Chinese minority clothing. Journal of the Central, 5. SHEN, H. M. (2004). Ethnic identity and mens etic versus womens emic orientation: Reflections on social gender of ethnic identity in contemporary China. Ethno-National Studies Journal, 5. WU, Q. H. (2000). The cultural connotation of Yunnan ethnic people costumeThe female significance of costume development. Yunnan Universitys Journal of Social Sciences, 5. YANG, G. C. (2010). The origin and development of the knowledge of the minority women in China: A case study of their traditional handicrafts and costumes and ornaments. Journal of Yunnan University of Nationalities(Social Sciences), 2. YANG, Y. (1999). Chinese national costume culture (1st ed.). Beijing: Mass Culture and Art Press. ZHAO, M. (2011). Cultural connotation of ethnic clothes of Chinese minorities and intercultural communicationDrawing on data from women of China (English monthly). Journal of China University of Mining & Technology (Social Science), 1.

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836 January 2013, Vol. 3, No. 1, 25-41

DA VID

PUBLISHING

Fine Artists of Panay: A Pioneering Study of Their Works and Lives

Lucell A. Larawan
Central Philippine University, Iloilo City, Philippines

This paper documents the works and lives of selected visual artists from Panay provinces. The selection of the artist was based on meeting at least two of the following criteria: (1) The artist should have a major award(s) in any prestigious national fine arts contests which included the MADE (Metrobank Art and Design Excellence), AAP (Art Association of the Philippines), Petron, GSIS (Government Service Insurance System), and the Biennial Dumaguete Open Terra Cotta Festival contests; (2) He/she should have had one-man or two-man exhibitions at reputed galleries; and (3) He/she should be active in the local art scene, meaning, a continuous schedule of exhibits during the past three years. Mostly self-taught, the artists artistic inclinations manifested early in childhood when they discovered their talents; this led to their resolve to seriously pursue with enduring fervor their art careers. Their sense of calling amid a less ideal art scene did not give way to the voice of conformity but they have maintained a clear sense of identity and destiny as inspiring art icons in their milieu. The analyses of the works of these artists lead to the observation of the Panayanon artistic tradition. Aside from the formalist descriptions of the artworks features, the analyses go further into the contextual and evaluative levels that reveal a highly nuanced meaning and semantic richness of the works. The paintings and sculptural pieces of the artists are expressions of their true voices, fresh innovations that have earned accolades even if these innovations are untamed by the academe. Keywords: fine artists, Panay, artistic tradition

Background
The National Commission for Culture and the Arts records a brief history of Philippine art, briefly highlighting the luminaries of the field. The classical tradition in Philippine painting had its roots in the first painter of note, Fabian de la Rosa (1869-1937). Later, there was De la Rosas nephew, Fernando Amorsolo y Cueto (1892-1972), who became the first national artist. The works of these artists were literal landscapes. Modernism in Philippine painting started with the distorted and naked working men of Victoriano Edades (1896-1985). Edades recruited two young dropouts from the UP (University of the Philippines), College of Fine Arts, Carlos Botong Francisco, and Galo Ocampo. The Triumvirate of Edades, Ocampo, and Francisco became the core of a group of artists informally known as the Thirteen Moderns. The other Moderns (according to Edades list) were Diosdado Lorenzo, Vicente S. Manansala, Hernando R. Ocampo, Cesar T. Legaspi, Demetrio
Lucell A. Larawan, member of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts-National Committee on Visual Arts and recipient of the Commissions competitive research grant, associate professor at the College of Business and Accountancy, Central Philippine University.

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Diego, UST (University of Santo Tomas) faculty members Bonifacio Cristobal (1911) and architect Jose Pardo (1916), Arsenio Capili (1914-1945) who died during the Japanese war, two student-assistantsRicarte Purugganan (1912-1998), and Anita Magsaysay-Ho (1914), the only woman in the group. Other names which gained significance were Fernando Zobel (1924-1984), Nena Saguil (1914-1994), and Jose Joya (1931-1995). The year 1995 was an eventful year for Philippine visual arts. The AAP (Art Association of the Philippines) Semi-annual Competition and Exhibition at the Northern Motors Showroom was marred by The Walkout of conservative artists. After the opening of the exhibition, they took their entries and put up their own exhibition across the street. It was their sign of protest for what they perceived as a bias for Modernist works in the awarding of the Rotary Clubs Golden Anniversary Awards, all of which went to Modernists Galo B. Ocampo, Manuel Rodriguez Sr., and Vicente Manansala. In 1959, the AAP decided to stop its practice of awarding two categories, perhaps realizing that there was just one standard for judging art, not two. In the sixties and seventies, several young artists were on the rise such as Bencab, Antonio Austria, Manuel Boy Rodriguez Jr., Roberto Chabet, Norma Belleza, Jaime de Guzman, Danilo Dalena, Imelda Cajipe-Endaya, Justin Nuyda, and Angelito Antonio among others. This new generation ensured that Modernism, in particular, and Philippine painting, in general, remain alive and well into the next decades (Retrieved from http:www.ncca.gov.ph). Panay is endowed with acclaimed talents in the visual arts. Despite this reality, the region is facing a dismal art scene due to the overall negative art appreciation and development culture manifested by the lack of researches that document the works and lives of its fine artists. Defensor (1992) in an M.A. thesis wrote about the works of the deceased local artist Vicente San Miguel. The rest of the writings available are scant essays and reviews that cannot yet establish a significant pool of knowledge on the fine arts of Panay.

Artists of Panay
Edmar Colmo: Vanguard Social Realist Edmar Colmo (1980- ), a resident of Molo, Iloilo City, was the Philippine representative to the Beijing Olympics Sport and Art Contest in 2008 where his entry in painting was named Highly Recommended. He started as a finalist in the Shell National Student Art sculpture competition (1999). Later, he successively earned three semi-finalist distinctions from Metrobank Young Painters National Competition and Metrobank Art and Design Excellence. His entry in the Philippine Art Awards was one of the 10 winners in the Visayas and became a finalist in the national awarding. Colmo has joined a number of group exhibits in Cebu, Bacolod, and Iloilo. Critique of works. With works that challenge the beautiful side of life, Colmo understands his role as an artist. An artist who lives in a degenerate time should mock, satirize, and document the decay in society. In a period of harsh realities abound in the social milieu, one cannot just choose any course. Life is circumscribed by these realities and no amount of romanticism will alter it. A protest artist, Colmo concerns himself with provoking and engaging the attention of the masses. His paintings express the Filipinos or even the global citizens problems and their times. Using dominant linear elements rendered in pen and ink or acrylic, the artist usually draws or paints distorted faces and human figures which provoke insights on political, social, and personal experiences. The content of his art is typically shocking and subversive. His messages have the goal of becoming agents of change.

FINE ARTISTS OF PANAY: A PIONEERING STUDY OF THEIR WORKS AND LIVES As protest art reflects a current societal ill, it can be an agent of change.

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Colmo is a vanguard of a style which possess a different hallmark that led to his selection to the Philippine Art Olympics. Few artists create a unique presentation and many are mostly followers or protges of art schools. Ako, which presents a famished woman, is a stark reminder of oppression set beside societys negligence, a characteristic of the marginalized sector. The subject is wearing a Muslim attire and the symbolism of the crescent moon denotes a subculture in southern Philippines. Another symbolism is the nail-pierced handan allusion to the crucifixionwhere the message of suffering is presented. The anguish of the enraged face and the use of red for the color of the skin add to the artworks purpose which is to awaken society from its apathy towards certain sectors. The biomorphic forms on the ground are surrealist presentations that suggests the birth of more repulsive creatures. Colmo overcame the reactions of those whose beliefs or notions are challenged by his counter-paradigmatic art. Although not everyone likes his artistic expressions, somehow his strong resolve to express his true voice earned him the high regard among the members of the art community. Gary Custodio: Painting Echoes of Visual Music Gary Custodio (1968- ) is a Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate of the University of Santo Tomas where he graduated in 1992. He lives at Andagao Beach, Kalibo, Aklan although he occasionally stays at his brothers place in Baclaran, Paraaque City. He has earned numerous awards in national art contests and had a one-man exhibit in West Gallery, Quezon City. From the Metrobank-sponsored contests, he was awarded three second prizes and one third prize. He became a two-time finalist in the Philippine Art Awards and also a finalist in the GSIS (Government Service Insurnce System) painting competition. He started as a graphic artist at Philweb, Makati City from 2000 to 2003. Later, he worked as a product designer of Passad Export and Obras, Co. in Iloilo City until 2006. At present, Custodio is a full-time artist whose passion in the visual arts has found a better milieu. Critique of works. The transience of human construction and mans relationship with his environment have a great impact in Custodios body of works. His art shows how the natural world has played an important role in the story of mankind by mans continuous intrinsic link with the environment. The modern world, however, leaves little room for the contemplation of nature and the cultivation of a relationship with ones environment. The notion of an unspoiled terrain has become something of a Holy Grail, the longing for many especially Custodio. Custodio draws upon the precarious relationship between man and the man-made environment. His paintings resemble architectural models but rather than celebrate mans triumph over the natural world, they exhibit unease about man-made structuresphysical or organizational. They draw attention to how people cling to the environment they have created and how easily they have forgotten the power of nature. The physical structures built by modern architecture and engineering represent the epitome of mans taming of the natural world. In building skyscrapers, the ramifications of such endeavor must not be brushed aside, as Custodio infers in his paintings. The organizational structures built as mechanisms in running corporations have permeated the business world. They can mean efficiency, effectiveness, and economy in meeting business goals; however, they also suppress the individuality and humanity of man. The artworks bring to the viewer the artists consciousness, leading to mans exercise of more responsibility in dealing with the environment through the seen and the unseen structures. Custodios works also reveal a profound theological insight into the temporal nature of mans existence and

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FINE ARTISTS OF PANAY: A PIONEERING STUDY OF THEIR WORKS AND LIVES

mans innate longing for the enduring celestial city. This insight was shown in the title of Custodios latest solo exhibit which was Impermanence. The paintings do not show a symbol for that object of longing but they are eloquent as man may not always be aware of what he really needs amid the challenge of impermanence. During the Metrobank Young Painters Annual of 1999, Cid Reyes said of Custodios work which won 2nd place:
Abstraction, as a visual language, demands of the viewer a measure of surrender to its ambiguity. The absence of a figurative image (which the eye immediately attempts to seize), while it may at first confound the viewer, intentionally heightens the interplay of the plastic elements: line, color, tone, shape and perceptions thereof. In Gary Custodios Unknown, these elements seem to merge and vanish, only to surface as an illumination of feeling, and evocation of space. If the viewer so wishes, he can perceive, lurking from this evanescent image, certain intimations of cityscape and the slippage of a human form. But these luminosities of reality are, indeed, merely the expressive echoes of a visual music. (Reyes, 1999)

Angelo Jun-jun Duarte: Prince of Mixed Media Angelo Jun Duarte (1967- ) tried related professions and made distinctions in each of them. As a visual artist, he is a second prize winner (mixed media) and honorable mention (painting) in the competition of Art Association of the Philippines (2003) and finalist in the Philippine Art Awards (1999). He was featured in radio and in ABS-CBN Iloilo. He has held three solo exhibits and a number of group shows in Iloilo City. He founded the Baysulangpu Society and Kurit Ilonggo Artists groups. With his achievements, Duarte became a nominee to the CCP (Cultural Center of the Philippines) 13 Artists Award. Critique of works. Like the emperors new clothes, the content and motive behind much of modern art warrant close scrutiny. This is especially true in a style which considers the idea more important than the finished product. The painting either markedly de-emphasizes or entirely eliminates a perceptual encounter with unique objects in favor of an engagement with ideas. The conceptual arts chief synonym is idea art. The idea, rather than the object, is paramount. To circumvent the too-narrow limits of art, Duarte uses aspects of semiotics and popular culture to create works that barely resemble traditional art objects. What the viewer sees is simply a document of the artists thinking. Antecedents of concept art are commonly regarded as aesthetic activities. At a deeper level, interesting concepts, concepts enjoyable in themselves, especially as they occur in mathematics, are commonly said to have beauty. Duartes mixed media art is mostly negotiations of the common: detritus reemployed to communicate repeatedly ideas concerning our use of and respect for resources and their source. The artists intention and form employ, perhaps cohere around, structured fluidity. The square or rectangle that contains the wall-mounted objects beautifully merges with the fluidic composition that creates visual music. There is a disarming honesty in Duartes words and works. He has demonstrated conceptual strength and creativitya marked ability to use the mundane imaginatively to make the viewer take a second glance at the traits he is critiquing. The low-status materials confront and invite new views, which in fact build upon previous experience. In Paraw Regatta (see Figure 1) and Conjecture, the dominant linear elements combine to produce rhythm. Paraw Regatta is inspired by the yearly Festival in Iloilo City. Boats with painted sails compete. Painted hand-made

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paper and strings resemble the waves of the sea. The two vertical straight strings in yellow balance the nuances of curved horizontal lines. The composition is enriched with splattered blue paint situated randomly in the area with no fixtures. On the other hand, Conjecture is a white monochrome of lines accented with small red dots. Unlike Paraw Regatta, the curve lines that dominate are vertically positioned while two big lines combine horizontally. The vertical lines seem to represent energy flowing from a source which shows a metaphor of the concept. From such energy, many great inventions flourish. Many of them start with wild guesses, not structured thinking.

Figure 1. Paraw Regatta, mixed media, 2 ft x 4 ft, by Angelo Jun Duarte.

Indigenous materials in burnt umber form loose lines in a sporadic array in Duartes Fireworks. An object shaped as an irregular triangle appears in the left portion of the board. To give attention to the object, a dry brush of blue is applied around the object to separate the surrounding space. The painting shows that some fireworks producers thrive in Iloilo to provide the supply during Christmas and the new year. Although at the figurative level, Fireworks revolves around the short-lived span of human technology where after consumption, they are nothing but rubbish. Duartes works reflect the artist as a Catholic-animist. As an animist, he gives tribute to the sacredness of nature. Jose Joe Dureza: Leader of Artist-Voyagers The development-conscious institutions in Panay should think of establishing a system of awarding those who carry the banner of the regions honor and pride in the arts. Truly deserving of the distinction is Jose Joe Dureza (1941- ), one of the leading lights of the visual arts. Born in Roxas City, Dureza first worked in Bacolod

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City, then later migrated to New Jersey. In New Jersey, he co-founded and presided (for 10 years) over the SPAA (Society of Philippine American Artists) together with Manuel Rodriguez, the foremost printmaker of the country. He earned feathers on his cap as first prize winner in graphics, being a Liquitex Awardee and Artist of the Year of Hudson Artists, Inc., and Best of the Show Awardee of SPAA (Society of Philippine-American Artists). His assignments and scholarship grants from Fulbright and Rotary took him to the US, France, and Yemen. Critique of works. Art reflects reality. Art is humanitys attempt to recreate reality, to create reflections of realityand imagination and creativity are part of reality. Aesthetics, as emphasized in Durezas vision creates identity or set of enduring concepts that can be linked to certain traditions or art movements. Durezas experiences as a transplanted Filipino in Secaucus, New Jersey shaped and transformed his art. He wrote:
Each art work is as unique as its creator. We, however, like a piece of art for many reasons, often very personal ones; sometimes it is about the subject, sometimes it is about the artist and how that artist sees the subject through his or her eyes. My paintings are a personal view of our world presented in a manner that people have not seen before and therefore every time I present a painting, I am inviting others to look into my soul. (personal communication, 2010)

Landscape painting is a distinct genre of painting which captures nature in its elemental form. It is a reflection of the skies, seas, rivers, the sun, the moon, and greeneries. Dureza, poet of the land and sea, reveals the artists reverence for peace, beauty, solitude, and solace he finds in natural grandeur wherever he goes. While occasionally painting persons, Durezaas a romanticisttakes a look very minutely to the factors like the struggle the person has faced and the mood he/she is generally occupied. These qualities are in the portraits commissioned in the US. In Death March and Japanese War, he has applied the principle used in his portraits. Using ingenuity to portray garden flowers in watercolor, Dureza did Spring Bouquet. The vibrant red, blue, yellow, and white are a celebration of life at its fullest. The exuberance of the composition is reminiscent of Durezas productive art career in the US. Hope and life in the bouquet painting inspires the following Hiligaynon poem by the researcher: Sang nakita naton ang ginpinta nga mga bulak/nagpati kita liwat sang paglaum/isa ka korus ginkanta sa mga duag:/nagpati kita liwat sang pagkahingpit/dihon nga gin umpisahan sang bag-o nga tinuga/namukadkad sa aton pagkatawo (When we saw the floral painting/we believed again in hope/a chorus sang by the colors/we believed again in perfection/form that began in a new creation/blossoming in our being). Dureza has painted for more than 50 years. His body of works documents his journey from the Philippines to New Jersey, reflecting his passion and sentiments for his native land as well as for America. Martin Genodepa: Transforming Stoic Stone Martin Genodepa (1963- ) is a self-taught specialist in stone sculpture. His favorite media are coral stones and sandstones which are abundant in the environs of Guimbal, Iloilo where he resides and has set up his studio. He has had nine solo exhibitions in Iloilo, Manila, the US since 1992: at the UP Visayas Art Gallery, Museo, Iloilo, Tangahalan Fernando Amorsolo of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Hiraya Gallery, and the Vermont Studio Centers Red Mill Gallery. In 1999, he was a recipient of the Freeman Fellowship for Asian Artists, full grant awarded by the Vermont Studio Center. He was an artist-in-residence in the art colony. He appeared in Travel Times New Kids on the Art Block television documentary together with Alfredo Esquillo, Marcel Antonio, Gabriel Barredo, and Dansoy Coquilla. Genodepa has gotten favorable reviews from respected

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Filipino critics like Alice Guillermo and Eric Torres and has been featured in art publications. Genodepas themes vary from grace under pressure, alienation and isolation, and feminism and sexuality to human and societal disintegration. Critique of works. Raised in a serene and close-to-nature environment in Guimbal, Sculptor Martin Genodepa derived his spirituality and creative energy from an alchemy of nature and awakened consciousness. His sculptural works reject theatricality and detail in favor of radical simplification and abbreviation. His goal is to capture the emotion of human beings rather than tell a storyand render this emotion visible with minimal formal means. Mostly, his sculptural works are coral stone although he also sculpts sandstone or marble. Coral stone is a rare medium and Genodepa finds joy in forming his usual subjectswomen. He does not scuba-dive the nearby sea to get the material for that would mean a conservationists nightmare. He only combs the beaches to find coral large enough to be fashioned into sculpture. For him, art should be ecologically-friendly. Woman as the subject of his works is first of all a symbol of fertility. From her, springs forth life and a childs earliest experiences of nurture and care. She is more capable of showing a simple emotion. But in Genodepas works, she is no stereotype of the elusive women of myth. These women do not belong to the folk inhabitants engaged in day-to-day activities. Genodepas minimalist approach which focus on human heads evokes a dominantly hilarious and romantic emotion. The shapes and textures create harmony and rhythm which contribute to the noteworthy quality of the artworks. The viewer does not miss the stark ironyfragile human beings shaped from stoic, hard, and passionless stone. This is both to protest and battle alienation and lack of privacy which are the usual effects of modernization. The stone made soft by tender expressions depicts the struggle to maintain ones dignity and self-awareness in the midst of a more impersonal and busy society which is alluded by a cold and formless piece of stone. If humanity in the 21st century continues to stifle mans innate emotions for the sake of efficiency, truly the stones will start crying. Genodepa often depicts the head with the bust as a unitary irregular circle or ovals. Evoking images of repose like Brancusis works, Genodepas heads are usually positioned to convey an ecstatic mood with faces rendered in a cubist manner. The women in coral stone are subtle monuments to the aesthetic act and to the fact that women are its inspiration.

Figure 2. Wrapped Series 2003 & 2004, coral stone, 10 x 9 x 4, by Martin Genodepa.

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FINE ARTISTS OF PANAY: A PIONEERING STUDY OF THEIR WORKS AND LIVES Wrapped Series (see Figure 2) shows the womans head in an inclined position almost blanketed with her

long hair. Part of the back and hips are visible. The message it seems to communicate is the typical conservative woman who preserves her dignity and respect.
The appeal of Genodepas works lies in his instinctive understanding and appreciation of his material, coupled with an unfailing sense of design through which he is able to make full, expressive use of the coral medium. With these figures he brings into sculptural realization hitherto submerged passions, impulses and feelings even as the coral stones had been dredged by the tides from the bottom of the sea to the open shore. (Guillermo, 1999, p. 7)

Edgar Gonzales: Culture Painter With a Style Edgar Gonzales (1948- ) is one of the oldest painters in Iloilo. As a father to some artists, he trained some who later became productive local artists. Gonzales had made two solo exhibits at UP Visayas Art Gallery (1983) and at Museo Iloilo (1984), while he participated in a number of group shows. He has a number of awards which include the International Art award in a childrens art competition (1965), 2nd prize in regional painting contest (1980) and President Marcos trophy in the National Health Poster contest (1984). His art profession has been a major source of his family sustenance. The owner of an establishment in Iloilo awarded his three children full scholarship in high school and college in exchange of his art services. Having earned a reputation in the local art scene, he has been tapped as one of the judges in the Dinagyang Festival. Critique of works. Art reflects the truth of the cultural milieu as Edgar Gonzaless works emphasize. The artist creates in a historical moment and art reflects that reality, that historical moment. George Scharf, friend of George Eliots and an important figure in the Victorian art world, once contrasted the historical, heroic, or idealised style of figure-painting with genre painting, which he defined as the representation of life in its unheroic forms. Gonzales has used both types. Aside from narrating important historical events in Panay, he has also glorified the ordinariness of rural life activities. Gonzales distinguishes himself by using a medium he is famous forpen and ink on board or vinyl. When he uses the medium, he combines it with wash watercolor to achieve more than a monochromatic effect in the composition. Barter of Panay in acrylic is based on a folk account which is commemorated by a festival in Kalibo. The scene on the beach tells of the forging of ties between the Ati and the Bornean visitors. The group at the left is the Ati dwellers who welcomed the ten Bornean datus. Researches revealed that the incident happened in 1212 when 10 Bornean datus, led by Datu Puti and their subjects, escaped the tyranny of Sultan Makatunaw by boarding the baeangays to seek peace in a new place. They found it in Aninipay (Island of Panay) which the datus named as the Island of Madyaas (Paradise) in contrast to the island where they came from. Carabao Race, a drawing, presents the yearly festival in Pavia, Iloilo. The cross-hatching method in using the pen and ink expressively highlights four carabaos with their riders. The body movements of running are seen among the beasts of burden. Carabaos in the drawing is an embodiment of the Visayan rural life, wholly representing the culture of the farmers level of modernization, industry, love of nature, and kindness to animals (Funtecha, 1995). The carabao, the artworkss inspiration, is considered to be the beast of burden but sometimes it is the source of recreation through the annual carabao-carroza race held every May 3 which is the town fiesta of Pavia. Old Iloilo (see Figure 3) drawing poses a sense of sentimentalism for what Iloilo City, particularly Calle

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Real, used to be with old cars and calesas. The place is known for its ancestral buildings, some of which are preserved to evoke nostalgia. In the absence of old pictures to show what the place used to be, the drawing narrates the rich history of the city.

Figure 3. Old Iloilo, ink on vinyl, 30 x 40, by Gonzales.

Folk imagery (from the German volk, meaning people) has been the talismanic source of the artists excellent oeuvres. Allain Hablo: Call to Meditation Allain Hablo (1968- ), from Estancia, Iloilo, is one of the select self-taught artists specializing in abstract minimalism. He has been a recipient of the 9th Annual Freeman Foundation Vermont Studio Center Award. He availed himself of this artist-in-residence grant in the US in 2001-2002. Through the grant, he presented his first solo exhibit at Red Mill Gallery, Johnson, Vermont. His second solo came six years later at Avellana Art Gallery, Pasay City. Hablo has a number of awards in visual arts. Highest among them is the second prize in sculpture (open art competition) from the AAP, 2004. From AAP, he also got a jurors choice (1993) and four honorable mention (2001, 2002, and 2003) awards. In the Philippine Art Awards, Hablo was a jurors choice awardee (2005) and a four-time finalist (2000, 2001, 2003, and 2006). When still a young artist, he won third prize in Metrobank Young Painters Annual (2000) and got a finalist award in Shell National Students Art competition (1991). Hablo has judged during the Dinagyang Festival (2004) and served as a resource person in the Iloilo Visual Artists Association Art Forum. Critique of works. From the contemplative nature of Hablos oeuvre springs poetry whose elements are handled with careful purpose. There is nothing coincidental in the execution of his art, except the stark presence of the artist. The tension and nuances in the optimum content derived from a modicum of form are hallmarks of Hablos works. These give them the distinction of creating literary pieces embodied in visual form. Hablo philosophizes: I believe art has to come from the intuitive nature of the subconscious. It should not, in one form or another, represent anything recognizable. It has to go beyond the limitations of the human senses, independent from reason for it to become universal (personnal communication, May, 2010).

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FINE ARTISTS OF PANAY: A PIONEERING STUDY OF THEIR WORKS AND LIVES Hablos works invites the viewer to realize that even the simplest of human concepts are paradoxically

complex. Meditation, the usual message of Hablos works, cultivates states of mind that are conducive to peace and well-being and eradicate those that are not. The premise is examination of life. This leads to the discovery that most of mans time and energy is devoted to mundane activities, such as seeking material and emotional security, enjoying sensory pleasures, or establishing a good reputation. Although these things can make man happy for a short time, they are not able to provide the deep lasting contentment that he longs for. Sooner or later, his happiness turns into dissatisfaction, and he finds himself engaged in the pursuit of more worldly pleasures. Directly or indirectly, worldly pleasures cause his mental and physical suffering by stimulating attachment, jealousy, and frustration. Moreover, seeking to fulfill his own desires often brings him into conflict with others. Meditation shifts the awareness from the usual focused and outer-directed activity of the mind. It gives one an opportunity to shift gears, let go of this focus and experience a more peaceful and silent state. In current times, the term meditation, which is the emphasis of Hablos paintings, is used much more broadly to refer to many different practices meant to bring about a variety of results. Meditation is no longer always associated with spirituality. Different meditations have different goals, and people meditate for many different reasonsrelaxation, health, personal growth, and spiritual development. Often people meditate simply to become more relaxed, or because their doctor has advised them to meditate to lower their blood pressure. Being clear on why one want to meditate will help him in his search. The titles of Hablos artworks in relation to the presentation of a few rectangles or squares and some lines are intriguing. There is no subject visible to support the idea of the artworks. Obviously, the artists idea, not the object, is paramount in each artwork. The goal of such art is to react against formal and more commercial works of romanticists and realists, calling to a deeper reflection that goes beyond commercialism and towards deeper meanings of existence.

Figure 4. Faded Insights, mixed media, 45 x 52, by Allain Hablo.

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Faded Insights (see Figure 4) makes one aware of the artist building up his imagery to speak to his contemplative and reflective nature. The mixed media painting is composed of intriguing textures all throughout the canvas. A few broken lines in light green form an irregular cross-like pattern. These lines complement the overall color scheme of the composition. Two loose circular shapes appear on the upper portion. Dominantly black with few traces of burnt umber describes False Negative. Unlike Faded Insights, yellow lines appear on the sides and at the center. These lines form in pairs and meet at the center. In the middle, a loose darker line emerges to add some variety. Alex Ordoyo: Watercolorist of Ilonggo Culture Alex Ordoyo (1984- ) surprised his peers when he won the grand prize in the 8th Art Petron National Art Competition (Water Media Category) in 2008. In the national On-the-Spot National Poster Making Competition sponsored by the Ombudsman-European Commission, he also emerged as grand prize winner. During the 9th Art Petron National Art Competition, he was 1st runner-up in water media category and semi-finalist in the oil category. Ordoyo has had a number of group exhibits in Manila and Iloilo City. Because of his extraordinary achievements, Ordoyo is a Pasidungog awardee in the field of culture and arts in his hometown, Sta. Barbara, Iloilo. Critique of works. Ordoyos paintings are mostly in watercolor, the medium which he has excelled as a national champion in Art Petron and most of his award-winning entries. The medium is made of pigment ground in gum, usually gum arabic, and applied with brush and water on a painting surface, usually paper. Watercolor compares in range and variety with any other painting method. Transparent watercolor allows for a freshness and luminosity in its washes and deft calligraphic brushwork that makes it a most alluring medium. There is one basic difference between transparent watercolor and all other heavy painting mediaits transparency. The oil painter can paint one opaque color over another until he has achieved his desired result. The whites are created with opaque white. The watercolorists approach is the opposite. In essence, instead of building up he leaves out spaces. The white paper that is left out creates the whites. The darkest accents may be placed on the paper as the pigment comes out of the tube or with very little water mixed with the pigment. Otherwise the colors are diluted with water. The more water in the wash, the more the paper affects the colors. To the artist, art mirrors society. Ordoyos subjects focus on festivals, churches, and the plight of the poor and the oppressed. He also focuses on genre paintings that present the joyous: Pasungay Festival, Bagsakan, and Molo Church. Or in few cases, his paintings show unhappiness like the Depression. Ordoyo limns churches, like the Molo Church, to celebrate Iloilo as a place known for historical churches. The churches which Ordoyo usually get inspiration are referred to by Jose Moreno (Spanish critic) as tequitqui, an Aztec term which means tribute payer. Also depicting social realities, Ordoyo protests the aftermath of urbanization and modernization. An artist who lives in a degenerate time satirizes or documents the decay. An artist should see his role in the stripping off of the mask of the fantasy of societys self-aggrandizement. Ordoyo hints this role in some of his paintings such as Compressor and Depression. Compressor speaks of both deprivation and survival. The elderly woman begging, an eye clouded over with cataracs, asks for alms from passers-by. With a hideous look that is part-pleading and part-cursing, the horrifying visage of the woman must have of a proud human being forced to become an outcast by societys apathy. It

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FINE ARTISTS OF PANAY: A PIONEERING STUDY OF THEIR WORKS AND LIVES

speaks of humanitys descent as society fantasizes on self-aggrandizement. Though the current administration of Iloilo City disallows the presence of beggars on the sidewalks, beggars are still roaming around. An alternative social program could have been designed besides the effort to cleanse the streets to get rid of beggars. Ordoyo, at age 25, creates art at a historical moment. Through his creations, he projects to the community an awareness of the current milieu. Having excelled in the watercolor medium, Ordoyo makes his presence secure in the Panay art world. PG Boyet Zoluaga: Seer of the 21st Century PG Boyet Zoluaga (1958- ) distinguished himself by winning local and national awards in the visual arts. He was the best entry in the Centennial Painting Competition of the AAP (1998), and jurors choice (1998) and finalist (1998, 1999, and 2000) in the Philippine Art Awards. Locally, he won first place (1998-1999) in the Pinta Paraw during the Paraw Regatta Festival, became champion (1993-1998) in the costume design of the Dinagyang Festival and got the 3rd place (2000) in the Pinta Lawas in the Paraw Regatta Festival. He served as faculty of the Special High School for the Arts at Iloilo National High School (1993-1998) and chairman of the Visual Arts Committee of the Arts Council of Iloilo Foundation, Inc. (1991-1993). Critique of the works. The darker side of life expressed in bold lines and overall composition that emote fear, loneliness, hopelessness, and concepts such as phobia, isolation, and death are symbolized in the works of PG Zoluaga. With emphasis on environmental destruction and alienation, these are intended to portray the artists deep sentiment for his community that suffer the plight of a third world setting and the harsh realities of modernization where exploitation, corruption, and dehumanization abounds. Using a social realist style, the influences of Munch and Chagall are evident in the works which effectively convey the intended message. Zoluagas deepest sentiment in the visual medium was popularized in the 1990s through his original song composition Iloilo Banwang Pinalangga (Iloilo My Beloved Town). The place is duog sang mga damgo (a haven of dreams) which captures ones affection. At the end of the song, Zoluaga makes a plea for his town, San-o mo ako mabatian? (When will you hear me?). Such plea is seen in his social realist paintings and drawings reflecting his protest to stop the acts of men which either destroy the environment or take peoples dignity and rights. The theme of his color etching, Deliverance, is exorcism. The scene is a tribal dance with a shaman, the main subject, who performs a ritual to cast out evil spirits. The background using textural elements is a representation of the natural habitat in the rural scene with colors rendered in an almost monotonous range of black, sepia, and green. In a natural environment where the ritual is performed, it suggests of the presence of evil that needs to be dealt with using supernatural means. The work reminds the viewer of peoples desire for an unknown power beyond which, in the Filipino culture, is summoned to counter the horror or demonization. Horror or demonic activities are alluded here as the social ills that need to be exorcised. Deliver Us From Extinction (see Figure 5) effectively communicates humanitys struggle for survival. Linear elements in bamboo and fire dominate the composition that shows a horrific doom. Two people in the center personalize the bamboo poles which are abundant in the community. In the background are faces of human beings floating in a lake of fire and burning bamboo that gradually turns into ashes. The entire mixed media painting is a prophetic message that warns us about an impending doom both at the natural and spiritual levels. In the natural plane, it may be disasters that follow deforestation. In the spiritual plane, it suggests the second

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death which is possible for the deserving. More than suggesting destruction of natural environment due to kaingin (burning of trees), the painting eloquently emphasizes that people considered to be most important in the entire creation are actually the endangered species.

Figure 5. Deliver Us From Extinction, acrylic, 4 ft x 4 ft, by Zoluaga.

Zoluagas sentiments are limned in the words of Filipino poet Edgar Maranan whose lament emotes:
In the beginning was the valley/of the river, slope of vineyard,/mills of driving winds, the lily/of the fields, dollhouses basking/through the golden seasons of the sun/the end is blast of ancient rage,/all colors die, love ends, no child/cries out. Theres only the rush of/gutted fleeing souls. (Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, 2000, p. 206)

Zoluagas paintings are exquisite media expressing the sentiments.

Discussion
Panayanon society is a pluralistic society in transition. As such, Panay art which reflects its culture and sentiments, mirrors such characteristic. In Fred Riggs (Retrieved from http://www2.hawaii.edu/~fredr/mccurdy.htm) explanation, such condition in a community is better understood using the prismatic model. The theory, based on the principle of light, asserts an insightful analogy: light as it arrives from a source like the sun is fused. All of the visible wave lengths are present, but they are combined into the single color white. Once separated, the individual colors appear as in the hues of a rainbow. One way by which light can be refracted into its separate colors is to use a prism. To Riggs, the white light represented the fused structures of a traditional society. The rainbow represents the diffracted (or refracted) structures of an industrialized society. Inside the prism is society in transition. The prismatic situation is neither traditional nor modern, but it contains novel elements generated by the juxtaposition of old and new social structures. This contradicts the escalator model of modernization, which assumes that the prismatic characteristics would

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quickly disappear as societies are moving towards progress. To understand societies and their leadership better, one has to understand the particular features of that situation. In an attempt to better understand the art of Panay, it is important to note that the white and the refracted lights in the prismatic model hold true in a continuously developing artistic tradition in a flux. The white light represents the influences of old masters like Fabian de la Rosa, Fernando Amorsolo, and other classicists as they celebrate lifes ambiance especially of the rural milieu or perhaps document significant landmarks and festivals; while the refracted light is the semblance of the modern and post-modern energies in art making with the leading lights of modernism: Victorio Edades, Carlos Botong Francisco, and Galo Ocampo and the foreign counterpart Constantin Brancusi, as well as the persuasions of current Filipino icons Gabriel Barredo and Charlie Co among others. The white and refracted lights can never be divorced as both are fused in Panayanon artistic tradition. Parallel to the analogy of a transitional society where art finds its milieu, a better understanding of the development of artistic tradition cannot use the linear model which assumes the disappearance of the classic approaches among artists as a result of the morphing fusion of the early, modern, and avant-garde movements. The traditional persuasions are still used as society does not stop the demand to romanticize and document culture in a more literal yet stylized ways. The civilization in transition has both elements shown in the traditional and modern society. Implied to this are dissensus and poly-normativism seen as those observed in the structures, lifestyles, and issues in the urban and rural contexts. In the urban setting, challenges of alienation, waste disposal, and more dehumanized existence have been observed, although varying in intensity depending on the city concerned. Challenges in the rural areas have always been on the lack of infrastructure and social services, poverty, and slow social mobility. The mixture of agricultural and industrial lifestyles also persists. Sentiments, therefore, vary as seen in Alex Ordoyo, Jose Dureza, and Edgar Gonzales in one cluster vis--vis Allain Hablo, Martin Genodepa, Gary Custodio, Edmar Colo, PG Zoluaga, and Angelo Duarte in another. The art scene is another delimiting force to consider. Compared with Davao, Bacolod, and Cebu, Panayanon artists, find less political support, while their unity is less evident through the years. Rarely have institutions been diligent and philanthropic-minded in supporting the development of the artists or in documenting the local heritage as implicated by the absence of this research despite the presence of competitive visual artists who are well-respected among the cultural community. This could have been addressed for the Constitution mandates that The State shall foster the preservation, enrichment, and dynamic evolution of a Filipino national culture based on the principle of unity in diversity in a climate of free artistic and intellectual expressions (Article IV, section 14 and 15). Cognizant of the Constitutional mandate, the right to culture based on the universal declaration of human rights by the United Nations makes the participation to visual arts a basic human right where participation should not be taken only as a luxurious option in the mindset of the typecast stinginess among the community members. On this premise, the agents of changethe policy-makers, artists, educators, cultural workers, government agencies, the private sector, and the non-government organizationshave more reasons to give more respect and understanding for the creative forces of society. The formalist elements of the Panay artistic tradition undeniably borrow foreign approaches such as the use of canvas in a rectangular or square presentation, impressionism, expressionism, minimalism, and use of acrylic or oil. The leading Panay artists, however, do not deny their preferences forming their identities such as the use of

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rust pigments in some of the works of Edmar Colmo, soil in Allain Hablos, indigenous and found objects in Angelo Duartes, coral stones drifted in beaches for Martin Genodepa, and drawing and painting combination using vinyl in Edgar Gonzales works. Philippine art that uses the Western tradition does not lose its being Filipino according to Benesa (2009). The argument on what makes art Filipino is settled, because the artist and the culture presented are of the country. The same is true with Panay artistic tradition reflecting foreign influences in one way or another yet retaining a Panay and individual identity through the artists creating a unique expression in the context of culture. The backgrounds of the leading artists in Panay make one aware that eight out of nine are self-taught artists and only Gary Custodio has a fine arts course to back up his art making. Being self-taught is an advantage for it gives the artists more freedom to innovate their approaches in medium and presentation. Their expressions freely flow from the pure creative springs without the taming forces or perhaps delimiting standards set by academe. Without such academic training, they still manage to be at the top, even defying many who are formally trained. The leading artists early inclinations in childhood pushed them to pursue their artistic career with passion. They have fought well the battle for survival. Table 1 Summary of the Features of the Panayanon Artistic Tradition
Artists Category Medium(s) Pen and ink, oil, rust pigment Watercolor General outstanding Style feature(s) Linear strokes and medium in the entire composition Surrealism give a fresh presentation The use of medium in a Abstract minimal presentation is expressionism poetic Notable influence(s) Edvard Munch, Charlie Co. abstractionists, Robert Morris, Donald Judd Gabriel Barredo Emotion(s) imparted Despair, gloom, pain, alienation Alienation, insecurity Curiosity, concern for environment

Edmar Colmo Painting

Gary Custodio Painting Angelo Jun-jun Duarte

Recycled objects, Wall-mounted textile, oil, wood, Concepts are fresh and goes Minimalism, mixed media indigenous hand in hand with the media conceptualism materials

Jose Joe Dureza

Martin Genodepa Edgar Gonzales Allain Hablo

Ancient Sentiments of migrants are Chinese recognized in the US and Impressionism, paintings, Painting Watercolor locally, and they are romanticism Winslow presented with refined skills Homer, Dong Kingman Expressive faces or torsos Minimal Constantin Sculpture Coral stone, in coral stone is a vanguard presentation of Brancusi (free-standing sandstone approach figure or face Pen and ink on Elements of drawing and Drawing Fernando Painting vinyl, watercolor, painting create a laudable combined with Amorsolo, acrylic style to document culture painting modernists

Sentimentalism, delight with nature

Romance, reservation

Alex Ordoyo

PG Zoluaga

Sentimentalism, concern for the common Curiosity, Wall-mounted Automotive paint, Concepts engage the Minimalism, Robert Morris, meditative mixed media acrylic, oil, soil viewers in a unique manner conceptualism Donald Judd feeling His proven skills in Impressionism, modernists, Sentimentalism, Painting Watercolor watercolor give him the expressionism, leading concern for the edge to document culture romanticism watercolorists common Distortions, symbolisms Edvard Despair, gloom, Acrylic, oil, and expressive lines Painting Surrealism Munch, pain, alienation watercolor effectively portray the Charlie Co. message

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FINE ARTISTS OF PANAY: A PIONEERING STUDY OF THEIR WORKS AND LIVES A semiotic analysis of the works of the leading Panay artists reveals a diversity of themes, emotions, media,

styles, influences, and outstanding features (see Table 1) which fits the earlier-mentioned prismatic model. This diversity shows that even with some contextual similarities, the works of the artists have different messages, personalities, and sources of inspiration. They can be viewed in a horizon of meaning implying a range of significations that the works accommodate yet the analyses strived to a more stable and consensual interpretations. What is common among the artists is the strength of resolve to present their true voices. The Panay artistic tradition is not about the dominance of artistic elements, themes, emotions, media, styles, influences, and outstanding features but rather a presentation of Panay communal life, beliefs, moral virtues, and personality. In some cases, it is about mans universal desire for a continuous engagement with the elements of nature which he needs to preserve. Where the pragmatic and materialistic values prevail in cities with less dignifying forces of modernization, many of the leading Panay artists take the role of the seer prophesying the impending doom of decline and decay or simply engage the viewers with inoffensive narratives of humankind exploiting nature. Where local heritage, festivals, and aspects of rural culture bring sentimental and light-hearted appreciation, a few of the leading artists prefer to romanticize or give tribute to them through impressionism as a natural reaction. The leading lights of Panay visual arts are mostly avant garde of their respective media and approaches; they are adventurers sailing in a rough sea. They are mostly offshoots of the modern and post-modern movements and their works invite accolades for their scintillating excellencelike exquisite sails in the famous Paraw Regattathat tell about self-consciousness, or consciousness of the self in the sea of assimilating identities. This self makes sense of time and space, a knowledge that plays out in the context of a marked presence. Panay artists in this study share this disposition.

Conclusions
Unique among the Panayanon artists is their individual identity reflecting the sentiments, culture, and history of the pluralistic society or the places of their temporary engagement. A collective description cannot be made as a simplistic whole entity or movement for even in the communal upbringing which has the same environment, the personalities, media, style, and subject preferences made art a complex presentation of various moods and seasons in an evolving society. The pluralistic society also yields pluralistic art. Leading artists in Panay have developed a stable visual presentation of their body of works using new innovations in media and approaches which leave an easily recognizable hallmark pointing at the creators. The visual presentations remain hinged in Panayanon culture although some deal with universal issues. They narrate descriptions of the material component of community life; market systems applying concepts of tiyanggi, pakyaw, and alsada; heritage sites such as churches; festivals such as Dinagyang, Carabao-Carroza race, and Pasungay; value orientation on relational imperatives that gives premium to kakugi, kalulo, and amuma; moral imperative that values huya; and global issues dealing with the plight of man in technologically-driven society. The Panay artists unbridled expression is observed to embody a fresh philosophy in art making. The works may have influences from Manila or foreign icons but the manner by which the works re-presents reality manifests vanguard characteristics. In a state of a flux, Panay art has been evolving and what is common among the leading artists is the role of

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peers who challenge their achievement motivation, active participation in cultural activities or contests, non-reliance on the nurturing of the fine arts by the academe, and undaunted aggressiveness and determination of the artists to continue art making regardless of the level of community appreciation. Amid stereotypes, the artists do not lack the credibility to earn respect in the national art scene. As prophets and powerful princes of change like Picasso with his Guernica, Panay artists ideally occupy a respectable place in Panayanon society.

References
Barrett, T. (1994). Criticizing art: Understanding the contemporary. Mountain View, C.A.: Mayfield Publishing Company. Benesa, L. (2009). What is Philippine about Philippine art. Retrieved from http:www.ncca.gov.ph Bernabe-French, Z. (1995, December 7). The Martin Genodepa one-man exhibit at the UPV Art Gallery: A review. Sunstar Iloilo Daily Times. Briones, L. (2003). Fiscal and monetary policies as constraints to development. In V. A. Bautista (Ed.), Public administration in the Philippines: A reader (pp. 554-566). Manila, Philippines: National College of Public Administration and Governance, University of the Philippines, Diliman. Coseteng, A. (1972). Spanish churches in the Philippines. Quezon City, Manila: New Mercury Printing Press. Defensor, E. (1992). The life and art of Vicente de San Miguel (An unpublished masters thesis, UP Diliman, Quezon City). Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. (2000). An anthology of winning works. Manila, Philippines: Anvil Publishing, Inc.. Funtecha, H. (1995). Popular festivals in Western Visayas. Center for Western Visayas Studies, UPV, Iloilo City: MLC The New La Editorial Printing Press. Guillermo, A. (1999, October 7). Doing sculpture in Iloilo. Todays Weekender, No. 379, 7. Guillermo, A. (2001). Image to meaning: Essays on Philippine art. Bellarmine Hall, Katipunan Avenue, Loyola Heights, Quezon City, Manila: Ateneo De Manila University Press. Hernandez, E. (2009). The American and contemporary traditions in Philippine visual arts. Retrieved from http:www.ncca.gov.ph Kintanar, T. (2004). Self-portrait 2: 14 Filipino women artists. Quezon City: Ateneo University Press. Larawan, L. (2008). The Ilonggo artistic tradition in the lives and works of ten selected artists. Jaro, Iloilo City: University Research Center, Central Philippine University. Living in Manila (Editorial). (2010, September 30). The Philippine Star. Querubin, N. (2004). The potters memoir: The clay found me when my heart cried to create (Unpublished manuscript). Querubin, N. (2005). Patterned and inscribed: The art of Nelfa Querubin. UP Jorge B. Vargas Museum & Filipina Research Center, Roxas Avenue, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City: Nelfa Querubin-Tompkins. Reyes, C. (Art critic). (1999). Young painters annual. [Winners Exhibit]. Manila, Philippines. The Holy Bible, new international version. (1984). Manila, Philippines: Image Builders Services and Publishing Foundation, Inc..

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836 January 2013, Vol. 3, No. 1, 42-51

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PUBLISHING

The Glazed Tile Techniques of the Seljuk and Beylik Periods

Usak University, Usak, Turkey The word tile originates from Persian and means China or Chinese work. In the Ottoman language, the word tile also means Chinese work, or belonging to China. The art of Turkish tiles occupies a place of prominence in the history of Islamic art. Its roots can be traced at least as far back as the Uygurs of the eighth and ninth centuries. Its subsequent development was influenced by the Karakhanids, the Ghaznavids, and (especially) Iranian Seljuk art. With the Seljuks victory over the Byzantines at Malazgirt in 1071, the art followed them into Anatolia and embarked upon a new period of strong development fostered by the Anatolian Seljuk sultanate. The first major development in the art of tile-making occurred primarily in Anatolian Seljuk architecture. Various techniques have been used in the art of tiles which gave hundreds of samples for centuries. This study explores the glazed tile techniques used in the production of the Seljuk and Beylik periods. Keywords: Seljuk and Beylik periods, glazed tile, glazed brick, tile decoration, glazed tile techniques

Introduction
The Great Seljuks made variations in glazed tile techniques, and the Seljuks of Anatolia made original developments in that art. Until the 18th century, Turkish ceramic art and its products were called evani, meaning pottery, and ki, a word of Persian origin, meaning of Kan, the city that became the center for ceramics during the period of Great Seljuks. The Turkish emperor, Yavuz Sultan Selim (Selim I) brought Chinese ceramic products back from a military campaign in Iran. Since Chinese porcelain was renowned, and Chinese ceramics had an influence on Turkish ceramics, they were called ini, meaning of China. Today, the ceramic pieces in various geometric shapes that decorate the interior and exterior facades of buildings are called ini (tiles), while objects of everyday use are called ceramics. The different types of tiles and ceramics that were developed and used during the Anatolian Seljuk and Ottoman periods were made using a variety of techniques (Satr, 2007, pp. 3-4). During the Beylik and Seljuk periods, unglazed tile and ceramics were very common in Anatolia. There were also unglazed ceramics (fired earthenware), which were used in the Near East, Mesopotamia, Iran, and Syria, in the Great Seljuks period and by Artukians in Southeast Anatolia, before being used in Anatolia. Glazed tile art can be considered to have started with the glazed brick, which has been used in architectural structures since the Uygurs. Other glazed tiles were developed following this prototype. The techniques used in the production of Seljuk and Beylik period glazed tiles include glazed brick, monochrome glazed tile, underglaze, gilding, the luster technique, the minai technique, glazed tile mosaics, relief molding, colored glaze, and the faux mosaic technique. Glazed Brick This relatively easy technique entails coating of one of the narrow sides of a brick with glaze and then
smail Yardmc, associate professor, Head of Ceramic Department, Fine Art Faculty, Usak University.

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firing it. Glazed brick may also be cut by brick layers into different shapes and sizes and used in this fashion (R. Ark & O. Ark, 2008, p. 15). The most frequently encountered type of architectural decoration from the Anatolian Seljuk period involved the use of glazed brick in which glazed (and also unglazed) bricks were arranged to produce a variety of patterns, mostly on the facades of buildings (see Figures 1-2). Mosques, mescits (small mosques), and minarets were decorated with turquoise and purple and reddish glazed brick to produce a variety of geometric compositions and kufic inscriptions (Ozel, 1999, p. 86). Turquoise was the most frequently used color for glaze although cobalt blue, eggplant violet, and sometimes black were also popular. Glazed bricks were often used in conjunction with unglazed red bricks to form complex patterns, such as the dome decoration of the Ulu Mosque in Malatya (1247). Examples of glazed brick minarets are the Ta Madrasa (Aksehir, 1250), Yivli Minaret (Antalya, late 13th century), Sahib Ata Mosque (Konya, 1258), the Gk Madrasa and ifte Minareli Madrasa (Sivas, 1272), and Afyon Ulu Mosque and the nce Minareli Madrasa (Konya, 1264).

Figure 1. Glazed brick, Afyon Ulu Mosque. Source: Afyon (1272).

Figure 2. Glazed brick, nce Minareli Madrasa (Konya, 1264). Sourece: ney (1987, p. 49).

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THE GLAZED TILE TECHNIQUES OF THE SELJUK AND BEYLIK PERIODS

Monochrome Glazed Tiles Monochrome glazed tiles are produced by applying a transparent or opaque glaze to tile biscuits of varying sizes. The glaze is usually applied without a primer. Turquoise, purple (aubergine), dark blue, white, and green are frequently used on this type of tile. In the Seljuk and Beylik periods, the technique was applied to square, rectangular, hexagonal, eight-pointed star, cross-shaped, lozenge, and butterfly-shaped tiles. An important point to make at this juncture is that there is a different technique that produces results similar to monochrome glazing. In this technique, monochrome dye is applied to the tile biscuit, which is later glazed and fired. This is a form of underglaze painting. While it produces similar results, it should not be mistaken for monochrome glazing. Monochrome glazed tiles were used extensively on both religious and public buildings as well as palaces in the Seljuk and Beylik periods (eken, 2008, p. 15) (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Monochrome glazed tile and glazed brick, Arch at the atrance from the mosque to the tomb in Gk Madrasa, Amasya. Source: R. Ark and O. Ark (2008, p. 133).

Monochrome glazed tiles were glazed by obtaining the dark blue glaze from cobalt, turquoise from copper oxide, eggplant purple from manganate, black from a mixture of manganese and copper oxide, yellow from antimony (a nonferrous metal used to harden metals such as tin and lead), and the white from tin oxide (Satr, 2007, p. 5). Monochrome glazed tile panels were used to cover the interior walls of Seljuk works, creating a visual riot of colored glazed brick decoration on arches, vaults, wans, domes, and squinches (dome transitions). Underglaze This decoration technique entails the application of heat-resistant paints to clay biscuits and then firing them with either a colored or a colorless transparent glaze. Since the glaze is transparent, the painted decoration is visible underneath. Underglaze pigments used with transparent glaze were black, brown, green, blue, turquoise, dark blue, and purple (aubergine). Silhouetting is a technique of underglaze where black decoration (using chrome oxide) is applied under a purple transparent glaze. This is a much sought after form of underglaze. There are ceramics with cobalt blue decoration applied under turquoise transparent glaze (Ylmaz, 2000, p. 155), as well as black patterns used under cobalt blue transparent glaze. While underglaze tiles are

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typically used in the decoration of palaces, they are also seen on some religious and public architecture (R. Ark & O. Ark, 2008, p. 15). Fine examples of these tiles have been discovered at the excavations of the Kubad Abad Palace in Beysehir, where the tiles are decorated with plant motifs as well as with figures of human beings and animals (see Figure 4). Typically, the tiles are white, eight-pointed stars and have delicate figural paintings of humans and animals, including some of the best in Anatolian Seljuk representational art. Painted with an underglaze in turquoise, green, purple, and blue, these figural tiles are set on a back ground of cruciform turquoise tiles with arabesque motifs in black.

Figure 4. Underglazed painted tiles of the Kubad Abad Palace in Beysehir, Konya, 1272. Source: R. Ark and O. Ark (2008, p. 133).

Gilding

Figure 5. Interior of the eywan and the gilded tiles at the Karatay Madrasa in Konya. Source: R. Ark and O. Ark (2008, p. 87).

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THE GLAZED TILE TECHNIQUES OF THE SELJUK AND BEYLIK PERIODS

This process entails the application of gold leaf to glazed tiles. Gold leaf is cut to the desired decorative pattern and applied with a brush to the tile, which is refired at a very low temperature kiln to set the leaf in place. Gilding was typically used by the Anatolian Seljuks on monochrome turquoise and green tiles. Gilding, however, can also be combined with other techniques, such as minai, where the decoration is painted onto the glaze. With gilding, which is an overglaze technique, the gold leaf may peel off in time. While only a few examples of gilded ceramics have survived from the Anatolian, during the Seljuk period and the Beylik period gilded ceramics were relatively abundant (eken, 2008, p. 15). Examples with traces of gilding are rare today (see Figure 5). The technique can be seen in the following examples: in the yellow and green tile piece decorated with a figure from the Kl Arslan II Kiosk in Konya (on display at the Karatay Museum); in the turquoise glazed hexagonal tiles of the Divrii Hospital (Yetkin, 1986, p. 165); in the prayer niche of the Kazm Karabekir Mosque; in the turquoise glazed medallion located in the inili Kiosk Museum (Kerametli, 1973, p. 10). Luster Technique In this method, the surface of glazed tiles is covered with a thin layer of metal oxides, such as silver and copper oxides. Then they are fired again at a low temperature. The technique, which requires more than one firing, is particularly labor-intensive and time-consuming. In the first firing, the biscuit and glaze, and in the second firing, the luster is cured. Luster can be applied onto all kinds of glaze (Caiger-Smith, 1985, p. 225). Luster can also be applied to transparent and colorless glazes (Morgan, 1994, p. 163), but the best results are obtained by applying it on top of an opaque white glaze. After luster is applied, the tile is placed in a relatively low temperature kiln with an oxygen reducing atmosphere. Here the metal oxides fuse with the softened glaze and form a thin film. After cooling, the soot that forms on the tile is wiped off with a damp cloth, and from beneath emerges a gold sheen that changes from yellow and ruby red, to amber, green, and brown depending on the viewing angle. The pigments create different colors and textures depending on the intensity and duration of oxygen reduction in the kiln, and how slowly the tiles were cooled after their firing (Morgan, 1994, p. 163). The best Anatolian Seljuk luster tiles use opaque white glaze under the luster layer (see Figure 6). The luster is applied on top of turquoise, purple, green, and dark blue glazes. In all the Seljuk architecture, the greatest variety of luster tiles is to be found at the Kubad Abad palace in Konya. The tiles of the Kubad Abad Palace, the walls of which are covered with stars and cross-shaped human and animal figures, are important examples of this technique.

Figure 6. Eight pointed luster star tiles with various designs found in-situ at the Great Palace in Kubad Abad. Karatay Museum Konya. Source: R. Ark and O. Ark (2008, p. 328).

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Other fine examples of luster tiles can be seen in the Alanya Palace (Ylmaz, 2000, pp. 155-165), at Hasankeyf (M. O. Ark, 2003, p. 243), in the Kayseri Museum (Bozer, 2005, pp. 12-13), and in the Ktahya Museum (Altun, 1981-1982, p. 325) (eken, 2008, p. 15). Minai (Enamel, Minai) Technique Minai is a unique first used by the Seljuks on tiles and ceramics. It uses many different colors and produces a high quality tile or ceramic. Abul Quasim refers to this technique as seven colors (heft renk). Mina is a Persian word referring to pigments made from colored frit (Develiolu, 1993, p. 649). Western collectors of these items have thus referred to them as minai ware, and this name is popularly used. In recent years, the technique has also been called enamel and overglaze painted, but none of these terms does justice to the complexity of the technique (R. Ark & O. Ark, 2008, p. 19). Producing minai tiles is onerous and time-consuming. Of particular importance is the preparation of minai pigments to be applied over the glazed object. These pigments are made from frit, various oxides, and vinegar or molasses for viscosity. The technique entails the application of an initial glaze (usually white) on greenware. This is typically decorated using turquoise, cobalt, blue, and green (Bernsted, 2003, pp. 44-47), and then fired. Later, the item is removed from the kiln and redecorated using red, black, brown, and white colored enamels, and sometimes gilding and silvering. It is then refired in a relatively low temperature kiln. The technique created decorations with crisp lines, enabling craftsmen to achieve a high degree of detail. The first glaze, in addition to opaque white, could be opaque turquoise, blue, or dark blue. A variation of the minai technique is known as lajwardina. In this technique, the initial glaze contains no colors other than a uniform dark blue. All coloring is done as overglaze using only red, white and gilding or silvering (eken, 2008, p. 19). The most common patterns and designs in artistic tile panels from this time were stars, crosses, squares and diamonds, accompanied by throne scenes representing court life, various hunting scenes and especially flowers. However, the most interesting figures are the various animals related to hunting and the imaginary or magical animals. Such creatures as the sphinx, siren, single, and double-headed eagles, singles, and paired peacocks, paired birds flanking the tree of life, and dragons create a magical world of the imagination. They are all symbolic representations of the rich figural world of the Seljuks (Ozel, 1999, p. 88). Fine examples of these tiles can be seen in the Konya Aladdin Kiosk (the Kl Arslan II Kiosk) (see Figure 7).

Figure 7. Examples of Minai tiles Konya Aladdin Kiosk (the Kl Arslan II Kiosk). Konya. Source: ney (1987, p. 35).

Glazed Tile Mosaics Tile mosaic decoration became highly developed in Anatolia during the Seljuk period. It is a complex and visually diversified technique, generally applied to such interior surfaces as domes, squinches, arches, panels, and mihrabs. Tiles in turquoise, and less frequently in purple, cobalt blue, and black glazes were cut to the required shape to form a decorative composition. The cut pieces were placed, according to a design, in a

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mosaic-like pattern (Ozel, 1999, p. 87). Custom glazed tile pieces in the form of medallions, stars, cones, etc., have also been produced. To create the mosaic pattern, small pieces of tile are laid down on a flat or curved surface. Later, gypsum plaster is poured on the back of the pieces to pieces to seal them in place. Once the plaster is dry, the mosaic can be mounted on the surface it was intended for. Glazed tile mosaics have been widely used as architectural decoration owing to their ability to conform to both flat and curved surfaces (eken, 2008, p. 20) (see Figure 8).

Figure 8. Glazed tile msaics of the window on the right of the right on the etrance at the Tomb of Keykavus in Sivas. Source: R. Ark and O. Ark (2008, p. 51).

Mosaic tile compositions range from geometric and floral patterns to examples of calligraphy. Glazed tile mosaics have also been used together with brick, gypsum, or stone to create rich compositions of different colors and textures. The most popular colors were turquoise, cobalt blue, eggplant violet, and black. Examples of Anatolian Seljuk buildings decorated with mosaic tile include the Karatay Madrasa in Konya, the Aladdin Mosque in Konya, the Gok Madrasa and Mosque in Sivas and the Malatya Grand Mosque in Malatya. Relief Molding Technique This technique entails the production of relief tiles, using special molds and/or sculpting after the moulding. The technique, which, based on findings unearthed so far, was used only on monochrome and underglaze tiles in the Anatolian Seljuk and Beylik periods, was applied to luster and minai tiles outside of Anatolia (R. Ark & O. Ark, 2008, p. 20) (see Figure 9). The technique was typically employed on tiles with bands of calligraphy using white and dark blue colored glaze, but monochrome relief molded tiles are also to be found in Anatolia. Examples of the technique can be seen in the Kubad Abad Palace, the Aladddin Mosque, and the Karaarslan Tomb in Konya. Examples of the monochrome relief molded tiles are also present on the sarcophagus inscription of Mevlana Celaleddin Rumis Tomb.

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Figure 9. Examples of glazed tiles with relief molding technique, Iran. Art of Islam Museum, Berlin. Source: ney (1987, p. 54).

Colored Glaze Technique Colored glazes can be applied onto the plates in several ways. The biscuit is generally red in color. In the first method, the contours of the desired pattern are drawn onto the biscuit using a glaze with chrome or manganese oxide and sugar. Later, the pattern is colored using blue, purple, green, yellow, white, or red colored opaque glazes and fired. During firing, the contours rise and keep the other colors from mixing. A different method is seen mainly in the Early Ottoman period. The pattern to be colored is either carved onto the biscuit, or pressed with a face mould. Later, the recesses created by the carving or the mould are filled with different colored glazes, and the biscuit is fired (Yetkin, 1986, pp. 205-207) (see Figure 10). This technique, which is not seen until the first half of the 15th century in Anatolian glazed tiles, became popular mainly in the Early Ottoman period and was further developed following this era. In the Beylik period, outside of Ottoman territory, the best example is the prayer niche of the Karamanoglu Ibrahim Bey Imaret (complex) (R. Ark & O. Ark, 2008, p. 21).

Figure 10. Colored glazed tile decoration of Bursa Green Mosque. Source: Ozel (1999, p. 86).

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In addition to these techniques, the faux mosaic technique (glaze engraving) was used during the Seljuk period. This technique entails engraving a glazed tile to reveal the underlying clay. The engraving is done according to a pattern, thus creating a mosaic effect (see Figure 11). Examples of this technique can be seen in the Malatya Grand Mosque and the Sahipata tomb in Konya.

Figure 11. Example of the faux mosaic technique. Tile decoration of Bursa Green Mosque. Source: ney (1987, p. 36).

Conclusions
The Turkish interior and exterior architectural ornamental tile art form and the continuous development of Anatolian Turkish architecture have been shown. The various techniques of this ornamental art always create a colorful atmosphere, based on the architecture. This art form was very common in the Anatolian Seljuk architectural monuments of various types and it shows a great improvement over its continued existence until today. The tile decoration of each period, while maintaining the technical virtues of the previous period, has enriched the tradition with new technical inventions and colors. In Anatolian Seljuk architecture, religious buildings are decorated with the mosaic tile technique. The first examples of bricks and glazed bricks were used, but in a short period of time, all the surface finishing of glazed mosaic tiles reached a superior level. In the Beylik period, the use of tiles was not as majestic as it was in the Seljuk period. However, in some examples, this art is still being seen as successful. In sum, the tile art techniques of the Seljuk and Beylik periods inspired the artists of the Ottoman period.

References
Altun, A. (1981-1982). Turkish period architecture of Ktahya (Ktahyann Trk devri Mimarisi). Istanbul: Ktahya Kltr Yaynlar. Altun, A., Carswell, J., & Oney, G. (1991). Turkish tiles and ceramics, Iznik Kutahya, Canakkale. Istanbul: Sadberk Hanim Museum. Ark, M. O. (2003). Hasankeyf: The city where three worlds meet (Hasankeyf: Dnyann Bulutuu Kent). stanbul: Trkiye Bankas Kltr Yaynlar. Ark, R., & Ark, O. (2008). Tiles, treasure of the Anatolian soil, tiles of the Seljuk and Beylik periods (Anadolu Toprann Hazinesi iniSeluklu Ve Beylikler a inileri). Istanbul: Kale Group Editions. Aslanapa, O. (1993). Turkish art (Trk Sanat). Istanbul: Remzi Kitap Evi. Bernsted, A.-M. K. (2003). Early Islamic pottery materials & techniques. London: Archetype. INST ARCHKD 1 KEB.

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Bozer, R. (2005). Kayseri huand bath tiles (Kayseri Huand Hamam inileri). zmir: Sanat Tarihi Dergisi. Caiger-Smith, A. (1985). Lustre pottery: Technique, tradition and innovation in Islam and the western world. London: Faber and Faber. eken, M. (2008). Materials, techniques and kilns used in the productions of Seljuk and Beylik period glazed tiles. Tiles, treasure of the Anatolian soil, tiles of the Seljuk and Beylik periods (Anadolu Toprann Hazinesi iniSeluklu Ve Beylikler a inileri). Istanbul: KaleGroup Editions. Develiolu, F. (1993). Glossary of old and new letters in Ottoman Turkish (Osmanlca Trke Lgat eski ve yeni harflerle). (11. Bask). Ankara: Aydn Kitabevi. Kerametli, C. (1973). Wall tiles Anatolian Seljuk periods (Anadolu Seluklu Devri Duvar inileri). Trkiyemiz Journal (Trkiyemiz), 10. Morgan, P. (1994). Iranian stone-paste pottery of the Saljug period: Types and techniques. Cobalt and lustre, the first centuries of Islamic pottery. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ney, G. (1987). Ceramic tiles in Islamic architecture. Istanbul: Ada Press Publishers. ney, G. (1989). Arts of Beylik periods XIV.-XV. century (Beylikler Devri Sanati, XIV.-XV. Yuzyil), (1300-1453). Ankara: Turkish History Foundation Print House. ney, G., & Cobanl, Z. (2007). Art of tiles and ceramics in the Turkish period in Anatolia (Anadoluda Trk Devri ini ve Seramik Sanat). Istanbul: T. R. Ministry of Culture and Tourism General Directorate of Libraries and Editions. Oral, E. M. (2005). Development of the contemporary Turkish ceramic art (Trkiyede ada Seramik Sanatnn Geliimi). Eskiehir: Anadolu Sanat. Ozel, M. (1999). Turkish arts. Ankara: The Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Culture. Porter, V. (1995). Islamic tiles. London: British Museum Press. Satr, S. (2007, February). A current evaluation of the traditional Iznik tiles and ceramic. Design Discourse, II(3). Yetkin, . (1986). Development of the art of Anatolia, Turkish tiles (Anadoluda Trk ini sanatnn Geliimi). stanbul: Istanbul niversitesi. Edebiyat Fakltesi Yaynlar. Ylmaz, L. (2000). Ceramic finds from the excavation-Seljuk palace Alanya castle, I-IV. Excavation and research symposium Midle age and Turkish periods. Van, Turkey: Yznc Yl niversitesi. (Alanya kalesi kazs-Seluklu Saray ini buluntular-I, IV. Otaa ve Trk dnemi Kazlar ve Aratrmalar Sempozyumu Bildiriler Kitab. Van, Turkey: Yznc Yl niversitesi Yaynlar).

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836 January 2013, Vol. 3, No. 1, 52-60

DA VID

PUBLISHING

Primordial, Sacred, and Secular Architecture: Jan Patokas Theory of the Work of Architecture*
Milo evk
University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Pilsen, Czech Republic

The paper deals with Jan Patokas considerations on architecture. It presents Patokas concept of space as the union of two sensory fields, the kinaesthetic-tactile and the visual, and it emphasizes that this union is considered as the primordial architecture. According to Patokas view, the material architecture is only a consequence of the primordial architecture. The paper also follows Patokas idea of the sacral transubstantiation. Patoka argues that, traditionally, the construction of a work of architecture is considered as dependent on favourable conditions, on divine consent with such a construction and the movement of divine powers into constructed work. The origin of architecture is thus religious. The paper considers the relations and differences between the sacred and secular architecture. It highlights Patokas idea that both sacred and secular architecture open a certain world, even thought, the status of the world of sacred architecture differs considerably from that of the world of secular architecture. Keywords: Jan Patoka, space, architecture, art

Introduction
In this paper, the author considers the theory of architecture of the Czech phenomenological philosopher Jan Patoka. 1 The author proposes that its important features can be properly presented only after Patokas conception of the construction of space is first taken into account. The author therefore addresses Patokas conception of the relationship between primordial architecture, constructed of sensory fields, and material architecture of the real building. The author also presents Patokas idea of sacred transubstantiation, that is, the idea of the incorporation of divine powers into material architecture. With the help of this idea, the author aims to demonstrate both the similarities and the contrasts between Patokas theory of architecture and Heideggers notion of the building as a preservation of the oneness of the earth, the sky, mortals, and the divine. The author
*

Acknowledgments: This study was supported within the project of Education for Competitiveness Operational Programme (OPVK), Research Center for the Theory and History of Science (Vzkumn centrum pro teorii a djiny vdy), registration No. CZ.1.07/2.3.00/20.0138, co-financed by the European Social Fund and the state budget of the Czech Republic. Milo evk, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. 1 Jan Patoka (1907-1977) is generally considered to be the most important Czech philosopher of the 20th century. He studied in Prague, Paris, Berlin, and Freiburg; he was a pupil of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Patoka dealt mainly with the problem of the natural world, especially its structure, consisting in three fundamental movements of existence. Working on the problem of the natural world, he developed Husserls, Heideggers, and Finks concepts. The most significant of Patokas works are Natural World as a Philosophical Problem (Pirozen svt jako filozofick problem, 1936), An Introduction to the Husserls Phenomenology (vod do Husserlovy fenomenologie, 1965), and Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History (Kacsk eseje o filosofii djin, 1973-1976).

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emphasizes that Patoka supposes that only sacred architecture can be explained on the basis of sacred transubstantiation and that secular architecture must be explained on the basis of another principle. In this context, the author follows Patokas concept of the historical development of culture and endeavours to demonstrate that both sacred and secular art offer a certain truth, even though the status of the truth of sacred art and of secular art differ radically from each other. Sacred art is the depiction of divinity and modern secular art is the expression of human freedom. The author concludes that this expression is also the principle of modern secular architecture.

Primordial and Material Architecture

In the essay Space and Its Problems (Prostor a jeho problematika, 1991), Patoka offered a historical survey of the conceptions of space, and also criticized modern conceptions of space. He argues that the modern conception of geometrical space is artificial. Space is originally not objective, geometrical, and ordered, but subjective, personal, and ordering (Patoka, 1991, pp. 7-16). Also, in the essay Thoughts on Reads Book about Sculpture (vahy nad Readovou knihou o sochastv, 2004c), he argued that modern science and objectively, scientifically oriented, modern philosophy neglect the dramatic character of space; modern science and scientifically oriented philosophy concentrate only on the material and relational aspect of space, on space as a material and relational fact. The dramatic character of space is only revealed, Patoka argues, if space is considered as an ontological fact, as a structural factor of being (Patoka, 2004c, p. 450). In Space and Its Problems, Patoka states that the subjects presence in space is established by the fact of the original inside (Patoka, 1991, p. 16). The relation originating a space is not a relation in space; the original inside is not inside an objective space. The original inside is not the objective relation, that is, a certain relation in an objective space; rather, it is the subjects relation to beings as a whole. The original inside in the same way incorporates and detaches the subject from beings as a whole. It is equally in and out, because incorporating the subject into this whole is impossible without detaching the subject from it. Similarly, in Thoughts on Reads Book about Sculpture, Patoka proposes that spaceas a structural factor of beingplaces us in beings as a whole of by distancing us from beings of this whole at once. Only on the basis of this placing distancing (umsujc distancovn) can individual things appear, that is, become apparent (Patoka, 2004c, p. 450). It is obvious that Patoka develops Martin Heideggers concept of the relation of human existence to Being in such considerations.2 In his famous essay What is Metaphysics? (1978b), Heidegger said that human existence is originally related to beings as a whole by the receding of beings from this existence (Heidegger, 1978b, p. 103). Such a receding of beings is, however, identical with the meeting of Being. In Space and Its Problems, Patoka argues that the original inside is the relation to the universe and that this relation is the manner of existence of the subject (Patoka, 1991, p. 16). But this original inside is ambiguous. It presents the relation to the whole, which is distant, hidden, and unknown, but also the relation to a differently conceived whole, which is present as the context or overall scheme of the relations of things (Patoka, 1991, pp. 16, 20). On the one hand, the universe is infinite and the boundaries of this universe remain in the dark. On the

Patoka is, however, highly critical of Heideggers omission of the bodily character of human existence. He considers Heideggers view of human existence to be overly formal. Patoka argues that only with a view of the bodily character of human existence is it possible to present the correct description of space (Patoka, 1992, p. 217). Patoka repeatedly expresses such a conviction.

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other hand, the universe is to be understood as an illuminated horizon of beings. The universe therefore has both a dark and a bright side; it is both unmanageable and enables things to be managed. The original insideas an overall schema of relationsthus enables contact with concrete things. It contains references to the possibilities of concrete contact with things. The subject led by these references comes into contact with its surroundings. At the moment of contact, one concrete object steps out of these surroundings, and at the next moment another object steps out. The vicinity of the subject is thus changing, continually undulating (Patoka, 1991, p. 17). The subject stands in the centre of this undulating vicinity; it is surrounded by changing objects. The original inside is thus specially structured. The centre of it is subjective; changing objects or other subjects and the infinite periphery surrounds the subject. Patoka stresses that the subject always strives to establish communion with objects and other subjects and even with the infinite periphery. This harmonization or solidarity with vicinity and periphery is the essence of human living, the essence of human residing (Patoka, 1991, pp. 19-20). The subjective and personal space presents the union of two sensory fields, the kinaesthetic-tactile and the visual (Patoka, 1991, pp. 22-24). The kinaesthetic-tactile field is the dimension of active interaction with objects; it is the field of the unending search for objects, unending groping. This field is always open; it is without limits. The subject is able endlessly to proceed forward to the individual objects or subjects in this field. By contrast, the visual field provides a feeling of closeness to the horizon. This field is always closed; it offers the limit as a whole. This whole is not the object or the complex of objects; it is infinity itself. The horizon is inexhaustible and hidden infinity. The two sensory fields are therefore both related and opposite. In the kinaesthetic-tactile field the subject goes into the distance; in the visual field, the distance moves towards the subject, falling down on the subject. Patoka says that the joining of these two fields is the primordial architecture, the primordial building. Material architecture is only a consequence of this fundamental joining of the fact of the joining of the tactile vertical and the visual horizontal. Already in its active relation to individual objects or subjects surrounded by the visual horizon, the subject strives for a harmonic relation to the world. The subject creates the secure home, which incorporates all that is close and friendly but also all that is distant and strange. Such a home is, however, secure only in contrast to the thread of the cosmic horizon. It is possible to conclude that the construction of material architecture, that is, the material realization of a secure and friendly home, ensues from the construction of sensory fields. The tactile field of action and the visual field of closeness find their counterparts in a material building. The material home presents the creation of the inner space covered against the outer space; material architecture is the realization of the secure and friendly inside.

Sacred Transubstantiation
Patoka points out that the closeness of the human subject to the visual horizon radically differs from every other closeness, because the closeness to the horizon is the pure inside, that is, it is closeness without the outside. Patoka says that this closeness to the visual horizon is the source of the architectural feeling. This architectural feeling is never absent from the life of a human being. Originally, however, this feeling was unnoticed; it presented the invisible film of everyday experience and acting. Only later, did it become the subject of active forming and developing (Patoka, 2004c, p. 452). Patoka suggests that this feeling is the source of the desire for a private room (Patoka, 1991, pp. 35-36). This desire was satisfied by human beings initially settling in caves. The cave presented not only the inside covered from the unsecure outside, but it also

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brought the possibility of organizing private and social life. But the desire for the secure and friendly inside was satisfied only in the emergence of the house. Strictly speaking, the emergence of the house enabled privacy and it rooted life. Patoka argues that the successful construction of the house was not traditionally seen as an altogether autonomous fact, as a fact totally independent of favourable conditions. Such a work is successful only if divinity enables it, agrees with the transformation and formation of materials and the humble and the rich gifts of the soil, only if the superhuman being consents to the use of soil, stone, and wood and to the creation of a special pattern and rhythm (Patoka, 1991, p. 37). The settling of a house, village, or town is the result of a common decision taken by the closest and the most distant, the human, and the cosmic. Patoka proposes that the origin of architecture is cultic and religious. The material building presents the concentration of divine powers coming from the visual horizon into the centre of the visible world. Patoka depicts this process of concentration of divine powers as sacred transubstantiation (Patoka, 1991, p. 24). Sacred transubstantiation obliges the building tendency, it offers an objectiveor rather super-objectiveexplanation of this tendency, Patoka says. Sacred transubstantiation enables this tendency to become conscious and to become conscious as building of the universe. Sacred transubstantiation also presents the human role in this building as passive, imitative, and unimportant. What exactly is this sacred transubstantiation? It is the movement of the world horizon to the centre of the world. Divine powers coming from the periphery of the world become the centre of the world from their own decision and initiative, the absolute reveals itself. Patoka suggests that the absolute thus enables orientation in the world; the place of epiphany becomes the centre of this orientation. Epiphany categorizes the entities of the world; this fundamental categorization differentiates in particular the sacred from the profane, that is, differentiates true, really existing being from weakened and dying being. From this moment, the tendency of building obtains the overall plan and concept; it stands on an overall scheme of relations (Patoka, 1991, pp. 24-25). The ways that the divine is in contact with the profane and consequently also the results of the sacred transubstantiation in architecture of course differ greatly. In some respects, Patokas concept of sacred transubstantiation brings to mind Heideggers idea of the relation of the fourfold to buildings. In his essay Building Dwelling Thinking (1971), Heidegger stated that building is really dwelling and that dwelling secures the fourfoldthat is, the simple oneness of the earth, the sky, mortals and divinitiesin things (Heidegger, 1971, pp. 149-150). In general, there are two modes of dwelling: the building that cultivates growing things and the building that erects buildings. The nature of buildings is thus preserving and guarding the fourfold. Genuine buildings give form to dwelling; they present a particular response to the summons of the fourfold. All the planning and all the constructing of buildings remains based on this responding (Heidegger, 1971, p. 159). Heidegger supposes that dwelling is the universal nature of buildings. Buildings always preserve the fourfold, whether this is evident in them or whether obstructed (Heidegger, 1971, p. 153). Even though Patokas idea of the relation of the building to the divine powers coming from the visual horizon is very similar to Heidegers idea of keeping the fourfold in the edifices, the important differences between the two authors concepts are obvious as well. In contrast to Heidegger, Patoka recognizes that it is impossible to explain the nature of modern architecture by the idea of sacred transubstantiation, that is, by the idea of the reunion of the absolute powers and human work in the movement of the world horizon into the centre of the world. Another explanation must be found for the character of modern secular architecture.

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The Dialectics of the Outside and the Inside

In Thoughts on Reads Book on Sculpture, Patoka follows Herbert Reads concept of the relation of sculpture and architecture (Patoka, 2004c, pp. 452-453; Read, 1961, pp. 3-24). Patoka accepts Reads idea that both architecture and sculpture grow from a common root. This root is the monument, originally of compact and nonorganic appearance. In the monument emerged a case for a tactile image of god. The monument thus became hollow; it started to enclose space. From that time, architecture develops, the origin of architecture is thus sculptural, concludes Read. Both architecture and sculpture create real objects in a real space. The difference between them lies in the fact that architecture encloses space, whereas sculpture occupies it. Architectural space, empty space could, Read points out, be thematic, as it is in ancient Roman architecture, or non-thematic, as it is in ancient Greek architecture. In respect to this architectural inside, the problem of shaping of a corresponding outside emerged. There were two possibilities of this shaping, the firstthe total sculptural decoration of the Indian temple, the otherthe Greek solution, entailing the concentration of sculptures on tympanons and metopes and the geometrical organization of the remainder of the temple, including the rows of columns. Read adds that in ancient Roman and early Christian architecture, the empty interior of the church became the most important artistic element to be outlined. The rows of columns occupied the inside and started to present the foreground on the background of the vault. In Gothic architecture, Patoka adds, the elevation of the vault, the enlargement of the inside, led to the problem of how to shape the outside again. In this respect, the Gothic solution was analogous to the Indian; Renaissance architecture adopted the Greek solution with certain modifications (Patoka, 2004c, p. 453). Patoka says that it is possible to find the true crux in Reads dialectics, but he also states that such a dialectics of the inside and outside should be considered on the basis of the properly understood difference between sensory fields, the visual and the kinaesthetic-tactile (Patoka, 2004c, pp. 441, 451). In other words, Patoka supposes that the polarity and the solidarity of the kinaesthetic-tactile and the visual presents the origin of the dialectics of the inside and the outside in the development of sculpture and architecture. On the one hand, the monolith makes sense only if it is related to the optical periphery, only if the magical omnipotent power incorporates into it. The monolith as the divine axis of the world order is thus closely related to the visual horizon, to the optic periphery, which contains and encircles all human beings and things, which is sensorily present as something beyond presence. This periphery encloses everything and gets lost in uncertainty. The monolith as the prototype of a temple thus makes sense only in relation to the periphery incorporating divine powers into it. On the other hand, the emergence of inner architectural space itself also has a very important relation to the visual horizon. The inner space of a high vaulted church was created by limiting the encirclement of the visual sphere by transferring it into the inside of a former monolith (Patoka, 2004c, p. 452). The process of development of an architectural outside and inside is, in fact, the process of harmonic crystallization growing from the absent presence of a visual horizon (Patoka, 2004c, p. 453). Patoka (2004c) said that the optic closeness of the space presents the sensory realization of the ontological fact of the original inside (p. 453). Similarly, he (1991) also mentioned that the visual horizon exemplifies the fact that human existence is always inside (p. 24). It is thus reasonable to conclude that because the absent presence of a visual horizon is the sensuous manifestation of the original inside the

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dialectics of the architectural inside and outside must be anchored in the fact of the inside. The original inside is the basis of the dialectics of the outside and the inside described by Read, Patoka (2004, pp. 450-451) said. He remarks that Read did not mention this original inside, because he considered only aspects of artworks. Patoka concludes that every architectural workand also every sculptural, visual, or even literary and musical artworkreacts to the fact of the inside; it presents an answer to such a fact. It must thus create the space in a certain manner. The visual artwork of course creates the illusion of space, whereas the literary or musical artwork evokes the representation of space. Only the sculpture or building creates real objects in real space. But the sculpture occupies space, whereas architecture encloses it. Patoka says that the sculptural work remains compact, whereas the architectural work creates empty space, regardless of whether this emptiness is conscious or unconscious. One notes a striking similarity between Patokas and Heideggers thoughts on the relationship between art and space. In this respect, both authors also consider the role of architecture similarly. In the essay Art and Space (1973), Heidegger considered the relationship between the work of art and space. He says that in the work of art genuine space is uncovered. The work of art is a clearing-away and a freeing from wilderness (Heidegger, 1973, p. 5). This clearing-away of genuine space is the release of secular and sacred spaces; it is the release of the locations of possible dwellings for man, the regions of the possible tarrying of things surrounding and concerning man (Heidegger, 1973, p. 8). Such a release is, however, the unconcealment of Being (Heidegger, 1973, p. 8). In Being Dwelling Thinking, Heidegger argues that building as dwelling produces locations and that these locations provide spaces. He says that building, by virtue of constructing locations, is a founding and joining of spaces. The locations are, however, produced as buildings and other works of architecture and engineering. Building thus receives from the fourfold the standard for all the traversing and measuring of the spaces that are provided for by the locations that were founded as buildings (Heidegger, 1971, p. 158).3 But Heidegger also argues here that dwelling is the character of Being. In Thoughts on Reads Book on Sculpture, Patoka argues very similarly that art relates space essentially; it attempts to give human existence the essential foundations, the relation to being. But, Patoka says, to relate being means to dwell in the world and to build. And to build means to live in space. Art is thus necessarily in relation to space. In the proper sense, it relates to the dramatic aspect of space; it grasps space as a structural factor of being. The work of art thus builds in a most fundamental sense of the world, because it shows us the dimensions of space; it enables us to live in a space of a certain character, to deal with and to meet beings of a certain character. Only the work of art enables the encounter of the absent and present, of the unreal and real; the divine, for example, is among us in an ancient temple and the transcendent is here in a Gothic church (Patoka, 2004c, p. 451).

Secular Architecture as the Heir of Sacred Architecture

In Space and Its Problems, Patoka emphasizes the historical importance of the sacred understanding of architecture. The sacred orientation of architecture is demonstrated by the nature of private and public buildings from archaic, ancient, and medieval times. Houses, churches, places of sacrifice, places of celebration, and also
3 Heideggers view on the status of the mathematical or the physical concept of space is very similar to Patokas as well. Heidegger believes that such a concept is artificial. He argues that dwelling is much closer to the origin of the nature of space then any geometry or any mathematics (Heidegger, 1971, p. 158), Physical-technical space cannot be considered genuine space (Heidegger, 1973, p. 5).

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entire villages and cities manifest the sacred understanding of space. In these periods, the house is the image of the universe and the church is the house of God (Patoka, 1991, p. 26). Patoka (1991) argued that modern secular architecture only develops the heritage of sacred architecture (p. 26). But what exactly is inherited? It is clear that the heritage of sacred architecture does not consist only in concrete modes of the construction of buildings and the planning of villages, towns, and cities. And it is obvious that Patoka believes that the sacred building of space contains something that the secular building of space also contains. The sacred orientation of architecture is the manifestation of a certain understanding of the beings as a whole. If secular architecture is considered the heir to sacred architecture, one must conclude that modern secular architecture is also connected to a certain understanding of beings as a whole. The building of the whole world (Patoka, 1991, p. 26) is thus founded on both sacred and secular architecture. But, the author would note, the concept of heritage includes both continuation and change. The author has already mentioned that Patoka considers architectural artworks to be real objects creating an empty space and presenting the dimension of space. In the essay Hegels Philosophical and Aesthetic Development (Hegelv filozofick a estetick vvoj, 2004a), Patoka argues, however, that architecture creates not only the most characteristic objects, landmarks, and points of reference of our surroundings, but also the key feature of the space-form (tvarov prostorov pedznamenn) of concrete life. Only in this key feature of space-form do the individual components of our surroundings gain their proper sense. This key feature shapes the landscape and the relations between the earth, the waters, and the heavens; it defines distance, security, peace, and danger (Patoka, 2004a, p. 301). The author also mentioned that Patoka views the structure of space as being built dramatically and historically, that is to say, it is different in different historical eras. He also points out that the structure of space is not a simple fact but is something that arrives (Patoka, 2004c, p. 450). Architectural artworks of different eras thus show the structure of space in a different manner. Or, the architectural artworks of different eras create different worlds, different ways of understanding reality. One must therefore consider Patokas concept of the history of culture to be able to grasp the continuity and change in the nature of the heritage of sacred architecture that is present in modern secular architecture.

Two Different Eras of Culture and of Architecture in Particular

In the essay Art and Time (Umn a as, 2004b), Patoka recognized two different eras in the cultural history of humankind (Patoka, 2004b, pp. 306-307). The first is called the era of artistic culture. At that time, art was the predominant way of approaching the world. Man understood the truth of the world primarily through works of art. The divine was revealed through art, and the human gaze penetrated art directly to the truth which governed the world. The work of art was not recognized as such, that is, as an independent reality; the viewers gaze passed through the artwork as if through a window to the reality that was to be grasped. Art presented a method of living out, feeling and thinking, certain religious or ritual questions, access to a festive, extraordinary, deciding and divine aspect of the world. This era lasted from the prehistory through the 19th century. Patoka believes that the second era began in the 19th century, and continues to the present day. This is called either the era of aesthetic culture or the reflected era. Abstract terms were the predominant tool of approaching the world. All objects are scientifically analyzed, including works of art. This is characterized by the constitution of two new scholarly disciplines, aesthetics and art history. Scholars in these new disciplines have carried out extensive research and

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made important discoveries. Artistic production has been revealed to be a special kind of activity distinguishable from purely technical activity. Specific problems concerning works of art have been solved by determining abstract relations and laws. The work of art has been recognized as an independent reality. The viewers gaze rests on the artwork itself. The artwork does not refer to something outside itself. Patoka believes that the artworks of both the artistic era and the aesthetic era always open up a certain world, in other words, a certain horizon of human existence. He considers this opening up of the world to be the opening up of being (Patoka, 2004b, p. 316). This world, in Heidegger view, enables the fundamental orientation of human existence, and shows what a human being is, what a thing is, and what an animal is (Heidegger, 1978a, p. 169). Patoka (2004b, pp. 315-316) argued that the opening up of the complete world remains a fundamental operation performed by the work of art. He insists on this opening up of the world by the artwork, on this opening up of the horizon, even though, as he admits, the status of this world has radically changed during the previous centuries. Art is no longer able to open up the objective and binding world, but it does offer a subjective one. Patoka believes that the art of the present expresses the world rather than depict it. He also emphasizes that this expression provides conclusive evidence of human freedom. We need such evidence today, in times that are scientific and technical. Patoka successfully demonstrates that modern science regards nature as absolutely inorganic, that is, as a system of abstract scientific formulas (Patoka, 1996, p. 116). Nature is conceived of as a totally predictable and exploitable system. It is a system of usable potentialities, an immense source of energy. This modern scientific view of nature also concerns humans. In the world today, the scientific and technical view of nature determines human life in all spheresthe social, the economic, the political, the environmental, and even in the private. Human beings are considered items in the accumulation and transformation of usable natural forces; they are accumulated, calculated, utilized, and manipulated. At present, human beings are also considered items in the production and consumption process. Patoka argues that from the general scientific and technical view of nature the development of industrial production and consumption creates a self-governing system, a system of unleashed production. Industrial production absorbs distribution, and is capable of planning future consumption. This production surpasses natural demand, creates unnatural demand, and forces consumers to expend all their energies to obtain the products on offer. This situation inevitably results in the concealed imprisonment of humankind, the imprisonment of the consumer. In this respect, Patoka focuses on the graduation of power in the third person. It is this power which makes use of human beings as tools in its own development, in its own strengthening (Patoka, 2004b, pp. 310-321). In todays world, a work of art is evidence that a human being is no mere accumulator or transformer of natural forces. A work of art proves, on the contrary, that a human being is a real creative source, freedom. Art represents a massive protest against the subordination of human beings to the process of unleashed production, to the process of increasing of power (Patoka, 2004b, p. 316). The author would emphasize that the character of the heritage of sacred architecture in secular architecture can be well understood in the light of Patokas reflections on the two eras in the cultural history of humankind. Both architecturesthe sacred and the secularopen up a world, a horizon of human existence, even though the horizon of sacred architecture is binding and objective and the horizon of secular architecture is subjective. Modern secular architecture is therefore evidence of human freedom, of the human ability to remain part of the real creative process. In Art and Time, Patoka also points out that modern art can perform its role only if it is

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part of reality, only if closely related to everyday life (Patoka, 2004b, pp. 314-316). Modern theatre surmounts the contradiction between the performance and the audience, modern sculpture abandons the pedestal, and modern painting is unconcerned with the visibility of the image surface. Modern art is thus not an artificial paradise, not escapism. The function of modern art is not an escape from the problems of everyday reality, but an expression of human freedom. The importance of modern secular architecture is evident from this perspective. Perhaps no other art can better serve as an expression of human freedom, because no other art is so close to the problems of common reality and everyday life.

Conclusions
In this paper, the author has traced out Patokas theory of architecture. The author has sought to show that it is based on his conception of space, because material architecture is only a consequence of the primordial architecture of the construction of sensory fields, that is, a consequence of primordial architecture. The author has also traced out the problems in the relationship between the two modes of material architecture, the sacred and the secular. The author has sought to show that both these architectures open up a certain world, even though the character of the world opened up by sacred architecture is radically different from the world opened up by secular architecture. In Patokas view, the worlds opened by works of architecture present the result of the revelation of being. Even though Patokas theory of architecture is clearly inspired by Heideggers reflections, the opinions of these two authors differ in this respect. Heidegger argues that the genuine edifice is inevitably related to the fourfold, that is, the unity of the earth, the sky, mortals, and divinities, but Patoka supposes that sacred architecture is enabled only by sacred transubstantiation. He argues that whereas sacred architecture depicts the omnipotence of divinity, secular architecture expresses the freedom of subjectivity. The author has sought to demonstrate that Patoka strongly emphasizes the importance of this expression today. It is in this context that the author sees the importance of modern secular architecture.

References
Heidegger, M. (1971). Building dwelling thinking. In A. Hofstadter (Ed.), Poetry, language, thought (pp. 145-161). New York: Harper & Row. Heidegger, M. (1973). Art and space. Man and World, 6(1), 3-8. Heidegger, M. (1978a). The origin of the work of art. In D. F. Krell (Ed.), Basic writings (pp. 149-187). London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Heidegger, M. (1978b). What is metaphysics?. In D. F. Krell (Ed.), Basic writings (pp. 95-112). London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Patoka, J. (1991). Space and its problems (Prostor a jeho problematika). Estetika, 28(1), 1-37. Patoka, J. (1992). Natural world as a philosophical problem (Pirozen svt jako filozofick problm). Prague: eskoslovensk spisovatel. Patoka, J. (1996). Heretical essays in the philosophy of history. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court. Patoka, J. (2004a). Hegels philosophical and aesthetic development (Hegelv filozofick a estetick vvoj). In D. Vojtch & I. Chvatk (Eds.), Art and time I (Umn a as I) (pp. 227-302). Prague: OIKOYMENH. Patoka, J. (2004b). Art and time (Umn a as). In D. Vojtch & I. Chvatk (Eds.), Art and time I (Umn a as I) (pp. 303-318). Prague: OIKOYMENH. Patoka, J. (2004c). Thoughts on reads book about sculpture (vahy nad Readovou knihou o sochastv). In D. Vojtch & I. Chvatk (Eds.), Art and time I (Umn a as I) (pp. 441-453). Prague: OIKOYMENH. Read, H. (1961). The art of sculpture. New York: Bollingen Foundation.

Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836 January 2013, Vol. 3, No. 1, 61-69

DA VID

PUBLISHING

Is Fengshui Science or Superstition? A New Criterion for Judging the Value of Knowledge Systems*
ZHANG Yong-feng, DAI Wei
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Fengshui, which can be translated as Wind-Water literally in English, is an ancient Chinese system of laws considered to govern spatial arrangement and orientation in relation to the flow of Qi, and whose favorable or unfavorable effects are taken into account when sitting and designing buildings. Similar systems exist in many other cultures such as Vastu Shastra in India, which consists of precepts born out of a traditional and archaic view on how the laws of nature affect human dwellings. Although prospered in ancient society, modern reactions to Fengshui are mixed. The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience states that principles of Fengshui are quite rational, but folk remedies and superstitions have been incorporated into its eclectic mix. In this paper, we do not distinguish Fengshui and other similar systems between science and superstition, but try to propose a criterion for judging whether a knowledge system is valuable, and if so, to whom it is valuable. We will end up arguing that, a knowledge system satisfying the criterion of relatively true property is valuable at least to its community of believers, and the problem of whether a knowledge system has greater value is essentially a problem of whether it is relatable to other knowledge systems, so as to expand its community of believers. Keywords: philosophy of science, superstition, Fengshui, relatively true property

Introduction
Philosophy of science has long been an important research area for philosophers, which has also made great impacts on the development of science and technology. Karl Popper contented that the central question in the philosophy of science is distinguishing science from non-science (Thornton, 2006). We are here mainly focused on science and superstitions, with the latter broadly considered to be a typical kind of non-science. Science is usually described as a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. As described in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, science is knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws, especially as obtained and tested through scientific methods. More precisely, a knowledge system is referred to as such a system that has one or more axioms or hypotheses (propositions made as bases for reasoning without proving their truth), as well as a set of reasoning rules, together with all the conclusions based on these
*

Acknowledgements: The authors thank LIU Li, Professor at School of Humanities, Tsinghua University, and FENG Shi, M.S. at School of Information Science, Tsinghua University, for the fruitful discussions with them. ZHANG Yong-feng, M.S. at Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Tsinghua University. DAI Wei, M.S. at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Tsinghua University.

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hypotheses and rules. Note that a knowledge system is not necessarily a deterministic system, which requires that no randomness be involved in the development of future states of the system. A knowledge system only requires two basic elements: hypotheses and rules. Superstition, on the other hand, is defined as a widely held but unjustified belief in supernatural causation leading to certain consequences of an action or event, or a practice based on such a belief. The process through which conclusions are arrived at has drawn much attention when distinguishing science from superstition (Shermer, 2002, pp. 111-112). According to broadly accepted perspectives, an important factor to consider when distinguishing science from superstition is the role that skepticism plays when people arrive at conclusions. Science demands people to keep a skeptical attitude anytime and anywhere in practice. One is demanded to keep analyzing and critical thinking before accepting any conclusions, let alone accepting conclusions that can not or have not been confirmed. Even for those conclusions that have been confirmed and utilized in practice, one should also try to examine their limits in space and time, and the accuracy of observations related with these conclusions. On the contrary, superstition is such a belief that has no basis or only a few unjustified observations. As the significant difference between the processes through which conclusions are made, philosophers tend to put science and superstition in contrary places: One prefers to trust those objects, conclusions, and experiences which are confirmed through accurate scientific methods, and utilizes them in practice with confidence. One tends to doubt their value and refuses to utilize them in practice if they are not verified through scientific methods but ways such as simple or limited observations. However, it is not always proper for us to judge the value of objects, conclusions, and experiences in such a way, as it brings about two essential problems. First, it is not guaranteed to be absolutely true even if a conclusion is drawn through scientific methods. Second, it is not guaranteed to be absolutely wrong even if a conclusion is drawn through methods that are not scientific or not scientific enough. As a result, judging the value of a conclusion only by the process through which we arrive at the conclusion is not enough, and even may not be reasonable. We need criterions that are more objective and practical to decide whether a conclusion or a knowledge system is valuable, and if so, to whom it is valuable. Further more, we need to know what on earth is the essence of the value of a knowledge system. In this paper, we devote ourselves to proposing a criterion for judging the value of a knowledge system. Note that what we are discussing here is the value of a knowledge system, namely, whether and to whom a knowledge system is valuable. In other words, we will not discuss the problem of whether a knowledge system is science or not, and more precisely speaking, there is no need for us to discuss this problem with the criterion to be proposed. In fact, we are not going to make a distinction between science and non-science in this paper, but to show that we can still judge whether a knowledge system is valuable without the concept of science and non-science, and the so-called science or not problem is in fact a problem of whether knowledge systems are relatable1 to each other.
1

A knowledge system is relatable to another knowledge system if there exists at least one method to transform conclusions in the first system to conclusions in the second system. The first system is partially relatable to the second system if part of its conclusions can be transformed to the second one. Two knowledge systems are relatable to each other if this property holds in two directions. For example, geometry and algebra are relatable to each other, because the conclusions can be transformed from geometric forms to algebraic forms as well as reversely, through Cartesian coordinate system.

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Fengshui and Mathematics

Fengshui is most extensively investigated in Zangshu (Book of Burial) by GUO Pu of the Jin Dynasty. In this section, we make a comparison of Fengshui together with a typical example, mathematics, in order to introduce the basic ideas of this paper. We will start with the question why people trust mathematics. Science, in narrow sense, is defined as the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observations and experiments, which is also usually referred to as natural science. From this perspective of view, science is a set of laws created by God, which is not changeable. As a result, mathematics is usually not classified as science2. In fact, as a course studying quantity, space, structure, and change, mathematics is an invention or partially an invention of human beings3. Mathematics is a self-consistent knowledge system based on several axioms and reasoning rules. In mathematics, the reason why we trust a conclusion, namely, we call it a theorem, is that it can be derived through generally accepted reasoning rules on basis of generally accepted axioms. In other words, we can prove it. If a conclusion has not been proved yet, it is called a conjecture rather than a theorem. One can see that the essential reason for our belief in mathematics is that we identify the same axioms and follow the same reasoning rules. This is the very reason for us to believe the conclusions derived by others who also identify those axioms and reasoning rules. We are sure that for any person who follows the same axioms and rules, he or she must arrive at the same conclusions, which is mathematically repeatable4. As a result, people do not doubt the exactness and soundness of mathematics, as long as they identify those axiom bases and reasoning rules, which further leads to their acceptance of all the conclusions derived according to the axioms and rules. But people tend to take different attitudes when considering Fengshui or Vastu Shastra, and in most cases they are viewed as superstitions. In fact, such an attitude is mainly rooted in the doubt of the process through which Fengshui is proposed. In ancient China, Fengshui used to be an important set of principles to judge whether a natural environment is good for people or not. It was widely used to determine the places and orientations for palaces, villages, or tombs. But with the rapid development of experiment-based courses such as physics, chemistry, and biology in modern years, people begin to doubt those principles described in Fengshui. An important pattern for doing research in modern natural science is evaluation, interpretation, observation, conjecture, experiment, and assessment. A conjecture will not be universally accepted unless it is confirm by strict experiments. Otherwise, such conjectures will always be conjectures, waiting to be confirmed, or to be discarded. From this point of view, many of the principles and rules in Fengshui are still conjectures, which make
Of course, this is still a philosophically open problem with various viewpoints. The authors just take the argument that mathematics should not be classified into science here. For much more detailed information on this problem, the book The Foundations of Mathematics: A Study in the Philosophy of Science is a good choice. 3 This is also a problem debated for centuries with two basic arguments: Geek Philosophy Platos Platonic Theory, which states that mathematics is discovered, and a counterclaim by philosopher Mark Belaguers theory. But it has been broadly accepted that mathematics is at least partially invented. For more information, Kuhn Robert Lawrences Is Mathematics Invented or Discovered (Science and Religion Today, 1 Apr. 2010) is a good reference. 4 Repeatability is an important concept in the problems discussed in this paper. Conclusions in a knowledge system are repeatable if people can arrive at the same conclusions anytime and anywhere, as long as they identify the same axioms or hypotheses, and obey the same reasoning rules of this system. Mathematical repeatability is a kind of absolute repeatability. In fact, the only thing that one needs to do is just writing the proof of a conclusion on a piece of paper. Another kind of repeatability is experimental repeatability, which requires experimental results are repeatable given the same conditions and experimental methods.
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people keep doubtful attitudes towards them. In fact, Fengshui is similar to Mathematics in that they can both be viewed as human-made, or partially human-made knowledge systems. In mathematics, it is because people identify the same axioms and obey the same reasoning rules that they can arrive at the same conclusions even though they are at different times and in different places. Similarly, if we identify the same basic concepts and obey the same reasoning rules in Fengshui, we can also come into the same conclusions with our ancestors in ancient years, without caring about whether these conclusions are right or not5. By this means, we will be able to understand their thoughts and behaviors, which helps us to study them better and make a guess at their potential behaviors more correctly. Such a method is playing a very important role in archeology and history studies. It is not reasonable to simply view a knowledge system as a kind of superstition when it does help us to understand existing phenomena and to predict potential phenomena, just like we cannot view mathematics as superstitions. We will begin from this basic observation on, and discuss the role that human-made knowledge systems play in helping us to understand the universe. Further more, we will discuss the relationship between science and superstition, as well as when and how they can be transformed into each other.

A Criterion for Judging Whether a Knowledge System Is Valuable

Nature and universe are objects, which are so complicated and recondite, that it is practically very difficult for human beings to acquire all the knowledge about them without making any mistakes all the time. In fact, it is quite probable for human beings to arrive at partially wrong or even completely wrong conclusions. For example, people used to believe that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects, which is a wrong conclusion. Another example is that people thought Newtons laws of motion are universally true in any case, but it turned out to be suitable only to macroscopic objects with low velocities. On the other hand, during the long period of struggling with nature, people have summed up much experience. Such experience may not have been proved by accurate and persuadable experiments, but it does not mean that they are wrong or useless. For example, people have known for long that light travels along strait lines, and all right angles are equal to each other. One can see that, as has been stated above, it is not guaranteed to be absolutely true even if a conclusion is drawn through scientific methods. Besides, it is not guaranteed to be absolutely wrong even if a conclusion is drawn through methods that are not scientific or not scientific enough. Let us view a conclusion on two aspects here: how and what. In other words, by what means we arrive at the conclusion, and what the conclusion itself is. Since it is not reliable for us to judge the value of a conclusion according to the way we arrive at it, it will be natural for us to change to the other aspect, that is to say, according to the conclusion itself. Here, what we care about is whether a conclusion is relatively true6 in a knowledge system, namely, we do not really care about whether it is absolutely true7 in all knowledge systems. If a conclusion is not relatively true in a knowledge system, i.e., if it is not repeatable in this knowledge system, then people in different places and at
Namely, we only care about the repeatability of conclusions but not their correctness here. A conclusion in a knowledge system is relatively true if it is repeatable in this knowledge system. 7 If a conclusion is relatively true in a knowledge system, and this knowledge system is relatable to another knowledge system, then the conclusion is also relatively true in the second knowledge system, according to the definition of relatable. Further more, a conclusion is absolutely true if it is relatively true in all knowledge systems.
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different times are not guaranteed to arrive at the same conclusion, even though they start from the same axioms or hypotheses, and use the same reasoning rules. We view such a conclusion as useless, as reasoning basing on this conclusion means arriving at more unrepeatable conclusions, which damages the soundness and stableness of a knowledge system. If a conclusion is repeatable, or equally speaking, relatively true, in a knowledge system, then it means that the conclusion has universal meanings at least in this knowledge system, which makes it valuable and useful at least therein. Further more, whether the conclusion is relatively true in another knowledge system depends on whether the original knowledge system is relatable to the second one, and whether the conclusion is absolutely true depends on whether the knowledge system is relatable to all other knowledge systems. As a result, we take whether a conclusion is repeatable in a knowledge system as the criterion for judging whether it is valuable in this knowledge system. We call such a criterion the criterion of relatively true property. Further more, the problem of judging whether a conclusion is absolutely true turns out to be a problem of determining the relationship between knowledge systems, namely, whether they are relatable to each other. In this sense, knowledge systems are unified on the aspect of judging the value of conclusions.

Why such a Criterion Is Reasonable

One can see that this criterion is reasonable if we restrict our scope to one specific knowledge system without caring about the relationship between different knowledge systems. We take geometry as an example to discuss such a case in detail here. Geometry, as an important branch of mathematics, is in fact made up of three different theories, which are Euclidean geometry, Lobachevskian geometry, and Riemannian geometry, among which Euclidean geometry is the one that is most widely known. All these three types of geometry have five axioms, among which the first four are the same: two points determine a line, a line extends infinitely, take a point as center and a line segment as radius we can draw a circle, all right angles are equal. But they are different from each other on the fifth axiom. Euclidean geometry states that given a line and point outside the line within a two-dimensional plane, there exists exactly one line through the point that does not intersect with the given line. But Lobachevskian geometry claims that there are infinitely many such lines, while in Riemannian geometry there is no such line8. Those three types of geometry are all consistent within themselves, although they are based on three different sets of axioms. We view these three types of geometry as three different knowledge systems, and for each of them the conclusions are relatively true within themselves. Note that the relatively truth here is not only repeatability, but also absolute repeatability. This is because people at different places or in different times are able to draw the same conclusions in each of these knowledge systems as long as they start from the same axioms and follow the same reasoning rules. In fact, all that we need to do is writing the proofs on a piece of paper, and that is enough. As a result, this criterion is reasonable when used to judge whether a conclusion is valuable in a single knowledge system. Moreover, in such rigorous systems as mathematics, the criterion is not only reasonable but also practical, which depends on the fact that conclusions in such knowledge systems are absolutely repeatable.
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Lobachevskian geometry is also called Hyperbolic geometry, and Riemannian geometry is also called Elliptic geometry.

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A Knowledge System Is Valuable if It Satisfies This Judging Criterion

A knowledge system is valuable at least to its community of believers9 as long as it satisfies the criterion of relatively true property. Further more, whether this knowledge system is valuable to community of believers of another knowledge system depends on whether it is relatable to that knowledge system, namely, whether there exists medium methods to transform conclusions from this knowledge system to another one. If this is true, the first knowledge system will also be valuable to the community of believers of the second one, as long as they believe in these medium methods for transformation. Moreover, these two knowledge systems will be valuable to communities of believers of each other if they are relatable to each other. To be more intuitional, a knowledge system is valuable at least to its community of believers, and if we can find a set of methods to make two knowledge systems relatable to each other, then both of these two knowledge systems community of believers expand, by absorbing each others believers. This has also been obviously verified by geometry. In fact, Absolute geometry introduced by Janos Bolyai in 1832 has been playing the role of medium method to make the three types of geometries relatable to each other. In Absolute geometry, the three types of geometry correspond to curvatures zero, negative numbers, and positive numbers. Before Absolute geometry was proposed, mathematicians hesitated to believe that such three types of geometry hold at the same time, resulting in three communities of believers, corresponding to the three different sets of axioms. But things are different when we found such a medium method as Absolute geometry, which merged those three communities of believers to one. This is essentially why mathematicians accept all these three types of geometry nowadays, and it is a good example of how community of believers of a knowledge system expands. In fact, we can view a knowledge system as a kind of language to communicate with each other for its community of believers. In this sense, mathematics is a language for mathematicians and all those persons who believe in the axioms and rules of mathematics; natural science such as physics, chemistry, and biology are languages for human beings and nature; economics and other social sciences are languages for human beings and the society they construct. For example, we say that the reason why Euclidean geometry is valuable for those people who believe in the basic axioms of Euclidean geometry and follow its reasoning rules is that they can communicate with each other with such a language and create new theorems without worrying about unexpected conflicts10. Besides, these theorems can also be reflected intuitionally in real world, which made a great contribution to expanding its community of believers to ordinary people without specific mathematical knowledge in human history. We say that Riemannian geometry is also valuable to those people who believe in the Riemannian fifth axiom, although this geometry cannot be reflected intuitionally in real world for the difficulty people encounter to imagine that there is no parallel line. Such value is mainly reflected in two aspects. First, the believers can discuss and create new conclusions in this knowledge system without worrying about its repeatability, because conclusions that are relatively true in this knowledge system must be absolutely repeatable. Second, it is quite
Community of believers of a knowledge system is such a group of people or objects that believe in the axioms or hypotheses of the knowledge system and follow the reasoning rules of this knowledge system. Note that a community of believers does not necessarily consist of persons only. For example, if physics is a real description of nature, we view nature as a member of the community of believers to the knowledge system of physics. 10 Unexpected conflict means conflict that occurs even though we start from the same axioms and follow the same reasoning rules.
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probable that there exist other knowledge systems relatable to this knowledge system, although they may not have been discovered or proposed yet. In fact, when Riemannian geometry was first proposed, people did not believe that it could be useful in practice. However, several decades of years later, Albert Einsteins general theory of relativity made things different. General theory of relativity supposes that spacetime is not evenly distributed, which can only be explained with Riemannian geometry. In this way, the knowledge system of Riemannian geometry turned out to be relatable to the knowledge system of general theory of relativity, thus resulting in the expand of its community of believers. Another typical example is the relationship between mathematics and natural sciences. This criterion is capable of explaining why, at least until now, all these kinds of natural sciences such as physics, chemistry, and biology do not conflict with each other, although they were developed almost independently at the beginning. We tend to describe natural sciences as knowledge systems created by God, while mathematics as knowledge system created by human beings. The reason why the parts of knowledge about physics, chemistry, and biology that have been discovered by us do not conflict with each other, and why we prefer to modify existing models to ensure its consistency when conflict occurs, is that we have constructed mathematics as a medium knowledge system, which makes those branches of natural science relatable. And the fact that community of believers of mathematics is almost all of the human beings makes the communities of believers of natural sciences also almost all human beings, or to be more precise, have the ability of expanding to all human beings. Further more, it is potential that there exists another extraterrestrial intelligence that uses another form of mathematics as medium knowledge system to make natural sciences such as physics and chemistry relatable, where the only difference is the form of relationships. As a result, a knowledge system is valuable as long as it satisfies the criterion that its conclusions are relatively true in itself. Such value may be some intuitional practical value, or the value that it can be used as a language for its community of believers to communicate with each other, or even the value that it may be relatable to a knowledge system that has not been discovered or proposed. And all these kinds of value are based on the fact that they satisfy the criterion that their conclusions are relatively true at least.

About Science and Superstition

In this section, we take Fengshui as an example to see how the criterion of relatively true property above can be used in practice. Generally speaking, Fengshui is a knowledge system about how the ancients view nature and the environment they lived in. Although a few of the conclusions in this knowledge system have been proved to be reasonable to some extent, most of them are regarded to be subjectively assumed without any basis, which made people tend to refuse to accept the hypotheses and reasoning rules of Fengshui, and classify it to the category of superstitions. Let us analyze the knowledge system of Fengshui first. As a knowledge system, its axiom is that the universe is made up of five basic elements, which are metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. It has a variety of reasoning rules, for example, Qi rides the wind and scatters, but is retained when encountering water11. Now, we do not care about the relationship of this knowledge system with other natural science knowledge systems such as physics and
There are detailed descriptions of all reasoning rules in the book Zangshu (Book of Burial) by GUO Pu of the Jin Dynasty. This would be a good reference if the reader were really interested in this ancient Chinese system.
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chemistry. We only care about whether conclusions are relatively true in the knowledge system of Fengshui itself. That is to say, what we care about is whether different people can arrive at the same conclusions if they start from the same axioms and follow the same reasoning rules. A conclusion here may be that whether a natural environment or the orientation of a building is good or not. If they are able to arrive at the same conclusions given the same conditions, we say that this knowledge system is valuable to its community of believers. Fortunately, it is real that conclusions in this knowledge system of Fengshui are relatively true, which is proved by the utilization of Fengshui in archeology and history studies. In archeology for example, as we know that the ancients decided the orientations of palaces and tombs according to the knowledge system of Fengshui, we can also arrive at the same conclusions about how they were constructed if we deduce the orientations of ancient tombs according to the axioms and reasoning rules in the same knowledge system when digging at a site, which will be very helpful for archeologists to find the historical relics buried underground12. In this example, we do not care about whether the knowledge system of Fengshui is relatable to other knowledge systems that seem to be more scientific such as physics and chemistry, but it is still very valuable at least to archeologists. The essential reason here is that conclusions in this knowledge system are repeatable, or more precisely, relatively true, at least to a large extent. Further more, the problem that whether the community of believers of this knowledge system of Fengshui can be expanded depends on whether we can find some medium methods to make this knowledge system relatable to other knowledge systems such as physics, at least partially. If so, the community of believers of Fengshui expands by absorbing the community of believers of physics, which is almost the whole mankind. This has been verified by the fact that many conclusions in Fengshui have been explained successfully in scientific aspects to some extent. For example, a building is considered to be particularly good if it faces south with a mountain in the back as well as a river in the front. Experts from many different fields including psychology, geophysics, and architectonics13 have demonstrated this point of view. Psychologists point out that with a mountain in the back and a river in the front, people will be given a psychological suggestion of being both safe in the back and lively in the front. On the contrary, if a building faces a mountain in the front and leans on a river in the back, people will be given a psychological suggestion of being both congesting in the front and dangerous in the back. At the same time, geophysicists point out that it is reasonable for buildings in the Northern Hemisphere to face south as this is benefit for both gathering daylight and defending monsoon in winter. As a result, community of believers of the knowledge system Fengshui expands in this aspect. The essential reason here is that we can find some medium methods to make Fengshui at least partially relatable to knowledge systems that already have their own community of believers. To make a summarization, we do not need a clear boundary between science and superstition with this criterion for judging the value of knowledge systems, and we even do not need to discuss what science is and what superstition is. All that we need to care about is whether a knowledge system is relatively true, namely, whether its conclusions are repeatable in this knowledge system itself. We can be sure that this knowledge system

Jack Finegans book The Archeology of World Religions (1956) is a good reference for the study of the utilization of various kinds of Fengshui-like knowledge systems in archeology. 13 Much more detailed discussion is presented in Suhana Lim and Bruce Bentleys Designing a Healthy Practice with Fengshui (Health traditions, Vol. 5-1).

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is valuable at least to its community of believers as long as this property holds, just as what we have seen in the example of the three types of geometry above. As for the problem of whether a knowledge system has larger value, we say that this is essentially a problem of whether this knowledge system is relatable to other knowledge systems, thus to expand its community of believers.

Conclusions
In this paper, we started from the relationships between mathematics and Fengshui, and proposed the criterion of relatively true property for judging whether a conclusion is valuable in a knowledge system. We demonstrated that such a criterion is valuable, and knowledge systems satisfying this criterion are also valuable. In the end, we took Fengshui in archeology as an example to show the role that the criterion plays in practice. In conclusion, the core points of view of this paper are: a knowledge system that satisfies the criterion of relatively true property is valuable at least to its community of believers, and the problem of whether a knowledge system has larger value is essentially a problem of whether it is relatable to other knowledge systems, thus to expand its community of believers.

References
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