Abstract
The time for scribble is now, more than ever. This introduction opens out scribble out as a constituent process, (perhaps unfinished, informal, even aimless or careless, but not unintentional) where, for the purposes of this book, I suggest it is neither possible nor fruitful to attempt definitive examples of scribble, as all our definitions and preferences would rightly differ. You can only scribble a definition of scribble. Introductory examples of the complexity I propose for scribble might be helpful, nonetheless, and for that I turn to an artist sometimes described as the founder of conceptual art, Solomon (Sol) LeWitt, and his Scribble Wall Drawings. From there to examples of indecipherable writing, metaphor and the physics of refraction as ‘non-method’, I suggest that scribble’s mostly two-dimensional, low status appearance conceals an abyss beneath; an ‘intense dynamics’ of its forms, cultures, histories and times, its economies and modes of production: that mysterious ‘line with knots’ for the book to untangle.
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
Untitled. Emily Dickinson c. 1858–1865
Yeah, time, time, time is on my side, yes it is
Time is on my side. Jerry Ragovoy/Rolling Stones 1964
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Notes
- 1.
Born in Vienna into one of Europe’s richest families, Wittgenstein went to the same school as Hitler (though Adolf was held back a year and Ludwig moved forward one, so they ended up 3 grades apart). Wittgenstein experienced depression after serving on the front line for the Astro-Hungarian army in WW1 and gave his entire fortune away to his surviving siblings, as three had committed suicide. Moving back to a Chair at Cambridge in 1926, he sought naturalisation (having Jewish grandparents) then asked to work manually at Guy’s hospital for the war effort. A dispensary porter, he apparently advised patients not to take the medicine prescribed. Demonstrating all the restlessness and creative attempts at ‘beginning again’ of the scribble migrant discussed on page 2, Wittgenstein changed direction an extraordinary amount, right up to his death in 1951.
- 2.
2005 saw an explosion of forms such as large-scale conceptual sculpture, installation, grafitti and digital art that posed challenges to more traditional media (and often more manageable size) of works in paint, drawing, printmaking, e.g.: Christo & Jean-Claude The Gates; Dreisetl’s Art Wall; Banksy’s Show me the Monet.
- 3.
Based on carbon dating of the vellum.
- 4.
‘Idiorrhythmy’ is a term describing a community where everyone can live at their own rhythm. As opposed to regulated or imposed ones, the idiorrythmic life can ‘flow’ in flexible, free, mobile forms.
- 5.
The cyanotype is a photographic printing process that produces blue prints using things placed on coated paper exposed to light, discovered by the scientist and astronomer John Herschel in 1842.
- 6.
Admired by activists such as James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr. as one of the most insightful writers on the experience of African Americans in modern society, Nina Simone’s Black Gold album featured civil rights anthems such as ‘To be Young, Gifted and Black’. Recorded and released just before Simone self-exiled from the US to Europe, ‘Who Knows Where the Time Goes’ is perhaps the most viscerally moving song of the entire performance.
- 7.
Having served in Italy and then involved in the Austrian civil war, Ernst Fischer fled to Hotel Lux in Moscow, a refuge for communist exiles at the time of the Stalinist purges. Forced to flee again, Fischer resisted the communist principle of dictatorship against the proletariat, and argued for the principle: ‘I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.’
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de Rijke, V. (2023). Introduction: Not Defining Scribble. In: The Untimely Art of Scribble. Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education, vol 34. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-2146-1_1
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