PLAY OF SIGNS

The works play with signs and the notion of the sign. We might make a diagram between

the sign, the finger, and the fiction:

SIGN (N.)

early 13c., “gesture or motion of the hand,” especially one

meant to communicate something, from Old French signe “sign,

mark,” from Latin signum “identifying mark, token, indication,

symbol; proof; military standard, ensign; a signal, an omen; sign in

the heavens, constellation.”

....

It has ousted native token. Meaning “a mark or device having

some special importance” is recorded from late 13c.; that of “a

miracle”

One of the first signs we come to is the King’s finger. In his dream, it is the source of his

power, since with it he is able to turn things into gold. It is through his finger that he

wishes to control reality, to make the world become what he wills it to be.

An (unorthodox) etymological connection is made with Latin fingere:

fingere

From Latin fingere, present active infinitive of fingō,

from Proto-Indo-European *dheyǵh-

(“to mold”).

Verb

fingere

1 (transitive) To pretend or feign

2 (intransitive) To dissemble

The fingere is related to feigning, potential deception. The finger is able to point towards

that which it wants one to see, and to believe. It molds the world.

fictitious (adj.)

1610s, “artificial, counterfeit;” 1620s, “existing only in

imagination,” from Medieval Latin fictitius, a misspelling of

Latin ficticius “artificial, counterfeit,” from fictus “feigned,

fictitious, false,”past participle of fingere” to shape, form,

devise, feign” (from PIE root *dheigh- “to form, build”).

Related: Fictitiously; fictitiousness.

His fiction is an aspect of his sign, his sign an aspect of his fiction, in which ‘the

people’ may, or may not, believe.

In the preface to his collection of essays on political iconography, Carlo Ginzburg writes

about the way in which the engraving for the frontispiece of Hobbe’s Leviathan, is used

to create a new reality in the minds of those who see it. A fiction (Latin fingunt) which

they are induced, through the image, to believe in.

The title page of Leviathan—that illustrious example of political

iconography—translates into a new image the words of Tacitus:

fingunt simul credunqtque (they believe what they have just

made up). Here we are confronted not by an emotion but by an

idea, a Logosformel which has an emotion as its object—we are

subjugated by falsehoods of our own creation. In its disarming,

paradoxical simplicity, this idea can help us to develop a

critique of the language of politics and its images. 1

Ginzburg proposes the Logosformel, as a further development of Aby Warburg’s

Pathosformeln, the basis for an analytical approach to a history of images, which looks to

the ways in which they draw upon and rework ancient themes. Ginzburg suggests a way

of understanding which does not only look back at the origins of works, but one which

comments on the illusion building formula of images with political intent.

With a similar goal, the artwork itself might aim to use the signs and images against

themselves, inviting a questioning of the instructive (political) use of signs through the

manufacture of a fictional history. The being of the artwork becomes a device which

might break open the cracks in a façade of words and images, in order to see what has

been made up and how it has been done. It creates the illusion in order that it might in

some way crumble.

Midas’ Cygne (or the KYNGE’s CYGNE)

The cygne (the swan/cygne(t)), is set into play as another sign. The the cygne is a bird,

swan, and also a poet (who sings/signs).

CYGNUS

Etymology

Romanized form of the Ancient Greek (kúknos)

Noun

cygnus m (genitive cygnī); second declension

1. A swan; a bird noted for its singing and sacred to Apollo.

2. (figuratively) A poet, especially one who sings.

cygnet (n.)

"a young swan," c. 1400, also signet before 17c., from Anglo-French cignet (mid-14c.), Anglo-Latin cygnettus,

diminutives of Old French cigne, cisne "swan" (12c., Modern French cygne), from Latin cygnus, from Greek

kyknos, which has been the subject of "abundant discussion" (Beekes) and is perhaps from PIE

*(s)keuk- "to be white" (compare Sanskrit socati "to lighten, glow," sukra- "light, clear, white"). Spanish,

Portuguese cisne, Italian cecero are from Medieval Latin cecinus, cicinus, a corruption of the classical Latin

word.

The drawing Midas’ Feast, is based on an ink drawing by Pietro Bonaccorsi, and

reworked with the addition of a swan topped pie as part of a festival/ parade, and the lion

of the original has become the body of a lion with a swan’s head.

The parade appears to make no distinction between the good and the bad, providing

enjoyment to both angels and devils, and suggests that there is no tension between the

concepts of the swan protector (lion swan), and the swan cooked (swan pie).

The cygne is sacred to those in the picture for its material/spiritual capabilities.

The cygne feeds and looks after them. It is meat and god-like protector. The cygne

embodies the paradox, which is at once celebrated and consumed.

(are we speaking here of the kings swan or the poets sign/song?) *

The painting Midas and his Cygne (after a medieval illumination) shows a King (wearing a

crown) sitting up in a bed, looking towards a swan who is standing on the bed, and who

appears to be cut, with three pink/red drops falling from its chest, and a small puddle at the

base of the picture. The King points his finger to the ground, as he looks at the swan.

We might intimate that this is Midas/ (the poet) and his bleeding cygne (sign), which his

finger(fiction) does not appear to have in hand. It has its own life, and will not be

controlled. (It says/does more than he wills it to. It leaves a trace.)

In a fragment of text MIDAS’ PIE (PYE OR P_YE), the figure of the swan is the emblem

of regality, whose image becomes an insignia, adding value, to that which it is attached.

The pie was often decorated in the wild fashions of the past. It

sometimes had a bird sitting on the top. The swan was the

most regal, so they put a small, gilded and bejewelled,

ornamental crown on its head, and Midas’ insignia was

stamped into the paste of the crust.

The swan/cygne, stands for his majesty the King, and can be transferred to that which the

Midas chooses.

(This is the manner in which Midas- the poet?- may transfer signs, attaching them to new

objects, giving them new meanings.)

In the text I submitted for the exam, there is a section on the way in which Midas shifts the

idea of his value, from the gold, to paper, to literally nothing, through the use of his

sign/image.

It is a magic trick, where the King is able to impose his image

on the substance of the gold, hence associating the gold with

his image, then he takes away the gold leaving his image on

paper, (people still think of the gold), the paper is then taken

away and one is left with the idea, the image inscribed in the

minds of the people who believe they have it, though they

have nothing in their grasp.

In Money Language and Thought, Marc Shell draws an equivalent pathway, from the use

of gold (electrum) in Ancient Lydia, to the use of electronic money in contemporary

America, through a shifting of association, to create value, through the use of inscriptions

or intellectual currency, which is reattached to new objects, until what is of value is no

longer any ‘thing’ but an idea.

The exchange value of the earliest coins derived wholly from

the material substance (electrum) of the ingots of which the

coins were made and not from the inscriptions stamped into

these ingots. The eventual development of coins whose

politically authorised inscriptions were adequate to the

weights and purities of the ingots into which the inscriptions

were stamped precipitated awareness of quandaries

between face value (intellectual currency) and substantial

value (material currency). This difference between

inscription and thing grew greater with the introduction of

paper moneys. Paper, the material substance on which the

inscriptions were printed, was supposed to make no

difference in exchange, and metal, or electrum, the material

substance to which the inscriptions referred, was connected

with those inscriptions in increasingly abstract ways. With the

advent of electronic fund-transfers the link between

inscription and substance was broken. The matter of electric

money does not matter. 2

This unfolding transfer of association, and the re-assignation of value, that Shell describes,

might in some sense be regarded as a model for the unfolding chapters of the phd writing,

which aim to open a path, via the cipher of Midas, through a history of shifting signs and

objects, which transform one in relation to the other. A kaleidoscopic re-reflecting in a

transformation of the world/world view; a journey through the Holocene.

The fragments of the Slew and the Stew (and the Murder), A Verytable Hystory of the

Mystery of Kyng Midas and Hys Tymes, a relationship can be uncovered between the pie,

as energy/currency, money/currency, language/currency.

Food/energy/currency:

Midas’ pie, which is cooked each and every day and feeds a

lot of people.

money/currency (given out by the banks of the river Tymes) :

People were taken care of by the banks, by those who

worked for the Polis, and most were there each day to get

their daily slice of pie, though, it had to be said that some

got a decent slice, and some only a sliver. If you got a good

size slice you were likely to be one of the lucky ones, as it

may well contain a few gold coins for you to put by. With

only a sliver it was unlikely that you would find a coin or have

anything other than what you needed for that day.

language/currency:

P.I.E.

(Language as currency; the franking of a tongue; the insignia,

stamp of approval; sign of worth, value.)

the ‘framework’ of the pie, as generator of currency:

The pie encircled everyone and enclosed everything. Pie

was circular and it made things circulate.

though also a generator of current harms:

The cooking of the pie had caused an excess of stench in

the atmosphere; a smoky effluvium ending up angering the

Sea, which then becoming acrimonious, ammonius, and full

of choler and spleen.

The chimneys which puffed out their plumes of smoke

looked rather like p’ye. Or pie. The symbol for pye. л. (I

mean pi). That unending and senseless number which

constituted the rationalisation of their lives.

The question of currency, (the current, the present, the energy, the value) is thrown into

relief, with reference to historical ways of seeing /showing/imagining, linguistic framing.

What sustains us? What gives us our energy? Which perspectives have value? What makes

the current the current? (The other side of the question is, what makes the obsolete, the

outdated? Will it for some reason return rehabilitated? (a new/old custom/costume). (The

contemporary is the ‘current’ so long as we agree on its value. Until it is outmoded. )

(disambiguation):

Proto-Indo-European

P-I-E was a theoretical construct, said to be used used for

communication and perhaps direction. What was P-I-E?

The ___________ used to communicate with the people?

What was expressed through P-I-E? What or who did P-I-E

negate? Was anyone forgotten in the enterprise of P-I-E?

Was P-I-E the frame of our understanding? Could there be

more to life than P-I-E?

(What about a current p-i-e? Old system replaced by

another? Or a system which contained a current? A

generator but of what?)

There is the question of the exchange value of signs. The intrinsic value of signs.

And if the signs are no longer seen to have value, what happens to the signs? Overthrow of

the signs? What will enter in their wake? What is in fact gone, and what remains?

In Stew and the Slew, there comes an opening for the replacement of the pie:

They had had enough of the pie. The crusts. No one wanted

paste, only marrow, substance. They wanted the essence of

blood.

Midas, (and his associations; the pie and his own people), are replaced by his replacement,

King Sufficus and the Soup, as declared by the wigged men in Lvnidom:

“Due to the fact of the disappearance of Kyng Midas, and

thus, for now, the impossibility of his corporeal punishment,

the new king will commission a wooden statue to be

produced in the image of Midas, which the town will burn

during a celebratory feast.

All of those in the castle who were in any way affiliated or

associated with the old King, are also convicted, by the law

of joint enterprise and are to be thrown into the Tymes, at

this time.

Midas’ land will from now on be known as Rich Man’s Broth,

and our new leader crowned, King Sufficus.”

THE CUT and the INSECKT (morphologies)

The works play with the relationship between word/sign/image and insect.

The pastel drawing The Allegory of Midas and his Daughter (or the birth of Venus), bases

itself on Bronzino’s painting, the Allegory of Venus and Cupid. In the original the figure

of ‘Time’, (the bearded man in the right hand corner of the painting) stretches out his

arm holding up a blue curtain behind the naked (serpentine) figure of Venus. A winged

cupid is seen embracing Venus, to the left of the painting, while a putto figure appears to

run towards them with flowers.

In the reworking, Time’s arm has become the neck of a swan, whose beak reaches

forward towards the pointed finger of Midas’ Daughter (Venus). The beaks of other

swans appear to hold up the blue curtain. On Midas’ Daughter’s belly, we see what

appears to be a lengthy cut (red) towards which Cupid points his finger. The smiling

putto, now, rather than holding flowers, is holding a blade/scythe. There is a pool of red

at the bottom right of the painting.

Again we have the figures of the swan/cygne, the cut, the finger, the run off, in another

configuration. Midas’ Daughter (Venus) is literally insected. Towards which Cupid’s

(Midas’?) finger points, as she points towards the cygne (Midas’ finger/fiction?).

The miniature painting Midas’ Men and the New Gold (tear in the fabric of space-time?) we

see a wigged 17th Century gentleman (Midas? One of his men?) pointing his white gloved

finger towards a cut, (vesica piscis- mathematical shape) shining yellow against a black

background.

In both images, the cut, shines out (old English, scinan, Proto-Germanic *skīnana), in the

first, it ruby red, in the other, yellow/gold?. The cut, in both instances leads to the run

off, the blood, the gold, the power.

The Cut is the figure which produces the world of Midas, in the Myth of the CUT. The

Cut is the cause of the Gold Bug (the gylden inseckt).

insect (n.)

early 17th century (originally denoting any small cold-

blooded creature with a segmented body): from Latin

(animal) insectum ‘segmented (animal)’ (translating Greek

zōion entomon ), from insecare ‘cut up or into’, from in-

‘into’ + secare ‘to cut’.

There is the relationship to be made between the insect and the sign:

sign (n.)

According to Watkins, literally “standard that one follows,”

from PIE *sekw-no-, from root *sekw- (1) “to follow.” But de

Vaan has it from PIE *sekh-no- “cut,” from PIE root *sek- “to

cut” He writes: “The etymological appurtenance to seco ‘to

cut’ implies a semantic shift of *sek-no- ‘what is cut out’,

‘carved out’ > ‘sign’.” But he also also compares Hebrew

sakkin, Aramaic sakkin “slaughtering-knife,” and

mentions a theory that “both words are probably

borrowed from an unknown third source.”

The sign’s relation to the image, can be said to be the cut. It carves out its meaning,

cutting itself off from some associations, and finding links to new ones. However, the

historical layers of meaning cannot simply be obliterated.

The morphology of the insect, relates to the metamorphosing figure of Midas, and his

history, can be seen through the metamorphoses of word/image/sign.

Metaphor(m)/metamorph are aspects of one another. Word/image fragments are the

morphemes of his world, which are not fixed, though there appears a thread (in the

structure of the work) which holds them in relation, one to another.

The whole, is paradoxically held together by holes. The potential for metamorphoses is in

the gaps.

Metamorphosis (n.)

1530s, “Change of form or structure, action or process of

changing in form” originally or especially in witchcraft, from

Latin metamorphosis “a transforming, a transformation”, from

metamorphoun “to transform, to be transfigured”, from meta,

here indicating “change” (see meta)-morphē “shape, form”, a

word of uncertain etymology.

Each stage of Midas’ civilization comprises a new image (a new mask/fiction) leaving

behind a shell (historical fragments, elements of the cracked façade). Each image cannot

help allowing for a space/gap, for a new image to occur. The picture can never be

‘finished’. The image/sign/metaphor cannot be ‘fixed’.

imago

in biology, the imago is the last stage an insect attains

during its metamorphosis, its process of growth and

development; it also is called the imaginal state, the stage

in which the insect attains maturity, it follows the final,

ecdysis of the immature instars.

Before the new image, we have a new egg/seed (ovum/owom) from which its

ghost/spectre (larva), then the puppet/doll (pupa) whose strings might be pulled, so that

the imago might become the purity of the imaginal state.

Nature (from Latin, gnatus, P.I.E.* gehn1, to produce, beget, to give birth) is clever

enough to produce her own masks: ovum-larva-pupa-imago

There are many other possible diagrammatic associations that the work makes in the

creation of the labyrinth/game of the work. For example the cut, is also linked to the cup

from which Midas drinks his golden elixir, or the soup pot/cauldron –whose mouth is

another vesica piscis on its side. The cut pours out and it contains/holds. It produces and

it receives.

It is this potential for cycling, oppositions and similarities, the back and forth oscillation

between signs and meanings, in the unfolding of a mythical fiction. The subject is not so

much a story, but the way in which the story is made and re-made. Foregrounding a play

of form and perception.3

Notes:

1. Ginzburg, Carlo. Fear Reverence, Terror Seagull books, London, 2017.Preface p.xii-

xiii (italics my own)

2. Marc Shell, ‘From Electrum to Electricity’, Money Language and Thought. (The Regents of the

University of California: 1982) p.1

3. Inscribed in the work of prâxis (“action, activity, practice”) is a relation to theōria (“contemplation,

speculation, a looking at, things looked at”) in a kind of oscillation between referential elements in the

visual, poetic works, (revealing connections and possible networks which relate to the history of art and

knowledge) and concepts ideas and affects are explored and effected again through formal play.

The writing will aim to embody the thesis, allowing itself to be led by the practice, and establishing a

space in support of its position, “where praxis, poiesis and episteme belong to the same dialectical

constellation” (Barry Sandywell, “Seven Theses on Visual Culture: Towards a Critical-Reflexive Paradigm

for the New Visual Studies” in the Handbook of Visual Culture (Berg, 2012 )