The Mythical History of Kyng Midas and Hys Gylden Inseckt, presents the fragments of

a fictional history, in painting, illustration, artefacts, and writing, based on the subject of

Midas, (the king who wanted to turn things into gold) in relation to the fictional

artist/author Quintillius Quintillian, exploring the relationship between form/subject (in

its many iterations), the problem of interpretation, and the relationship between truth

and the artwork.

The myth of the Cut (an allegory of creation, whose offshoots lead to the birth of King

Midas) is presented through writing which unfolds the making of the world, via a play of

morphology in language, with etymology and its morphemes, (Ancient Greek, Latin, and

Proto Indo European roots), pointing towards themselves as aspects of a whole which has

been cut apart and stuck together.

The Stew and the Slew and the Murder: A verytable history of the mystery of Kyng Midas and

Hys Tymes by (the fictional) Quintillius Quintillian, is an interpretation of the Midas

myth, told in fragments, using devices such as metaphor, metonymy, idiomatic language

and irony, playing with ambiguity and multiple possible interpretations.1

A landscape of artworks, including paintings, drawings and illustrations, re-interpret the

myth/texts in contrasting ways, referencing a variety of formal conventions/materials

from the past and present, and together with the texts, make up the fragments of a false

history, a kind of labyrinth, hall of mirrors, puzzle or a game, which might set each other

into play.2 3

The works aim to distance through mimesis4

, with regard to historical forms5 (classical,

medieval, renaissance, modern) and through devices such as metaphor, irony, the

grotesque, the uncanny and pseudonymous authors/artists.6

The written thesis will be in a way an exegesis of the mythical hystory, and at the same

time, extension of the fiction, (it cannot help but be another interpretation of the

interpretation, translation of the translation), weaving together aspects from mythology,

etymology, art history, literature, philosophy, psychology, iconology, historical texts, for

the purpose of unfolding an understanding of the relationship between subject and form,

through contrasting two distinct approaches.

The trajectory of King Midas (fictional king) will be set against that of Quintillius

Quintillian (fictional artist), who can be seen to travel in the same direction and travel in

different directions simultaneously. Metaphorically they travel in equivalent directions,

(both aim towards transcendence of life in their own ways, towards the ‘gold’ of life,

towards transformation) though at the same time, they are on divergent paths, due to

their contrasting interpretations of the nature of matter; a difference in their relationship

to form/substance and creation which has implications for the whole.

Through interweaving texts, we see two pathways emerge from a single root- from

P.I.E.*poiewo = making/the possibility of making/ creating- which fork into power and

poetry, broadly speaking, one (Midas) towards power, via techne, and the other

(Quintillius Quintillian) towards poetry, via ars.

Midas’ belief in the world of the subject/object, the mining of matter, the imposition of

form, via technology, towards progress (what we might call his materially materialist

perspective), gives lie to the world of Quintillius Quintillian who aims to undermine the

world of the subject/object, in favour of a dialogical approach to substance /form through

his art (his essentially essentialist outlook) which finds that opposites in the world as a part

of a continuum.

The work draws out the relationship between language, images and the contrasting

outlooks of Midas and QQ. It is Midas’ language, and the images ‘representing’ him,

which frame the world, and define the lens that conveniently divides it. It is the world of

the subject/object, noun and verb (of the language of metaphysics7

), which enables his

move towards power, the illusion of progress (an image which conceals the harms, the

run off, the damage it causes in its wake). It enables him to not see the other side of the

coin, the underside of his actions. The language divides and conquers.

On the other hand QQ understands that he must aim towards a vision of the whole, if he

is to come to some form of truth, to not ignore the underside of language, or that which

lies beyond the surface of the image. He sees the need to reveal that which lies beyond

the world of the subject/object, to in some ways reveal that which ‘primitive’ language, in

its poetry, and refusal to divide. He looks back to the ‘un-civilised’ aiming to reveal the

language of civilisation as artifice, image as mask.8

There is that which the language is built to ignore, that which is suppressed that QQ

knows he must bring to the fore, via a dialogical relationship, attentive to the life in the

materials, responsive to the resonances and facets of a word, implications of the paint, the

line, the consonances, dissonances, layers of interpretation. Through this play of

material/formation, he must shine light on the underside of illusion, via poetry, to reveal

that which has been concealed in pursuit of anthropocentric power. It is the magical

function of art, in transforming perception, towards which QQ aims.9

Through the practice and the written thesis the phd explores ideas within philosophy,

taxonomy, societal frameworks, structures, symbols, signs, shifting forms of history

(designs, costumes, buildings, objects) which are linked by the underlying question of the

relationship between form and subject, and its relation to truth.

10

The claim of the phd is that the artwork is able only to pursue truth through the play of

form/subject.11 It is the truth of alethiea12, a revealing, and concealing. It does not make

claims to knowledge (episteme), since its form links opposites, avoiding reduction. It is the

recognition of this complexity- that from the perspective of art, is merely masked by

episteme- that necessitates the making of the artwork in the first place.

It is born of the recognition that any positive claims it aims to make will be undone (in

time) by its own form. The form, the inscription, is fixed: the problem of writing.13

Hence it needs to provide the basis by which it might be understood (since it will in time

no longer have the context in which it is made to support it.14) The truths of history shift

and change, though the artwork wishes to transcend the limits of history.

The artwork’s play of form is its support. A conversation with itself provides its own

internal structure. It stands for itself and is made in a way, that it does not need to be

tested/proven according to an external framework.15

It aims to reveal its own workings, to reveal the shaping of perception, through its

formation of its materials; a back and forth, forming and letting go, letting the materials

speak16 beyond the attempts to fully control them, towards a picture of the whole,

beyond conventional use of language and images, revealing the paradoxical nature of the

whole.

On one level, the work considers the origin of matter, the shifting convention in pictures

and language reveal morphing perspectives of history, world views consolidated via the

creation of masks (new designs, costumes, buildings, objects), a new image of life, which

conceals an underlying substance, or shadow (that which is suppressed of life by the

masks) potentially revealed in the art work through a sensitivity to the discrepancy

between that which one aims to present, and that which is.

The fictional history unfolds a model of Midas’ world-while the thesis is in some sense aims

towards a kind of anthropology, mining the layers, the structures implicit in it. (The

gold, the blood, the oil; the insect, the run off, the bloom; his finger, his fiction, his pen, his

nose) At base, there is the economy of gold, food, word and image which make the world

go around in different ways for Midas and Quintillius Quintillian.

The formation of the world out of ‘bits’, morphemes, cut up mind/matter and its

interpretation, is the subject of the work, which is explored through forming Midas’ world

out of ‘bits’, morphemes, cut up mind/matter (words, colour pigment) and it’s

interpetation.

It is through this doubling and cycling, outwards and inwards that the work plays out the

notion of the hermeneutic circle17, revealing the problem of interpretation posed by

Hermeneutic Philosophy, and onto the significance of the basis by which we choose to

interpret. Subject and form reveal themselves to be inextricably linked, which is to say, the

lens through which we view is an aspect of that which we find, though by drawing

attention to this, (allowing us to see in some sense the lens in addition to that which it sees),

through this tension, the artwork hopes, there might be a chance to open onto the aporia,

that aspect not defined by the lens, or the surface of that which it sees, but that which may

be behind, in the fractures of the insected world. The space of the unknown beyond the

limits of the metamorphosing illusion.

1 Examples include using the cooking of the pie, which creates smoke, as a metaphor for a society which

corrupts its people and environment, through which is feeds itself and maintains the fiction of an economy,

(all the while aiming towards ‘gold’). It also uses the words pie, pye, p_ye, pi and P.I.E., to designate

different aspects of the same system. The pie is at once, food, pay, a reference to the notion of the

medieval, the irrational number pi, and the theoretical Proto Indo European language.

2 The importance of the subjective intelligence of the reader/ onlooker as a participant in conceiving of the

work. They are played by the work (see Gadamer’s notion of play and the artwork). The work aims to learn

from the approach of Socrates, and his belief in innate intelligence, and faithfulness to the idea that one

must assist the participant or reader to give birth to the ideas he has inside himself. Since he cannot seek to

teach a person from the standpoint of authority, telling them what to think, which he considers ultimately

false, (obscuring truth, rather than revealing it), his work must come from a place which consistently

provokes questions in the reader, who must qualify for him or herself what is being said.

3 The work can be interpreted as a meta-murder mystery, whose fragmented and ambiguous structure

reflects the unfathomable structures of a civilisation, which obfuscate the continual sacrifice of life deemed

necessary for its continuation. Read as a kind of metaphysical whodunit, the question of who is ultimately

responsible for murder/death cannot be answered without also answering the question: who constructed

the conditions in which murder/death is necessary or even possible? Through the ambiguity of the prose

and structure, the reader is unable to come to a final answer, and is forced to conclude that everyone and

no one might in some way be considered both guilty and innocent, (or even alive and murdered) and it is

this paradox, which constitutes the mystery at the heart of the work, and a central aspect of this research.

4 “Imitative representation is not the kind of play that deceives, but a play that communicates as

play....Mimetic imitation does not want to be ‘believed’, but understood as imitation” Gadamer, Hans-

Georg, The Play of Art (p 127-8, The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays)

5 Classical sculpture, medieval illuminations, renaissance oil painting, modern mixed media, oil paint, egg

tempera, mixed media, digitally made imagery, perspective, lack of perspective, composition, illusionism.

6 Pseudonymous authors (including QQ) provide another way of distancing the works from the persona of

a single author, and another means through which the works are put into play. The ‘real’ author “must

withdraw symbolically, if not physically, in order to let the text live on.” Caputo, John D. Hermeneutics:

Facts and Information in the Age of Interpretation, Pg.99-

7 The understanding that it may be our language which in some sense determines our choices, actions and

modern move towards technology (and its increasing dangers) is a substantial claim by Gadamer, that we

have not yet understood or even come to think about collectively: “even before the game of world history

began, did some cast of the dice fatally compel us by means of our language to our way of thinking, and if

things continue so, will human kind destroy itself by technology?...We see with increasing clarity..that

Greek metaphysics is the beginning of modern technology....”p.571-572 Gadamer, Truth and Method

8 The attempt to move through the intellectual framing of language/images, towards the felt, affective, the

uncanny.

9 “a dark theory of writing....an invitation to a labyrinth.....a place that can teach you to make your way in

the dark.....to look at the blueprints of a labyrinth is not the same as being inside a labyrinth...to

paraphrase Michel Foucault, the experience of the labyrinth metapmorphoses those who enter.” Bruce

Krajewski, Travelling with Hermes, University of Massachusets Press, 1989, p.96-99

10 This is a distillation from the initial research questions:

-How is it possible that a single myth, re-interpreted in the form of a fictional historical landscape of works

(through texts and visual artworks, stylistically and tonally at odds, and referencing different periods) may

be able to come towards an essential picture of the whole, getting at truths inaccessible to an approach

which aims towards an objective image, from a point of neutral observation?

- Why is the relationship between form and subject matter important with regard to this aim?

- How can a hermeneutic approach to the work (as individual pieces, and together as fragments of a whole)

help us to elucidate the work in relation to important aspects of the present historical moment, and

potentially lead us to a deeper understanding of the world, seen in relation to a cultural-historical

paradigm, which shifts over time?

11 “For something can only be called art when it requires that we construe the work by learning to

understand the language of form and content so that communication really occurs.” Gadamer, The

Relevance of the Beautiful, Art as Play, Symbol and Festival, from The Relevance of the Beautiful and

other essays, Cambridge University Press 1986, p.52

12 In his Being and Time, and also his essay the Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger develops the notion

of aletheia, and the artwork in relation to being. Aletheia might be seen as the antidote to ‘un-mindfulness’,

from lethe, one of the five rivers of Hades, which flowed around the cave of Hypnos (sleep).

13 Here we see the problem of writing, attested to by Plato’s Socrates, who did not write down his words

for a reason. “For Socrates writing is an act whose secrecy is irreversible, and he is worried about what

would happen if words fell into uncomprehending hands, since writing cannot speak for itself. ... writing

is defenseless against misinterpretation. Without any chameleon-like potential, writing slides unchanged

into new situtations.” Bruce Krajewski, Travelling with Hermes, p.107-8

14 It may be useful to think of Structural Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss’ replacement for the label of

‘primitive’ for ‘people without writing’. We can intimate that rather than a sign of ‘underdevelopment’,

this may be interpreted as an advanced understanding of the difference between living words, spoken from

the impulse, the intelligent communicator, who also hears how language is heard in the moment it is

uttered, who can shift and change the words in relation to how they are received, is lost in written

language. The problem of misinterpretation is part of writing, herein lies its danger, and the need it has to

try to account for the mobility of signs.

15 “Language escapes the mode of being of discourse. In other words the dynasty of representation. And

literary speech develops from itself, forming a network in which each point is distinct, distant from even its

closest neighbours and has a position in relation to every other point in a space that simultaneously holds

and separates them all.” Michel Foucault, I lie, I speak, from Maurice Blanchot: The Thought from the

Outside, Zone Books, New York, 1987.

16 “Interpretation is a very different immanent attitude. That is, it isn’t objectifying. It doesn’t seek to

establish something as a neutral observer. Rather, it searches for what is genuinely understood in a

framework of meaning. Not in the form of a mere objective determination of truth, but to bring out what

is in all these structures of meaning. To make them speak.” Gadamer (Youtube video on Gadamer’s

Hermeneutics, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ9Lc0Tk9-Q)

17 It is through interpretation, via the notion of the hermeneutic circle set out by Schleiermacher, and

developed by Gadamer, that the research will seek to understand the parts of the work in relation to the

whole, uncovering the layers of meaning within the works, and between the works, as well as possible

relationships with the present historical moment: “It is a hermeneutic rule that the whole must be

understood in terms of the individual and individual in terms of the whole. It is a circular relationship that

exists here. Thus the movement of understanding is always from the whole, to the part, back to the whole.

The task consists of expanding in concentric circles, the unity of meaning that is understood” Gadamer,

Hans-Georg, Youtube video, Gadamer’s Hermeneutics, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ9Lc0Tk9-

Q. (accessed 10 August 2019)