The Twins, Castor and Pollux, by Dorothea Rockburne
I think the reason I paint, or that I do whatever I do, is to deal with (I don’t think of it as unconscious) subliminal knowledge. And I do think that one has knowledge about things that haven’t occured yet, and I try to work for those kinds of knowledges. For me, these are emotional truths.
[Subliminal knowledge] is what I call developed intuition. What I have found is that when I learn something—while you are using it at the moment, it’s right at the top of your brain. But, as you move on and are using newer information, the formerly learned information goes into a mental file and with time that file goes deeper into the drawer and becomes what I call sublminal information. It is trained intuition because the files begin to combine, all on their own accord.
Dorothea Rockburne, in conversation with Denise Green
Metonymy in Contemporary Art
This is one of the clearest statements I’ve ever read of what it is that compels me to paint. Rockburne’s distinction between “sublminal knowledge” and the unconscious is also a key insight. The visual material that we internalize is a bit like the bubble under the tablecloth—you know it’s there, but it is nearly impossible to nail down. It just pops up somewhere else, having morphed into yet a different shape. As Rockburne suggests, the mixing it up happens with or without conscious engagement.
Another provocative suggestion in this exchange is Rockburne’s reference to prescient information and how, as an artist, she is seeking access to those other “kinds of knowledges.” But that is a topic for a whole other discussion.
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(Note: This post originally appeared on Slow Muse in March of 2007.)
This is a wonderful bit of illumination that, for me at least, goes right to the heart of the matter. The real life now now now pulsing rhythmic life of praxis and embodied knowledge. I have to resist the temptation to fill your comment section w/ a discursive flood of threads that have woven themselves into my work over the past 30 years! You may have finally motivated me to write some of this down in a form that is even remotely coherent so I cans share it with you. Holly has a copy of Denise Green’s book (thanks to your rec.) and was reading passages aloud to me recently while we were in the Berkshires. “Resonates” seems inadequate a word to describe our take on the material! Thanks for all the work you put into sharing your own line of inquiry here. Its a constant source of inspiration and very much appreciated.
Rockburne’s idea of “trained intuition” also brings to mind how dancers’ muscles internalize movement and how writers internalize and transform words into metaphors that have visual expression in their mind’s eye. Fascinating stuff.