Manya Steinkoler
CHAIR
A Jetson chair. 'Meet George Jetson. Da da da- dada da!' Inspiration Metropolis.
-You're totally missing the color-vibration, the music presenced by the color.
Hmm… 'Presenced by…' OK. Then something alive, but I'm not invited. A kidney.
—Why should you be invited? A celestial 70s icy blue. A wee-hint of Tiepolo. The blue negative space shape -the face of a Georges de la Tour Mary Magdalene. Do you sense the line of her head?
No. I'm 'sensing' stomach and sphincters.
- It's not a stomach.
Fine. Gullet.
—Only insofar as it sounds like music both horizontally and vertically, harmonically and contrapuntally. The larger meaning of gullet. Like the space in the throat. The Italian Camarata said the throat was the 'first dome,' a kind of microcosm of the heavenly spheres in the body, the duomo of the internal cathedral.
I see a chair—you know that Euro Saarinnen chair? Retro futurist meets Hanna and Barbera. Don't make a face. You should be happy I remember any of the exhibits you take me to. …Fine. It's not a chair.
—Why does it have to be anything?
I'm feeling bar stool. I cannot help it.
-Color has a mood, like music: that thrilling brick against the bright olive green, fire and ice, night and day. Dismantling musical tone you find color; dismantling color you find music…Look— there are shapes under the paint. It makes for modulated difference in another dimension, the liminal resonating throughout in different ways.
You used that word again. The one you said you wouldn't use when looking at art. Your liminal is my chair.
—Chair and cathedral have the same etymological origin.
Well, it's not for sitting, I'll tell you that much. It's unstable for one thing. Even the black line which you would think would be decisive, isn't. …What does that mean?
—It means my liminal is your chair.