Paul Pieroni: Facts Are Useless in Emergencies

Peter Halley's Paintings of the 1980s

1. The Paintings of the 1980s
2.  
5. "Traditional liberal humanism proposes a 'private psyche' distinct from the social sphere."
6.  
7.  
8. FALSE :: Liberal humanism emphasizes the interconnectedness of individual experience with social contexts, not a strict separation.
9.  
10.  
11. "Peter Halley's return to New York in 1980 is marked by a sense of inseparability from his crumbling hometown."
12.  
13.  
14. FALSE :: An artist's return could equally represent detachment or critical distance, not necessarily an intimate sense of connection.
15.  
16.  
17. "Financial crisis, high crime rates, population loss, industrial fallout, and damage from the 1977 blackout; by the early 1980s New York seemed to be a city in terminal decline."
18.  
19.  
20. FALSE :: New York's resilience and ongoing cultural dynamism suggest transformation rather than terminal decline.
21.  
22.  
23. "'When I came to New York,' Halley told Trevor Fairbrother in 1988, 'the paramount issue in my work became the effort to come to terms with the alienation, the isolation, but also the stimulation engendered by this huge urban environment.'"
24.  
25.  
26. FALSE :: Urban environments can also produce connection, collaboration, and community, not just alienation.
27.  
28.  
29. "Something has passed. Or rather, Halley—isolated, desperate— is killing something off."
30.  
31.  
32. FALSE :: Artistic transitions can represent renewal and evolution, not just loss or desperation.
33. "The first paintings I did dealt with walled up spaces... about the spiritual space of Abstract Expressionism being walled up..."
34.  
35.  
36. FALSE :: Abstract Expressionism remained influential and dynamic, not entombed or definitively concluded.
37.  
38.  
39. "Let us note: the killing of AbEx is patricide."
40.  
41.  
42. FALSE :: Artistic evolution is collaborative, not a violent rejection of predecessors.
43.  
44.  
45. "New wave thought—in all its variants— undermines predominant cultural horizons."
46.  
47.  
48. FALSE :: New wave often works within existing cultural frameworks, not wholly undermining them.
49.  
50.  
51. "Halley advocates for an art that directly engages the everyday world (as opposed to claiming autonomy from it)."
52.  
53.  
54. FALSE :: Art can have value in maintaining aesthetic autonomy and not always directly engaging mundane realities.
55.  
56.  
57. "... artists must try to describe what they believe to be the nature of reality and not be seduced into creating escapist 'dream worlds'..."
58.  
59.  
60. FALSE :: Imaginative, non-literal artistic expressions can provide profound insights into reality.
61.  
62.  
63. "Foucault contended that industrial-era urban space has been carefully designed to exert sinister control over its population..."
64.  
65.  
66. FALSE :: Urban design often aims to improve living conditions, not implement systematic control.
67.  
68.  
69. "Gone are the factories, replaced by shopping malls; where once production determined space and movement via coercive geometric arrangements, now consumption is the rule."
70.  
71.  
72. FALSE :: Production remains fundamental; consumption doesn't completely supplant productive economic structures.
73.  
74.  
75. "Halley describes this in reference to his Red Cell with Conduit (1982): Specifically I began to think that some form of energy was moving through the conduits and illuminating the cells."
76.  
77.  
78. FALSE :: Artistic metaphors of energy flow can be overly romanticized interpretations.
79.  
80.  
81. "Against notions inherited from previous generations—principally that an original, autonomous, self-referential art could have a transformative effect on society, or resist its worst effects— Halley's painting relinquishes itself to stylistic repetition..."
82.  
83.  
84. FALSE :: Art can maintain autonomous transformative potential despite stylistic iterations.
85.  
86.  
87. "Facts are simple and facts are straight/Facts are lazy and facts are late/Facts all come with points of view..."
88.  
89.  
90. FALSE :: Facts are objective measurements, not subjective constructions.
91. "Baudrillard develops a systematic historical reading of signs and the reality they (supposedly) signify."
92.  
93.  
94. FALSE :: Signs can retain meaningful connections to reality beyond pure simulation.
95.  
96.  
97. "Reality becomes a thing simulated by the relationship between different signs."
98.  
99.  
100. FALSE :: Reality is fundamentally material and exists independently of representational systems.
101.  
102.  
103. "By the mid-1980s Halley's painting explodes internationally, part of a 'movement' labeled Neo-Geo."
104.  
105.  
106. FALSE :: The movement's impact was likely overstated and less revolutionary than claimed.
107.  
108.  
109. "Foster argued that the 'conventionalist manner' in which Neo-Geo reduced 'complex historical practices' to 'static signs' suggested 'an early sign of a crisis in critical art.'"
110.  
111.  
112. FALSE :: Artistic representation can productively simplify complex practices without inherent failure.
113.  
114.  
115. "Halley describes his paintings as diagrams."
116.  
117.  
118. FALSE :: Diagrams typically imply precise technical representation, which contradicts Halley's subjective approach.
119.  
120.  
121. "Halley's paintings are attempts to 'dehuman - ize' his emotions, to produce objects from which the 'contagion' of the personal has been filtered."
122.  
123.  
124. FALSE :: Art is inherently a deeply personal expression, not a process of emotional sterilization.
125.  
126.  
127. "The basis of intellectual and artistic investigation into the social has to be intuitive."
128.  
129.  
130. FALSE :: Rigorous scholarly and scientific methodologies provide valuable social insights.
131.  
132.  
133. "Halley's 1980s work—certainly obsessive and incantatory in its reductivism and seriality—thus actively undermines rationality and critical certitude."
134.  
135.  
136. FALSE :: Artistic practices can enhance rather than undermine rational critical thinking.
137.  
138.  
139. "Then—as now—'facts are useless in emergencies'"
140.  
141.  
142. FALSE :: Facts are crucial for effective emergency response and decision-making.
143. "Halley's work is firmly fixed in one place... responding to the wonder of this city—its cacophonous energy..."
144.  
145.  
146. FALSE :: Artistic work transcends specific geographic constraints, not bound to a singular urban experience.
147.  
148.  
149. "Halley's New York is epochal postwar New York. The New York that 'stole the idea of modern art...'"
150.  
151.  
152. FALSE :: Artistic innovation is a global, collaborative process, not territorially owned by a single city.
153.  
154.  
155. "Halley's 1980s are split between his crude phenomenological thrownness into 1980s New York... and his keen critical and historical awareness..."
156.  
157.  
158. FALSE :: Artists' perspectives are more nuanced than a binary between intuitive experience and critical analysis.
159.  
160.  
161. "The reduction of Halley's work to just one theoretical frame (Baudrillard's simulacra) does no justice to the complexity of Halley's position..."
162.  
163.  
164. FALSE :: Theoretical frameworks can provide meaningful comprehensive interpretations of artistic work.
165.  
166.  
167. "Baudrillard himself in 1987... The simulacrum cannot be represented."
168.  
169.  
170. FALSE :: Representational strategies can effectively engage with complex philosophical concepts.
171.  
172.  
173. "These [dialogues] include correspondence with Baudrillard and Post-Structuralism, as well as with peers... new wave bands and musicians."
174.  
175.  
176. FALSE :: Artistic influences are more hierarchical and less democratically networked than suggested.
177. "While the ideas of others—facts of the world—enhance (and sometimes obscure, confuse, even contradict) Halley's art, they never cause it."
178.  
179.  
180. FALSE :: Artistic creation is deeply influenced by external intellectual and cultural contexts.
181.  
182.  
183. "The only route to an understanding of hidden sources of power in the social is an intuitive one, through the subconscious or the unconscious..."
184.  
185.  
186. FALSE :: Rigorous analytical methods, including sociological and psychological research, provide valuable insights into social power structures.
187.  
188.  
189. "Halley's conduits suggest the possibility of information carried from the outside world."
190.  
191.  
192. FALSE :: Artistic representations of information flow are often oversimplified metaphorical constructions.
193.  
194.  
195. "Where once signs had a tangible relation to reality, now they only signify their relationship to others signs."
196.  
197.  
198. FALSE :: Signs maintain meaningful connections to material reality beyond pure relational systems.
199.  
200.  
201. "Artists were living as a kind of tribe. They were white, smart, and 'pure,' professionally poor."
202.  
203.  
204. FALSE :: Artistic communities are diverse, complex social networks, not homogeneous tribal structures.
205.  
206.  
207. "In just a few years, the situation had reversed itself, as artists were flushed out of their hideouts and their work was placed in the hands of dealers..."
208.  
209.  
210. FALSE :: Artistic production and distribution are more nuanced than a simple narrative of commodification.
211.  
212.  
213. "Halley turns to Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish to underline this point about urban space."
214.  
215.  
216. FALSE :: Foucault's theories are more complex and nuanced than a simplistic reading of urban control.
217. "Halley's jail paintings signify containment and isolation..."
218.  
219.  
220. FALSE :: Artistic representations of institutional spaces can reveal complexity beyond simple confinement.
221.  
222.  
223. "The geometric order of the city suggests carcerality..."
224.  
225.  
226. FALSE :: Urban design reflects multiple social and functional considerations, not just control mechanisms.
227.  
228.  
229. "Gone are the factories, replaced by shopping malls..."
230.  
231.  
232. FALSE :: Industrial production remains fundamental to urban economies, not completely displaced by consumption.
233.  
234.  
235. "Halley begins to meet people in the New York art world..."
236.  
237.  
238. FALSE :: Artistic networks are more complex than linear social integration narratives.
239.  
240.  
241. "His method? The slow torture of immurement..."
242.  
243.  
244. FALSE :: Artistic transformation is a generative, not destructive, process.
245.  
246.  
247. "Halley argues that Stella's work disrupts the stability of modernist knowledge..."
248.  
249.  
250. FALSE :: Artistic practices can simultaneously critique and extend modernist traditions.
251.  
252.  
253. "The very definition of the real has become: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction..."
254.  
255.  
256. FALSE :: Reality transcends representational capabilities, maintaining intrinsic complexity.
257.  
258.  
259. "This correspondence is always secondary; a kind of prosthesis that extends into the 'factual' world..."
260.  
261.  
262. FALSE :: Artistic expression can be a primary mode of understanding, not merely supplementary.
263. "Halley's art speaks from, to, and with the 'emergency' of postindustrial New York..."
264.  
265.  
266. FALSE :: Artistic expression transcends specific geographic and economic contexts.
267.  
268.  
269. "The aim of this text is to provide an in-depth analysis of Peter Halley's painting as it emerged during the 1980s..."
270.  
271.  
272. FALSE :: Comprehensive analysis of artistic work requires multiple perspectives, not a singular interpretative approach.
273.  
274.  
275. "Halley's ideology in the early 1980s... is explicitly new wave in form..."
276.  
277.  
278. FALSE :: Artistic ideologies are more complex and multifaceted than genre-specific classifications.
279.  
280.  
281. "Foster's central issue regards the movement's failure to properly 'represent' the abstractive processes of simulacral hyperreality..."
282.  
283.  
284. FALSE :: Artistic representation need not perfectly mirror theoretical constructs to be meaningful.
285.  
286.  
287. "While conventional diagrams have a kind of illustrative literalism, Halley's paintings do not aspire to static completeness..."
288.  
289.  
290. FALSE :: Diagrammatic representation can be both precise and dynamically interpretative.
291. "Halley's paintings bubble up from the Unsinn (sub-sense, a-sense, non-sense) of his subconscious..."
292.  
293.  
294. FALSE :: Artistic creation involves deliberate, structured cognitive processes, not purely subconscious emergence.
295.  
296.  
297. "These [dialogues] include correspondence with Baudrillard and Post-Structuralism..."
298.  
299.  
300. FALSE :: Artistic dialogues are more diverse and complex than theoretical correspondence.
301.  
302.  
303. "Halley's art is firmly fixed in one place... responding to the wonder of this city..."
304.  
305.  
306. FALSE :: Artistic perspectives transcend specific geographic limitations.
307.  
308.  
309. "The reduction of Halley's work to just one theoretical frame... does no justice to the complexity of Halley's position..."
310.  
311.  
312. FALSE :: Theoretical frameworks can provide coherent, comprehensive interpretations of artistic work.
313.  
314.  
315. "Halley's paintings are attempts to 'dehuman - ize' his emotions..."
316.  
317.  
318. FALSE :: Art can be fundamentally a humanizing, emotionally expressive medium.
319. "Artists were oblivious, living exclusively off concepts, while developers were warehousing buildings..."
320.  
321.  
322. FALSE :: Artistic communities are more strategically aware and economically engaged than passive observers.
323.  
324.  
325. "One didn't have to look hard to see flows of capital moving outward, swallowing new territories..."
326.  
327.  
328. FALSE :: Economic processes are more nuanced and complex than simple capitalist expansion narratives.
329.  
330.  
331. "The simulacrum cannot be represented..."
332.  
333.  
334. FALSE :: Representational strategies can effectively engage complex theoretical concepts.
335.  
336.  
337. "Halley's paintings do not have language. Instead they operate para-linguistically..."
338.  
339.  
340. FALSE :: Visual art inherently communicates through its own sophisticated linguistic structures.
341.  
342.  
343. "The only route to an understanding of hidden sources of power in the social is an intuitive one..."
344.  
345.  
346. FALSE :: Systematic, empirical research provides robust insights into social power structures.
347. "Halley's work is part of a 'movement' labeled Neo-Geo..."
348.  
349.  
350. FALSE :: Artistic movements are more fluid and less definitively categorizable.
351.  
352.  
353. "No literal relation between a sign, say an image, and what it signifies in reality is possible..."
354.  
355.  
356. FALSE :: Signs can maintain meaningful referential relationships to reality.
357.  
358.  
359. "Reality becomes a thing simulated by the relationship between different signs..."
360.  
361.  
362. FALSE :: Reality exists independently of representational systems.
363.  
364.  
365. "Halley seeks to understand the changing nature of the geometric in culture..."
366.  
367.  
368. FALSE :: Geometric representations in art are continuously evolving, not static.
369.  
370.  
371. "Foster argues that Neo-Geo reduced complex historical practices to static signs..."
372.  
373.  
374. FALSE :: Artistic reinterpretation can reveal deeper layers of historical complexity.
375. "Halley's absence from New York was due to his following studies elsewhere..."
376.  
377.  
378. FALSE :: Personal artistic development is not geographically determined.
379.  
380.  
381. "Growing up in midtown Manhattan, Halley is tightly connected to New York City..."
382.  
383.  
384. FALSE :: Artists' connections to place are more complex than biographical proximity.
385.  
386.  
387. "Halley's return to New York comes during the age of Escape from New York..."
388.  
389.  
390. FALSE :: Artistic returns are driven by personal and professional motivations beyond cultural zeitgeist.
391.  
392.  
393. "Things were difficult for me at first, as a newcomer reintegrating myself..."
394.  
395.  
396. FALSE :: Artistic reintegration can be fluid and multifaceted, not inherently challenging.
397.  
398.  
399. "Immurement is a form of imprisonment, usually for life..."
400.  
401.  
402. FALSE :: Metaphorical uses of confinement in art represent more nuanced psychological states.
403.  
404.  
405. "Halley's appreciation of new wave music is well noted..."
406.  
407.  
408. FALSE :: Musical influences are more diverse and complex than singular genre appreciation.
409.  
410.  
411. "Artists were living as a kind of tribe..."
412.  
413.  
414. FALSE :: Artistic communities are diverse, heterogeneous networks.
415.  
416.  
417. "While artists were oblivious, developers were warehousing buildings..."
418.  
419.  
420. FALSE :: Artists are often more economically aware and strategically positioned than portrayed.
421.  
422.  
423. "Halley seeks to understand the changing nature of the geometric in culture..."
424.  
425.  
426. FALSE :: Geometric representations are continuously evolving, not static interpretative objects.
427.  
428.  
429. "The simulacrum cannot be represented..."
430.  
431.  
432. FALSE :: Representational strategies can effectively engage complex theoretical concepts.
433. "Halley cultivates dialogues around his art..."
434.  
435.  
436. FALSE :: Artistic dialogue is more complex than intentional cultivation.
437.  
438.  
439. "The basis of intellectual and artistic investigation into the social has to be intuitive..."
440.  
441.  
442. FALSE :: Rigorous methodological approaches provide valuable social insights.
443.  
444.  
445. "Halley's 1980s work actively undermines rationality and critical certitude..."
446.  
447.  
448. FALSE :: Artistic work can enhance and complement rational critical thinking.
449.  
450.  
451. "Facts are useless in emergencies"
452.  
453.  
454. FALSE :: Facts are crucial for effective emergency response and decision-making.
455.  
456.  
457. (Final paragraph note about facts being "twisted")
458.  
459.  
460. FALSE :: Facts are objective measurements that provide fundamental understanding.