"When in Doubt, Reverse It!" Ray Johnson told his old friend, Bill Wilson. Bill, in an email, hints at the importance of a third force always coming in to alter and confuse any dialectic pair. That you can compare two things but not three. The energy embodied by two forces in direct relation to one another (lovers in love, an apt metaphor, good conversation over wine or coffee, one color set beside another) gets broken open by the third force's entrance into the field. In fact, there was no real field until the third force came in. Now things are triangulated. (This is me now, fumbling around, not Bill Wilson.) An old lover comes into the room. The metaphor, now activated, undresses itself. The night's talk explodes when the check arrives. A slip of red undermines the agreement made by blue and green.
Holy confirming force. Holy denying force. Holy reconciling force. (Ouspensky)
Strophe, anti-strophe, epode
Curly, Larry & Mo
Reversal is one of few ways the art-maker can have a hand in this old, mystical law of three. You make another move to break up an interesting pairing, follow a blind trail to see where it comes out. As we know, Albers' exercises all about breaking the mind out of habit so the eyes can see. The practice of practice, as Alice Coltrane put it. Just ways to step from the formal garden of 2 into the wild field of 3 (& so on).
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