The Long & The Short of It

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Liminal spaces: the intersections, boundaries and - almost-places - of change or union, are deeply embedded in the human psyche, evoking fear and fascination, anxiety and contemplation in equal measure. They provoke something visceral in us, reflecting, maybe, our uncertain or otherwise thoughts about our own mortality; that liminal space between being and not-being at the cusp of the ultimate change for each of us: the moment of our end as a person.

I was reading the Life & Arts section of this weekend's FT, in the pub today, and came across a couple of pieces of note, which I think are not unconnected. The first was an appraisal of the exhibition of Constantin Brâncuși's sculpture at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the second, looking at a show of the work of the ceramicist Toshiko Takaezu at the Noguchi Museum in New York.

The former's work I have been aware of since I was a schoolboy, the latter blissfully unaware of until now, as I've been out of touch with the art world for a good while now, and I've never been particularly au fait with ceramics to any degree, anyway. In Brâncuși's case, I've always cleaved to the purity and elemental qualities of his sculpture; on the surface primitive [deceptively so, technically] but deeply present and of their place in the world, they just are: of this world, and of our present state, a folk-memory of our possible history, but not of our future.

The piece on Takaezu quotes her as saying once that "The important thing is the dark space that you can't see..." - which in itself encapsulates the transitional space, dividing the known from the unknown. The ceramic sculpture itself the liminal space between knowing and unknowing, often with a small opening between the dark of the unknown interior and the world that the observer occupies. In The Gateless Gate, there is a Zen parable that goes: 'Shuzan held out his short staff and said: 'If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now what do you wish to call this?'

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