Gus Blaisdell Collected

Introduction: Radical Philosophical Reclamation & Wrecking, Project: TLP Hotel

∙ 233 ∙ introduction: Radical Philosophical Reclamation & Wrecking, Project: tLP Hotel ■ this work of fiction was serialized in Artspace Magazine, beginning in the Spring 1977 issue. it was originally conceived as a work comprised of seven parts, each part correlating with one of the seven numbered propositions in ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (tlP). only four of the projected seven parts or chapters were ever completed. each part is numbered (tlP Hotel 1, tlP Hotel 2, etc.) and the numbers in these subheadings correspond to the numbered propositions in Wittgenstein’s text. this numbering, however, does not indicate the order of the narrative. instead, the flow of the narrative follows the sequence in which the parts appeared in Artspace (1, 3, 5, 2). Wittgenstein’s seven propositions: 1. the world is all that is the case. 2. What is the case—a fact—is the existence of states of affairs. 3. a logical picture of facts is a thought. 4. a thought is a proposition with a sense. 5. a proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions. 6. the general form of a truth-function is [ρ, ξ, n(ξ)]. this is the general form of a proposition. 6.001 What this says is just that every proposition is a result of successive applications to elementary propositions of the operation n(ξ). 7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. 234 ∙ fiction in a brief note on the project Gus wrote: “these were a series of commentaries in the form of stories on contemporary art, about a painter with painter’s block and his beloved. they were set across from the ruins of Pacific ocean Park (PoP) at the ‘landsend’ below the Santa Monica Pier in venice. the inspiration was a studio lewis Baltz built but never lived in; he said of it, ‘it was an idea i had. i never planned to live in it.’ the couple that did went through so[me] strange changes because of its scale—smaller than they were—and the idea of living in somebody else’s idea: painter’s block for him and futile temptations toward conceptual art as a substitute; for her, well, ah . . . ‘temptations’ toward ‘affairs.’ From these hang the commentaries on conceptual and minimal art.” Gus once indicated that the tlP Hotel is loosely based on the old Mendota Hotel at the corner of Hill and Main Street in Santa Monica, California, where various artists had studios, including James turrell, who produced a signature early work there involving apertures of light, called “the Mendota Stoppages.” the Baltz studio was nearby at 11 navy. Gus never explained his mysterious renumbering of the street address on ocean Front Walk at the opening of each chapter of the story. Discussing the tlP Project in a letter to Bill (William S.) Wilson (letter undated, but probably sometime in 1979), Gus wrote: [i am] sending along a couple of issues of Artspace, each of which contains sections from the novel i am finishing: to be called Landsend. it is rewriting the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, tlP, as a work of art of another kind. (Few philosophers think of philosophy as a work of art, and they should; and it is no longer much of an excuse for them to say they were never taught it was, were rather taught the opposite. Philosophy without imagination, the sort we have professionally today, is rather like a sight without an eye.) in any case the pieces have developed in Artspace, and i trust you will find them interesting. they appear reorder [ed], my feeling being that an artist would come upon proposition 2 (the picture theory of meaning section) later than a philosopher trying to think in the formal mode (l.W.), and that an artist, especially one who was earlier on a “failed” philosopher, would also see the challenge of trying to depict proposition 6, i.e., the logic exhibition. it is tlP 6 in which i now wallow, “the logic exhibition,” and have been struggling there for months. i never realized how terrifying it would be to try and fulfill Wittgenstein’s warning, i.e., that he would be understood only by introduction ∙ 235 those who had had the same thoughts as himself, retraced the same trails. and so i am deep in the heart of logic, in the basement below the foundations—or with the foundations surrounding one on all sides— and it is...