Topical Guide 82
Mark Dorset
Aesthetics; Style
I’ve always taken great pleasure in seeing anyone’s workbench, for a workbench is, I think, a window on one’s aesthetic soul. To be permitted to see a person’s workbench is, for me, a sign of great intimacy, particularly if the workbench is in the cellar, because merely to be invited to the cellar is a token of close affection.
Little Follies, “The Static of the Spheres”
We have hardly any remnant of the idea in our society, that the principal work of art which one has to take care of, the main area to which one must apply aesthetic values, is oneself, one’s life, one’s existence. We find this in the Renaissance, but in a slightly academic form, and yet again in nineteenth-century dandyism, but those were the only episodes.
Michel Foucault, “On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress” in Practices and Knowledge
Traits, of Character, of Personality; Traits, Generational Persistence of
Both grandfathers kept neat, orderly workbenches, but Guppa’s style of neatness and organization differed from Big Grandfather’s. It was a case of a difference in degree producing a clear difference in style. Along shallow shelves above Big Grandfather’s workbench stood rows of identical jelly jars, each labeled to describe its contents, and each containing only items that were quite precisely alike. …
Guppa, on the other hand, kept his supplies in large cans and large categories, such as “screws,” “springs,” and “string.” Whenever he needed a brass screw one inch long, he would dump all the screws out onto his bench and poke through them for a pleasant interval, whistling with the carefree pleasure of this simple task, until he found the screw he needed. …
My father’s workbench was quite a different matter. It was so cluttered with tools and scraps that no work surface was exposed anymore. Since the workbench had become storage space, any work on a project had to be performed on the cellar floor or on a couple of planks thrown over a couple of sawhorses. ...
The two aesthetics—neatness and clutter—are at war within me, and from the state of my workbench one can tell at any time which has, temporarily, the upper hand.Little Follies, “The Static of the Spheres”
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