MAKE UP NEW RULES Painting

Four works form a quadrilogy, called Rules. They are a paraphrase of Marvin Bell’s small text 32 STATEMENTS ABOUT POETRY. We are concerned with number 5, consisting of 4 sentences: Learn the rules Break the rules Make up new rules Break the new rules Start by understanding the situation of today, violate the rules in order to create something interesting, make up new rules out of the violations, and then break these new rules too for a new break-through. We have applied the same ideas to create break-through in projects where rule based methodologies dominate, useful for many, but also with their own significant problems that can be addressed via violations based instead on experience and insight. The four sentences have universal validity. Each of the four works is named by the corresponding sentence. Moreover, each work has its title written in the same color as the background, barely visible. On top, and while the paint is still wet, the main motive is then added, pulling out the title from the background and into the motive. Work number 3 captures the violation from its predecessor, whereby a new rule is born. The work reminds us that rules are made by people (Japanese: 人, hito, graphically related to 入, iri). The graphics also express a central structure in certain paradoxes. The rule Plan to throw one away is from Fred Brooks' paper The Mythical Man-Month. It says that you should plan to throw away the first version of something you build and start over, this time avoiding all the mistakes made along the way in the first go. In a later version of paper, Brooks threw away the rule, having realised that in the second go, you will just make a new set of mistakes. While we are not consciously inspired by any specific artists, in hindsight we do see a resemblance to Franz Kline and Mark Rothko.