Framing Spinoza: Frame as a noun is a ready companion to the visual arts. Conceptually, when frame is a verb, it marks a transition from one thing to another. These frames are both noun and verb. They situate Spinoza, the brilliant Marrano, in Amsterdam, in an extraordinary meeting of time and place. The works are based on the design of an actual set of 17th century Dutch frames, composed of ebonized painted wood that are dense with the vitality that comes from the co-mingling of multiple visual forms. The complex assemblages within the elaborated frames are bracketed by echoing right angles making claim to the mathematical structure of the whole. Rebecca Goldstein, in Betraying Spinoza- The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, makes the connection between the “highly formalized geometric style” of The Ethics and Euclid’s Elements. I have recreated the structure of the frames using mixed media and mylar in which to try to distill some of the rich materials that Spinoza’s world and work continue to offer up.

Conatus: Conatus is the term used by Spinoza in The Ethics, described by Yovel as ”The endeavor, wherewith everything endeavors to persists in its own being, is nothing else but the actual essence of the thing in question.” Into the patterned frame are snippets from Jasper Johns’ “Dutch Wives” as well as bits of optical art (the kind of art made to challenge perception). They frame the more open-ended center of particulates and pigments simply presenting abstraction as the thing itself.

Politicus: This multipart frame surrounds a scanned and woven center image from the cover of the Theologico Politicus, Spinoza’s great work addressing democratic governance and the separation of church and state. The title is partly obscured. The thru line, from Spinoza to John Locke’s time in Amsterdam to the “framers” of the U.S. constitution, seems freshly relevant to the present moment when foundational documents are in danger of unraveling.