David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.


26 February 2015

Actually, for purposes of activation...


Act One : 
Hal Foster : Lecture, Melbourne University today
       
2015 Dean's Lecture Series
'In praise of actuality: Questioning Art as a Process'
Why is process, like performance, so readily embraced by artists today? One reason is that it is said to activate the viewer, the assumption being that to leave an artwork undone is to prompt us to complete it.  And yet this attitude can easily become an excuse not to execute a work fully. A work that appears unfinished hardly ensures that the viewer will be engaged; indifference is as likely a result, perhaps a more likely one.

In this lecture, internationally-renowned art critic Hal Foster argues that such informality tends to discourage sustained attention, both aesthetic and critical.  We are likely to pass over the work quickly, he claims, because its maker seems to have done the same prior to us, or because quick effect seems to be what was intended in the first place.  He also challenges two further assumptions. The first is that the viewer is somehow passive to begin with, which need not be the case at all, and the second is that a finished work in the traditional sense cannot activate the viewer as effectively, which is also false.

For purposes of activation and attention, Foster argues, give us a Piet Mondrian over a George Maciunas any day!

Professor Hal Foster is Townsend Martin Class of 1917 Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University and a coeditor of the journal October. Author of The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century (MIT Press, 1996) and Design and Crime (and Other Diatribes) (Verso, 2002/2011), he recently published The Art-Architecture Complex (Verso, 2011) and The First Pop Age: Painting and Subjectivity in the Art of Hamilton, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Richter, and Ruscha (Princeton University Press, 2012). His new book Bad New Days: Art, Criticism, Emergency is due out from Verso in fall 2015.
When:Thursday, 26 February 2015 | 6:30 - 7:30pm

Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...

LOGOS/HA HA
      
     
Act Two :
Yves Klein : dimanche, 27 November 1960
The Diary of a Single Day
The Blue Revolution Continues

ACTUALITÉ

As part of the theatrical presentations of the Festival of Avant-garde Art in November-December 1960, I have decided to present the ultimate form of collective theatre : a dimanche for everybody.

I did not wish to limit myself to an afternoon or evening performance.


On dimanche (Sunday), 27 November 1960, from midnight to midnight, I thus present a full day of festival, a true spectacle of the Void, as a culminating point of my theories. However, any other day of the week could have been used.


I wish that on this day joy and wonder will reign, that no one will get stage fright, and that everyone, conscious as well as unconscious actors-spectators of this gigantesque presentation, should have a good day. 


That everyone will come and go, move about, or remain still. 


Everything I write in this diary today precedes the presentation of this historic day for the theater.


The theatre should be or at least rapidly attempt to become the pleasure of being, of living, of spending wondrous moments, and with each passing day of better understanding the beauty of each moment.


Everything I write in this dairy represents my own steps towards this glorious day of realism and truth: the field of operations of my proposed conception of theatre is not only the city, Paris, but also the countryside, the desert, the mountains, even the sky, and even the entire universe. Why not? 


I know that everything inevitably is going to work out very well for everyone, spectators, actors, stagehands, directors, et al.


I would like to thank Mr. Jacques Polieri, the director of the Avant-garde Festival, for his enthusiasm and for proposing to me that I present this “dimanche, November 27.”

Yves Klein
   

Dimanche on sale at a Paris news-stand  
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...

      
LOGOS/HA HA
        
 
Act Three : 
bLOGOS/HA HA : Theatre of the Actors of Regard
Actually...





detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...

LOGOS/HA HA
  
    
     

25 February 2015

The Times they are a-changin'


Tired of watching others read The Times while you wait and wait and wait your turn? 

Why not have your Gentleman's Club install wifi, then catch up on bLOGOS/HA HA while you wait.
   
This 1831 performance of 'Waiting for The Times' for Theatre of the Actors of Regard long precedes the artlife of Gilbert & George. It is recorded here by the artist Benjamin Robert Haydon*. 
 

Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...

LOGOS/HA HA
       
*You might recall the impecunious and constantly unhappy Haydon in the film 'Mr Turner'. In one scene, we saw him upset that his 'A Sicilian Ass' has been installed in the back room of the Royal Academy. The following sequence extracts are from Mike Leigh's screenplay here :

In the ante-room we are looking at a painting of a donkey. 

PICKERSGILL : Can you explain your rendition? 
HAYDON : It needs no explanation, sir. ‘Tis our Redeemer’s conveyance into Jerusalem, plain as day. 
PICKERSGILL : Blasphemy! 
(Turner has returned.)
TURNER: You faring well, Mr. Haydon? 
HAYDON : This will be the finish of me! (He storms out.)
TURNER : Fifty pounds! 

Turner shakes his head, and shares the moment with Soane, who is adjacent. 
Haydon marches into the main gallery. He goes up to Leslie, who is standing with Eastlake and Callcott...

PICKERSGILL : Haydon, can I point out that I too hang in the inferior chamber?
HAYDON : I care not for your work, sir. I care not a fig.
PICKERSGILL : At least my work does not represent self-portrait as ass. 

SHEE : Mr. Pickersgill...! 
HAYDON Give me those... 
(Haydon knocks Pickersgill’s hat off. A general struggle ensues.)
HAYDON : Unhand me!
SHEE : Remove this man!
HAYDON (shouting) : You swines! You swines! 


Turner quietly leaves the gallery.

       

24 February 2015

regarding Mr. Turner

 
Sunday night at The Rex.
Three old artists sitting in a row 
for Mike Leigh 
Mr T
and Theatre of the Actors of Regard.
       

   
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/ 
someone looks at something...

LOGOS/HA HA
        
.  .  .  .

Demonstration Day at the Royal Academy.
Three old artists standing in a row
for Charles West Cope 
Mr T
and Theatre of the Actors of Regard.
   

Joseph Mallord William Turner by Charles West Cope
oil on card, circa 1828
National Portrait Galley, London

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...

LOGOS/HA HA
       
         
        

23 February 2015

P

   

             click image to enlarge  
  detail
  A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
  someone looks at something...

  LOGOS/HA HA


        

22 February 2015

LOGOS/HA HA or Who Speaks There?


The editorial WE thought we had more or less finished this run of Malevich-referencing posts, after yesterday's report that the great artist will run onto The Field for the Essendon Bombers in the 2015 pre-Season.

Then, today, we encounter this splendid photo...


Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something...

 LOGOS/HA HA
 ]The Red Cardigan(
  
... and its problematic headline ...
   
Kasimir Malevich's 'Black Square': 

What does it say to you? 
   
... accompanying a July 2014 article by Michael Glover in The (UK) Independent. It begins :


The painting itself sits in a relatively darkened room at Tate Modern, where a major retrospective of the career of its creator, Kasimir Malevich from Kiev, opens today. Given that the painting is black from top to toe and hip to hip, and that it is often said to represent a pivotal moment in the history of abstraction and the art of the 20th century, this strikes the onlooker as an odd decision. Why not be given the opportunity to see it as clearly as possible? 
                    - read full article here
     
Given that (one meaning of) Logos is 
The Speaking into Being of the World,
and given therefore that this Logos includes
The Speaking into Being of... say, 
Kasimir Malevich's 'Black Square'

... we at bLOGOS/HA HA 
would, with instinctive reflex, recast that headline, 
and its conceptual confusion, as :

Kasimir Malevich's 'Black Square' : 

What do you say to it?


Not that you must say anything to it. As with any other projection-space, to be silent is an option.

Salvatore Rosa's 'Self-portrait' : 

What do you say to it?

Consider another artwork, a severe favourite of ours at the National Gallery, London : Salvatore Rosa's c.1645 self-portrait :

        

Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
Rosa plays hard eyeball with his Actors of Regard while his hands hold firm to the dictum board :
AUT TACE, AUT LOQUERE MELIORA SILENTIO (Do not speak unless your words are better than silence).



 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something...

 LOGOS/HA HA
  
   

20 February 2015

Malevich to Play for Bombers in pre-Season

          
... as the tough times continue. 

This editorial in The Age today :


    "Any day now vast numbers of Australians will begin an annual ritual. Already the back pages of daily newspapers  have begun a familiar transformation. Progressively, sports played with round balls are being pushed inside – footy season is nearly upon us and it is cause for celebration.
       
Or is it? For the third consecutive year, the start of an AFL season is being tainted by the red and black stain of the Essendon Football Club... " 
     

Resurrection : Bombers Milk Chocolate Easter Egg Wrapper

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...

LOGOS/HA HA
     
     
      

19 February 2015

Theatre of the Actors of Regard presents : Kostume Drama (black horizontal red vertical white ground)

      

AAA_ArtArchiveAustralia   
 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something...

 LOGOS/HA HA


     

18 February 2015

White on white, G & B, 1910

       
In Melbourne and Sydney in the early 1970s, certain members of Theatre of the Actors of Regard made it their practice to visit Minimalist and Conceptualist art exhibitions and enquire of the director or a member of staff : 
"Oh, is there nothing on?"

Recounted from the other side, one may still hear gallery personnel tell of those who used to come into an exhibition and say : 
"Oh, is there nothing on?"
           
That came to mind while enjoying this artist's response...
       


...to one stater of the obvious. This is from a U.S. postcard series - THOSE FOOLISH QUESTIONS - published by G & B in 1910.


             click image to enlarge  
  detail
  A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
  someone looks at something...

  LOGOS/HA HA
       
     
In the preceding posts
we have regarded 
as figures-on-ground :
- a red vertical (The Wild, Barnett Newman, 1950) 
- a black horizontal (Black painting, Mel Ramsden, 1966)


Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Cross (Small Cross in Black over Red on White), 1920-27, Stedelijk Museum :  johan's photoblog
            
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...

LOGOS/HA HA
     
     
Today, we attempt to focus on 
the ground/
ground-on-ground/
The Ground/
       
(1) In the 1910 postcard scene : 
two figures on a ground 
regard 
with language and other projections
a white-on-white (sic) ground (sic)
     
(2) In the TAR scene below : 
two figures on a ground 
regard 
with language and other projections
a white-on-white (sic) ground (sic)
   
"It goes without saying that when artists attend exhibitions, they look with exceptional intensity: on the initiative of the Rheinische Post, the artist Günther Uecker and Marion Ackermann, director of the Kunstsammlung, visited the exhibition “Kandinsky, Malevich, Mondrian: The Infinite White Abyss” together at the K20.
They spoke about the artistic approaches of this trio of avant-garde artists, about their compositions, about German postwar art – and of course, about the color white.

For the curator Marion Ackermann, this is the most radical picture in the exhibition: Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematism (White Planes in Dissolution), 1917-18, on loan from the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam."
     
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...

LOGOS/HA HA
     

(3) In this 
our scene here now :
you and me 
we 
two figures 
with language and other projections
regard 
this :
now our meta-scene regard
     
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...

LOGOS/HA HA