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.


29 September 2015

Malus Lemoinei 'Label Tree' buds

   
Around the grounds, Spring is sprung. 
           


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

 LOGOS/HA HA 
         
        
         

21 September 2015

TESTING, TESTING

  
We have a technical problem : the images that we added recently (since 3 September) are showing here okay but they are not appearing for you?!

We're working on it.

Test, testing...



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

 LOGOS/HA HA 
         
        

16 September 2015

Theatre of the Actors of Regard presents : Purple Gaze


Purple gaze, all in my brain
Lately things they don't seem the same
Actin' funny, but I don't know why
Excuse me while I kiss the sky

 We are what we think.
 All that we are arises with our thoughts.
 With our thoughts we make the world. 
 Buddha
 The Dharmapada 
Purple gaze, all around
Don't know if I'm comin' up or down
Am I happy or in misery?
What ever it is, that girl put a spell on me

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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
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Help me
Help me
Oh, no, no

Ooo, ahhh
Ooo, ahhh
Ooo, ahhh
Ooo, ahhh, yeah!

Purple gaze all in my eyes
Don't know if it's day or night
You got me blowin', blowin' my mind
Is it tomorrow, or just the end of time?

Ooo
Help me
Ahh, yea-yeah, purple gaze
Oh, no, oh
Oh, help me
Tell me, tell me, purple gaze
I can't go on like this
Purple gaze
You're makin' me blow my mind
Purple gaze, n-no, nooo
Purple gaze

   
- with apologies to JH

___________________________________________

We have received the following email announcement from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney :

Question the post-critical irony 

How do we distinguish between an ‘original’ and a ‘copy’? 
Professor of Art History at Monash University, Rex Butler 
takes a look at the practice of two painters making similar 
work for two very different reasons. Explore the theories 
and future of painting, in this thought-provoking lecture.
       
Clicking on that takes us to this :
           
TALK

WHY PAINTING? 
– Rex Butler

Explore the recent history, current state and the possible futures of painting in this series of talks.

REALLY POST-CRITICAL

Rex Butler (Monash University)
Sat 26 September
2-3.30pm
The Brisbane-based newspaper The Courier-Mail recently carried a long article by journalist Susan Johnson, 'CJ Hendry shows how artists are finding fame and riches by using social media' (Read article here) (December 15, 2014), featuring the work of one CJ Hendry, an artist whose work bears an uncanny resemblance to that of another Queensland artist Michael Zavros. Painter Zavros is known for his “post-critical” attitude towards art-making, his doing away with that critical “irony” that distinguishes the work of art from that object or attitude it appears to represent. Zavros’ work simply is what it represents: cars, handsome young men, the artist narcissistically bathing in his own wealth and glamour. And yet Zavros and his dealer in the article are quoted defending his work against its imitation by Hendry. In what could the difference between the two bodies of work lie? How are we to distinguish between Zavros’ “original” and Hendry’s “copy”? And why would Zavros, given his apparently “post-critical” attitude, want to?
Rex Butler is Professor of Art History at Monash University. He is currently working on a history of UnAustralian art with ADS Donaldson and has recently completed a book on Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy?
FREE, bookings essential
Veolia Lecture Theatre
Presented in association with Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney
Image Credit: Lucy Parahkina
               
Theatre of the Actors of Regard 
 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something...

 LOGOS/HA HA 
         
          

14 September 2015

DOUBLE DISILLUSION PLAN HEADED OFF BY TURNBULL!

   
There was loud appreciative laughter in the bLOGOS/HA HA Canberra Office this morning when our politics staff heard the ABC political editor Chris Uhlmann accidentally reveal the PM's plan to save his Prime Ministerial skin. Uhlmann stumbled-out that if this weekend's Canning by-election went badly, Abbott just might call "a double disillusion". His pronunciation was clear.

Realising that Uhlmann had inadvertently divulged a confidence, we called an immediate editorial meeting at which an editorial was committed to, several opinion pieces were proposed, tomorrow's banner was sketched (below) and Laughter Models were hired from an agency.

At 4pm it was Stop the Presses : Malcolm's challenging!
              
click image to enlarge     
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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something...

 LOGOS/HA HA 
                 
       
       
         

10 September 2015

Be Headed

         
This c.1935 tableau photo of two men in the street is by Dora Maar.    
Dora Maar (November 22, 1907 – July 16, 1997), born Henriette Theodora Marković, was an Argentinian-raised photographer of French and Croatian descent, with further known artistic work in poetry, and painting; she is most widely known as Pablo Picasso's muse of nearly a decade (c.1935-44), including for his widely known pieces Guernica and The Weeping Woman.
- Wikipedia
    
The man on his knees appears to be multi-headed with one or more heads down the darkness manhole and one head resting on the lighted path above, that being either iron-masked (see: L'Homme au Masque de Fer) or actually having the form of a two-eyed matrix manhole cover. 
         

The other man is a TAR passer-by : his suited body in the photographic dimension; his probable head, crop-guillotined, likely exists elsewhere. 

Around the time of this photo effacement, Dora Maar was introduced by Paul Eluard to Pablo Picasso. Over their next nine years together, Picasso rendered Maar's visage many times.
Below, three women of Theatre of the Actors of Regard perform 
'for and after Dora Maar Untitled c.1935' :

photo by LM of TAR  
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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
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 LOGOS/HA HA 

     
     
            

06 September 2015

Borders | borders | borders!


Not since WW2 and the 1947 partition of India has there been such a mass movement of human refugees.

Often in such extremis, the overwhelming complexity is reduced to a single compelling image; often of a suffering child, as it was in the Viet Nam war, at the Oklahoma City Bombing and during the Gaza Strip invasion  in 2000. This time, it's the image of a refugee child at the borders of sea and land, war and peace, life and death.
         

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

 LOGOS/HA HA 
         

a drowned refugee child
____________________

an Official with a notebook
____________________

a photographer
____________________

an image
____________________

Reuters
____________________

editors
____________________

publishers
____________________

as described by news and opinion writers 
____________________

as received by us and remade
____________________

as acted upon in thought word and deed
       
Theatre of the Actors of Regard : photo LM 
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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something...

 LOGOS/HA HA 
         

         

03 September 2015

Another Border Boundary

             
At the crease : AB keeps his eye on the ball
           

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

 LOGOS/HA HA 
         
        

01 September 2015

might might BORDER INCIDENT


Attorney General George Brandis, who personally chose Dyson Heydon to lead the Royal Commision into Trade Union activities, said recently that Commissioner Heydon "does not have a political bone in his body". Indeed, that...
“This is a man who has no politics, who is entirely free of politics, but has given a lifetime of service.”  
Dyson Heydon: royal commissioner decides future
The Australian / Elizabeth Colman, Jared Owens
31 August 2015
Royal Commissioner Dyson Heydon's father was the private secretary to Robert Menzies when he first was Prime Minister, from 1939-40.
What you didn’t know about Dyson Heydon
Malcolm Farr / news.com.au


Q : (Loud appeal by ACTU at Allan Border Field) : Howzat?
A : (Third Umpire, observation) : Dyson Heydon was dismissed (run out, no less) for eight when he played in Sir Robert Menzies' Prime Minister's XI against South Africa in 1964.
TAR : Okay. Let's have another look at that...
        


    
Yesterday, after 10 days of deliberation, Commissioner Heydon delivered his self-assessment regarding "apprehended bias".
Apprehended bias 
The test for determining whether a judge should disqualify himself or herself by reason of apprehended bias is “whether a fair-minded lay observer might reasonably apprehend that the judge might not bring an impartial and unprejudiced mind to the resolution of the question the judge is required to decide”  
Johnson v Johnson(2000) 201 CLR 488 at [11], affirmed in Ebner v Official Trustee in Bankruptcy (2000) 205 CLR 337; applied inMichael Wilson & Partners Ltd v Nicholls (2011) 244 CLR 427; distinguished in British American Tobacco Australia Services Ltd v Laurie (2011) 242 CLR 283; see also Slavin v Owners Corporation Strata Plan 16857[2006] NSWCA 71 and Barakat v Goritsas (No 2) [2012] NSWCA 36.
Surely that is a might might through which a fair-minded lay observer might drive a galaxy fleet of hyperdrive perceptors; and yet the projection-space known as Royal Commissioner Dyson Heydon has judged himself reasonably unlikely to be such a projection by others.
       
Here's the submission about that as made by lawyer for the ACTU, Mr Newlinds :
May I emphasise at this point what I call the double "might" test in Ebner. We would respectfully suggest that the use of the two "mights", not only is it rather ugly grammar, it does emphasise that this is actually quite a low bar that is imposed by the High Court in relation to the test, because I don't have to persuade you that the hypothetical observer would think that you harbour a political prejudice. I only have to persuade you that the hypothetical observer, firstly, might think and, secondly, what he might think is that you might harbour a political prejudice. I think that is an important point to emphasise. The test could be cast with the use of many other words but it has obviously deliberately been cast in that sense which creates a low threshold. That is our first submission. We put it forward as a basis by itself that would justify the making of the orders we seek.  
p9 of the pdf of the Royal Commission transcript of 21 August 2015
   
Dyson Heydon would not be run out again - not by the other runner, not as a result of his own error, and not by the other side - while serving in the Prime Minister's XI. 

He has declared himself, "Not out".



 Three fair-minded lay observers at the crease          LM of TAR
         
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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something...

 LOGOS/HA HA