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.


25 October 2015

Questionable IdeoLOGOS/HA HA


A Red Question Mark for Australia?

We acquired our copy of Neville Cayley's "What Bird is That?" in the early 1960s. With it's mighty red question mark on the dust jacket, that well-worn edition remains our favourite.



Do we see too much through the filter of Big History when we imagine that red question mark and its jackass branch secretary morphing out of the red hammer and sickle? Cayley was born in 1886 and first published this work in 1931, so he had lived through the rise of Communism and the new consciousness of that strong red signage.



Thoughts too of Yeats' The Second Coming (1919), beginning with a trained bird of prey sickle-arcing beyond the falconer's call and concluding with a question, What Rough Beast is That?
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. 
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
       
History Plays 

1979 : Return of the Laughing Inspectorate

1997 : The Cover of Rolling Stone


       
After listening to the interview with Artist As Family, it was time for the annual Hepburn Springs Festa Street March down to the Mineral Springs. The Daylesford Community Brass Band, the local school kids dressed and masked as animals and clowns, and anyone else who feels so inlined. This year we sent our cartoonist along to represent the local office of bLOGOS/HA HA 



           
Lisa Gervasoni did but see them passing by : that's lovely Andrea and our bloke, cartoonish, with a model of the Yello Ideo, sign of all this interconnectedness. Those who don't march line the way to observe.
      
At the Springs Clare Gervasoni was about to record our rep when ... ah, here comes an actor now :

2015 : Theatre of the Passers-By 




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

 LOGOS/HA HA 
         
      
     

24 October 2015

Artist As Family theartistasfamily.blogspot.com.au


What a joy this morning to listen to our inspirational frontier friends Patrick Jones and Meg Ulman being interviewed by Michael Williams on the national broadcaster.
Blueprint for Living
'Frugal Family Adventure'
ABC Radio National :
click here to listen
Here they are on their recent 6,000 km adventure. Zero out front of Patrick and Zephyr ...


... and Meg and Woody.



Now, from Newsouth Books ... 
     


Permaculture co-founder and yet another extraordinary local resident David Holmgren launched The Art of Free Travel at the Daylesford Library and Community Garden earlier this month.

       
This week Artist As Family will set off on their bikes again, from Daylesford to Sydney and back for a 3 month book tour. If you encounter them along the way, please make them welcome.


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

 LOGOS/HA HA 
         
      
          

23 October 2015

Maximum Choppage


Simon Chan (played by Lawrence Leung) has returned to his hometown of Cabramatta. While everyone thinks he was studying at a legendary martial arts school in Beijing, the truth is he was at Marshall's Art School, in Melbourne. Skilful with a paintbrush but clueless in combat, Simon is the exact opposite of an action hero. However, due to his mother’s boasting, everyone in Cabramatta thinks he is a kung fu master and the new saviour of their town.

And in the Red Corner...

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

  LOGOS/HA HA 
         
      
       

21 October 2015

U R HERE : CARTOLOGOS/HA HA

      
Mandala of the Matrix World
(Tazōkai mandara 胎蔵界曼荼羅)
(15th century-16th century)



Medium
opaque watercolour and gold paint on silk

Measurements
218.4 × 184.5 cm (image and sheet)

Place/s of Execution
Japan

Accession Number
AS9-1971
      
Department

Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 
Purchased, 1971
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of The Gordon Darling Foundation

Gallery location
Not on display


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

 LOGOS/HA HA 
         
      
        

20 October 2015

Sitting On Empty


National Gallery of Victoria, 1975 

Theatre of the Actors of Regard 
presents
'Zazen'


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

 LOGOS/HA HA 
         
      
        

16 October 2015

Speak Truth To Power : LOGOS/PFFFT!

   
Hugh Heffner has confirmed that Playboy magazine will no longer show photos of nude ladies.
Now readers of Playboy, the glossy men's magazine known for its nude fold-outs, can honestly say they are buying the magazine for its articles.
Playboy will no longer publish nude photographs of womenthe New York Times reported on Monday in an article quoting Scott Flanders, the company's chief executive.
The Age (here) 13 October 2015
Call us pedantic, or voyeuristic metaphysical, but "nude photographs"? We'd like to see that.
Headline : Nude Photos Reveal Nothing
Anyway, O spirit of the times, today we read in The Age that federal Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly reckons the image of a bare blue-painted bum of a witch is not something appropriate for the bloody corridors of power at Parliament House.


       
Pass slowly with non-attachment : (above) Theatre of the Actors of Regard at Parliament House yesterday and (below) a detail of 'The Witches' by Wendy Sharpe. Photos: Andrew Meares



Which reminds us of another round of recent arse-baring, an 
art-historical reconstruction of a sort, a celebration of the great Edo period Japanese scroll so euphoniously named He-Gassen: The Battle of the Farts. Here's the particular scene that inspired (exhausted!) the TAR group 'Falstaff Four' ...


       
to perform their latest 4x projection-space propulsion routine

           
with additional rapid expulsion courtesy NGV.


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

 LOGOS/HA HA 
         
PS  Digital Malcolm, why isn't the people's Parliament House art collection viewable online?

         

14 October 2015

Matthys Gerber at MCA Sydney

               
Sydney artist Matthys Gerber is a deft painter who deliberately makes work in an array of contrasting styles. From photorealism to fluid abstraction, portraits and still lifes, Gerber’s interests remain wide-ranging and his approach incessantly experimental.
The motif of the Rorschach reappears in his paintings. In varying colours, sizes and styles that morph into different physical forms, from the canvas to the wall, the Rorschach epitomises the intentions of Gerber’s work to reflect the nature of desire and the will to find figurative elements in abstract forms. This will be the most comprehensive exhibition of Gerber’s work ever staged in Australia.

Curated by MCA Senior Curator, Natasha Bullock.
22 September-6 December 2015
#matthysgerber


 Matthys Gerber
 Painting for Peter 
 2003

 Museum of Contemporary Art
 purchased with funds provided by the MCA Foundation
 2015

 image courtesy and © the artist
 photo: Ashley Barber


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

 LOGOS/HA HA 
         
   
         

12 October 2015

Spy v Spy


Further to the previous :
      
"Yes, this is he. To whom am I speaking, please?"


           
 Thanks to Tash of TAR for alerting us to the cover of 
 UNDERCOVERISM :
             


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

 LOGOS/HA HA 
         
     
         

10 October 2015

Re noir

     
We have received the following announcement from the MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art), Sydney, sent with the headline Paint in polar opposites :


If images are exhausted, where does that leave painting?  Explore the past, the now and the tomorrow of painting during a series of talks presented in association with Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, including Dr Jacqueline Millner and Leonhard Emmerling from the Goethe Institut, Delhi.

.  .  .  .     
         
If images are exhausted, where does that leave painting? 
               
This image about (regard of) PAINTING received widespread inhaustion this week. It's a protest staged outside the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Click here for The Boston Globe article 'Renoir haters picket outside Museum of Fine Arts' by Mark Shanahan and photographer Lane Turner. 


              
If images are exhausted, where does that leave painting?

RENOIR or REYESIR?

   
If images are exhausted, where does that leave painting?

Re noir : Renoir is the new black : QED

1. "Renoir" is the name of a French painter
2. Translated to American, that French painter's name means
    "Regarding black"
3. Black is the colour of Satan / God is Light 
_______________________________
= GOD HATES RENOIR / USA LOVES GOD

              HONK IF YOU HATE RENOIR  
     
If images are exhausted, where does that leave painting?

And where does that leave Theatre of the Actors of Regard, you might then ask?

In fact, TAR were there, undercover, staging their own infiltraitor alt_action. See the dude without a hate sign, the one on the left who's sidled up to the others, the one holding a half-taco in that unmistakeable classic TAR pose ...



Yes, that him!



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

 LOGOS/HA HA 
         

         

08 October 2015

LOGOS/HA HA : a series of talks

         
We have received the following announcement from the MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art), Sydney, sent with the headline Paint in polar opposites :

If images are exhausted, where does that leave painting?  Explore the past, the now and the tomorrow of painting during a series of talks presented in association with Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, including Dr Jacqueline Millner and Leonhard Emmerling from the Goethe Institut, Delhi. In the galleries, Matthys Gerbers exhibition is a wonderful opportunity to get to know the many styles of painting, from photorealism to geometric abstraction.

.  .  .  .    
                    
If images are exhausted, where does that leave painting? 

       
If images are exhausted, where does that leave painting? 
                   corella-as-image in cwest of correlation 
If images are exhausted, where does that leave painting?
On December 14, 2010, Linden Tibbets, the creator of IFTTT, posted a blog post titled “ifttt the beginning...” on the IFTTT website, announcing that the new project was called IFTTT.  
IFTTT is a web-based service that allows users to create chains of simple conditional statements, called "recipes", which are triggered based on changes to other web services such as Gmail,  FacebookInstagram and Pinterest.[4] IFTTT is an abbreviation of "If This Then That" (pronounced like "gift" without the "g").[5] 
   
If images are exhausted, where does that leave painting?


If images are exhausted, where does that leave painting?


 cumulative attendance of TAR
 Clouds #2 (1995) by 
Matthys Gerber
 
MCA survey

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

 LOGOS/HA HA 
         

         

06 October 2015

Where the bee sees

      
The Tempest (Act 5, Scene 1)
by William Shakespeare

Ariel sings :

Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.   
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.  

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

 LOGOS/HA HA