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.


30 July 2017

Picky of the Bunch

        
The Archibald Prize : The prize will be awarded, in the terms of the will of the late JF Archibald dated 15 March 1916, to the best portrait ‘preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in art, letters, science or politics, painted by any artist resident in Australasia during the 12 months preceding the date fixed by the Trustees for sending in the pictures’.

Furthermore,
the work must be a painting. Must be a portrait painted from life, with the subject known to the artist, aware of the artist’s intention and having at least one live sitting with the artist.

- from AGNSW Archibald Prize Entry Conditions

For some, the annual Festival of Portrait Regard is their Festival of Dagger Definitions.

Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse.


- James Joyce, ‘Ulysses’

This art competition has a history of contention :

...the most famous was in 1943 when William Dobell's winning painting of Joshua Smith was challenged because of claims it was a caricature rather than a portrait.

Max Meldrum criticised the Archibald Prize winner in 1938, saying that women could not be expected to paint as well as men.

In 1997 the painting of the Bananas in Pyjamas television characters by Evert Ploeg was deemed ineligible by the trustees because it was not a painting of a person.
  
This year, John Olsen and Tim Storrier - both are former Trustees of the AGNSW, and both previous Archibald Prize winners via self-portrait entries - publicly criticised the winning work.

In the Daily Telegraph :

Veteran art dealer Hughes said he was “not unhappy” with Cairns being selected as winner but an incensed Olsen’s comment was simply: “Oh dear, oh dear.”

“I have never seen anything so superficial,” the 88-year-old said. “The thing is so totally bland.”

Sour grapes? “How can it be sour grapes when I am the richest grape?” Olsen said.

“I know nothing of the artist and I wish him very well but the thing is that it hasn’t got the necessary qualities that makes a portrait. Where the hell is the Archibald Prize going? If they get to that kind of level, what’s the point?”
.    .    .    .  

Storrier said Cairns’ win was symptomatic of a political “agenda”.

“What I’m referring to is the inclusion of certain types of paintings by certain types of people, which appears to me to be the case. The board has lost what its focus is meant to be, which is to pick the best portrait,” he said.

In the Age/SMH :

The Archibald Prize has once again sparked controversy with veteran artist John Olsen calling this year's winner, Mitch Cairns' colourful portrait of artist Agatha Gothe-Snape, "just so bad".

 
"I think it's the worst decision I've ever seen," the 89-year-old former winner and three-time judge of the country's best-known portrait prize said. 


Insisting that an outstanding portrait should give an insight into its subject, Olsen said Cairns' painting lacked analysis. 


"It's entirely surface, the drawing is just not there, and the structure, which is a summation of what makes a thing good, isn't there," he said.


What is "a portrait"? 

We can't find a definition of "a portrait" provided anywhere in the terms and conditions of this contest. 

In this regard ...

We were very interested to note as one of the 43 hung finalists, and therefore, presumably, a work considered by the Trustees to meet the stated terms and conditions of entry :

Tjungkara Ken's Kungkarangkalpa tjukurpa 

(Seven Sisters dreaming), a self-portrait.

At the AGNSW Archibald Prize website, the artist is quoted :

‘I hold my father’s story, I hold my mother’s story… [it] doesn’t come out of paper or out of a book. It’s coming out of the ground here,’ said Tjungkara Ken in 2015.

‘When the ancestors painted our tjukurpa (dreaming) on the caves and on their bodies, it was a celebration of our culture, a way of identifying people and places, and a way of continuing our stories. Today, we have new materials and ways but the celebration and commitment to tjukurpa and cultural identity is always the same,’ says Ken.

‘My painting is a self-portrait through Kungkarangkalpa tjukurpa, the Seven Sisters dreaming – a self-portrait of my country. For Anangu, they are one and the same.'

  


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27 July 2017

2017 Archibald Portrait Prize


Tomorrow at midday, the Festival of Portrait Regard will reincarnate at the Art Gallery of New South Wales with the announcement of the 
2017 Archibald Portrait Prize Paint for Regard.

Each year, along with the newly celebrated, a previous lineage master is also acknowledged.

This year, Theatre of the Actors of Regard will honour the artist Ike Taiga and his seminal work 

"The Connoisseur of Regard".
  

TAR  
Ike no Taiga (池大雅, 1723–1776) was a Japanese painter and calligrapher born in Kyoto during the Edo period. Together with Yosa Buson, he perfected the bunjinga (or nanga) genre. The majority of his works reflected his passion for classical Chinese culture and painting techniques, though he also incorporated revolutionary and modern techniques into his otherwise very traditional paintings. As a bunjin (文人, literati, man of letters), Ike was close to many of the prominent social and artistic circles in Kyoto, and in other parts of the country, throughout his lifetime.


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25 July 2017

Double Hate


The polling analysts who worked for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign had a name for the many Americans who didn’t like him but didn’t like Hillary Clinton either: “double haters.”

Many of these double haters seemed likely to vote anyway, given their long voting history. “They were a sizable bloc,” Joshua Green writes in his new book “Devil’s Bargain,” the first deeply insightful political narrative of the Trump era, “3 to 5 percent of the 15 million voters across 17 battleground states.”

The double haters spent much of the campaign unsure what to do. In the end, as Green told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross last week, “they broke to Trump.”


   David Leonhardt / New York Times


FIAPCE -1978- 
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24 July 2017

FACTUM EST


I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

—Wallace Stevens, verse VIII from 

    “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”


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Theatre of the Actors of Regard  

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Factum est silentium in cœlo

There was silence in heaven

Et vidi septem illos angelos qui adstant in conspectu Dei, quibus datæ sunt septem tubæ.

And I saw angels standing before God, and to them were given seven trumpets


Et septum angeli, qui habebant septem tubas, præparaverunt se ut clangerent.

And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to blow

Primus igitur angelus clanxit, et facta est grando et ignis, mista sanguine, projectaque sunt in terram: et tertia pars arborum exusta est, et omne gramen viride exustum.

The first angel blew, and there was made hail and fire, which were mingled with blood, and they were cast in to the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt, and all green grass was burnt.

Deinde secundus angelus clanxit, et quasi mons magnus igne ardens projectus est in mare: factaque est tertia pars maris sanguis. Et mortua est tertia pars creaturarum quæ erant in mari, animantia dico, et tertia pars navium periit.

And the second angel blew: and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast in to the sea, and the third part of the sea turned to blood, and the third part of the creatures which had life, died, and the third part of ships were destroyed.

Tum angelus tertius clanxit, et cecidit e cœlo stella magna, ardens velut lampas, ceciditque in tertiam partem fluminum, et in fontes aquarum. Nomen autem stellæ dicitur Absinthium: versa est igitur tertia pars aquarum in absinthium, et multi homines mortui sunt ex aquis, quod amaræ factæ essent.

And the third angel blew, and there fell a great star from heaven burning as it were a lamp, and it fell into the third part of the rivers, and into fountains of waters, and the name of the star is called Wormwood. And the third part was turned to wormwood. And many men died of the waters because they were made bitter.

Deinde quartus angelus clanxit, et percussa est tertia pars solis, et tertia pars lunæ, et tertia pars stellarum: ita ut obscuraretur tertia pars eorum, et diei non luceret pars tertia, et noctis similiter.

And the fourth angel blew, and the third part of the sun was smitten and the third part of the moon, and the third part of stars: so that the third part of them was darkened. And the day was smitten that the third part of it should not shine, and likewise the night.

Et vidi, et audivi unum angelum volantem per medium cœli, dicentem voce magna, Væ, væ, væ incolis terræ a reliquis sonis tubæ trium illorum angelorum qui clangent!

And I beheld and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice: Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth because of the voices to come of the trumpet of the three angels which were yet to blow.

[St John the Divine, Book of Revelation & Apocalypse Chapter 8, Translation by William Tyndale (1534)]


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Adam Zyglis / Buffalo News, 2017  
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23 July 2017

Theatre of the Actors of Regard presents Acting for the Camera


ACTING FOR THE CAMERA
The Albertina, Vienna

With circa 120 works from the Albertina’s Photographic Collection, the exhibition Acting for the Camera examines the diverse ways in which models are staged or stage themselves before the camera. The featured photographic works, created between the 1850s and the present, represent a cross-section of photographic history as well as the diversity of the Albertina’s own holdings. The present selection is divided between six thematic emphases: motion studies, models for artists, dance, picture stories, portraits of actresses and actors, and Viennese Actionist stagings of the body.
 
Featured photographers (selection):
Ottomar Anschütz | Bill Brandt | Brassaï | Günter Brus | John Coplans | Hugo Erfurth | Trude Fleischmann | Seiichi Furuya | Eikoh Hosoe | Martin Imboden | Dora Kallmus | Rudolf Koppitz | Johann Victor Krämer | Heinrich Kühn | Helmar Lerski | O. Winston Link | Will McBride | Arnulf Rainer | Henry Peach Robinson | Otto Schmidt | Rudolf Schwarzkogler | Franz Xaver Setzer |Anton Josef Trcka | Erwin Wurm

Exhibition dates : 10 March - 5 June 2017

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Hard to escape... 
ACTING FOR THE CAMERA


Theatre of the Actors of Regard 
Dr. Walter Moser, Kurator der Albertina spricht über unsere neue Fotografie Ausstellung ACTING FOR THE CAMERA


Theatre of the Actors of Regard 
 Rudolf Koppitz
 Bewegungsstudie (Motion Study)
 1926
 Multicolor gum bichromate print
 Albertina, permanent loan of the Höhere Graphische Bundes-
 Lehr-und Versuchsanstalt, Vienna


Theatre of the Actors of Regard 
 FIAPCE
 -1952-


Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
 FIAPCE AT BONZAVIEW
 -1978-


Theatre of the Actors of Regard 
 Actors of Regard at ACTING FOR THE CAMERA 
 The Albertina, Vienna
 2017

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19 July 2017

Nothing if not egg c'llectic

 
Following on from the previous post
] [ man-child regards points, lines, right-angles, planes, block ] [
TAR presents :
) ( chook-woman regards pointless, lineless, angleless, bifoci, egg ) (

News today of the online auction of the Jennie Boddington Collection. The private collection of the first Curator of Photography (1972-1990) at the National Gallery of Victoria. Lot 4 is our interest :

Description :
LEE FRIEDLANDER (AMERICAN, BORN 1934): A small group of letters (2) from Maria Friedlander and postcards (4) from Lee to Jennie Boddington, between 1980 and 1983. In her letter of March 7, 1983 she writes "The N.Y. photo market has been rather still for a couple of years, but we are beginning to hear optimistic rumblings." (6 items).
GST :
Quantity :
Symbol :
Grade :
Categories : Australian & International Art > Photographs (Art)
It's the image 
reproduced on the pin-pricked postcard that interests us : Folies Bergère dancer
Mlle Couralet, dans "La Poule aux oeufs d'or" - not by Friedlander, by the great Nadar. 
  
Theatre of the Actors of Regard c.1890  
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16 July 2017

A : AUDIENCE : Ω


Ross Coulter's Audience exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria ends today.
  
Theatre of the Actors of Regard -1952- 


end sequence Audience photo by Ross Coulter  
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14 July 2017

We call him "Mr No Enemy Liu", he said.


Liu Xiaobo, Chinese Dissident Who Won Nobel While Jailed, Dies at 61

by Chris Buckley / New York Times (13 July 2017)

full article here

Mr. Liu was imprisoned and unable to accept the Nobel Peace Prize 
in person in Oslo in 2010. The actress Liv Ullmann read from Mr. Liu’s 
“I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement to the Court.”CreditOdd Andersen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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Liu Xiaobo, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, died today, July 13, 2017, from complications of liver cancer, while serving an 11-year prison sentence for “inciting subversion of state power.” The following essay is excerpted from Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century, by Orville Schell and John Delury.

Liu Xiaobo’s Three Refusals: 
No Enemies, No Hatred, No Lies

An Excerpt from ‘Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century’

  
In the spring of 1989, Liu Xiaobo was a thirty-four-year-old professor of literature and philosophy at Beijing Normal University with a keen interest in political ideas, who when demonstrations broke out, quickly became a habitué of Tiananmen Square. Having written a doctoral thesis on the topic of aesthetics and human freedom, he was a prolific if acidic writer, a loner and iconoclast who believed that the most worthy role of intellectuals was to “enunciate thoughts that are ahead of their time” and to strive for a vision that is able “to stretch beyond the range of accepted ideas.” He believed that a truly autonomous intellectual must be “adventurous” and “a lonely forerunner” whose true worth would be discovered “only after he has moved on far ahead.”1 A uniquely independent thinker whose signatures were close-cropped hair, an addiction to cigarettes, and a fondness for aviator glasses, Liu rejected the fundamental premises of one-party rule, which he felt had corrupted the ability of most Chinese to think for themselves. Party rulers, he later said, “bribe us with small favors, threaten us with the lash, entertain us with songs and dances, and use lies to poison our souls.”2 For those intellectuals who too easily accommodated the party, Liu had little but contempt. “And China’s so-called intelligentsia,” he wrote, “is, for the most part, the dictator’s conspirator and accomplice.”3
An admirer of nonviolent leaders such as Vaclav Havel, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr., Liu prided himself on his intolerance for cant, groupthink, and political pandering.4 “The Chinese love to look up to the famous, thereby saving themselves the trouble of thinking,” he wrote before the 1989 demonstrations began. That’s why they “rush into things en masse. Occasionally someone stands out from the crowd and lets out a shout: Everyone is astounded. What I’m saying is that there are too few people with their own minds, their own ideas.”5 ....
full article extract here

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11 July 2017

TAR at ASG


Theatre of the Actors of Regard 
at 
Anna Schwartz Gallery

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extract from the current ASG website :

MIKE PARR
LEFT FIELD


Calling on the tenets of Suprematism and continuing the premise of Painting-out Performance, 2015, in which several large prints were painted red, Mike Parr performed LEFT FIELD [for Robert Hunter] at Anna Schwartz Gallery on the 6th of July 2017.

The title of the performance invokes variously; a position of obscurity, an ideological leaning, a location on a baseball pitch, or even an abandoned site – a field left behind. Such an empty field could be imagined as boundless, one entire entity without edge or seam. Embracing the statement of Kazimir Malevich that “Art… wants to have nothing further to do with the object”, Parr’s minimalistic performance has rendered the gallery void, leaving behind only a trace in the form of video documentation. On display for the period of the exhibition, this ephemeral echo reverberates against the walls, ceiling and floor, intensifying its barely perceptible sight and sound. On view in the upstairs gallery is a new work by Mike Parr, COATED TONGUES [for Shaun Gladwell], in which he continues his tribute to seminal Australian artists.
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10 July 2017

Some Artists & Philosophers Walked into a Door...




Theme :

A work might be experienced in numerous ways — in person, online, across multiple versions, as a record, diagram, report, description, witness account, podcast, video, plan, remix, or even as a scalable aggregate of elements. Perhaps, once we consider the world of a work of art as a constellation of elements, the indeterminacy of art is given a more conspicuous materiality. Where is a work of art? Is there an optimum or primary point of entry into a work of art?

Chairs : 

Sean Lowry (VCA) and Jenny McMahon (Philosophy, Adelaide)

Presenters (more info) :

Barbara BoltElizabeth Burns ColemanEdward CollessCate ConsandineClaire Healy & Sean CordeiroJustin ClemensCynthia FreelandVanessa GoddenAndrew GoodmanPaul GuyerRaafat IshakKate JustTessa LairdClaire LambeSean LowryDavid MacarthurMohan MatthenJennifer A. McMahonRowan McNaughtMichael NewallJames PhillipsLisa RadfordGeoff RobinsonKiron RobinsonBernhard SachsDavid SequeiraRobert SinnerbrinkDaniel von Sturmer, Sophie Takách



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08 July 2017

ORAZIO FANTASIA and the METAPHYSICAFLOGOS/HA HA


IN PRINCIPIO ERAT VERBUM
In the Beginning was the Word...
and the Word was made Flesh

ORAZIO FANTASIA
I Speak the Fantasy...
into Being


 Orazio Fantasia

"Fantasia making something out of nothing." 
 ABC radio game caller as Fantasia kicks a goal
 27 minutes into the 2nd quarter
 Essendon v Collingwood



 And whatsmore :
"Bombers at one end making something out of nothing. Collingwood at the other making nothing out of something."



For the second time this season,
Bombers defeat Collingwood


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07 July 2017

Overs Bowled :


outswinger also bowled to that previous post
by Spare Room 33 :


SR33 caption: Comrades Aleksandr Rodchenko and Pavel Popov* inspect state porcelain factory bowl containing M. Marcel Duchamp’s coffee grinder.  *Liubov Popova’s brother

Canberra Times caption: Senior manager of the Security and Emergency Management Branch in the Justice and Community Safety Directorate Bren Burkevics, and Minister for Police and Emergency Services Mick Gentleman inspect new CCTV cameras that are being installed as upgrades to the ACT public safety CCTV system. Photo: Sitthixay Ditthavong).

HAND SPACE caption :
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