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 September 2018

Gerald Murnane and the possible present


This is Nobel Prize announcements week. 

Due to a sex abuse scandal within the Swedish Academy, however, no Nobel Prize for Literature will be awarded in 2018.

Earlier this year, before the cancellation announcement, a profile of Gerald Murnane and his writing featured in The New York Times Magazine. The article, by Mark Binelli, was titled 
Is the Next Nobel Laureate in Literature Tending Bar in a Dusty Australian Town?


photo by Morganna Magee for The New York Times 

Last week, The Wheeler Centre (Melbourne) published online an audio record of a conversation between Gerald Murnane and Sean O'Beirne. Heartily recommended.


Sean O'Beirne and Gerald Murnane - photo by Scott Limbrick

Twenty years ago, when I first arrived on the plains, I kept my eyes open. I looked for anything in the landscape that seemed to hint at some elaborate meaning behind appearances.
My journey to the plains was much less arduous than I afterwards described it. And I cannot even say that at a certain hour I knew I had left Australia. But I recall clearly a succession of days when the flat land around me seemed more and more a place that only I could interpret.

- the opening of The Plains (1982) by Gerald Murnane

 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something... 
         
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28 September 2018

AFL TARminoLOGOS/HA HA


terminology
ˌtəːmɪˈnɒlədʒi/
noun
the body of terms used with a particular technical application in a subject of study, theory, profession, sport etc.
  


AFL TARminoLOGOS/HA HA
AFLˌTARːmɪˈnɒlədʒi/
noun
the body of terms used with a Theatre of the Actors of Regard application to Aussie Rules Football

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Lowering The Eyes – See : intent

Intent – Term of dubious provenance and application used with great flourish and emphasis by football people to mean more or less whatever they feel like at the time. Conspicuously fails to correspond to identical-looking expression in the dictionary.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

... this year it's lower the eyes used to tell a player running forward to look to closer options rather than bombing it long. Once again, I have never heard the saying prior to this year. Listen tonight fellas, you'll hear it at least twice a qtr.

I've tried it, playing footy with my 9 & 6 year old sons about 3 weeks ago. Left the "fat side" of the park, starting "running the lines", looked up to see that there wasn't any "plus 1's", (there wasn't), I thought, shit is there a closer option, so I lowered the eyes and fell flat on my stupid ******* face. Give it a try, stop what you're doing, trying running a half a dozen paces and then actually lower your eyes. There's a fair chance you'll be head-butting the floor.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

The term lace out has generally been used by commentators in the past to describe a perfect foot pass to a leading forward. The kick used is generally a drop punt, which spins backwards, the ball is kicked to a leading forward who marks it on his chest 
lace out, referring hypothetically to the main laces at the area where the ball is pumped up. (Not the stitches that connect the four pieces of the ball but the main laces at the top centre.) So, when the forward has marked this ball on his chest, the back of the ball is hugged to him and theoretically the laces of the ball are facing outwards... it's not anything that is ever practised or realistically is aimed for, it is just a piece of verbal hyperbole used by the commentators when they say, "Look at that, delivered lace out to the forward" ...


AFL Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
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25 September 2018

Fool Moon


this night's full moon
Hakuin's little bird
on one branch

...I’ve appended in my teaching notes a comment by Chuang-tzu: “Even in the densest wood, the wren is content with one branch.” Isn’t that wonderful?! 
- R.P.


Theatre of Avian Regard  
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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
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23 September 2018

World of Sport


 A wedge-tailed eagle is driven out of a magpie’s territory with 
 some aggressive dive-bombing. photo Scott Turner

Here's one for our older Melbourne sports fans as Uncle Doug on World Of Sport (Channel 7) looks to next weekend's footy final between the Magpies (Collingwood) and the Eagles (West Coast).


Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
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16 September 2018

TAR* here Jack!


We read with compounding interest the Rex Butler article Tom Roberts, Shearing the Rams in memo review yesterday.

 Tom Roberts
 Shearing the Rams 1890
 Oil on canvas (lined onto board)
 121.9 x 182.6 cm
 Signed and dated l.l. Tom Roberts/1890
 Felton Bequest 1932
 National Gallery of Victoria


 Original frame by Melbourne frame-maker John Thallon.

Approaching his conclusion, Rex writes 

But what is the meaning of this young girl holding the tarbrush and catching our eye at the quiet centre of the painting, I kept asking myself? (And it was increasingly being speculated, against previous scholarship, that she was even the model for the slightly older boy to her left holding the shorn fleece.) Why did she seem after all the hidden secret to the painting?

Click go the shears, boys, click click click

And then it clicked. Roberts' late addition of first a girl with a broom and then turning that broom into a tarbrush was a last-minute nod to the act of painting his picture ... That tin into which she is about to dip her brush in order to seal any small wound inflicted by the shearers on the sheep is strikingly like the palette and paintbrush Roberts used to make his painting.

Actually 

In other words, what we are actually looking at in Shearing the Rams is nothing less than the various stages in the long process of Roberts making his painting.

various stages : a view from the TAR pit 

In other words, what we are actually looking at in Shearing the Rams is nothing less than the various stages in the long process of our re|making ourselves as pain|things, a Theatre of the Actors of Regard*. 
TAR* here Jack! 

a postscript jot c.1980

"One day in the early 1970s, I was looking at Tom Roberts' famous painting Shearing the Rams (1890) at the National Gallery of Victoria.

Beside me were three women.

The figure of the youth with a tar brush 
('...tar here Jack'), the only figure in the painting recognizing 

the presence of the painter constructing the painting and us re-constructing the painter's painting, who 
I had always thought to be a young boy, was being addressed by the three women standing beside me.



On either side of a very old woman were what I guessed to be perhaps this woman's nieces**.  It was she who had been the youth with the tar brush. 
Now, some eighty years later, she was looking at 
this painting, answering her nieces' questions, remembering the time the artist painted this painting."

**Have just found this online video... 


click the arrow above to watch video or go to here

... in which family members Dorothy and Gayle Ambrose describe this one and only visit by 'the tar boy' Susan Bourne with her daughter-in-law and sister-in-law to the NGV to see her younger actor-self in Tom Robert's Shearing the Rams, as witnessed by your TAR correspondent :

click image to enlarge  

Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
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Q. Where did your grandmother first see the original painting?
A. (Dorothy Ambrose) Well, she saw it in the gallery in Saint Kilda. It was the National Gallery, I think. And she was seventy, at least. And her daughter-
in-law and her sister-in-law took her to see it. And 
she stood in front of it and looked at it and said, 
"There I am." And she hadn't seen it ever before. And she only saw it the once."

Susan Bourne died in 1979.

Theatre of the Actors of Regard   
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
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14 September 2018

on the table


takuno
sushi ni me samushi
Kangyotei 

the sushi on the table 
has a chilling effect 
Fish-Viewing Pavilion

- Yosa Buson, transl. Cheryl A. Crowley

Theatre of the Actors of Regard       
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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
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13 September 2018

TAR : The Beckoning


Natasha Johns-Messenger

Water-Orb 2018


Ian Potter Sculpture Court, Caulfield Campus
   
MUMA is pleased to launch our Ian Potter Sculpture Court Commission with a new work by Natasha Johns-Messenger, Water-Orb 2018.

In this work Johns-Messenger uses simple optical physics to activate a chasm between what we think we see and what we know. Employing an ocular-like form, the work beckons our observation of a dynamic body of water that appears to defy gravity as it flows.

Supported by MUMA Contemporaries. 


Photo : Christian Capurro

Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something... 
         
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12 September 2018

"LOGO" | Figure + Field




regarding LOGOS | LOGO | "LOGO"

etymoLOGOS/HA HA
from Online Etymology Dictionary

logo (n.)
"simple symbol or graphic meant to represent something," 1937, probably a shortening of logogram "sign or character representing a word."


logocentric (adj.)
"centered on reason," 1931, from logo- "reason" + -centric.

logorrhea (n.)
1878, from logo- "word, speech" + ending from diarrhea.

logolatry (n.)
"worship of words," 1810 (Coleridge), from logo- + -latry "worship of." …

logomaniac (n.)
"one mad for words," 1870; see logo- "word" + maniac (see mania).…

logophobia (n.)
"fear of words," 1890; see logo- "word" + -phobia "fear." Related: Logophobe; logophobic.

logo-
before vowels log-, word-forming element meaning "speech, word," also "reason," from Greek logos "word, discourse; reason," from PIE root *leg- (1) "to collect, gather," with derivatives meaning "to speak (to 'pick out words')."

logomachy (n.)
see logo- + -machy). Related: Logomach; logomachical. …

logogram (n.)
"word-sign, sign or character representing a word," 1840, from logo- "word" + -gram. Generically, "any symbol representing …

logograph (n.)"instrument for giving a graphic representation of speech, word-writer," 1879, from logo- "word" + -graph "instrument for …

logograph (n.)
"instrument for giving a graphic representation of speech, word-writer," 1879, from logo- "word" + -graph "instrument for …

logocracy (n.)
"system of government in which words are the ruling powers," 1804; see logo- + -cracy "rule or government by." Popularized by …

*leg- (1)
logic; logistic; logo-; logogriph …

swoosh (n.)
1860, sound made by something (originally a fishing rod during a cast) moving rapidly through the air; imitative. As a verb from 1867. The Nike corporate logo so called from 1989.

letter-head (n.)
also letterhead, "sheet of paper with a printed or engraved logo or address," 1868, short for letterheading (1867 …

prudential (adj.)
Related: Prudentially. Prudential, the U.S. insurance company, dates to the 1870s; its logo featuring the Rock of Gibraltar dates from c. 1900 and was widely known 20c.


logogriph (n.)
type of word puzzle based on synonyms, etc., and often in the form of a verse, 1590s, from French logogriphe, from Greek logos "word" (see Logos) + gripos/griphos "riddle," a figurative use, literally "fishing basket, creel," probably from a pre-Greek word in a lost Mediterranean language. "The variation [p/ph] is typical for Pre-Greek words; such an origin for a fisherman's word is quite understandable" [Beekes].

logopoeia (n.)
a quality in poetic writing that charges words with meaning based on context and prior usage, a term introduced, along with phanopoeia(visual image) and melopoeia (sound), by Ezra Pound from Greek logopoeia, from logos "word" (see Logos) + poiein "to make, create" (see poet).

logon
in computer sense, as one word, by 1975, from log (v.2) + on (adv.).

Logos (n.)
1580s, "the divine Word, second person of the Christian Trinity," from Greek logos "word, speech, statement, discourse," also "computation, account," also "reason," from PIE *log-o-, suffixed form of root *leg- (1) "to collect, gather," with derivatives meaning "to speak," on notion of "to pick out words." The Greek word was used by Neo-Platonists in metaphysical and theological senses involving notions of both "reason" and "word" and subsequently picked up by New Testament writers



 Serena Williams examines her smashed racket during the
 women's final of the United States Open. (New York Times)

 photo : Danielle Parhizkaran/USA Today Sports, via Reuters

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


  

11 September 2018

Louise Paramor : Kurious Oranj


Louise Paramor
Kurious Oranj

Final week | until 15 September 2018

Karen Woodbury Fine Art

exhibition at
FORT DELTA
143 Brunswick Street
Fitzroy, Melbourne 3065
(enter via rear laneway)

Tuesday to Friday 10 - 5
Saturday 12 - 4
or by appointment


  Pretty Green 2018, honeycomb paper sculpture

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



10 September 2018

The lampstand will add a sentence



Volume eight
The manuscript is painted.
The original version is とまでいつてをきます.
これをみると は は は 会 あんどんくわい ひます ひます ひます ひます ひます ひます ひます ひます ひます.
Candlestick は さん さん さん ところでみたも か か か か か か か か か か か か か か か か か か か か か が
たゞ, Akutagawa さんが, らふそくの火(ほ)さきを, にじませて画(か)くことを觉えて喜えてんだことだけはんだことだけは.

The sculler is the Taro of Kubota City. More than sixty people. City 
Taro さんの亲方,都筑(つづき)德三郎さんの言葉を绍介すると,

"Engraving."
このりにはりには is divided into hard work and の meaning.

[Note: The front section of the された絵は された絵は らく 岩 岩 岩 岩 岩 岩 岩 岩 岩 岩 岩 岩 岩 しき しき しき しき しき しき しき しき しき しき しき しき しき しき しき しき しき しき しき しき The old collection is rewritten.

The lampstand will add a sentence,
Aunt

うす绵は
のはしかね
Frosty Nightingale


という 川 川 龙之介 confidently made a sentence. この句に关わって龙之介は大正13 (1924) February 1発行雑の雑志 “female” に の の の を発 を発 を発 している 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太 太.

Frosty night
A night of frosty nights.

いつものやうに machine に かつてゐると, いつか いつか いつか いつか いつか いつか がする がする がする がする. At 12 o'clock, you must sleep. Tonight, I am squatting, squatting, squatting, and squatting. The film is a big cloud. The original paper is smashed into the book. Finally, the beginning of the fire. はんねらの瓶に铁瓶の汤をつぎ,その中へ火を一つづつ入れる. See you in the fire. Charcoal る る る も んにする んにする んにする んにする. The water vapor rises independently. He is happy and happy. He Yan is worried. Bed time の の にとつてある. The second である も も も も も も も も. Before going to bed, you must squat, のびのびと一人便便をする. Tonight, the second-order squats. The seat of the のののの电灯がついてゐる. Who knows who to think about. Whoever picks up the きてゐるのかしらとも思ふ. その部屋の外を通りかかると, 68六になる母母が一人, 古い绵をのばしてゐる. かすかに光る绢の绵である.

"Auntie" is a cloud. "まだ起きてゐたのですか?" と云ふ. "Hey, I am thinking about it. What is the ももう る る だらう?" The rear frame of the electric light はどうしてもつかない. Remember to squat and urinate. After the frame of the の の には には が が えてゐる えてゐる えてゐる. The sound of the wind is ある晩はののすれる. What is the sound of the sound tonight? ただ い い い い じられてゐる じられてゐる じられてゐる.



FIAPCE  
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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
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 LOGOS/HA HA



09 September 2018

monumenTAR


Babel...
Tatlin, Flavin...
TAR...


 Vladimir Tatlin, Monument to the 3rd International (1917-)
  

 Dan Flavin, monument 1 for V. Tatlin, 1964
  
  

Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
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 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
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02 September 2018

total TAR | incl. Politics of Seeing







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