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.


Showing posts with label Theatre of the Actors of Regard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theatre of the Actors of Regard. Show all posts

07 October 2019

The Secret Text


Franz Verbeek's Jester and John Turturro as 
the Franciscan monk William of Baskerville in 
The Name of the Rose both use the same TAR lens
as our editor.

Theatre of the Actors of Regard 

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



  

04 October 2019

includes 'door de vingers zien' and dendrochronoLOGOS/HA HA


Franz Verbeek's 'Portrait of a Jester' c.1550 has been a longtime favourite here. 


FIAPCE  
We knew it was up for auction. This text from Koller International Auctions :

The figure of the jester or fool is found in 16th century Flemish painting, such as in works by Quentin Massys (1466–1530) and engravings by Lucas van Leyden (1494–1533). It is therefore not surprising that while in the Hintze Collection, our painting was considered to be by Massys. The work offered here, however, is a rarity in that the figure of the jester is depicted as a portrait against a black background, and the entire composition concentrates on his facial expression. The painting becomes particularly interesting when one knows that it depicts the Dutch proverb "door de vingers zien" (literally "to look at the world through one’s fingers" – to turn a blind eye), still in current use. In order to illustrate this proverb, both the hand gestures and the motif of the glasses play a central role: the jester, who has put his glasses in his coat, looks at the world through his fingers. This proverb reveals an attitude that consists of distancing oneself from everything that goes wrong in the world. By closing his eyes and remaining silent, the individual succeeds in protecting himself. The jester also calls on the viewer to behave just as favourably towards him. The conventional symbols of the jester can also be found in this representation: the yellow-red costume, the cap with the dog's ears, the cockscomb, the fool's staff on the right and the glasses in the foreground. The latter, usually a sign of scholarship, are here associated with glare and deception, because making glasses at the time was a technical challenge, causing their quality to vary greatly – for this reason, their makers were sometimes considered charlatans.

The painting has been dendrochronologically examined by Dr Peter Klein and may have been made as early as 1548.


Last week, it sold for CHF 695 300 (incl premium).


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

02 October 2019

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, an tota alterum explicari mei, pro ut tibique iudicabit adolescens, eam no error corrumpit. Ut mea nonumes apeirian perpetua, est cu clita deseruisse. ] Eye Spy ( An mazim putant pro, id ferri epicuri delicatissimi pri, ad soluta sanctus repudiandae nam. Mei in impedit insolens concludaturque.


FREE PUBLIC LECTURE 
Thursday 3 October 2019
5:00 - 6:00
Lyric Eye:
The Poetics of 20th-Century Surveillance

University of Melbourne
William Macmahon Ball Theatre
Old Arts
Parkville campus

Over the course of the 20th century, the Federal Bureau of Investigation developed an obsession with the content, form and authors of modern American poetry. At the same time, poetry underwent a series of radical changes in the ways that it communicated ideas of privacy, observation and the self.
The inextricability of poetry and surveillance during this period offers a new and productive framework for theorising our current techno-political crisis. In this lecture, Dr Tyne Daile Sumner will discuss how the deceptively simple arena of poetry became a source of intense focus for the FBI and, subsequently, a crucial site for seeing, watching, evaluating and surveilling.


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

 LOGOS/HA HA


30 September 2019

] ] ] before ] ] before ] and ( after ( ( after ( ( (


 Larry Miller :   performer in 'Incidental Music' by George Brecht
                        at the concert "Art Action 1958-1998"
 photography : F. Garghetti, Quebec 1998
 

TAR : "before and after Larry Miller, before and after Art Action"
photography : Reg V Brock, View Point, Bendigo, 1952


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


  

27 September 2019

ImitaTAR of WriTAR & CollecTAR


'Kawabata Yasunari & Collection'
HIMEJI CITY MUSEUM OF ART

BY YUKARI TANAKA


Sept. 14-Nov. 4

Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972) is best-known as the first Japanese novelist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1968). He was also a philosopher and avid art collector who amassed an impressive range of important works.

Kawabata’s acquisitions ranged from Japanese masterpieces by Urakami Gyokudo (1745-1820), Ike no Taiga (1723-1776) and Yosa Buson (1716-1784), some of which are now designated national treasures, to modern works by Kaii Higashiyama (1908-1999), Harue Koga (1895-1933) and Yayoi Kusama. He also admired Western artists, including Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973).

To celebrate 120 years since the birth of Kawabata, the Himeji Museum of Art is showcasing the writer’s collection alongside letters, personal objects, related documents and writing samples by his fellow literary masters.

TAR & Hand Space present 

 Yasunari Kawabata looking at Rodin's 'Hand of a Woman'
 photo by Tadahiko Hayashi
Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
The ImitaTAR 
after Yasunari Kawabata


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

    
  

24 September 2019

World Climate Criminals



“Each day I send my kids to school and I know other members’ kids should also go to school but we do not support our schools being turned into parliaments. What we want is more learning in schools and less activism in schools.”
- Scott Morrison PM speaking in Parliament recently

Global Climate Strike, Melbourne
Today, Greta Thunberg addressed the UN
Climate Action Summit :

click image to watch video  
"My message is that we’ll be watching you. This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet, you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, yet I’m one of the lucky ones.
  This is coal. Do not be afraid. Do not be scared. 
  It will not hurt you. (Scott Morrison in Parliament)

People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is the money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?

Theatre of the Actors of Regard
For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you are doing enough when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight?

Theatre of the Actors of Regard
You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency, but no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil and that I refuse to believe.

Theatre of the Actors of Regard
The popular idea of cutting our emissions in half in 10 years only gives us a 50% chance of staying below 1.5 degrees and the risk of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control. 50% may be acceptable to you, but those numbers do not include tipping points.
Theatre of the Actors of Regard
Most feedback loops, additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution or the aspects of equity and climate justice. They also rely on my generation sucking hundreds of billions of tons of your CO2 out of the air with technologies that barely exist. So, a 50% risk is simply not acceptable to us, we who have to live with the consequences.

Theatre of the Actors of Regard
(Parliament of Australia)
How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just business as usual and some technical solutions? With today’s emissions levels, that remaining CO2 budget will be entirely gone within less than eight and a half years. There will not be any solutions or plans presented in line with these figures here today because these numbers are too uncomfortable and you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.
Herald Sun (News Corp/Murdoch) Melbourne
You are failing us, but the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say, we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up and change is coming, whether you like it or not. Thank you."

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


  

22 September 2019

Vale Milton Moon (1926-2019)


Milton, John (1608-1674) 
Author of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.
    
Lotus Moon / Otagaki Rengetsu (1791-1875)  
Lotus rising from the mud, reaching for the moon [enlightenment). 

   
collection FIAPCE   

Milton Moon (29 Oct 1926 - 6 Sept 2019) 
Lineage name bearer. Potter, Australia.



Robert Yellin's Japanese Pottery Blog 
26 May 2008

A good friend of mine recently returned from 'Down Under' and brought back a wonderful book, 'The Zen Master, the Potter and the Poet' by Milton Moon.

It is a special book full of Moon-sensei's anecdotes of many journeys to Japan, his insights into good pots and the wisdom that can be found when one listens to them in silence. Mr. Moon, if you ever visit Japan again please allow me to take you to Ryutakuji, if you haven't already been, and we can retrace the steps of Hakuin, and also Tsuji Seimei, the photo of him in the previous posting was taken at Ryutakuji. Blessings abound....


Milton Moon leaves us his own excellent archive website :


A free-form platter 33 by 34 cms.

This is the last entry on my website, which, I hope will be still here after I am gone, at least for a few years. The last pots of my life I make will be for me.


I do have a last comment: it is an archival website and shows just some of my journey with clay, and I hope it brings inspiration to some younger potters, but as a wise friend countenanced, 'to copy is not creative, it is merely contrivance.'


Finally, I am grateful for those agents, who over the long period of my creative life, have believed in my work and have supported me. To them I say 'thank-you.'
  

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


  

18 September 2019

TAR : rollies & filter tips



 Vincent van Gogh 
 Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette c.1885-86

 Theatre of the Actors of Regard  

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


     

17 September 2019

Theatre of the Actors of Regard : The Smoken



 Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
 Untitled  
 Umbo (Otto Umbehr). 1946  

  Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
 Smoke Dragon Temple, Japan  

 Theatre of the Actors of Regard 
 Fukurokuju holding hōju (flaming pearl of wisdom) in regard 
Kano Kyuhaku (1621-1688) 
collection FIAPCE  

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


     

12 September 2019

TAR : Call To Action!



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


     

08 September 2019

® The ResisTARance


   Dusty Martin demonstrates the fend-off aka 'the don't argue'

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


     

06 September 2019

On Becoming : A Citizen of ... Australia (1) Clown PrincipaliTAR ]2(


Background briefing 
ABC.RN 8 September 2019
Who watches over our judges? 

He comes from a family of legal royalty but this judge is attracting controversy.

Judge Sandy Street presides over more refugee cases than any other in the Federal Circuit Court.

His defenders say he’s an extraordinarily hard worker.

But Street’s rulings have been successfully appealed 90 times in the past five years...


- click here to hear program now 
  ANGRY?! 
- transcript here from 10 Sept 2019


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


     

02 September 2019

o::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::o


See-See
Saw
Law of the Lever
Lever of the Law


click image to enlarge  
Hotei and the TARist
after Shōkadō Shōjō
1584-1639


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


     

31 August 2019

Wish-fulfilling Vases of the Void (continued)


see : Sotheby's :
A Sneak Peek into Hong Kong Autumn Sales

HONG KONG.- Sotheby’s Hong Kong Chinese Works of Art Autumn Sale Series 2019 on 8th October will be led by A Highly Important Beijing-Enamelled Pouch-Shaped Glass Vase, Blue Enamel Mark and Period of Qianlong, arguably the greatest example of Qing dynasty art in private hands. 

AN ENAMELLED JEWEL, THE LE CONG TANG COLLECTION.
A HIGHLY IMPORTANT BEIJING-ENAMELLED POUCH-SHAPED GLASS VASE,
BLUE ENAMEL MARK AND PERIOD OF QIANLONG
18.2 cm
Estimate upon request
(Expected to fetch in excess of HK$200,000,000/US$ 25,000,000)
 
This truly extraordinary glass vase, enamelled by imperial command of the Qianlong Emperor in the early years of his reign, is arguably the greatest example of Qing dynasty art in private hands. Enamelled glass vessels were by far the most complex and demanding of all works of art commissioned at the Beijing Palace Workshops, and the current example is the most successful of all surviving examples, in the intricacy of its pouch-shaped form with simulated pink sash tied at the neck, and with its unique and brilliantly enamelled design of a pair of phoenix soaring amidst clouds and peonies, one bud with the blue-enamel mark. Emanating from the legendary collection of Prince Gong, it later passed through the hands of A.W. Bahr and Paul and Helen Bernat, before being acquired by the present owner in October 2000 for a then record price. Its appearance on the international art market now is a moment of celebration. 


Theatre of the Actors of Regard  Thoughts of TAR and this faint Japanese Edo scroll. Hotei, sack on head, regards a hōju宝珠 or 
hōju-no-tama 宝珠の玉 aka wish-fulfilling jewel 
aka flaming pearl of wisdom. Value inestimable.

  hoju ringed (click to see full image)                 collection FIAPCE


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


     

22 August 2019

Hotei in the guise of a street TARist


Hotei in the guise of a street performer
HAKUIN Ekaku
-1685-1768-
Hotei in the guise of a street TARist
Theatre of the Actors of Regard
after HAKUIN Ekaku
-1981-

Hotei in the guise of a street TARist
Theatre of the Actors of Regard
Bourke Street, Melbourne
photo by FIAPCE
-1981-

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


   

20 August 2019

a void pissing in the wind


We recently read the Jacquelynn Baas essay
Before Zen : The Nothing of American Dada with it's further consideration of the ...Duchamp/Mutt/
Wood/Steiglitz/Norton... 'Fountain'.

Alfred Stieglitz, photograph of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, as published in Beatrice Wood, The Blind Man, No. 2, May 1917. 
Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection.

Then, Buddha of the Bathroom by Louise Norton (1917). Here's an extract :

When the jurors of The Society of Independent Artists firmly rushed to remove the bit of sculpture called the Fountain sent in by Richard Mutt, because the object was irrevocably associated in their atavistic minds with a certain natural function of a secretive sort.
  
Yet to any ‘innocent’ eye how pleasant is its chaste simplicity of line and color! Someone said, ‘Like a lovely Buddha’; someone said, ‘Like the legs of the ladies by Cézanne’; but have they not, those ladies, in their long, round nudity always recalled to your mind the calm curves of decadent plumbers’ porcelains?
At least as a touchstone of Art how valuable it might have been! If it be true, as Gertrude Stein says, that pictures that are right stay right, consider, please, on one side of a work of art with excellent references from the Past, the Fountain, and on the other almost anyone of the majority of pictures now blushing along the miles of wall in the Grand Central Palace of ART. Do you see what I mean?
And more such (from wikipedia) :

In a letter dated 23 April 1917, Stieglitz wrote of the photograph he took of Fountain: "The "Urinal" photograph is really quite a wonder—Everyone who has seen it thinks it beautiful—And it's true—it is. It has an oriental look about it—a cross between a Buddha and a Veiled Woman."[2][25]

In 1918, Mercure de France published an article attributed to Guillaume Apollinaire stating Fountain, originally titled 
"le Bouddha de la salle de bain" (Buddha of the bathroom), represented a sitting Buddha.[26] 
. . . .
Since the photograph taken by Stieglitz is the only image of the original sculpture, there are some interpretations of Fountain by looking not only at reproductions but this particular photograph. Tomkins notes
"Arensberg had referred to a 'lovely form' and it does not take much stretching of the imagination to see in the upside-down urinal's gently flowing curves the veiled head of a classic Renaissance Madonna or a seated Buddha or, perhaps more to the point, one of Brâncuși's polished erotic forms."[1][42]
 
It all reminded us of this 'wall-gazing Daruma' scroll by the Zen master Nantembō (1839–1925).

collection : FIAPCE  

The inscription as translated by John Stevens : 

        The form of our Grand patriarch 
             facing the wall in meditation
        or is it a tasty melon or an eggplant 
             from around here in Yahata?
        (signed) 
             Eighty-five-year-old Nantembo Toju


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