bLOGOS/HA HA

19 April 2010

un-Australian L---Scape

In the light of the recent Wynne Prize stir (article here) around Sam Leach's Dutch/Italian/Australian landscape painthing, Proposal for Landscaped Cosmos, it is interesting to note, according to Wikipedia, the origin of the word un-Australian.

And so it is with great pleasure

un-Australian L---Scape Unvieled

16 April 2010

Theatre of the Actors of Looking : A DOUBLE DOUBLE PLAY

.
'Tis no idle boast, but the truth we tell,
When we claim for the your claim here

A stainless name and a deathless fame
So long as the round World moves.

15 April 2010

copyness

As discussion continues (here) about the Trustees of the AGNSW awarding the Wynne Prize, for "the best landscape painting of Australian scenery in oils or watercolours", to Sam Leach's Proposal for Landscaped Cosmos, his reworking of a 1668 'Dutch' depiction of an 'Italian' moment ...

... here's a timely old favorite from the heap. The original regard of this, hereabouts, a V&A postcard. Verso, it is labelled thus :

Artist copying a European print on to glass.
Watercolour on paper.
China (Canton); about 1790.
34.1 x 41.5.
FE 175
D.107-1898.

Our artist-in-residence editioned a set of these in the mid 1980s.
All hands that will, to the wheel.

1792_Artist copying a European print onto glass_V&Apostcard_440 x 600

14 April 2010

Same Old Same Old

le bLOG qui rit previously presented the plight of a Heidelberg artist attempting to render Australian landscape with a cow breathing down his neck.

Minus the bothersome cow, a similar scene greets us today on the front page of THE AGE (Melbourne).

The newspaper's headline writer has had fun too:

Double Dutch as our Sam paints
it again to take Wynne prize

"You painted it for her, you can paint it for me!" - bL

Turns out that Sam Leach's winning work in the Art Gallery of NSW's 2010 Wynne Prize for ...

is a reworking of a 1668 painthing by Dutch artist Adam Pynacker.

Is this a problem? Consider and discuss.

1. Look at the painthing

archive : Theatre of the Actors of Looking
26 March 2010 AGNSW

2. Read the Label

archive : Theatre of the Actors of Looking
26 March 2010 AGNSW

3. Consider your verdict

If bLOGOS/HA HA recalls the above TV news item correctly, art critic John McDonald made no mention of any problematic copyness attaching to this painthing when he addressed the Australian people immediately after the Wynne Prize announcement.

Today he addresses the cosmos again. On TV news; on the net, with a prime-ministerial chat from the study ( video here )

and quoted in THE AGE article, where he concludes :

12 April 2010

Heidelberg school Australia art artists education

Researchers, travellers, students . . .
click on the images below to enlarge

Adventures of a Heidelberg Artist
lithographie artistique

click here le bLOG qui rit to see what happened next

11 April 2010

Tears of a Magpie

Melbourne
Friday night
AFL football
two local tribes
St. Kilda v Collingwood
Saints v Magpies
Red Black and White v Black and White

Friday's AGE
"JUST TRY TO STOP ME"
It's the sort of headline said to have jinxed the Titanic.

"God Himself Couldn't Sink the Titanic"

Sinking the Unsinkable

Sure enough, just before half time the great Saint lands badly and seriously tears a hamstring. Simple as that.

One of the great features of AFL football is the players' immediate and respectful embrace of the enemy at the moment battle ceases.

And so it was on Friday night, as depicted here in allegory (compassion, depression, uncertain future) by our artist at the game.

click to enlarge

08 April 2010

Melbourne %!#? Brisbane : punk, art and after

http://m.messandnoise.com/discussions/3913425

wot jumpjump sed

wot bL sed

04 April 2010

Fight the Power

What are we to make of this?

Fight the Cube : a pocket-size meta-projection propaganda toy for children. There are no images on its wheel, which is entirely as shown above. That is, as one rotates the wheel through a complete revolution the 'image' projected remains the same. This from the culture that brought us, "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." But why round on the Cube? Even the corners of this device have been rounded : Square v Circle : CUBE V SPHERE :

Art critic Louis Vauxcelles seeded the term "cubism" in 1908 when he described a picture by Georges Braque as "full of little cubes". (In 1905 Vauxcelles excoriated the group of painters around Matisse, as well as their admirers, as Les Fauves (the wild beasts) and, after Cubism, Tubism in 1911 to deride the style of Leger.)

Maisons à l'Estaque
1908
Georges Braque (1882-1963)

Is it possible that before this there had already been a children's anti-Cube movement in France? That there were anti-Cube-ists before Cubism? It would appear so. What might they have called themselves? From this artifact, Le Cercle de Lumière perhaps. But who knows. (*More research needs to be done on this.)

Is it possible that as a child EN FRANCE the young Georges B was excluded from such a patriotic membership? It seems likely his friends would have been aware of the photo portrait reproduced below, which is known to have been displayed in the family home. Someone pictured thus would hardly be an obvious anti-Cube candidate.

Rejected by his peers, did a formative psychodrama later play out as a petty and reactionary (rather than revolutionary, as has been previously proposed) Le Monde Est la Cube! determination in early adult life? Cubism! (And Picasso, of course, knew a good thing when he saw it.)

Or, as the old Braque family photograph invites us to consider, was Georges Braque born a Cubist?

Georges Braque
(c.1883)

02 April 2010

Giant Tableau Proposed

London : Theatre of the Actors of Looking (International) has announced plans for a giant sculpture tableau to be built at Olympic Park in time for the 2012 London Olympic Games.

The tableau will show a life-like 100-metre sculpture of the renowned British artist Anish Kapoor in a pose of formal regard, looking at a 115-metre sculpture of a maquette for a (this same) sculpture. Block-style figures and building sculptures will populate the pedestal on which the meta-maquette is based. The sculpture of Kapoor as Actor of Looking will show the upper half figure only and will appear to rise up out of the earth.

Scale model of the proposed tableau :

01 April 2010

Gettysburg Address

click images to enlarge

David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :