something of a genre

.

"The art image of a person in a museum looking at another art image is something of a genre in its own right ... "

The Age (30 December 2010)

click to enlarge

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

LOGOS/HA HA

matrix of regard

.

In today's local broadsheet, THE AGE, a reprint from The Guardian : Switched-on works seek a little light relief, in which Maev Kennedy chronicles some recent legislative farce from those who would define ART.

It is a question that has dogged the contemporary art world since Duchamp put a urinal in a gallery: is it art?

read the full article here

What particularly delights this reader is to see the objects in question depicted in not one but two photographs. One shows the head of a viewer, the other shows the feet of a 'viewer'. (Or should we say, the feet of a passer-by?) No matter, it seems a fine sign of the times : the matrix of regard continues to expand.

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

LOGOS/HA HA

A Christmas Offering

.

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

LOGOS/HA HA

A Jolly Christmas Wish
to all our regardists
from the team at bLOGOS/HA HA

Back for the New Year...

Theatre Review

.

Theatre of the Actors of Regard
presents

The Bishop and the Grail

Opening act :

I, a bishop, do behold this Grail

Closing act :

I, a bishop, do destroy this Grail

(exeunt)


To read THE AGE review of this recent Ballarat performance
"Departing bishop takes hammer to bitter chalice"
click here

In the review, the bishop is quoted as using various metaphors. We would add to the heap, again, this favorite 1585 image by
Tomasso Laureti Siciliano :
The Triumph of Christianity over Paganism

Go (dis)figure!

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

LOGOS/HA HA

Vale Norman Hetherington (died 6 December 2010)
the creator of and puppeteer for Mr. Squiggle and friends.

'Mr Squiggle's creator dies at 89' : Sydney Morning Herald article and photos (December 6, 2010) here.


"Mr Squiggle was a cheery, scatter-brained character who would often be distracted and would occasionally go for "space-walks", and his assistant would need to calm him down to get him to focus on the task of drawing."

- Wikipedia

A senior member of our editorial staff...

regularly watched Mr Squiggle through the 1960s, and now wonders if he owes Mr. Squiggle and Blackboard (and therefore Hetherington) a greater debt than previously realised...

click on image to enlarge

The free pencil movement also raise their pencils in salute to Mr. Squiggle and Norman Hetherington. For a generation of children Mr. Squiggle was surely the most wondrous, most appreciated and most influential free drawer in Australia.

free pencil movement

we gotta fight
for the right
to
Squiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggle!
after Beastie Boys

Reading the many recent tributes, as well as earlier articles about Hetherington, has lead us to Hilary Talbot's excellent all-things-Australian-puppetry website Dancing Spirits.

On her blog Hilary shows a picture of Mr Squiggle, plus Gus and the moon, that Norman Hetherington drew for her in 2002.
What a treasure! She displays it as Hetherington the up-above-looking-down puppeteer would have created it, and the many thousand other extraordinary depictions, for Mr. Squiggle to declare: "Upside down! Upside down!"

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

LOGOS/HA HA

Puppet Culture Framing System

.

Continuing from the previous post, more on World Puppet Culture. This as Julian Assange is "out on bail" in London.

First, from 1979, a classic Melbourne Black setting:
black square regarded by members of the White Art Cult
collection : Ballarat Art Gallery

Next, from 198o, set in red for Joh Bjelke-Petersen's QLD :
black-on-white ideogram of dependent arising

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

LOGOS/HA HA
(PUPPET CULTURE FRAMING SYSTEM)

Here Is The News

.

Some days ago we intended to pay tribute here to the late beloved Australian puppeteer Norman Hetherington. However, we have been caught up in other matters on and off this stage. On the news front Julian Assange and WikiLeaks continue as the major issue of the moment.

The Hetherington appreciation will appear soon. In the meantime, in all the discussions about WikiLeaks, about freedom of the press, about citizens rights to information, about the public interest, the right to know, about diplomacy and secrecy and so on, it seems to bLOGOS/HA HA that the term puppetry might well apply as the umbrella for these associated issues of grand principle.

A pause for a moment to consider umbrella, realising it most likely arises out of umbra (shade, shadow). Thus, in relation to light, umbrella can be viewed as a refuge or a defence, a refusal, even an offence, against light. So umbrella term... ah, the twists and turns of the imagined LOGOS... HA HA

Back to puppetry. Manipulation (manipulator, manipulated), ventriloquism (a SpokesMan said...), shadow play, pulling strings, behind the scenes, and so on. These are terms as much about desire, attachment, power, liberation, theology, creation, freedom and originality as they are about child's play.

Here, from a personal archive, a glove puppet journalist

click image to enlarge

... with an orange card pencilled PRESS as proof of character. Once he had a peaked cap, too.

Journalist [NAME UNKNOWN] :
first appearance in an original puppet play (circa 1960)
White face, black eyes, red smile.

Q: What's black and white and red/read all over?
A: A newspaper

The journalist publicly interviews a dour, purple face witch,
a practitioner from the dark side.

Transcript of interview now missing.

click image to enlarge

Costume assistance : a loving mother.

Perhaps today, in this end-of-the-noughties spirit of disclosure, your correspondent should also unmask...

[ sounds behind screen ]

... Voila!

click image to enlarge

"So, until next time, this is your transparent stiff-spined Puppet Reporter for LeakiWorld Press signing off with that familiar re-mind-er :

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

LOGOS/HA HA

LeakiWorld

.

LOGOS : In the beginning was the Word,
and the word was made [ SECRET ]

HA HA : Pssst...

Today one topic overwhelms all others in the world's serious newspapers : Julian Assange and Wikileaks. It's another milestone moment in the history of the word and it's distribution.

... Gutenberg ... William Tyndale ... WikiLeaks ...

click image to enlarge

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

LOGOS/HA HA

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was

In war, truth is the first casualty.
Aeschylus (525 - 456 BCE)

A key image and constant reference at bLOGOS/HA HA is Tomasso Laureti Siciliano's 1585 ceiling fresco The Triumph of Christianity over Paganism in The War Room, as we call it, of the Vatican Palace, today the Vatican Museum.

On the four walls that support this crime scene is a representation of The Battle of ++++ in which the God of the Adver+isers offers a franchise opportunity to Constantine : "In this sign, Conquer" (see image below). C signs on the dotted line and the rest, as they say, is History.

The Triumph of ___ over ___ archetype would seem to equally well describe the current struggle between Julian Assange (founder of WikiLeaks) and the States and individuals attempting to silence him. Indeed, to kill him, as some prominent US politicians have publicly advocated. Aeschylus be damned, this is information terrorism!

The founder of the whistleblower website responsible for releasing thousands of secret documents should be treated as an enemy of the US, according to a former Republican Speaker of the House.

Newt Gingrich became the latest conservative to suggest that WikiLeak's Julian Assange deserves to be hunted and executed by calling him an "enemy combatant."

"I approach this very seriously," Gingrich told Fox News' Chris Wallace. "Information warfare is warfare. Julian Assange is engaged in warfare."

"Information terrorism, which leads to people getting killed is terrorism. And Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism," he continued.

. . . .

Townhall's John Hawkins wrote a column last week entitled "5 Reasons The CIA Should Have Already Killed Julian Assange."

Fox News contributor Sarah Palin took to her Facebook page to suggest that Assange deserved the same treatment as terrorists and insurgents.

read full article here

On the ceiling, the Party of the Four Golden Right Angles, in the name of poor Jesus - aka The Logos; aka The Word made flesh... more than an irony this, a total perversion - have set out from their HQ at Camp Vanishing Point, overthrown the Messenger of the Gods (Hermes, Mercury, WikiLeaks... ) and installed themselves, in their turn upon the pedestal of death, as the Government of God on Earth.

Now, DemocraCorp has been stung. The shadows recoil as the SuperStructure advances upon the messenger.

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

LOGOS/HA HA

PS :
Melbourne Protest to defend Julian Assange
State Library, Swanston Street, Melbourne
4.30pm this Friday, Dec 10 2010

Look out!

.

Following on from yesterday's post - Bring me the head of the viewer - about the dangers of The Golden Guillotine, this deadly detail from a recent National Gallery of Victoria advertisement.

Too late for this bloke...

Oh, and almost too late for that viewer, too...

"Hey. Look out!"

click image to enlarge

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

LOGOS/HA HA

Bring me the head of the viewer

.

In the latest edition of The Monthly, a bookmark.
Advertisement for an exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria
Gustave Moreau and the Eternal Feminine.

The headline on this bookmark, above Moreau's head of Salome :
"Bring me the head of John the Baptist"

And on the other side :
From Salome to sirens, be seduced by the femmes fatales of Gustave Moreau

What the...?!

Flicking through the weekend papers...

this intriguing image in The Australian, to accompany (with little relevance) a P.J. O'Rourke article about politeness.

Bring me the head of Francis Bacon
as decapipicted by Lucien Freud

One of the bLOGOS/HA HA tags is The Golden Guillotine
This refers specifically, but not exclusively, to the fine art practice of placing a golden frame around an image. An alluring bait... look in there... SNAP!

Bring me the head of the viewer

Still looking at (SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!) this image in The Australian...

Those gloves! I recognise those gloves!!

Too late, the white-gloved handler realises the golden guillotine has him, too, in its deadly frame.

Bring me the head of ...

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

LOGOS/HA HA

Staff at le bLOG qui rit are sometimes asked which journals we read.

A recent postcard from one of our overseas correspondents illustrates: a newsy letter amid regardez-moi (Mademoiselle Josephine regarde un journal) on one side, and on the other

Wishing you were here
reading Le Rire
with me
J.

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

LOGOS/HA HA

freehand (#8: How to draw...

.

How to draw a blank
or
How a vision of Australia emerged from the depths of war

What a thrill it was recently to see The Age headline Baillieu draws a blank. Ted Baillieu: metaphysician, leader of the Victorian Liberal Party, and Shadow Minister for the Arts.

( Read the article )

What a challenge and what an achievement it seemed to those of us with a simple mind. How did Baillieu do that? Why did he do that? Where can we see this drawing? this blank? this blank drawing?

freehand: recent Australian drawing
Heide Museum of Modern Art
25 November 2010 - 6 March 2011

Since then we have drawn in his footsteps, we have traced but the mere report of this achievement...

and on Saturday the people of Victoria elected him to govern.

click to enlarge

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

LOGOS/HA HA