bLOGOS/HA HA: Your Thought Here

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.

23 March 2011

Your Thought Here

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.

Buddha
The Dharmapada

2011.03_I have a thought_Think Here_sRGB_400

This old trade card and its gesture of aware cognition flashed into memory last evening when Melbourne University art historian Christopher Marshall did much the same on a program (Artscape - MONA: Feel The Weird) about David Walsh's Museum of New and Old Art in Tasmania.

Dr Marshall is signaling here about Walsh's abilities as a gifted mathematician-gambler :
"... in ways that we mere mortals don't understand".

During the program there were quite a number of references to thinking. The presenter Andrew Frost spoke with "a guru of art galleries", Jean-Hubert Martin :

AF: (... so what does he make of David's vision?)
J-H M: It will certainly be controversial. I guess it will attract quite a lot of people.
AF: Why do you think it will be controversial?
J-H M: If a much larger public comes here they're not just going to see beautiful paintings that will please their eye but they will be challenged and forced, actually, to think and maybe to reverse some of their ideas about art and human kind, actually.

bLOGOS/HA HA particularly enjoyed something that Walsh said almost as an aside

"There's a lot less to art than people think."