bLOGOS/HA HA: April 2012

30 April 2012

NGV : something to really scream about : AGAIN!

We've had some inquiries about the first of the 2004 free pencil movement protests at the National Gallery of Victoria. Why did fpm members wear The Scream masks?

A few days before the protests, the National Gallery of Victoria published the newspaper advertisement below for their 2004 Winter Blockbuster Edvard Munch - The Frieze of Life.

click image to enlarge

See something in Melbourne to really scream about!!!!
Free pencil movement were already screaming mad about the NGV bans on sketching and note-making so seeing this ad as a perverse encouragement they staged instead a silent protest, with masks of The Scream.

11 a.m. silent protest outside NGV International
click image to enlarge

For those interested in further information about the 2004
free pencil movement protests and their results : click here

. . . .

In recent days The Scream has reappeared on the world media stage. Hopefully this an auspicious sign toward another reversal of misfortune at the National Gallery of Victoria.

The current interest is in a fourth version of Edvard Munch's famous painthing The Scream. Previously in a private collection, bought from the artist by a friend neighbour patron, it will be auctioned by Sotherby's New York on May 2.

Theatre of the Actors of Regard have brought to our attention some recent costume-and-pose tableaux that feature this twentieth century ikon.

First, the classic heraldic format : central shield/projection-space with motto/Label, defenders to either side, all crowned with CorpName.

Two views (to view) : holding and beholding

Human string(er)s : dependent arising at arms length

"Petter Olsen, owner of ‘The Scream’ (1895), looks at the picture during its public viewing at Sotheby’s in London."

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

LOGOS/HA HA

Sotheby's to sell Munch's "The Scream", eyes $80M
Mike Collett-White : REUTERS London, 22 Feb 2012

Selling 'The Scream'
Wall Street Journal : April 26, 2012

The Scream ad infinitum
endless desire meets endless projection

FIAPCE (-1982-) : image courtesy Theatre of the Actors of Regard

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

LOGOS/HA HA

26 April 2012

MUSEUM BANS MUSES

Still not a peep out of the NGV Law Makers.

We know that NGV personnel have been pouring over these free pencil movement posts in recent days.

We know also that individuals are now going to the Fred Williams exhibition to sketch and make notes as a protest against the NGV prohibitions around this show.

There's even word of a flash mob rehearsing their choreography for weekend performances of the fpm Rebel Yell. (Would love to be there for that.)

Many messages of support. This one comes from a group of young German pencilists. They've reworked an old Johann Faber blotter advertisement to our present purpose : to end (again) the NGV anti-photo anti-sketching anti note-making regulations.

2012.04_fpm_updated Johann Faber blotter from German fpm

Appropriately, the fpm standard-bearer pencil here is an "Apollo".

Apollo, son of Zeus and Leto, twin to the chaste huntress Artemis:

...variously recognized as a god of light and the sun, truth and prophecy, healing, plague, music, poetry, and more.

As the patron of Delphi (Pythian Apollo), Apollo was an oracular god—the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle. Medicine and healing are associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his son Asclepius, yet Apollo was also seen as a god who could bring ill-health and deadly plague. Amongst the god's custodial charges, Apollo became associated with dominion over colonists, and as the patron defender of herds and flocks. As the leader of the Muses (Apollon Musegetes) and director of their choir, Apollo functioned as the patron god of music and poetry. Hermes created the lyre for him, and the instrument became a common attribute of Apollo. Hymns sung to Apollo were called paeans.

- Wikipedia

Apollo dancing with the Muses, Baldassarre Peruzzi, 1514-23

The nine muses are
Clio (history)
Thalia (comedy),
Erato (love poetry)
Euterpe (song and elegiac poetry)
Polyhymnia (hymns),
Calliope (epic poetry)
Terpsichore (dance)
Urania (astronomy)
Melpomene (tragedy).

Below is the muse Thalia, pictured recently outside the National Gallery of Victoria.

She is outside because the present keepers of this Museum would not let her in.

You can't bring that thing in here, she was told.
No Sketching, No Writing of Poetry,
No Laughing Matter Allowed.

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

LOGOS/HA HA

24 April 2012

free pencil movement : REBEL YELL

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

LOGOS/HA HA

23 April 2012

AT LARGE : HOMO LOGOS/HA HA

2012.04.22_TAR presents INFINITE HORIZONS_FLAT_sRGB_400

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

LOGOS/HA HA

21 April 2012

NGV RENEWS BANS

Dear Gerard Vaughan

regarding Manifestations of Now
regarding The role of art in 21st century Australia
regarding Fred Williams : INFINITE HORIZONS
regarding NGV

At NGV Studio on Thursday evening I participated (with Hossein Valamanesh and Nikos Papastergiadis) in the well-attended public forum 'The role of art in 21st century Australia'. This was part of the Manifestations of Now program.

I stayed in Melbourne overnight, to visit your Fred Williams exhibition the following day.

You will recall our previous communications in 2004 when
free pencil movement protested against your NGV regulation that banned all sketching and note-making.

fpm : the morning protest outside NGV Internationalclick image to enlarge

fpm: from the afternoon sketch-in at NGV International
& NGV Australia
For those interested in further information about the 2004 protests and their results : click here

Yesterday morning I arrived at NGV Ticket Sales and there encountered your banning notice of all photography, sketching and note making (or as you spin it note taking) by attendees of the Fred Williams exhibition. This in Fred's home town, no less. Grrrrr!

I informed the ticket seller that I intended to sketch in the exhibition! Who then sold me the ticket and told me no-sketching. Thank you. Thank you.

Once inside, it didn't take long for the first of your courteous enforcers to request CEASE AND DESIST. Thank you. I am aware of the prohibition but I intend to continue sketching. I am now also protesting at the return of this ridiculous limitation. I gave my name and asked that Gerard Vaughan be immediately informed that this someone is sketching! Walkie talkie to head the officer set off, and I continued to sketch to sketch to sketch

Over the next hour this was rehearsed several more times with other security personnel. After each exchange a bystander would approach with bemused astonishment. One said, But there's no other gallery in the world that prohibits sketching and writing!? Write to Director Gerard Vaughan, I suggested.

Eventually, two senior staff arrived. Hello hello. Hello. They said what they were obliged to say, including the PRIORITY of Terms of Agreements signed by one or more of the lenders to this National Galery of Australia Touring Exhibition OVER any-say-in-the-matter by the would-be-good-if-we-could NGV; and I put it that the whole farce was Kafka bullshit. They did allow that if one were to use an iPad instead of a pen and paper that would be acceptable. Grrrrr!

To progress things a bit, I made a FORMAL STATEMENT : stated NAME; acknowledged PRESENT PROHIBITED ACTION; acknowledged INTENTION TO CONTINUE PRESENT PROHIBITED ACTION; acknowledged INTENTION TO ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO CONSIDER SIMILAR ACTION; requested that GERARD VAUGHAN be immediately informed of PRESENT SITUATION, he being THE OFFICIAL who had previously AGREED to get rid of these UNENFORCEABLE BULLSHIT RULES that MAKE A MOCKERY of the NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA. They went off, and I continued to sketch to sketch to sketch

One later returned. Gerard knows of this situation, she told me, he was informed from the start. No message though, Gerard?
She said WE are are now in communication with the National Gallery of Australia. She informed me that someone would be keeping an eye on me. That the security staff had been instructed about the situation and as it seemed I had no intention to damage the artworks - I DO SO SWEAR NOT TO SO DO - the NGV would allow me, in the present circumstance, to continue to sketch. That this temporary toleration applied only to me and that everyone else would still be requested not to sketch, not to make notes. Smiles shared, hands shaken. She went off, and I continued to sketch to sketch to sketch

What a madness!

Gerard, you relayed no message and made no intervention when you might have, when I was within your building. When free pencil movement publicised and protested against your NGV no-sketching no-note-making rules in 2004 you convened an urgent meeting of the Trustees and rewrote those rules. Already I am hearing from individuals who propose to take their own sketch and note gear with them to this splendid Fred Williams home town exhibition. Perhaps it's time for another mass sketch-in?

PT
free pencil movement