Among the swell of TAR gathered in curiosity around Jean-Luc Godard and his crew that day, standing together opposite Jacques-Louis David's Oath of the Horatii (1784), was the Prime Minister of Australia, Sir Robert Gordon Menzies.
Jean-Luc Goddard, 'Bande à part' (Band of Outsiders) running past David's 'Oath of the Horatii', 1964
Afterwards, he joked to Dame Pattie :
"I did but see them rushing by..."
Sir Robert Menzies
The Louvre, 1964
Sir Robert Menzies officially opens Lake Burley Griffin, Canberra,
1964.
"When the time came to give the lake a name, I remember my then minister for the Interior, Gordon Freeth, coming to me and saying, 'There is a widespread feeling that, as you have been in a material sense the father of this lake, it should be named after you.' My reply was prompt. 'Gordon,' I said, 'that is a characteristically pleasing thought on your part, but the lake is not going to be named after me. Do you remember that the original designer of this city and the original creator of the whole notion of a lake was Walter Burley Griffin. So far as I know, he has no memorial in this place. He must have one. I want to have the lake called Lake Burley Griffin.' It was so named and has given Griffin a memorial which no man ever more handsomely deserved."
- R G Menzies The Measure of the Years, 1970 p 147-8.
From the National Capital, Spare Room 33 has alerted us to the cover of The Oath on the cover of the 2005 catalog by the German artists Konsortium.
Members of Konsortium are exhibiting in Melbourne at the moment, at the Justin Art House Museum in the group exhibition Infinite Loop.
Katalog 2005
Lars Breuer, Sebastian Freytag, Jan Kämmerling, Guido Münch
Extra Verlag, Berlin
LOGOS/HA HA
Lars Breuer, Sebastian Freytag, Jan Kämmerling, Guido Münch
Extra Verlag, Berlin
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...