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.


31 December 2016

New Year's Eve :


      The bridge of dreams
Floating on the brief spring night
      Soon breaks off:
Now from the mountaintop a cloud
Takes leave into the open sky.

      Teika, aged 32, 1194

      Japanese Court Poetry 
      Robert H. Brower, Earl Roy Miner

---------------------------

Out of 
now|here -- 
a bridge

      poeter      
      after Basho
      for Yves Klein
            of Leap into the Void


by Matsuo Basho (1664-1694)    
One fellow traveller 
observed --
17 lines

      for I R    
        

scroll by Matsuo Basho (1664-1694)  
 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something... 
         
 LOGOS/HA HA


       

29 December 2016

Studio of TAR presents : The Elephant Drawing in the Room Drawing


At the Department of Projection Studies, the Elephant in the Room is our emblem and friend.


collection : FIAPCE 
To meet an elephant or meta-elephant head on : that is the challenge. Scene above, a new bundle of scrolls has arrived, ready for regard. Can you see the elephant in the ...


Theatre of the Actors of Regard 
 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something... 
         
 LOGOS/HA HA


      

27 December 2016

TAR + HAND SPACE | advertisement received & forwarded :



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


       

22 December 2016

from Edo to Moscow to you : bLOGo sends Season's Greetings

     
Here's
a waka strip
by Rengetsu
   

and some other
wacker's trip --
just 4 U

     

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


       

20 December 2016

Signed Sealed Delivered

         
from Blouinartinfo/Nicholas Forrest, the following report :

French auction house Pierre Bergé & Associés has set a new record for a Chinese seal, selling an 18th-century imperial seal to a Chinese collector for €21,000,000 during its December 14 Extrême-Orient sale at Hotel Drouot in Paris – more than 20 times its estimate.

Owned by Emperor Qianlong, the palm-sized Qianlong period (1736-1795) red and beige soapstone seal is decorated with nine stylized dragons chasing the sacred pearl through the clouds. The dragon is a symbol of imperial authority, the pearl a symbol of imperial power and immortality, and the number nine, being the highest single digit number, a symbol of masculinity.

Alice Jossaum, an expert in Asian art at Drouot, told AFP that the seal was remarkable for its colour, which she described as being “very red, almost blood.”

“This seal was used to sign paintings by Emperor Qianlong himself, along with calligraphy,” Jossaum said. “The markings underneath the seal reiterate the famous saying: ‘Emperor Qianlong's paint brush,’ meaning everything he had painted or written himself,” she added, also stating that “the Qianlong period is highly prized, it’s flourishing, it’s the absolute pinnacle.”


   
from FIAPCE, the following report :

Untitled Document from 1973 on a single sheet of Arches paper two broad-brushed black-squarish washes of thin pigment sealed eight times across two rows of asymmetric four.

AAA_Art Archive Australia   
from TAR, the following report :

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


       

18 December 2016

Kiffy Rubbo: curating the 1970s


In the 1970s, Janine Burke was a key member of the community of artists, writers and curators associated with the Ewing and George Paton galleries at Melbourne University Student Union. 


 Janine (left) and Kiffy    
Always the heart and centre was Kiffy Rubbo, well assisted by Meredith Rogers.


1974 at the Ewing Gallery : a performance with theremin by Phillipa Cullen as part of 'Events/Structures' curated by Peter Cripps. Peter is squatting at the back; beside him is Aleks Danko, with beard, and standing beside Aleks is Jennifer Phipps, an NGV curator through the 1970s. Kiffy is seated on the floor, back to the wall, on the right.  photo by FIAPCE
               
In 2014, Janine Burke organised a commemorative seminar at Melbourne University :
Curating the 1970s'          
      
Following on from that, published last month, is 
Kiffy Rubbo: curating the 1970s, edited by Janine Burke and Helen Hughes.


       
In this weekend's The Age/SMH, is this review by Owen Richardson : 

Kiffy Rubbo: Curating the Seventies
Editors Janine Burke and Helen Hughes
SCRIBE, $29.99
Review by Owen Richardson 


Kiffy Rubbo ran the George Paton Gallery at the Melbourne University Student Union from 1971 to 1979. These were years of upheaval in the art world, here and abroad, and on the local scene the George Paton lead the way in new developments: photography and feminist, conceptual and performance art all found a home there under Rubbo's leadership. 

It was the period of trailblazing feminist art historian Lucy Lippard's visit to Melbourne, and the artists' sit-in at the National Gallery organised by Rubbo as a protest against the gallery's censorship of Domenico De Clario's work, and the founding of the Women's Art Register. It was also the time of Stelarc spending 10 days lying between two metal plates, surrounded by bottles of his bodily fluids, and Jill Orr's Inside Jack's Head, which featured a sheep's carcass and a busload of Grade Five children and provides us with a convenient image for the freedoms of the era. 


This collection is a companion to 2009's exhibition and catalogue When You Think About Art: Ewing and George Paton Gallery 1971-2008, and its brief is to focus on the woman who did so much to help make these things happen. Alongside the editors, Orr and Stelarc provide memoirs, as do Lyndal Jones and Peter Tyndall, among others, and the impression of a distinctive and highly attractive personality comes through.

It sounds as if Rubbo was exactly what the times demanded: professional and disciplined while also open and free-thinking, strong and decisive at the same time as being inclusive and uninterested in self-aggrandisement. She had the benefit of a cultured, intellectual background: her father was a distinguished scientist, her grandfather a painter, one of her brothers a filmmaker and another a bookseller. Yet despite her advantages, beneath the outward energy and charm lay a self-doubting and troubled person: when she left the GPG she had difficulty reorienting herself and in 1980 took her own life.

We don't have to take the contributors' word for Kiffy's personal magnetism. The last 40 pages reproduce some of her letters to her brother Michael, and the liveliness and questing mind and humour are all there, as are the moments of sadness and anxiety.

One is left with a real sense of lost potential: it is hard not to feel that the culture of the past 35 years has been the poorer without Kiffy Rubbo's ongoing contribution. But this book testifies to what she gave in her time.
             
   

Kiffy Rubbo 2, 1979
by Robert Rooney
1979 (printed 2012 as inkjet print)
collection National Portrait Gallery

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

16 December 2016

CCP : Centre for Contemporary Photography - Photography is a beautiful, bold and affordable gift

     
TAR at CCP  
           detail
           A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
           someone looks at something... 
                   
           LOGOS/HA HA


       

14 December 2016

Beep Beep


Subject: Major exhibition announcement

In celebration of the seventieth anniversary of the House of Dior the NGV will present the never-before-seen exhibition The House of Dior: Seventy Years of Haute Couture.

Exclusive to Melbourne, this exhibition has been developed by the NGV in collaboration with the House of Dior, and will feature a sumptuous display of over 140 garments. Highlights include Christian Dior's iconic Spring 1947 'New Look' collection, magnificent ballgowns and current contemporary designs from the House's first female head designer, Maria Grazia Chiuri.


Trump in NY golden Tower
Versailles @ NGA ] man with a golden tie (
Sydney (duh!)

Classy Melbourne : 'New Look' 1947
   ] understated (


Images above supplied by FIAPCE in error      
✳   ✳   ✳         
Images below supplied by TAR as corrective     

'On Being : Subjects in the Darkness of the Sun King'
Performance by Theatre of the Actors of Regard at the National 
Gallery of Australia's 'Versailles : Treasures of the Palace',
featuring :
Have you seen another painting ] standing in the shadow (
- from Rebel Songs of TAR 

[Verse 1]
I'm glad I opened your eyes
The have-nots would have tried to freeze you in ice 
[Chorus]
Have you seen your mother, standing in the shadow
Have you had another, baby, standing in the shadow 
[Verse 4]
You take your choice at this time
The brave old world or the slide to the depths of decline 
- from "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby,
Standing in the Shadow?", Rolling Stones (1966)
TAR 'refusalist' demonstrates at NGV, Melbourne.
"Increasingly, we are seeing the public turning their backs on Art," a spokesperson for TAR said. Photograph by Bruno Benini

Daruma Muralists versus The New Look
'Protester at NGV awarded Gown of the Year', The Argus, 1956
Photograph by Bruno Benini
Fashion!
Turn to the left
Fashion!
Turn to the right
Oooh, fashion!
We are the goon squad and we're coming to town
Beep-beep, beep-beep 
- Tobias Andre Helmlinger, Thomas Karl Lang, Markus Steckert, Johannes Uschalt, Matthias Wendl
 BRUNO BENINI & TAR :
 CREATING ] THE REFUSAL ( TO LOOK 

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


       

13 December 2016

Popular songs of the museo-ekphrHaHasists, including 'Music to Watch TAR By' :


    "It's keepin' track of the fact 
            watching them watching back
    That makes the world go 'round
    What's that sound, 
            each time you hear a loud collective sigh
    They're making musea to watch TAR by."
           

 Cy Twombly, Rome, 1952, photo by Robert Rauschenberg

'Music to Watch TAR By' was the first Top 40 hit by Bob Crewe using his own name, recorded by his group The Bob Crewe Generation. Crewe first heard the song performed in a jingle demo for a Diet Pepsi commercial. Music was composed by Tony Velona and Sidney "Sid" Ramin. The "big-band, horn driven" recording went to #15 on the pop chart and #2 on the Easy Listening chart.

According to Greg Adams, writing for All Music Guide, the song "exemplified the groovy state of instrumental music at that time." In Bob Crewe's version, a trumpet plays the whole song, the first time around, sounding like Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass style. The second time the instrumental is played, a half step up in tone from G Minor to A-Flat Minor, a Tenor Saxophone plays a more jazzier version, accompanied by strings and a harpsichord, that play a counter-melody. The trumpets finish up the refrain, and all of the parts are played, repeating the first part in the Coda, before the fade.

Other instrumental versions of the song were recorded by Billy Vaughn, Chet Atkins, Al Hirt and Walter Wanderley. A vocal recording by Andy Williams, featuring lyrics written by Tony Velona, went to #34 in the United States, and after it was used in a Fiat ad in the UK, the re-released single reached the top ten. The version by Al Hirt reached #31 on the Adult Contemporary chart and #119 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1967. In 1967, an instrumental version renamed "Music to Watch Space By" appeared on Leonard Nimoy's debut album Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock's Music from the TAR Space. The Higsons covered the vocal version in 1984; this was released on a single and the album The Curse of the Higsons.

- FIAPCE via wikipedia


 Theatre of the Actors of Regard : Ros Packer 
 at NGA with 'Untitled' (2005) by Cy Twombly.

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


       

12 December 2016

The Hollow Crown


King Henry VI, Part II
William Shakespeare
         
Act IV Scene IX : Kenilworth Castle
King Henry VI :
         
Was ever king that joy'd an earthly throne,
And could command no more content than I?
No sooner was I crept out of my cradle
But I was made a king, at nine months old.
Was never subject long'd to be a king
As I do long and wish to be a subject.

*  *  *  *                            

T' wit, Nick X as the King-maker
     
                                  Senator Xenophon for TAR    
O Imperator! 


 Theatre of the Actors of Regard : a model for fashion house 
 Sorelle Fontana contorts at the Capitoline Museums, Rome,
 for photographer Regina Relang, 1952.

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


       

11 December 2016

KNULP 2016 fundraiser auction today 4pm



AAA_Art Archive Australia  
 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something... 
         
 LOGOS/HA HA



08 December 2016

UPDATE : Let ALL The Flowers Flow!


At a time when gates are being closed to people and trade; when walls ["I WILL BUILD A GREAT WALL"] are being raised rather than tumbled down; and when damning and down-stream water security is increasingly a matter of vital (life!) concern for many... we were interested last weekend to revisit one community's 1982 street banner, paraded in support of the (1976-1983) NO DAMS IN S-W TASMANIA and SAVE THE FRANKLIN campaigns.

Daylesford & District Historical Society Inc
Facebook : 4 December 2016
Margaret Leunig and Dianne Parsons spoke at the Museum on the occasion of their handing over the 1981-2003 Daylesford Embroidered Banners Project archive. The group photograph is of those people attending who contributed letters to the project.
     
The bloke in the photo, who had also stitched an alphabet letter, is holding a scroll from the LET THE RIVERS FLOW banner.

Below, the assembled banner leans against the old Victoria Hotel, ready for the 1982 New Years's Eve Parade : 6 painted scrolls, 16 letters, sign writing, a display structure and willing carriers.


click image to enlarge 
  A bit more about that black and white scroll. This is it in the 
  studio, a week before the parade.


click image to enlarge 
 As well as the meandering black flower, there was also a text 
 written in pencil, extracts from the book "Anti-Oedipus" :


click image to enlarge 
The full quotation :
Desiring-machines are binary machines, obeying a binary law or set of rules governing associations: one machine is always coupled with another. The productive synthesis, the production of production, is inherently connective in nature: "and . . ." "and then . . ." This is because there is always a flow-producing machine, and another machine connected to it that interrupts or draws off part of this flow (the breast—the mouth). And because the first machine is in turn connected to another whose flow it interrupts or partially drains off, the binary series is linear in every direction. Desire constantly couples continuous flows and partial objects that are by nature fragmentary and fragmented. Desire causes the current to flow, itself flows in turn, and breaks the flows. "I love everything that flows, even the menstrual flow that carries away the seed unfecund."* Amniotic fluid spilling out of the sac and kidney stones; flowing hair; a flow of spittle, a flow of sperm, shit, urine that are produced by partial objects and constantly cut off by other partial objects, which in turn produce other flows, interrupted by other partial objects. Every "object" presupposes the continuity of a flow; every flow, the fragmentation of the object. Doubtless each organ-machine interprets the entire world from the perspective of its own flux, from the point of view of the energy that flows from it: the eye interprets everything—speaking, understanding, shitting, fucking—in terms of seeing. But a connection with another machine is always established, along a transverse path, so that one machine interrupts the current of the other or "sees" its own current interrupted.

*Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, Ch. 13. See in this same chapter the celebration of desire-as-flux expressed in the phrase: ". . . and my guts spilled out in a grand schizophrenic rush, an evacuation that leaves me face to face with the Absolute."

           
Hence the coupling that takes place within the partial object-flow connective synthesis also has another form: product/producing. Producing is always something "grafted onto" the product; and for that reason desiring-production is production of production, just as every machine is a machine connected to another machine. We cannot accept the idealist category of "expression" as a satisfactory or sufficient explanation of this phenomenon. We cannot, we must not attempt to describe the schizophrenic object without relating it to the process of production.

       
Richard Lindner - Boy with Machine (1954)       

The satisfaction the handyman experiences when he plugs something into an electric socket or diverts a stream of water can scarcely be explained in terms of "playing mommy and daddy," or by the pleasure of violating a taboo. The rule of continually producing production, of grafting producing onto the product, is a characteristic of desiring-machines or of primary production: the production of production. A painting by Richard Lindner, "Boy with Machine," shows a huge, pudgy, bloated boy working one of his little desiring-machines, after having hooked it up to a vast technical social machine—which, as we shall see, is what even the very young child does.
- extracts from :
Anti-Oedipus by Deleuze & Guattari (Publ. French 1972, English 1977)
from The Desiring-Machines, Ch.1 (translated by Helen R. Lane, Robert Hurley, and Mark Seem)
Also on the scroll, the now-familiar formal meta-Title
as we follow the flow
to the see :
LET THE RIVERS FLOW
LET ALL THE RIVERS FLOW
LET ALL THE FLOWERS FLOW

AAA_Art Archive Australia  
click image to enlarge 
Banner at the ready --
    flowing flowing flowing 
        keep them doggies rollin'...

Daylesford Community Banner Project, 1982  
click image to enlarge 
 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something... 
         
 LOGOS/HA HA


POST SCRIPT : On 5 March 1983, the Australian Labor Party won the federal election with a large swing. The new prime ministerBob Hawke, had vowed to stop the dam from being constructed, and the anti-dam vote increased Hawke's majority - some federal Victorian seats were notable for having a strong interest in the issue . However, in Tasmania, the vote went against the national trend and the Liberals held all five seats. Hawke's government first passed regulations under the existing National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act 1975, and then passed the World Heritage Properties Conservation Act 1983, which prohibited Franklin River dam-related clearing, excavation and building activities that had been authorised by Tasmanian state legislation.
However, the Tasmanian government ignored both the federal regulations and legislation and continued to order work on the dam. The issue was brought before the High Court with the first day of hearings on 31 May 1983... (continues here)

   

05 December 2016

Strange Regard


Xenophon : Strange Voice
from Greek ξενος (xenos) "foreign, strange"
and φωνη (phone) "voice"

LOGOS/HA HA : Strange Voice
from Greek Logos λόγος, from λέγω lego "I say" 
("Word of God; speaking into being")
from Cheek(s) HA HA : laughter, farts, unsound dis-eruptions

"Osibisa : criss-cross rhythms that explode 
with happiness"
from The Dawn (tk. 1), 'Osibisa (1971) by Osibisa

This recent Nick Xenophon TAR tableau appears to us so hilariously fulsome ] like that bowl of golden arsehole enso ( that to give the lead-up might constrain the chain reaction... 
      
Nick Xenophon / Theatre of the Actors of Regard  
 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something... 
         
 LOGOS/HA HA



04 December 2016

Playing At Giants


The metaphor of dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants (Latin: nanos gigantum humeris insidentes) expresses the meaning of "discovering truth by building on previous discoveries".[1] This concept has been traced to the 12th century, attributed to Bernard of Chartres.

Its most familiar expression in English is by Isaac Newton in 1676:
"If I have seen further, 
  it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."[2] 

Below, the blind giant Orion carries his servant Cedalion on his shoulders to serve as the giant's eye.
                                                                    - Wikipedia
   
Playing At Giants :
a beautiful old favourite by Master Goya 


Francisco Goya, Jugando en el Giants/Playing at Giants (c.1792)
        
An Antipodean View 
Mike Parr

Mike Parr, The College of Cardinals (2005)

A Yankee at the Court of TAR 
after FIAPCE
after Luis Jacob
after Davies & Co. (Melb.)
          ] after whom, Houdini (
after The American Frikell
after Washington Simmons
after Dr H. S. Lynn
after Wiljalba Frikell
after Mark Twain


Theatre of the Actors of Regard featuring Luis Jacob's 'Sphinx'  
 detail
 A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
 someone looks at something... 
         
 LOGOS/HA HA