Season's Greetings from bLOGOS/HA HA

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Immoral Tales (continued)

2020 : NGV acquires $25million Blood Bath of Venus
see installation below :
after Immoral Tales (1973), Walerian Borowczyk / TAR

We calculate with some concern the sparsity of drainage fittings ...

TARist models regard Venus stepping into ...

(knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock knock)
That must be the first architect now. Ah, yes. It's Mr. Wiggin of Ironside and Malone.
MR. WIGGIN: Good morning, gentlemen. Uh, this is a twelve-storey block combining classical neo-Georgian features with all the advantages of modern design. Uhh, the tenants arrive in the entrance hall here, are carried along the corridor on a conveyor belt in extreme comfort and past murals depicting Mediterranean scenes, towards the rotating knives. The last twenty feet of the corridor are heavily soundproofed. The blood pours down these chutes and the mangled flesh slurps into these large containers--

specific-bonding detail / Theatre of the AnaLOGOS/HA HA of Regard

CITY GENT #1: Excuse me.
MR. WIGGIN: Hmm?
CITY GENT #1: Uh, did you say 'knives'?
MR. WIGGIN: Uh, rotating knives. Yes.
CITY GENT #2: Are you, uh, proposing to slaughter our tenants?
MR. WIGGIN: Does that not fit in with your plans?
CITY GENT #1: No, it does not. Uh, we -  we wanted a... simple... block of flats.

MR. WIGGIN: Ahh, I see. I hadn't, uh, correctly divined your attitude...
CITY GENT #: Uh, huh huh.
MR. WIGGIN: ...towards your tenants.
CITY GENT #: Huh huh.
MR. WIGGIN: You see, I mainly design slaughter houses.
CITY GENT #1: Yes. Pity.
MR. WIGGIN: Mind you, this is a real beaut. I mean, none of your blood caked on the walls and flesh flying out of the windows inconveniencing passers-by with this one. I mean, my life has been building up to this.
CITY GENT #2: Yes, and well done, huh, but we did want a block of flats.
MR. WIGGIN: Well, may I ask you to reconsider? I mean, you wouldn't regret it. Think of the tourist trade.
CITY GENT #1: No, no, it's-- it's just that we wanted a block of flats and not an abattoir.
MR. WIGGIN: Yes, well, that's the sort of blinkered, philistine pig ignorance I've come to expect from you non-creative garbage. You sit there on your loathsome, spotty behinds squeezing blackheads, not caring a tinker's cuss for the struggling artist. You excrement! You whining, hypocritical toadies, with your color TV sets and your Tony Jacklin golf clubs and your bleeding Masonic secret handshakes! You wouldn't let me join, would you, you blackballing bastards! Well, I wouldn't become a freemason now if you went down on your lousy, stinking knees and begged me!
CITY GENT #2: Well, we're sorry you feel like that, but we, um, did... want... a block of flats. Nice, though, the abattoir is. Huh huh.

- from Monty Python, The Architects Sketch 

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Happen Stance meets Horror Dance

stance (n.)

1530s, "standing place, station," probably from French 

stance "resting place, harbor" (16c.), from Vulgar Latin 

*stantia "place, abode" (also source of Italian stanza 

"stopping place, station, stanza," Spanish stancia 

"a dwelling"), from Latin stans (genitive stantis), 

present participle of stare "to stand" (from PIE root *sta- "to stand, make or be firm").

Sense of "position of the feet" (in golf, etc.) is first recorded 1897; figurative sense of "point of view" is recorded from 1956. The sense of the French word has since narrowed.

                     

Stand Dance (TAR)

see : I can't stop it/do that dance (Primitive Calculators)

see : Suspiria meets Climax
see : Theatre of Agit-Regard

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KNULP 2020 ONLINE FUNDRAISER TODAY

KNULP ONLINE FUNDRAISER / SATURDAY DECEMBER 19

This year - out of an abundance of caution - the annual KNULP fundraiser is moving online. 

Join us today from 4pm (Sydney/AEDT) for a live fundraiser on Instagram @ knulpknulpknulp, with works by 40+ contributing artists. 

Each work will be offered at a set price (between $100 - $1000) and the first person to comment ‘SOLD’ will win the piece. 

With enormous thanks to all of our contributing artists:

Hany Armanious

Stuart Bailey

Dylan Batty

Neil Beedie

Tom Blake

Belle Blau

Maggie Brink

Mitch Cairns

Consuelo Cavaniglia

Carla Cescon

Mitchel Cumming

Scott Donovan

Mikala Dwyer

Liam Garstang 

Alex Gawronski 

Sarah Goffman

Michelle Hanlin

Elise Harmsen

Patrick Hartigan 

Shane Haseman

Jesse Hogan

M P Hopkins

Ronnie van Hout

Emily Hunt

Andrew Hurle

Geoff Kleem

Jonathan M Kopinski

Mary MacDougall

Jason Markou 

Rose Nolan

Vicki Papageorgopolous

Luke Parker

Tanya Peterson

Jason Phu

Elizabeth Pulie

Robert Pulie 

Zoe M Robertson

Koji Ryui

Paul Saint

Maria Smit

Nicola Smith

Charlie Sofo

Nick Strike 

Jelena Telecki

David Thompson 

Philipa Veitch 

Justene Williams

Louise Zhang

before Big Fig

Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water.

- P J Harvey

 Yosa Buson (1716-1784) 

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Big Figuration (continued)

KAWS engages with universal feelings of isolation and loneliness through his works, in reaction to the turbulent world we live in today. His larger-than-life sculptures are playful, toy-like figures, however at closer look, they reveal a fragility and darkness in the vulnerable poses of the characters. The exhibition will include a newly commissioned 7-metre bronze COMPANION sculpture GONE, 2019, standing solemnly in a Pietà pose, evoking a sense of sorrow and empathy. On display in the NGV’s Federation Court, this monumental work will be the largest bronze KAWS has created to date.

NGV Media Release 11 July 2019

  KAWS, GONE, 2019                                                collection NGV

    In an art calendar decimated by the pandemic, and in a year in which we have all suffered such sensory deprivation, the global unveiling of the first in what he’s calling his Porcelain series has become even more of a red-letter event. Fittingly perhaps, given our social estrangement and affection deficit disorder, his muse is Venus, the Roman goddess of love. Inspired by 18th-century porcelain figurines, the sculpture is a synthesis of classical ideas of beauty and cutting-edge production techniques. As with so much of his work, it uses mirrors and reflections – a device intended to make his art more accessible by turning the viewer into a participant in the piece. “The surface people are looking at is the right here, right now,” he says of the super-sized statuette. “The image itself is a historical viewpoint.”

    Given the artist’s celebrity, and the undisclosed [$25 million!]

price tag attached to the work, Venus may be the most consequential American acquisition to arrive in Australia since Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles in the early 1970s. The key difference – and one that offers a protective shield from tabloid outrage and political philistinism – is that no public money is involved. Instead, a small group of NGV benefactors, including members of the Smorgon, Clifford and Fox families, has financed the entire project.

Move over, Blue Poles: Jeff Koons is about to deliver us his startling new artwork

Nick Bryant, The Age/Good Weekend, 5 Dec 2020

Jeff Koons "Venus" 2016–20 (render) mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent colour coating 254.0 x 144.5 x 158.4 cm Edition 1/3 + 1 A/P National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased with funds donated by Loti & Victor Smorgon Fund, Leigh Clifford AO & Sue Clifford, John Higgins AO & Jodie Maunder, Paula Fox AO & Fox Family Foundation, Professor AGL Shaw AO Bequest and NGV Foundation, 2020 © the artist and Gagosian.

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See French sculptor Jean Ipoustéguy's controversial sculpture installation titled ‘Death of the father’ today at NGV.

https://twitter.com/NGVMelbourne/status/887401675580997637/photo/1

 Jean Ipousteguy, Death of theFather, 1967-68, collection NGV 

We are young enough to remember when in 1972 NGV director Eric Westbrook announced the expensive acquisition of Jean Ipoustéguy’s Death of the Father. It was installed theatrically spotlit in a black-walled chamber of it's own at one end of the main exhibition hall. Patrick McCaughy, critic for The Age, railed against the work and it's purchase. We joined the Melbourne masses who came to see what the fuss was about.

We recalled that controversial acquisition while thinking about the comparable NGV acquisitions of 2019 and 2020 by KAWS and Koons. 

This invaluable research paper by Melbourne University's Christopher R. Marshall provides an overview filled with interesting detail.

Monumental Sculpture and Institutional Identity at the National Gallery of Victoria: From Here to Eternity, and Back

Read it or download the pdf  here. A glimpse :

The eventual 1968 relocation of the NGV down St Kilda Rd nonetheless brought a major shift in emphasis. Even prior to this, though, the change in agenda towards an assertively modernist approach to collections development and institutional identity was signaled by the appointment in 1956 of Eric Westbrook to the Directorship of the NGV. As a committed modernist with a strong background in international touring exhibitions, Westbrook wasted no time in making his new agenda felt. One of the key statements of this new focus came in the 1960 purchase of Henry Moore’s Draped Seated Woman, a landmark acquisition that was met with a barrage of press, both positive and negative. I have discussed elsewhere the importance of this acquisition “as an emblem of the National Gallery of Victoria's modernity” as based particularly on the NGV’s desire to use the acquisition as the centre piece to a new emphasis on collecting contemporary sculpture.20 It certainly represents the archetypal instance of what I shall here identify as the second stage in the NGV’s engagement with monumental sculpture. 

…the purchase marks a very important change in the policy of both the Felton Bequest and my own Trustees and we hope that it will lead to the building of a very fine collection of recent sculpture. Everything in Australia points to it being a country where sculpture should be presented, not only from the character of the people, but also from our superb light which is as close to that of Greece that I have yet found. 

The dream of creating in Melbourne a new Acropolis-like ensemble of monumental international contemporary sculpture proved challenging, as it transpired, and the collection in waiting idea registered so prominently by the Draped Seated Woman remained more or less a chimera at the NGV in the years to come. A great deal of the reason for this was financial.

Theatre of the Actors of Regard  

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TAR Label Mural ] for + after Donald Judd (

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Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery opens two new exhibitions [ ArtDaily : 6 December 2020 )

             

SYDNEY - Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery is presenting a cross-generational exhibition, A Painting Show featuring new works by three of Australia’s most important painters working today. All three artists are expressive, gestural and considered in their mark making - masterful colourists conjuring up vivid, fantastical realms, yet their unique styles have paved their way as distinct voices within the Australian and international art world.

Paintings by Tom Polo, Gareth Sansom and Jenny Watson are exhibited within the unique context of the last month of 2020 where the fibres of society are strained. Within a social fabric of distanced inter-personal relationships, disconnection and technological interfaces dominating modes of communication, painting allows us to take space and stand still.

The process of viewing painting is an intimate act, enabling one to stop momentarily and lean in close, to pay attention to minute details. The act of viewing provides an antidote to the hurtling speed of advancement, a tonic to the over-saturation of visual noise and screen-time. A Painting Show becomes therefore, a call for togetherness, to connect through looking, ultimately an opportunity of introspection and reconnecting the dots.

Theatre of the Actors of Regard   

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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

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our 2020 Good Gourd Gift Guide

 Jozan Ishikawa (1583-1672)

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In Other Words podcast #57 : Then and Now : Paula Cooper Gallery

PODCAST EPISODE #57

Then and Now: Paula Cooper Gallery

In Other Words

Apr 2019 (40 minutes)

Episode Description : Paula Cooper Gallery has survived and thrived in a mercurial art world for more than five decades. 

On today’s show, the legendary dealer talks about the history and future of her gallery together with Steven Henry, who has been the gallery director for more than two decades, Allan Schwartzman, co-founder of Art Agency, Partners, and host Charlotte Burns. 

Charlotte Burns: As we round out, I wanted to ask the three of you: from your combined experiences over the years, are there other words of wisdom that you would give either to collectors or artists who are listening to the show?

Paula Cooper: Look. Look more. Just look. And be patient and look.

Steven Henry: Trust your eye and —

Paula Cooper: And relax! Jesus, people get very uptight sometimes and nervous like it’s a test or something.

[Laughter]

TARist with 'Paula', oil on canvas by Rudolf Stingel  

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doomscrolling : 2020 Word of the Year announced by Macquarie Dictionary

A neoLOGOS/HA HA for some, maybe, 

but nothing new for others :

 by Yamaoka Tesshu (1836-1888)  

by GOCHO Kankai (1749-1835) aka Australian tide disciplined  

collection FIAPCE  

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