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.


05 September 2021

Spare Room 33


Heide Museum of Modern Art, (Heidelberg outside Melbourne, John and Sunday Reed)
Museum of New and Old Art, (Hobart, David Walsh)
TarraWarra Museum of Art (TarraWarra outside Melbourne, Eva and Marc Besen)
Buxton Contemporary (Melbourne, Michael Buxton)
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Lyon Housemuseum and Housemuseum Galleries (Melbourne, Corbett and Yueji Lyon)
Justin Art House Museum (Melbourne, Charles and Leah Justin)
Pestorius Sweeney House (Brisbane, David Pestorius)
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Spare Room 33 (Canberra, Peter Jones and Susan Taylor) 
Smaller in scale ("Cut your coat...) but not in serious intent. With Canberra in lockdown, Peter has taken to Instagram. Today, for example:

It being Sunday, we're enjoying pancakes and listening to 'difficult' music. It has always been grimly amusing to us that the barely three minutes of Webern's Opus 11 for cello and piano is now rising 107 years of age and can still drive people up the wall. Whereas we love the atonal, the serial, the minimalist.

Morton Feldman is one of our favourite composers. He was in love with sound, and his systems were dedicated to freeing it. His beef with his European contemporaries in the 1950's was that system and process had become for them the actual subject of musical composition (though we love their music too).

The added bonus with Feldman is that he was a brilliant writer and raconteur, was a close friend of many major New York artists, and thought deeply about the differences between their art and his. His friend Franz Kline's work is on the cover of the pictured LP from 1962.

Here's a typical Feldman musing: "Franz Kline once told me that it was only rarely that colour did not act as an intrusion into his painting ... In music it is the instruments that produce the colour. And for me, that instrumental colour robs the sound of its immediacy. The instrument has become for me a stencil, the deceptive likeness of a sound." And further: "I began to feel that the sounds were not concerned with my idea of symmetry and design, that they wanted to sing of other things. They wanted to live, and I was stifling them ... To make something is to constrain it. I have found no answer to this dilemma. My whole creative life is simply an attempt to adjust to it." Morton Feldman, 1972.

Last week (28 August) :

Six classic records (well, five classics, one not so much) featuring black and white cover photography.
1. Holger Czukay, 12" EP. Cover photo by Angus MacKinnon.
2. Steely Dan, Pretzel Logic. Cover photo by Raenne Rubinstein.
3. Jay White, Street Scene. Cover photo by Burt Goldblatt.
4. Chico Hamilton, Quintet in Hi Fi. Cover photo by William Claxton.
5. Ruby Braff, Braff!! Cover photo by Jay Maisel.
6. Bob Mould, Workbook. Rear cover photo by Marc Norberg.

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