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Much has been made of the extraordinary backflip this week by the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, on the issue of a banking royal commission – from two weeks ago when he was telling Channel Nine’s Karl Stefanovic that a royal commission “doesn’t do anything other than write a report”, to this week announcing one.

But of course this isn’t really a banking royal commission – it is instead a royal commission whose own framers see little need for it. It has been given just one year – a year less than was given to the trade union royal commission – and with terms of reference that are poorly focused, and which you could be excused for believing are designed to produce little change to our financial system.

It is the weirdest announcement for a royal commission that I can recall.

Shades of Sir Humphrey in banking royal commission terms of reference
Greg Jericho / The Guardian
3 December 2017

principium

a beginning, an origin

In principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat Verbum.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and God was the Word.

a groundwork, a foundation

principium - Wiktionary

flesh

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.

John 1:1, 14King James Version

Logos

Logos (UK: /ˈloʊɡɒs, ˈlɒɡɒs/, US: /ˈloʊɡoʊs/; Ancient Greek :
λόγος, from λέγω lego "I say") is a term in western philosophy,
psychology, rhetoric, and religion derived from a Greek word meaning "ground", "plea", "opinion", "expectation", "word", "speech", "account", "reason", "proportion", "discourse", but it became a technical term in philosophy beginning with Heraclitus (c. 535–475 BCE), who used the term for a principle of order
and knowledge. Logos is the logic behind an argument.

Logos tries to persuade an audience using logical arguments and supportive evidence. Logos is a persuasive technique often used in writing and rhetoric. Ancient Greek philosophers used the term in different ways. The sophists used the term to mean discourse, and Aristotle applied the term to refer to "reasoned discourse" or "the argument" in the field of rhetoric. The Stoic philosophers identified the term with the divine animating principle pervading the Universe. Under Hellenistic Judaism, Philo (circa 20 BCE -
50 CE) adopted the term into Jewish philosophy. The Gospel of John identifies the Logos, through which all things are made, as divine (theos), and further identifies Jesus Christ as the incarnate Logos. The term is also used in Sufism, and the analytical psychology of Carl Jung.

Despite the conventional translation as "word", it is not used for a word in the grammatical sense; instead, the term lexis (λέξις) was used. However, both logos and lexis derive from the same verb legō (λέγω), meaning "count, tell, say, speak"

Jeanne Fahnestock describes logos as a "premise". She states that, to find the reason behind a rhetor's backing of a certain position or stance, one must acknowledge the different "premises" that the rhetor applies via his or her chosen diction. The rhetor's success, she argues, will come down to "certain objects of agreement...between arguer and audience". "Logos is logical appeal, and the term logic is derived from it. It is normally used to describe facts and figures that support the speaker's topic." Furthermore, logos is credited with appealing to the audience's sense of logic, with the definition of "logic" being concerned with the thing as it is known. Furthermore, one can appeal to this sense of logic in two ways: 1) through inductive logic, providing the audience with relevant examples and using them to point back to the overall statement; 2) through deductive enthymeme, providing the audience with general scenarios and then pulling out a certain truth.

Philo distinguished between logos prophorikos ("the uttered word") and the logos endiathetos ("the word remaining within"). The Stoics also spoke of the logos spermatikos (the generative principle of the Universe), which is not important in the Biblical tradition but is relevant in Neoplatonism. Early translators from Greek, such as Jerome in the 4th century, were frustrated by the inadequacy of any single Latin word to convey the Logos expressed in the Gospel of John. The Vulgate Bible usage of in principio erat verbum was thus constrained to use the (perhaps inadequate) noun verbum for "word", but later romance language translations had the advantage of nouns such as le mot in French. Reformation translators took another approach. Martin Luther rejected Zeitwort (verb) in favor of Wort (word), for instance, although later commentators repeatedly turned to a more dynamic use involving the living word as felt by Jerome and Augustine.

- Wikipedia : Logos

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann,

darüber muss man schweigen.

Whereof one cannot speak,

thereof one must be silent.

so wrote Ludwig Wittgenstein

images via imgrum / instagram

identify

One of the more unusual techniques, which she learned from a psychologist many years ago, was to give her paintings long titles.

Her first solo show at the National Gallery of Victoria, Our Knowing and Not Knowing, will show works such as the one titled: The Rose Petal Scrolls, become the Scrolls of our Ancient Past; of the Law; of Wigs, still worn. The Hands of Now, of Doing. The Pear that is Flesh and Heart. The Conflict with Arrogance. Also, the Flicker of Life, and the Question Mark. 2014. And that’s one of the shorter ones.

She said people often imposed their own fantasies on artworks because it wasn’t obvious what the artist was portraying.

“I would love it if people could read the titles and identify what’s happening there,” she said. “That would be lovely but I don’t have much hope of that happening.”

Helen Maudsley to have first solo show at NGV

Tessa Ackerman / The Australian
16 November 2017

, actually,

It is the titles, actually, that are at once the most difficult and, through their play with the visual imagery, also most rewarding elements of Maudsley's work. Difficult because, despite Maudsley repeating that her intention is to have us look at and not look for something in the work, the titles constantly get in the way of our ability to simply look. They invest and 'fill up' sight with language so that the eye becomes a searching-eye, searching for something that the works never end up betraying. One option to overcome this would of course be to just ignore the titles. This option, however, never feels viable, especially when confronted with thirty-two works in a single room (with their oft repeated motifs and formal similitudes): the titles are one of the few reprieves from what, at worst, could be a visual monotony.

However, if the titles are difficult because they get in the way of simply looking, their rewarding aspect is that they actually compel one to be conscious of, and ultimately adjust one's very attitude to, looking. If the titles are not accepted at face-value as clues to a visual analogy that needs to be unlocked like the discrete, unified answer to a cryptic crossword; if, after filling sight up with Maudsley's language one actually empties sight of this language, then the titles start to function as a kind of semiotic or symbolic atmosphere that shrouds the work, keying in sight to a semiotic register. Instead of a visual search, they produce a visual 'mood'

This 'overcoming' of the titles, however, was only one challenge of Our Knowing and Not Knowing: Helen Maudsley...

- extract from

'OUR KNOWING AND NOT KNOWING : HELEN MAUDSLEY'

AT NGV AUSTRALIA

Paris Lettau / MEMO Review, 2 December 2017

Theatre of the Actors of Regard

But wait, there's more is less

Another challenge was the curator's appropriation of Maudsley's artistic strategies, in which, through a series of mimetic acts by the curator, the same formal structure of Maudsley's work is repeated at the level of exhibition design. What are these 'mimetic acts'?

One is the curator simply utilising a painting of Maudsley's as a design for an all-encompassing wallpaper [one quickly recognises the design to be taken form The Self: Part of it But not Merging (2017)]. (According to rumour, there is a wallpaper mandate at the NGV because "a million dollars" was blown on a wallpaper machine). In doing this, the spatial poetics of Maudsley's work is literalised within the exhibition space. This all-over nature of the wallpaper has the effect of consuming Maudsley's individual works, much like Sam Songailo's wall painting notoriously did in Painting. More Painting at ACCA in 2016...

- continuation of extract from
'OUR KNOWING AND NOT KNOWING : HELEN MAUDSLEY'
AT NGV AUSTRALIA
Paris Lettau / MEMO Review, 2 December 2017

LEGOFLAMB1

@sallyrossartist I feel the same way. That wallpaper does the incredible works a serious disservice
EMILYROSSBESPOKE

Why is the wall like that
JOHN_YOUNG_ZERUNGE

Helen’s paintings are enough thankyou. They are formally intelligent complete and they have tremendous integrity that can be contemplated at eye level. Their form and structure refer to very specific criteria from Western Modernism. They are not toys that need echo chambers to distract us. @sallyrossartist
SALLYROSSARTIST

@john_young_zerunge yes was just wondering why a non-existent void needed to be filled... xx
TWINK_PEAKS

Agreed!

21 pencil salute

Every so often bLOGOS/HA HA tips our hats to someone we admire.

Today, Helen Maudsley. Artist, teacher, matriarch and champion custodian of the work of her late-husband John Brack.

- extract from 21 March 2012 [ full post here ]

Came to the aid of the party

Helen, second from the left, at the free pencil movement silent

protest against no-sketching regulation, NGV, 9 December 2004

photo : Christian Capurro

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

LOGOS/HA HA

We loved the Tiger Cheer Squad's Theatre of the Actors of Regard meta-banner at the MCG last night. In the presence of 95,000 footy fans, their Tigers run-through banner acknowledged the Yellow + Black barrackers of the ages.