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.
HAKUIN
paints an enso
to help us see
Hakuin Ekaku (1686 - 1768)
HENRY NO LOGOS
Henry is a comic strip created in 1932 by Carl Anderson. The title character is a young bald boy who is mute (and sometimes drawn minus a mouth). With the exception of a few early episodes, the comic strip character communicates only through pantomime, a situation which changed when Henry moved into comic books. (Wikipedia)
Henry steps onto the set of
I Am Comic Curious (Yellow)
He is carrying a framed portrait by Carl Anderson,
a can of black paint and a brush.
Henry hangs the portrait on his free-floating name.
Henry turns to face us.
Henry paints an enso round his right eye.
Henry turns back to face the portrait.
Henry paints an enso round the portrait's right eye.
Standing beside the portrait, Henry regards us.
This is
Black Hole Henry's Meta-Portrait Enso Show
painted to help us see
Henry exits stage right
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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...
LOGOS/HA HA
The Masks of Melbourne
Last weekend in Melbourne there were violent clashes again between the Theseans & Minotaurs.
AAP photo
The Police Commissioner and Minister for Police have since spoken out against the use of masks by these groups.
They propose that masks by protestors be banned.
This issue has been going on for some time...
ex libris FIAPCE (1973)
Above, members of the two opposing groups pose for a drawing
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...
LOGOS/HA HA
We enjoyed and recommend Christopher Benfey's recent Wittgenstein’s Handles in the New York Review of Books. May 24, 2016 click here
Door handles and lock by Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Vienna house he
designed (1926-1929) with architect Paul Engelmann - photo Studio
Hubert Urban, 1972
FIAPCE, ideograms of dependent-arising (above) and The Two Truths
(see: Wittgenstein's Handles)
He begins with a question, to which he responds :
What was it about handles—door-handles, axe-handles, the handles of pitchers and vases—that transfixed thinkers in Vienna and Berlin during the early decades of the twentieth century, echoing earlier considerations of handles in America and ancient Greece?
From Wittgenstein...
To details like the door-handles, in particular, Wittgenstein accorded what Monk calls “an almost fanatical exactitude,” driving locksmiths and engineers to tears as they sought to meet his seemingly impossible standards. The unpainted tubular door-handle that Wittgenstein designed for Gretl’s house remains the prototype for all such door-handles, still popular in the twenty-first century.
Theatre of the Actors of Regard, Seating Viewed in Upright Position
(The Admissions of Wittgenstein), 1951 - note door handle
(Thomas Bernhard was surely evoking his idol, Wittgenstein, when he told a friend that the only way to find an exact replacement for a broken window-handle would be to find another, identical broken window-handle.)
Monk argues, more than once, that this design project brought Wittgenstein “back” to philosophy.
to the German sociologist Georg Simmel...
In his brilliant 1911 essay “The Handle,” Simmel argued that the handle of a vase bridges two worlds,the utilitarian and the non-utilitarian.
Pablo Picasso, Personnage avec mains sur les hanches (Vase with
two high handles), 1953 - note disparate translation handles
A vessel, according to Simmel, “unlike a painting or statue, is not intended to be insulated and untouchable but is meant to fulfill a purpose—if only symbolically. For it is held in the hand and drawn into the movement of practical life.”
Thus the vessel stands in two worlds at one and the same time: whereas reality is completely irrelevant to the “pure” work of art and, as it were, is consumed in it, reality does make claims upon the vase as an object that is handled, filled and emptied, proffered, and set down here and there. This dual nature of the vase is most decisively expressed in its handle.
to Emerson, Stanley Cavell, the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus, Bob Dylan, Thomas De Quincey, Coleridge, Robert Frost, a French-Canadian woodcutter named Baptiste , Elizabeth Bishop’s Crusoe, Gary Snyder who recalls Elias Canetti...
Snyder invokes the idea of literary tradition as a “handing down,” from father to son and from teacher to student, “how we go on.” In such a transfer, the ax stands in for the pen (in a different context, Snyder compared a laptop to a nice little chainsaw). In his seductive praise of the “craft of culture,” Snyder recalls Elias Canetti’s moving assertion: “It is the quiet, prolonged activities of the hand which have created the only world in which we care to live.”
HAND SPACE manifesto, 1981
Is there some unfinished business here?
he asks, and continues...
Was there, for example, any significance to Wittgenstein’s parenthetical joke about handles resembling one another, like brothers and sisters? “We see handles all looking more or less alike. (Naturally, since they are all supposed to be handled.)” For Wittgenstein, those handles seem to come momentarily alive; they’re animated...
Theseus at MoMA : Picasso, Tete de taureau (Bull's Head) 1942
A handle-horned minotaur...
awaits every Theseus...
in the labyrinth of TAR !
Theatre of the Actors of Regard
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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
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LOGOS/HA HA
Hegel's Owl: The Life of Bernard Smith was launched last evening from 6-8pm at the Victorian Artists Society. At the fall of dusk, all flocked in.
In 2008 the prominent Australian art historian Bernard Smith invited Dr Sheridan Palmer to write his biography. Bringing together years of interviews and insight through exclusive access to Smith’s papers and library, Hegel’s Owl deftly reveals the unique character of an exceptional man, today acknowledged by many as the father of Australian art history.
- University Of Sydney, N.S.W. Power Publications, 2016
We received a reminder about this boobook launch immediately after posting yesterday's gif of the Black Hole Owl Collector.
gif by Bill Domonkosis
H Owl here refers to this famous text by Hegel :
Um noch über das Belehren, wie die Welt sein soll, ein Wort zu sagen, so kommt dazu ohnehin die Philosophie immer zu spät. Als der Gedanke der Welt erscheint sie erst in der Zeit, nachdem die Wirklichkeit ihren Bildungsprozeß vollendet und sich fertig gemacht hat. Dies, was der Begriff lehrt, zeigt notwendig ebenso die Geschichte, daß erst in der Reife der Wirklichkeit das Ideale dem Realen gegenüber erscheint und jenes sich dieselbe Welt, in ihrer Substanz erfaßt, in Gestalt eines intellektuellen Reichs erbaut. Wenn die Philosophie ihr Grau in Grau malt, dann ist eine Gestalt des Lebens alt geworden, und mit Grau in Grau läßt sie sich nicht verjüngen, sondern nur erkennen; die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug.
Hegel, Vorrede zu der Philosophie des Rechts
One more word about teaching what the world ought to be: Philosophy always arrives too late to do any such teaching. As the thought of the world, philosophy appears only in the period after actuality has been achieved and has completed its formative process. The lesson of the concept, which necessarily is also taught by history, is that only in the ripeness of actuality does the ideal appear over against the real, and that only then does this ideal comprehend this same real world in its substance and build it up for itself into the configuration of an intellectual realm. When philosophy paints its gray in gray, then a configuration of life has grown old, and cannot be rejuvenated by this gray in gray, but only understood; the Owl of Minerva takes flight only as the dusk begins to fall.
Hegel, Preface to the Philosophy of Right
H o w
N o w
B r o w n
O w l ?
Goya, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (The Sleep of
Reason Produces Monsters), 1799
Howl this 1955 poem by Ginsberg :
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night...
and grOWL Russolo verses Hendrix :
Black How
Black Now
Black Hole?
((( O )))
Black Audio Sun!
grOWL-ed
be thy radiant Goethe gray
- gray in gray -
theoria!
Although your world wonders me
With your majestic and superior cackling hen
Your people I do not understand
So to you I shall put an end
Then you'll never hear surf music again
reverse gif FIAPCE
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LOGOS/HA HA
Malevich meets
Malevich meets Fontana meets
Malevich meets Fontana meets Kapoor meets
Malevich meets Fontana meets Kapoor meets
Yves Klein meets The Void
Yves Klein meets The Void
gif by Bill Domonkosis
"...which ever way you look at it,
there's a black hole."
- Malcolm Turnbull, 25 May 2016
- Malcolm Turnbull, 25 May 2016
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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...
LOGOS/HA HA
Theatre of the Actors of Regard
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...
LOGOS/HA HA
Kids Smash Art at Glass Museum While Adults Stand by Filming
Theatre of the Actors of Regard
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something...
LOGOS/HA HA
Rod Moss
Origin of the New Poetics
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| It was a great pleasure last weekend to attend the latest exhibition by Rod Moss and, on Saturday, to listen to him 'In Conversation' with Rex Butler. |
(left) Rex Butler and (right) Rod Moss and
"Families at Uleralkwe" "Considering The Birds"
From the discussion came even more to delight in, such as the link between the already wonderful
The Gift of Butterflies and Gustave Courbet's 1854 La rencontre, ou "Bonjour Monsieur Courbet" (The Meeting or "Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet").
Rod Moss, The Gift of Butterflies, 2015
"Rod Moss has lived in the Aboriginal community, Whitegate on the eastern fringes of Alice Springs, for almost three decades, forging close ties with the community. Breaking the barriers of what Moss considers “a politically correct, insulating silence” within the Australian art scene, Origin of the New Poetics depicts the people of Whitegate in extraordinarily personal, vulnerable and private moments.
Moss’ narrative paintings show resolute scenes in which the impact of alcohol and violence are unflinchingly depicted, contrasted with tender moments showing cultural milestones and family rituals. Appropriating compositions from the Old Masters and religious paintings, his artworks are familiar yet foreign, romantic yet confronting.
This is Moss’ fourth solo exhibition with Anna Pappas Gallery. Moss was awarded the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Non-fiction in 2011 for his first memoir The Hard Light of Day. Moss’s second memoir, One Thousand Cuts: Life and Art in Central Australia was launched in conjunction with a retrospective exhibition at Anna Pappas Gallery in 2013"
Click here for more exhibition images
Click here to view flip-book catalogue
Rod Moss, Origin of the New Poetics, 2015
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Rod Moss, August We Meet Here To Talk About Water, 2014
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After the conversation with Rex, Rod talked further about the Whitegate community. In 2014 the NT government turned their water off - read here and here and here and here - hence the title of this 2014 work, 'August We Meet Here To Talk About Water'.
Even in the last month further claim difficulties have emerged as the community attempts to gain a ‘special purpose lease’ over the Uleralkwe land (the other 16 town camps all have it).
click photo to enlarge
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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
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LOGOS/HA HA
Image: Raquel Ormella, Golden Soil #3, 2016, acrylic hi-vis and poly cotton, 186 x 186cm (irreg). Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane. Photo: Sam Cranstou
Audience numbers for visual art are up. Australian artists are driving the innovation agenda and are recognised globally. There has never been a more significant time to invest in innovation and creativity: and still our arts are in CAOs.
The announcement by the Australia Council that 65 organisations will no longer receive funding under its Four-Year Funding program (previously Key Organisations) delivers a major blow to Australia’s contemporary visual arts sector.
We congratulate the 42 newly funded organisations across all art forms, including one in the visual arts. However, we raise significant concerns about the overall impact on the visual arts sector, with the loss of Four-Year Funding to 40% of contemporary art spaces and two invaluable support organisations.
Contemporary Art Organisations Australia – or CAOs – is a 25-year-old national network of 14 independent art spaces, funded by state and federal governments. Each art space is an engine of innovation, supporting living Australian artists and developing new audiences for art and culture in Australia and globally.
CAOs member organisations play a fundamental role building capacity in the visual arts sector – providing crucial exposure for artists and curators who have become leaders at the forefront of contemporary art in Australia and internationally.
They connect and contribute to arts networks, including regional and public galleries; state, national and international art museums; the higher education sector; festivals and biennials; artist-run initiatives; commercial galleries; private collections; and cultural agencies. CAOs organisations demonstrate value for public and private investment on every measure.
Between 2012 and 2014, these organisations presented works by more than 6,500 artists through exhibitions and programs; supported 230 Indigenous artists through programming; exhibited 900 new artworks; toured more than 200 exhibitions to remote and regional communities nationally and internationally; and welcomed more than 3.9 million visitors.
These organisations play a vital role in Australia’s visual arts ecology providing opportunities that contribute to the vibrancy of the sector nationally and internationally.
Until the Australia Council’s May funding announcement, every state and territory in Australia had a federally-supported contemporary arts centre providing consistent, ongoing support and a stable base for artistic innovation in their locales.
Of the 14 CAOs member organisations, five have been informed that after 2016 they will no longer receive Four-Year Funding (previously Key Organisations funding).
Four of the organisations represented the only not-for-profit and independent contemporary art space in their particular state or territory – the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art (NCCA) in the Northern Territory, Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS) in ACT; and both Contemporary Art Centre South Australia (CACSA) and Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AEAF) in South Australia.
The two contemporary art spaces dedicated to photography – Centre for Contemporary Photography, Victoria and Australian Centre for Photography, NSW – are also no longer funded through Four-Year Funding, as well as the National Association of Visual Arts (NAVA). NAVA’s role as an advocate for artists’ rights and wages, and a leader in establishing and implementing best practice standards across the sector is a major loss.
Others losses include: Object: Australian Design Centre; Asialink Arts, which has done so much to foster international relations in the region; Next Wave Festival, which plays a critical role in supporting emerging talent; and several touring organisations amongst many others across art forms.
As Rupert Myer AO, Chair, Australia Council, wrote in his 2002 report for the Commonwealth Visual Art and Craft Enquiry:
‘Contemporary arts organisations play a major role in the development of contemporary art practices in Australia. Through their exhibition, educational and promotional activities they nurture the careers of artists and arts professionals. They provide opportunities for the revitalisation of the work of established artists and they also provide initial professional experience for emerging artists and emerging curators. Through their network they help build audiences, create demand for contemporary art and pioneer new international relationships.’
Fourteen years on from the Myer Report these organisations are at the forefront of demonstrating the Prime Minister’s Innovation statement that Australia should be a ‘creative and imaginative nation’.
Professor Ross Harley, Dean, UNSW Art & Design
The Australia Council has been placed in the invidious situation of being forced to manage a significantly reduced operating budget at precisely the time it needs to invest in the nation’s creative infrastructure. These key organisations have played a central role in the broader arts economy, in some case for more than 50 years. Removing their funding will do nothing to improve access to the contemporary arts and culture that is vital to the wellbeing of the general public and the creative sector that serves them.
Elizabeth Ann Macgregor OBE, Director, Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia
I am at a loss to understand these decisions. The contemporary art spaces are a vital part of the visual arts ecology. To give just one example, last year the MCA acquired through Yirrkala Arts Centre a major wall drawing by Barayuwa Mununggurr after seeing the work exhibited at the NCCA in Darwin. It will be shown later this year at the MCA in an exhibition to be opened by the director of Tate Modern. The loss of a significant number of these spaces will have an impact well beyond their scale.
Professor Ted Snell AM, Director, Cultural Precinct, University of Western Australia, Chair of the Australian Experimental Art Foundation and former Chair of the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council
The withdrawal of organisational funding to contemporary art spaces across the nation undermines partnerships that have delivered extraordinary outcomes for Australian artists and the Australian community over decades. Despite claims that no organisation has been defunded, the four-year Visual Arts and Craft Strategy (VACS) awarded to some groups does not constitute ongoing organisational funding and this effective defunding will have a long-term impact on the contemporary arts sector nationally. Short-term it will puncture confidence, reduce opportunity, put many young arts professionals on unemployment and undermine the Government’s rhetoric of building ‘a creative and imaginative nation’.
Shaun Gladwell, Artist, represented Australia at the 53rd Venice Biennale 2009
It is impossible for me to assess my career without factoring in the CAOs spaces as formative and utterly relevant. All of the CAOs spaces have played a crucial role in my career as an artist from my earliest group exhibitions at PICA, AEAF, NCCA, ACP and Gertrude Contemporary through to recent opportunities at CACSA, Artspace and 4A. I am in development for upcoming projects with CAOs spaces for 2017. Professional support through the network of CAOs is instrumental in the development of projects that subsequently become seen internationally. CAOs offers a vital platform for my work and I value the professionalism and commitment to experimentation. I represented Australia at the Venice Biennale and I credit that in significant part to the investment in my practice that I received from the CAOs network. It is inconceivable that CAOs should not be in every state and territory.
Tracey Moffatt AO, Artist, representing Australia at the 57th Venice Biennale 2017
The best thing about CAOs is that artists can be edgy with ideas. It was through CAOs that I learnt how to be an artist, where I learnt to organise myself and to understand the workings of a serious contemporary art space. Hail the CAOs of Australia for their fearlessness and guts in exhibiting the ‘unacceptable’, and for knowing that NOTHING holds back a brilliant idea.
Alexie Glass-Kantor, Chair, CAOs and Executive Director, Artspace
The contemporary arts in Australia are defined by many qualities including agility, responsiveness, passion, professionalism and a can-do attitude. As a consequence of operational funding cuts, it is foreseeable that one third of the CAOs membership will face severe cut backs, jeopardising their ability to support artists, deliver excellence in programming and expand audiences both in Australia and internationally. This is a devastating outcome that undermines decades of investment in sustainability, employment, education and innovation. It is imperative we do better.
We appreciate the difficult decisions that led to funding cuts but cannot understand how one vibrant sector can reasonably lose so much core infrastructure and be expected to continue to thrive.
We call for the allocation of additional funds so that the Australia Council can work with the states and territories to maintain critical infrastructure in the visual arts.
We call on the Australian Government to consider the long-term impacts of this loss of support and act to preserve the vibrancy of this sector and its sigificant contribution to the creativity of our nation.
SIGNATORIES
Contemporary Art Organisations Australia (CAOs)
4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, NSW
Artspace, NSW
Australian Centre for Photography (ACP), NSW
Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AEAF), SA
Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS), ACT
Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), VIC
Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia (CACSA)
Contemporary Art Tasmania (CAT)
Gertrude Contemporary, VIC
Institute for Modern Art (IMA), QLD
Northern Centre for Contemporary Art (NCCA), NT
Performance Space, NSW
Perth Institute of Contemporay Art (PICA), WA
West Space, VIC
Alexie Glass-Kantor, Chair, CAOs; Executive Director, Artspace
SECTOR SIGNATORIES
MICHAEL BRAND, Director, Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW)
CHARLOTTE DAY, Director, Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), VIC
STEFANO CARBONI, Director, Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA)
JANET CARDING, Director, Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG)
MICHAEL DAGOSTINO, Director, Campbelltown Art Centre, NSW
MAX DELANY, Artistic Director, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), VIC
KELLY GELLATLY, Director, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, VIC
ANGELA GODDARD, Director, Griffith University Art Museum, QLD
ERICA GREEN, Director, Samstag Museum of Art, Univesity of South Australia
DOUG HALL AM, VIC
PROFESSOR ROSS HARLEY, Dean, UNSW Art & Design, University of NSW
BARRY KELDOULIS, CEO, Art Fairs Australia and Director, Sydney Contemporary, NSW
MICHAEL LYNCH CBE AM, Chair, Sydney Community Foundation, NSW
VICTORIA LYNN, Director, Tarrawarra Museum of Art, VIC
ELIZABETH ANN MACGREGOR OBE, Director, Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), NSW
NICK MITZEVICH, Director, Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA)
DJON MUNDINE (Bandjalung) OAM, Curator, NSW
KAREN QUINLAN, Director, Bendigo Art Gallery, VIC
MICHAEL ROLFE, CEO, Museums & Galleries NSW; CEO, NETS Australia
CHRIS SAINES CNZM, Director, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA)
MARCUS SCHUTENKO, Director, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT)
JASON SMITH, Director, Geelong Gallery, VIC
PROFESSOR TED SNELL AM, Director, Cultural Precinct, University of Western Australia
MICHAEL SNELLING, Director, National Art School (NAS), NSW
BEN STROUT, CEO, Biennale of Sydney, NSW
MICHAEL ROLFE, CEO, M&GNSW and NETS Australia ANTONIA SYME, Director, Australian Print Workshop
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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
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R E D ] L A B E L ( G U A R D
This week marks fifty years since the beginning of Mao's disastrous Cultural Revolution.
Support the Great Cultural Revolution's
standard bearer, study and pay respects
to Comrade Jiang Qing!!
Mao's last wife Jiang Qing (see: Gang of Four) with Mao's Little
Red Book. Cultural Revolution era propaganda poster.
Members of Theatre of the Actors of the Red Guard perform
'Let Us Raise the Red Rectangle : from Abstraction to Praxis'
AAA_Art Archive Australia
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