Pointless and absurd

The end is nigh

2012-01-24T11:14:00.001+13:00

I've just handed in my MFA screed. This gave me no sense of satisfaction, nor do I consider it something to celebrate.

Unfortunately, the nightmare is not over yet. After a period of time that isn't quite clear, I'll get back two examiners' reports: one internal and one external. I get the impression the staff are a bit worried about what the external examiner will make of it. It seems that experimentation with the form is not encouraged (in the so-called 'experimental laboratory of ideas'! Ha!). They seem to want something standardised and familiar, something conventional. That's conservative academia for you, I suppose.

Last week, a staff-member contacted me for some last-minute feedback. There were several useful suggestions, and others that were less so. The marked-up copy of the draft I got back was pretty depressing reading. It was also my first indication of how the examiners will approach it. What was the line I was told? Something like 'the danger is they'll write you off as stream-of-conciousness' something or other. Raving lunatic probably.

Hopefully!

I expect there to be a tick in the box labelled 'Major revisions required'. Fuck knows what I'll do then. Maybe they'll decide it's beyond redemption and just fail me outright. That'd be funny.

I've done it for myself, not for anonymous examiners. I wanted to make the kind of book that, if I were to come across it, I would want to devour. The same approach as I take with my paintings – do it for yourself first and foremost. I reckon trying to do what you think someone else wants is a really bad idea.

Here are a couple of pics of the softbound version I've just handed in:

Post removed

2012-01-18T14:30:00.000+13:00

[This post has been removed under r 23 of the Temporal (Prevention of Paradox) Regulations 2051. Regulation 23 prohibits the construction of closed time-like curves in any form, including virtual. Construction of such a curve is an offence punishable by retroactive removal and temporal sequestration.]

Sign of the Black Square

2012-01-12T10:37:00.001+13:00

Reports just in from intertemporal avant-garde field agents indicate the Cult of the Black Square is spreading through a beleaguered populace.

Here is a manifestation reported by workers suffering under harsh nineteenth century factory conditions somewhere in Outer Wellington:

This black square manifestation provides a Zone of Contemplation, using supraharmonic colour wave vibrations to render cigarette smokers invisible to their Control Machine bosses (i.e. those bosses whose minds are controlled by inhuman computing processes).

In this example, some discolouration has occurred due to psychic blowback.

Bollocks to this

2012-01-06T11:13:00.001+13:00

I've spent the morning reading over my MFA screed. I'm really over it.

I've taken out a small section on the cybernetic fungus intelligence from Proxima Centauri and its nefarious mind control methods. I've also decided against most of the comic book elements I was going to include.

I reckon it's done. Or, shall we put it this way, I'm not doing anything more.

I've got painting to do.

Blah blah

2012-01-05T14:06:00.001+13:00

I do enjoy this time of year. Most people have gone away, things have shut down for the moment, and things are quiet. And the garden looks fucking great.

I'm taking a break from my screed so I can come back to it with fresh eyes. As well as reading Francis Bacon, I've been reading science fiction novels. I've borrowed Francis Bacon, so I can't really throw him across the room when he annoys me. Instead, I carefully place him down and pick something else up.

One such something else I very much enjoyed was a hard sf novel about a near-future starship voyage, one of those ones based on current theories of starship design. I've got a bit out of touch with them. As is usual though, the characters weren't much chop, and the attempt to create a shipboard art and culture was laughable.

I like Philip K Dickian characters and plots more. The ordinary bloke who drinks too much, his wife is on his case and about to leave him, he's just been fired from his dead-end job, and then he finds out the cat is an advance agent for the Alien Thought-Forms from the End of Time, projecting the illusion of the world into his head. Actually, he's a sub-routine in a universal holographic computer, and he has to receive and decipher the messages sent to him from outside the computer in order to live. Before the grey-suited control routines delete him.

That kind of thing.

I think I am going to have to put the entire written output of Philip K Dick into my bibliography. And quite a few punk rock records. And Doctor Who. And...

This is one of many reasons why Fine Arts is the best subject, much better than such dull as ditchwater ones as Art History and Philosophy. Or (shudder) English Literature. Ew.

Fuck rigour. Fuck references!

Art is a cathedral of shit!

Fragmented fragments

2012-01-03T20:50:00.003+13:00

Sitting here. Everyone gone away.

Obsessed with numbers. The numbers that rule the world. Our technocratic capitalist civilisation of shit.

What a waste of time that is.

Rose and the kids are away. It's me and the dog. And the Monster cat.

I've been reading Francis Bacon. Not the drunk painter Bacon. The Elizabethan cunt Bacon. While listening to Big Black.

Beat the whites with the black square!

Speaking of drunken fool painters. Numbers. Seeing the world as numbers. Dodgy as fuck. History-less numbers. No story with numbers. No story at all.

That's what we're for. The painters and the poets.

You think this is drunken raving? Numbers have fucked us all. It's all Pythagoras's fault (via Plato). Bertrand Russell dismissed Pythagoras cos he wouldn't eat beans, but Russell has no room to talk. He was a silly fool himself.

I say Pythagoras's fault, but I don't mean it. He was on to it. It was the motherfuckers who came after who spoiled it. Just like with Jesus. And Gautama. And all the rest.

St Francis.

I have seen arguments that reckon capitalism is not just the best system for organising society yet invented but the best possible system. Ridiculous arguments. But people buy it. And there are even worse ones, even more common, related stupid arguments, that say science is not just the best system for understanding the universe invented but the best possible system.

To deal with the disenchantment of the world, there are two main alternatives: a vague, ill-defined spiritualism and a deification of science.

Bollocks to both I reckon.

How's that grand unified theory going for you, guys? And where are our fusion reactors, eh? Wasn't that meant to be when I was 10!?! Overconfident bullshit-artist deluded cunts. Just like doctors.

Nothing! Nothing is all there is!

Fucking technocrats. Sub-Pythagorean number-worshipping world-destroying arseholes. You can all fuck off. You don't know a thing. Cos all your assumptions are wrong.

Cunts.

Take the Fermi Paradox! Don't make me laugh with how stupid that is. Uh, it's not actually a paradox at all.

Get this: Science assumes that the universe is pristine and natural, i.e. that everything we observe is the result of natural forces. Then along comes Fermi who says 'But, hey, there should be aliens! So many stars should produce heaps of intelligent species. But there's no observable evidence for them. No artificial structures for us to observe.'

Because the scientists have already assumed everything we obseve is natural. Scholastic idiots playing in their own heads, thinking it's real.

Morons.

I cannot get over how wrong the world is.

I'll tell you what's real – Nothing is real. Actuality, that which forms ourselves and world we observe around us, is an illusion produced by the logical necessity of probability: there appears to be something because it is possible for there to appear something rather than nothing.

Ha ha.

Time to play more loud fuck off music, dance the Shiva dance, and shout abuse at the neighbours. Cos that's the kind of cunt I am. Aren't you glad you don't live next to me?

(It's good for them. It builds character.)

The world ended 2000 years ago, but no-one's noticed yet.

Last PLF meeting for 2011

2011-12-31T09:06:00.001+13:00

I don't think there'd be many dissenters to the opinion that 2011 has been a pretty shit year all round.

Before the weather turned to custard, kai-boshing our New Year's plans, I spent a fair bit of time sitting in the sun in my undies working on my exegesis. Except I'm not calling it that any more. I've adopted Dad's term for it: my screed. He suggested I remove the 'infelicitous language'. Which I considered. For about 10 seconds.

My supervisor reckons I should apply for an extension, get my head together, and come back to it. Some suggestion I should discuss my work. I said I didn't want to do that.

What I've been doing instead is removing the boring factual historical background stuff and adding in more madness. Not less! More! Nyah ha ha ha ha!

Then, just before the pre-apocalyptic rains began, the PLF held its final meeting for 2011. For those who haven't met the PLF before, it is a not-so-secret society dedicated to the fine art of smoking tobacco through pipes. And because it's been such a shit year, we decided to hold our meeting at PLF HQ, Blandings South.

We started by listening to traditional PLF tobacco smoking songs:

Those are anno 1944 US Army valves driving things there (the ones that look like dildos with anal beads attached, that US Army eh?), driving these things here:

Here is the patron of the PLF and font of all knowledge, the Oracle if you will:

After getting fired up in the Listening Pavilion, we moved round the front to the Fire Pit, past the Croquet Lawn:

And of course when the sun went down and the embers had built up properly, it was time for the Secret Fire-Dance Ritual. But I can't tell you about that. I've probably already said too much:

Blandings South is not in conventional spacetime, you see. It exists outside of it. To get there, or leave, it is necessary to navigate a specially equipped open-top two-seater automobile. Here we are, blasting our way home through the mists of time (note the Colonel's protective eyewear):

I bet this guy got a shock when we suddenly emerged back into the real world:

Here's to 2012! As Mr Frederick Threepwood Esq. puts it, 'Not a year for dieting!'

Here's Dad...

2011-12-20T23:52:00.001+13:00

...showing us how we should dress for Xmas dinner.

(This is, of course, a dirty lie. It's actually Dad getting slaughtered at some Belgian pub in Akkers before seeing Ben get a nice prize a while ago. But, that said, the how we should dress thing still goes.)

And this is why he is the King

2011-12-15T23:15:00.001+13:00

Yeah, so Jagger can suck this guy's fat corpse cock:And now, for an even more awesome contrast:But those piss-anters pale in comparison to The Man:

Draft MFA exegesis

2011-12-15T15:44:00.002+13:00

I've been staying away from the computer since sending off my final draft of the MFA exegesis (your work is your thesis, you see, so what you write is an exegesis on that thesis) for comment.

It's still got to through the processes of structural editing and rewriting, copy-editing and proofreading. And I've still to do some drawings for the figures. But all the actual work's done! Woohoo!

Not had a peep out of the supervisor(s) yet. Though he did say the end of the week.

The working title is A strange book of incomprehensible nonsense: Or how I became an intertemporal avant-garde artist and went completely batshit insane.

(It has to have a colon followed by a subtitle so you know it's academic.)

It's the story of how time-travelling back to meet Piero della Francesca affected my painting.

Oh yeah, and I went to see the witchdoctor (on the same day as handing in the draft no less). I've got a diagnosis, bipolar I disorder, and they've put me on the Lithium.

Sucked in by the nihilist void

2011-12-13T16:32:00.000+13:00

Time for some drunkenness

2011-12-09T00:37:00.001+13:00

This is a drunken abusive blog post, just cos it's been a while.

I can't be fucked spelling it out for the 50,000,001st time, so take it as read, arseholes.

Something in Wellington to go to

2011-12-07T11:33:00.001+13:00

Well worth trekking up the hill for this I reckon:

Conversation 4.4: The Production of Identity

Tuesday 13 December 2011, 6-7pm

Cultural psychologist Ronald Fisher and art dealer Robert Heald will tease out the notions of cultural value and social taste that underpins the cultivation of the collector. Chaired by David Maskill, Programme Director, Art History.

Free entry, all welcome.

If they give us drinks, I'll heckle. Actually, I'm not sure I need that condition.

Oh yeah

2011-11-30T13:25:00.001+13:00

My brother Ben won some prize last night. Check this shit out.

Very fucking nice.

Summer projects

2011-11-29T10:48:00.001+13:00

I've stacked up some summer projects for while I get my head together. Some I don't want to mention just yet. But others I will.

I've got some paintings to do, which I'm idly planning now. This includes, among other things, another altarpiece. I'm thinking an Adoration of the Magi, and I'm also thinking of designing the composition from scratch, old school stylz. I mentioned it to Rose's son Jules, and he said 'I'll be Jesus!' Tsk tsk, the youth of today. 'No,' I answered, 'you can't be Jesus, but you can be a guard or a saint or something.' One of the Magi perhaps.

This altarpiece will be completely straight. I've got nothing against Jesus. He was a top bloke. I'm going to take my time over it. Just do some initial sketches and research over summer, and the main painting over winter. I am very excited about this. Come hell or high water, it will happen.

Vaguely related to this project is another summer project: to learn some rudimentary Latin grammar. I'd like to be able to come up with Latin phrases that are reasonably accurate by myself. It would also be useful to read stuff that doesn't have an English translation attached. I've borrowed an introductory beginner's Latin book, and had a gander at what I'm getting myself into. It's quite daunting. Such an insanely logical language! Those bloody Romans. Amazing and terrifying all at once.

Groan

2011-11-28T11:07:00.001+13:00

Well, last week was quite full on. First there was setting up my show. The stupid pills they had me on made that a nightmare. But it got done, which it wouldn't have without some invaluable help from some solid people. I'm so happy with how the altarpiece worked out (it's a Xmas show you see). All my experiments worked! I still can't believe it.

I'm going to see the shrinks again next week. I'm off the pills now, and the lingering side-effects (absolutely horrible) are waning. I'm beginning to feel like me again, not some unrecognisable monster. I think they're going to want to try to experiment with more of their crude primitive drugs, but I'm not having any of it. No fucking way.

The end of last week was quite a blast. My opening, which started out an anxious blur but ended up quite fun, and then Prospect, which was insane. I managed to go to the loo and go outside for a cigarette. Crossing the room twice to do those things took the entire opening. I'll go see the actual show later this week. And put up the stupid marketing form I filled out, which was not-so-politely refused when offered. Who's inane idea was that anyway? Absolutely dreadful. Then to try to manage the responses. Ick.

(Speaking of, I really didn't like the efforts to manage the after-party either so got the fuck out of Dodge. Who wants to be herded like primary school children? Who thought that was a good idea?)

And losing Kate immediately after this show? Makes the show a bit of a waste of time really eh?

But anyway.

Then there was Saturday. I watched a bit of the election courage. Thank fuck for the Greens! Hopefully, they'll be able to work sensibly with the other opposition parties to provide an effective opposition. The next few years are bleak as.

I'm really worried about being able to carry on painting. I need to work out how to do that. It's not looking good.

Or I burn everything and go live in a cave as a hermit. That has a certain undeniable appeal.

Final preparations

2011-11-24T00:22:00.001+13:00

Theme song

2011-11-20T19:17:00.001+13:00

Something in Wellington to go to

2011-11-19T16:38:00.002+13:00

Egg-sucking for young children (the come down's a bitch episode 51,000,000)

2011-11-17T21:26:00.001+13:00

Read lots of books, especially Nietzsche. The earlier the Nietzsche the better. Reading includes looking at pictures.
Draw self-portraits. Start by staring yourself in the eye in the mirror for hours on end. It's ok to go to the loo or eat or drink, just go straight back to the mirror. Then draw without looking at the page.
Don't whatever you do ever kill yourself. You don't know what's going to happen next. But you can bet your bottom dollar it's nothing you're expecting. And fuck it anyway cos:
It doesn't matter whether you win or lose but how you play the game. Dance motherfuckers dance! Only stop when you're dead.
Nothing matters. Nothing is all there is. Sprezza-fucking-tura.

And youtube the fuck out of this

2011-11-17T16:52:00.002+13:00

Now for the best song ever:

And people laugh when I say they're the best band in the world. In all the worlds. (Cue maniacal laughter.)

Some other people reckon he doesn't make any sense. That it's just nonsense.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Time to Cope

2011-11-17T12:40:00.001+13:00

Some things to go to

2011-11-16T14:24:00.001+13:00

I've left it a bit late cos I've been otherwise occupied away from the internet but there's a fair bit of good art to see in the next couple of weeks.

At Hamish's at the moment is Shane Cotton of course. I managed to have a chat with Shane at the opening, which I very much enjoyed. He told me about Te Kooti and I him about Dada. Two things that go together well.

At McLeavey's this evening is Bill Hammond, which I'm very much looking forward to seeing. Bill Hammond shows are always a revelation. Amazing surfaces (and everything else).

Then there's next week's craziness. Patrick and Michael up at Ivan's on Wednesday, which I wish I could go to [and which I got all wrong at the first go cos, being an idiot, I saw the first email but not the second]. However, I can't cos there's the small matter of getting my show ready to open on Thursday night.

Then there's Prospect at the City Gallery on Friday, which several friends of mine are in. I'm very much looking forward to seeing that. I have a lot of time for Kate Montgomery, who curated the show. It's a great pity she's leaving the City.

Then, for something completely different, there's the election on Saturday. It's been hilarious so far. I'm quite looking forward to the results. I don't have a dog in the race (though I'm sure it'll be a game of one side, and democracy will be the loser on the day). I am very much enjoying watching from the sidelines, heckling.

Whatever happens, there will still be good paintings to look at. I wouldn't mind being a post-apocalyptic cave painter (too much).

Cartoon competition

2011-11-10T17:15:00.002+13:00

Ha ha

2011-11-08T22:59:00.000+13:00

Oh yeah

2011-11-08T13:16:00.001+13:00

I went to see the shrinks today. Well, when I say 'shrinks' I mean mental health professionals, of whatever kind. They like to get different people's perspectives on things, of which I heartily approve.

The final diagnosis is not in yet, but I get the impression I might not even be officially mad at all. Or if so only a very little bit. I was horrified when they mentioned the doses of the pills I'm on that other people take. I'm on the lowest dose, a very very mild dose that's only meant to help me sleep, nothing else.

Unfortunately, the side-effects are far too full on. The cost outweighs the benefit by rather a large margin. I can't think, and I can't concentrate. Most worryingly, I can't work! I'm all over the place, blithering like a fool and wasting my time. When I have some clear space around me, we shall experiment with finding interim replacement pills.

I was worried about getting my show done how I want it, because I've run out of time to piss around in, but after having several discussions with sensible people who are not drugged up and hopelessly confused I'm not any more. It's all good (hopefully!). I'm so looking forward to seeing it.

This year may well be a write off in some respects, but if I get two good shows out of it I'll be happy. And I have plans! Exciting plans.

Caption contest

2011-11-04T14:04:00.000+13:00

If you go here and scroll down, you'll find a mention of my upcoming show at Robert's, which is really not very far away at all.

I've warned Rose to be careful what she says about that painting. It hasn't been named yet. Very tempted by the noun preceded by a string of adjectives she used to describe it.

Heh heh.

Sick

2011-11-01T15:52:00.001+13:00

I'm sick of it. Sick of people telling me what I 'really' think, am 'really' saying, am 'really' committed to, or am 'really' serious about. I am sick of being dicked over by cynical hypocrites who think themselves clever for manipulating the letter of their responsibility while pissing on its spirit. I am sick to death of human beings.

Ugly, selfish, and stupid. Nasty horrible things. Where are the redeeming benefits? Good people are hard to find.

This is why I spend all my time with my pictures, my partner, and my friends. Something not to lose sight of.

And again

2011-11-01T15:13:00.001+13:00

Old school punk rock

2011-10-30T13:43:00.003+13:00

Lonely press:

Playing Kingmaker

2011-10-26T12:44:00.007+13:00

Okay, so last night I couldn't sleep. I was bored with reading, and tried shooting zombies for a bit, but that didn't cut it. During the last week or so, I've been reading the 'Game of thrones' books, which are a lot of fun. Not fantasy at all but science fiction, complete with all the usual flaws.

Anyway, it's reminding me a lot of this old boardgame I used to play, so I dug it out. I've been trying to persuade my friends to have a Kingmaker night (2–7 players) like we've had poker nights, and to do this I need to remember how to play. It's quite complex.

So last night I set it up with two players and played both sides. I got most of the way through the game before I finally crashed. Here are some variable quality photos of the state of play as I left it:

So you start with a map of England in the mid-15th century. On it are placed counters representing the various royal heirs: of House York and House Lancaster. Richard York is in York, and King Henry Lancaster is in London. Henry's wife and child are in royal castles near Nottingham Forest, and Richard's heirs are in Wales, Ireland, and Calais.

Each player (a faction vying to crown their heir sole king) gets dealt the same number of cards. Some represent nobles, the lords making up your faction. Others represent offices, titles, ships, bishoprics, towns, and mercenaries. Each noble comes with a force of arms and at least one castle, and the other cards they hold augment that strength.

At the start of the game, my two factions were the Sun and Moon faction (supporting the true king Henry) and the Boar's-head Gate faction (supporting the Yorks). The Earl of Arundel lead the Sun and Moons, and Lord Percy, a grim Northern lord from the borders with Scotland, lead the Boar's-head Gates.

Because of the deal, the two factions started out very mismatched. The Sun and Moon lords controlled the riverlands around the Forest and so the road south to London and the approaches to Wales. Arundel made himself Warden of the Cinque Ports and Mowbray (the other major lord in the Sun and Moons) Captain of Calais. He made a minor Sun and Moon lord Warden of the Northern Marches (just to piss off Percy). The Sun and Moons were strategically located, blocking Percy in the north, and had control of all but one ship.

Percy, on the other hand, although isolated, made himself Chancellor of England and one of his minor lords Treasurer. He controlled the Archbishop of York, and the other minor Boar's-head lord controlled the Archbishop of Canterbury. By himself, Percy could field more than three times the number of men than any other lord.

When the game started then, Percy came sweeping down the road towards York, while Arundel met up with the other Sun and Moon riverlords to besiege the castle holding Henry's wife Margaret of Anjou. Meanwhile Grey took ship for Ireland and Mowbray for Calais. Another Sun and Moon minor lord moved to surround Harlech, where one of the York heirs was holed up. One of the minor Boar's-head lords, although heavily outnumbered, snuck around Arundel and made for London.

So things started to take shape. The Boar's-heads captured London and held Henry hostage (even a minor lord could hold London against much larger forces), while Percy captured York and crowned Richard York king. Arundel, spitting tacks, secured Henry and Margaret's baby before heading west to invest Harlech. Grey and Mowbray (diverted from Calais) had landed their forces in the south of Wales and had marched on Harlech, leaving the York heirs undefended in their ships.

Percy, seeing this, left Richard in York with a minor lord to defend him and swept down the road towards Wales, enabling him to reach Harlech before Arundel, Grey, and Mowbray could join. The Sun and Moon lord outside Harlech didn't have enough force to besiege Harlech, and was heavily outnumbered by Percy. It looked pretty hopeless. Unless the battle went extremely badly for Percy, he looked to have Harlech in the bag.

However, there never was a battle. Instead, there was a peasant uprising in Cornwall, which all the Cornish lords had to go off to suppress, including the guy surrounding Harlech. Percy marched up to the walls unopposed. Meanwhile, in Cornwall, the two Sun and Moon Cornish lords descended on the castle of the one Boar's-head Cornish lord, burnt his castle, pillaged his villages, and paraded his head on a stick.

Poor old Percy, meanwhile, fucked up the Siege of Harlech and got killed. His warhorse and he got encumbered and peasants filled his armour with boiling oil. Then they hung his corpse on their walls and burnt it. Percy's heir took control of their hereditary seat up north and said 'Fuck this'.

As if this was not bad enough, there was also at this time a particularly virulent plague outbreak. First King Richard died in York, then his heir Richard in Calais (with Mowbray just about to come sailing in for him), then King Henry in London, then Arundel in Shrewsbury.

Everything suddenly changed. Instead of two rival kings, no king at all. No archbishops (all died in the plague too), so no way of crowning a new king. The Boar's-head faction had been completely wiped out (though that didn't mean the player was eliminated).

Mowbray sailed for Wales and took Margaret and the remaining York heirs with him as he marched on Harlech. After a quick and bloody siege, Mowbray married Margaret of Anjou. He had a pet bishop who could marry them, even though he couldn't get crowned king. Unfortunately, during the siege, all the remaining heirs (the York kids and Lancaster baby) met with an unfortunate fate when the wagon they were travelling in was destroyed by outlaws. Spreading rumours the 'outlaws' were wearing Mowbray colours is likely to lose you your hands and your tongue.

After this outrage, new lords declared for the Boar's-heads. They were able to call Parliament and assign themselves some choice titles and offices (twice even). Mowbray is in London, surrounded by angry Boar's-heads. They can't get in, but he can't get out except by ship. The Boar's-head force is split on either side of London.

Mowbray sits brooding in his throne room. He is sick of sitting still and plans to lead his forces out and settle this thing once and for all.

Update: After many twists and turns, Mad Mowbray the Terror of the High Seas and Would-be King of England won the game by doing a dirty deal with the French and sailing into London from Calais with a load of mercenaries and getting a couple of tame bishops to crown him. I really hoped Hastings was going to be able to start a rebellion from his base in Nottingham Forest, but he got hunted down and ripped to pieces by Mowbray's personal hunting pack.

I won't bore you with the details of the next game. It had four factions and was therefore a lot more interesting in terms of alliances and strategic betrayals. The Welsh lords pulled a swifty (using smugglers and false promises) that ultimately led to their downfall in a glorious battle outside the walls of London where the entire English chivalry lined up against each other, one side led by King Henry Lancaster and the other by King Richard York. Richard killed Henry in a duel in the midst of the fighting. Then the Northern lords smashed the Southern lords. Very, very satisfying.

However, it didn't get the drawing I need to do done. Neither is this.

Something in Auckland to go to

2011-10-23T16:51:00.000+13:00

Some things in Wellington to go to

2011-10-19T12:23:00.000+13:00

Yeah, yeah, late notice, but you know how it is.

So tonight at McLeavey's is Brendon Wilkinson's opening. And tomorrow night at Robert's is Peter Madden's.

How's that eh? And a Don Driver show on at Hamish's.

Spoilt for choice. I think I'll choose to see all of them.

Oh, and coming up is an art book sale, being somewhat grimly advertised. I'll be sitting at Robert's desk at the sale, with a nice range of well-made books by various people to fill any gaps in your collection.

Support your local artists! Someone has to. It's a bloody hard slog.

The common-sense nihilist political programme

2011-10-08T16:52:00.001+13:00

The common-sense nihilist political programme is that everyone in the world should become their own independent sovereign republic. And, while we're at it, we should all fuck off into space and let this place go back to being a garden. Somewhere to visit, not to live.

It's as simple as that. Let's all just fucking live forever. Why the hell not?

More rock and roll

2011-10-07T17:34:00.000+13:00

And this one, the best music video ever.

What are we here for? We are here to go!

Right here, right now! This is our chance! Our only chance! To go now! Before it's too late!

Stop fucking around with stupid bullshit and get your shit together!

What are we here for? We are here to go!Go! Now! Before we're not able to any more!

We are here to go! Right now!

Crit week

2011-10-07T11:50:00.001+13:00

At about half two or three the other night, I was sitting in my studio having a cigarette break when I suddenly remembered it was crit week. I checked my computer to see what day it was and what day my crit was, and discovered I had to be there at half nine that morning.

Boy was that an adrenaline shock. And, boy, was I glad I remembered. Not showing would not have been a good look. So I toddled off to bed, fruitlessly of course, being all hyped up to paint.

However, I did make it, and make it through both days in fact, despite not sleeping the other night either. The first crit was a bit rough, a video work with a loud Pink Floyd sample repeating endlessly. It did my head in. But next up were Picabia-style mechanomorphs, which cheered me up immensely.

I ended up saying whatever came into my head during each crit, which only got me into trouble a couple of times (my mental filing system is a bit haphazard – I file things under rude jokes). And I tend to swear a lot when I get carried away.

I had a great time, and my crit in particular I found very useful for what I've to do next.

One thing that struck me was the difference in the kids a couple of years makes. Even though I did call them all fascists at a couple of points, they really impressed me. When I first went a couple of years ago, the kids were dull, sullen, and inactive. These are – or most of them are – quick, interested, and active. The second years in particular (though I got a bit confused who was what doing what when). The ones doing their own work. It was really good to see. (The inactive print studio not so much.)

With this lot, once they get their new building and administration bizzo sorted, Massey could well be a force to be reckoned with. If they want to.

Rock and roll!

2011-10-04T22:41:00.001+13:00

Oh well

2011-10-04T20:42:00.001+13:00

I've gone off this blog a bit recently. When I started it, I wanted to start a wee campfire to warm myself with in this icy wasteland. But, cos I can't stand tedious repetitive work (i.e. I'm a lazy cunt), I just switched on the gas instead of building it from scratch.

But now the goddamn gas company is making all these changes, and come calling with the bill, which I find I don't much fancy paying.So I tried warming up another fire, but to no avail.

Worth a crack, Nigel.

Party non-political broadcast

2011-09-30T17:45:00.000+13:00

I am thinking, for the election, of doing a 30-second youtube animation. With a strident soundtrack of course.

Update: My friend Shaun had a play round with one of the scenes:

Definite possibilities.

Fucking gold mate

2011-09-28T17:52:00.001+13:00

I've ripped these pics (badly) from here. I can't be bothered chopping them up to show properly.

My work in Cy, the group show at Robert's

2011-09-23T14:37:00.003+12:00

The frame was custom made by Mr Paul Craig. I think it turned out a treat.

Something in Auckland to go to

2011-09-22T12:24:00.001+12:00

Ten years

2011-09-20T15:26:00.000+12:00

Sometime in 1995 – I fondly think of it as April Fool's Day, though it probably wasn't – I started a drawing programme based on my reading of the painting manuals of Cennini, Piero, Alberti, and Leonardo. I was living in this kind of anarchist commune thing just north of Dunedin, you see, and some young guy who'd taken too many psychedelic drugs freaked out and claimed I was the devil. Seriously. 'All he does is sit there and fuck with people's heads,' he cried as he was restrained. (I might be exaggerating slightly, but that's the quote I remember.)

I thought, 'That's true. I suppose it's time I started doing something with my life.' True about sitting around, I mean. I do not resile from fucking with people's heads. Back then, I still tried to persuade people of things. When some idiot says to you, 'Don't worry about the future because, when the UFOs come, they'll save all the vegans,' I felt compelled to tell them exactly why that is a vile proposition.

So, in accordance with the advice I'd read, I set about learning to paint by drawing after the best paintings I could find and from nature. When I left school in 1987, you see, my head was full of silly ideas such as that painting was dead and the only valid art forms for a late capitalist society were punk rock videos and science fiction short stories. So I did art history and philosophy as preparation for writing science fiction. And look how that turned out, ha ha!

Funnily enough, when I left school in 1987, Mum was doing an industrial psychology course and, being of an experimental bent, tried out some measurement tools on me. She was a little dismayed when I scored 0 out of 10 for ambition. That's cos the stupid test measured ambition solely in terms of career success. I am actually quite ambitious, and was then, though that ambition has changed – I want to do the first fresco on Mars, for fuck's sake!

Being a rambling git, I've drifted far from the point. Which I need to take a moment to recollect. Oh yeah! Ten years.

So, around this time 10 years ago, I got a boot up the pants. I thought I had plenty of time for this long-term project, but the start of the resource wars and the turn of western societies towards authoritarianism happened a lot sooner than I expected. And now I'm doing my MFA, rereading all those books I read in the early 90s.

At Massey for the last two and a half years, they've been repeatedly telling me that I'm not really a painter (cos, I suppose, I'm not like the painters they usually deal with) and that my interest in art history is a problem because it makes my work 'anachronistic'. One person told me that my 'attempt to recreate' the avant-garde was 'sentimental romanticism'. I just smiled and nodded. Like I said, I gave up trying to persuade people long ago.

However, I am not trying to 'recreate' the avant-garde as anachronistic escapism, motherfuckers. I AM the avant-garde! It's a genuine contemporary response to the situation I find myself in, using relevant historical models. I mean, really, just imagine putting my pictures with ones from people of equal ability from the periods I work with in a time-travel group exhibition! Ha ha ha, fuck they'd look out of place! It's a ridiculous argument that's simply not worthy of a serious response.

Academic artists broke the avant-garde in the 1960s and 1970s, because all the good artists went into music instead, so we have to rebuild it from scratch. In a vaguely related way, we also have to rebuild painting from scratch more generally. And, you know, we are living in a time of great transition too, just like the early 15th and 20th centuries.

That's how I see it anyway.

But maybe I'm just insane. In the late 90s, I went to a barbecue at a friend's place. This being New Zealand, a friend from boarding school and his mother were there, cos his sister (the butter girl from the ads in the 80s) had just moved into the flat. My friend introduced me to his mother, saying 'Remember him from school?' His mother said, 'That's right! You were the crazy one.'

I didn't know what to say to that. Still don't.

Something in Wellington to go to

2011-09-17T14:47:00.003+12:00

Some old drawings

2011-09-16T12:39:00.000+12:00

The other day, I pulled out my draft of a graphic novel cos I hadn't looked at it for a while (and I always get a laugh out of it), and I thought it could be kind of relevant to what I'm doing now (but it's not really). If you click on the label at the bottom of the post, you can see scans of the draft (except you can't really cos the google overlords seem to have done something deeply stupid to how they display images, possibly completely ruining the blog format [update a few days later: it seems people have whinged, and they've changed it back]).

But here are some other pics I did as part of the research:

A political post

2011-09-13T16:22:00.000+12:00

I can't stand politics. I think it's an irredeemably nasty business that taints anyone that even comes close to it. Left, right, up, down, forwards, backwards, I don't want a bar of it.

I'm especially dubious about political idealism. I'm dubious about all idealism, but political idealism in particular scares the shit out of me. Those motherfuckers will do anything they like to you, the most horrible brutal things you can imagine, with the best intentions in the world.

Save us from earnest idealists with good intentions! Save us from people who believe in things!

Don't get me wrong. I don't have any problem with cogent analyses of how fucked everything is. No problem with that at all. However, when you take that self-contained abstract model and try applying it directly to the world, you start running into problems.

Let's face it, earnest idealism and good intentions, when applied as policy, do not have a good track record. It's not that they don't have a good track record for success (which they don't). Rather, it's that they just don't have a good track record at all – in any field you care to name. I refer you back to the earlier comment re: scary motherfuckers.

All you artists trying to change the world? You can fuck right off.

As Picabia said, 'If you don't want dirty ideas, change them like shirts!'

Quote of the day

2011-09-12T22:10:00.000+12:00

It is the plea for immortality beyond the illumined wrack where the sun goes to sea, a life within a liquid and diaphanous sun propped out of sight by waves. We can look at the sun at its going, and thither we are drawn in fantasy, forsaking the eastern dark for some low, nocturnal day lit by occidental beams to which the wandering sun returns for plenitude.

The Greeks, too, created myths from such emotion, but neither the sun nor any other elemental power had the exorbitance in that climate to submerge their poetry with over-compulsive longing. Theirs was the full life, theirs the life-giving poetry for which each element of Nature was loved for its seemingly wayward and informal behests. Man will make of them formal gods, statues for the sea and the rain, and even for the momentary lightning, eyeless statues of human stature. As sculpture are the lands, as sculpture the mountains and their vales, as sculpture the promontories and the tesselated seas.

And when Plato again set his thoughts upon the west, upon Atlantis, he was questioning the whole egocentric position on which Greeks and Romans in particular constructed Mediterranean culture. In the Renaissance, that culture attained its potent affirmation: its final affirmation; for already men were moving further west: soon America, soon Copernicus and his theories by which the astronomical foundation of egocentric feeling was destroyed, leading away from grandiose fantasies based upon the senses, leading on to pure science and the industrial age. Science has tracked the western sun: it is true that it does not set.

But what Atlantis is this that we have found?

How you should endeavour to copy and draw after as few masters as possible

2011-09-11T13:54:00.003+12:00

As regular readers have probably gathered by now, my two big influences (or models) are Piero della Francesca and Francis Picabia. I have been big fans of them since I was 22 and 15 respectively. My friends sometimes express surprise at this combination.

Here is Cennino d'Andrea Cennini on the subject:

Now you must forge ahead again, so that you may pursue the course of this theory. You have made your tinted papers; the next thing is to draw.

You should adopt this method. Having first practiced drawing for a while as I have taught you above – that is, on a little panel – take pains and pleasure in constantly copying the best things which you can find done by the hand of great masters. And if you are in a place where great masters have been, so much the better for you [Ha! Thank you industrial capitalism for cheap, high quality colour reproductions!].

But I give you this advice: take care to select the best one every time, and the one who has the greatest reputation [this bit only holds good if the reputation-making process is sound]. And if you go on from day to day, it will be against nature if you do not get some of his style and of his spirit.

For if you undertake to copy after one master today and after another one tomorrow, you will not acquire the style of either one or the other, and you will inevitably, through enthusiasm, become capricious, because each style will be distracting your mind. You will try to work in this man's way today, and in the other's tomorrow, and so you will not get either of them right.

If you follow the course of one man through constant practice, your intelligence will have to be crude indeed for you not to get some nourishment from it. Then you will find, if nature has granted you any imagination at all, that you will eventually acquire a style individual to yourself, and it cannot help being good – because your hand and your mind, being always accustomed to gathering flowers, would ill know how to pluck thorns. [Emphasis added.]

Rose's birthday present

2011-09-07T10:37:00.002+12:00

Rethinking my approach

2011-09-07T10:35:00.003+12:00

Yesterday, I had several extremely good conversations with friends. One was part of an ongoing conversation continued yesterday by an impassioned response to this post.

I've been thinking about 'good pictures', pictures generally, in terms of the properties they all share. My friend slapped me around the head repeatedly (virtually) and said (I'm paraphrasing), 'You fucking idiot, the properties of good paintings are different from the properties of good drawings and good photographs and good digital things [for lack of a better term]. For example, good paintings have good paintwork and layers.'

I am a fucking idiot. I've been deliberately conflating painting and drawing, but my friend is completely correct. They should be treated separately as things in their own right. As I said, 'I've been focusing too much on the blurry edges and not paying enough attention to the clearly distinct areas in the middle.'

Alberti defined the good painting in terms of three things. Piero adapted that definition and changed those three things in subtle but highly significant ways. I want to have a go at another reformulation, after modernism.

Of course, we shouldn't really be worrying about this shit. That's allegedly what the art historians, theorists, and critics are for. But they seem to treat painting as indistinguishable from writing (because they got all silly about writing being a visual symbol) and so are completely fucking useless.

I mean, honestly, when I first toddled along to Massey a couple of years ago, I was handed a copy of Foucault's 'Death of the author' and told, with a perfectly straight face, that wherever it said 'author' I should read 'artist'!

I hate the written word, deeply and passionately hate it. It was invented by the priest-kings to oppress us.

Thundering from the pulpit

2011-09-06T11:49:00.001+12:00

I have been enjoying myself immensely recently. I'm immersed in making pictures, putting things together.

I think Rose has found it quite trying. I am at present a completely preoccupied monomaniac. When I am not staring into space and forgetting to do basic things (it's lucky I noticed the fire I inadvertently started in the kitchen last night), I am ranting at her. About everything.

I'll calm down soon. Once I've got these pictures nailed.

Then it will be time to think about what to do next.

An evolutionary basis for making pictures (and other random blithering)

2011-09-05T15:57:00.004+12:00

It looks like, as a species, we've established pretty clearly that, from an evolutionary perspective, carrying around these silly big brains and producing this silly babble (I use the term advisedly) from our mouths was not such a good idea after all.

The birds communicate with each other much better, but then they've been around for a lot longer than we swaggering apes. It's important to remember we're just animals acting out of instinct. None of the findings of our neuroscience would surprise Nietzsche. He realised the rationalisations are just superfluously added on afterwards.

Both your self and your free will are illusions, wild imaginings of your mind, to be enjoyed as such but never taken seriously, no, never taken seriously.

I make pictures because I think they're the only worthwhile contribution our species has made to the world (along with maths and possibly music and architecture – oh, and philosophy and theoretical physics, but just for the laughs). If we didn't make pictures, no-one else would.

And a great picture is such a glorious thing.

This is why I also reckon that, if there's a decision to be made that affects whether a picture gets made or not, that decision is a no-brainer. If it's a question of whether the picture exists or not, of course the picture should exist. Including the bad ones. You don't know till you make it. And the distinction between good and bad is not something that anyone really has any control over anyway.

But that's a story for another day. (The short version is that the concept of control is another wild imagining.)

Like all pure research, art is a field of human endeavour to which the laws of supply and demand do not apply. (From which it follows (with some intervening steps elided) that none of the normal rules apply to artists!) Whether there is a demand for a picture is not a factor in determining whether that picture is produced. It is produced for its own sake – for a rare actual example of a term usually loosely bandied about far too widely: its inherent value.

Nothing else matters. The battle-cry: Lines and colour on a flat surface!

Symbolism

2011-09-04T13:03:00.002+12:00

Painting technique

2011-09-03T10:04:00.003+12:00

As I've been showing the constant stream of visitors to my studio during the last couple of days,* I've been experimenting with technique.

[*This is a joke, just in case you need to be told.]

I reckon painting technique is an impenetrable jungle filled with the full range of deadly traps: spear traps, dart traps, poison traps, pit traps, dead weight traps, etc. If you venture in, you get lost. And you need to be very careful while stumbling around trying to find your way back out again, or you'll end up dead.

Just try putting 'oil painting technique' into a search engine! There are millions and millions of people with completely the wrong end of the stick.

Technique is not an end in itself. I can't stand attempts at virtuosity. I hate them with a deep, fundamental, abiding passion. I stand in front of one of them and am filled with blinding rage, with a very real physical desire to punch the grinning idiot face of the wanker who produced it. Fuck, it makes me so mad. Mad, I tell you! Mad!

But that's beside the point.

I reckon a good painting shares the same properties as a good mathematical proof – elegant simplicity. A good painting, like a good proof, does the most things with the fewest possible elements.

Theoretically, you shouldn't need any more colours than the three main ones the cave painters used. Combinations of them should do everything under the sun. But, of course, there's a difference between a theoretical ideal and mucky reality. I've added a couple of colours, not taken them away.

Hypocritical cunt that I am.

Dorothy Wight

2011-09-01T23:14:00.008+12:00

Among other pictures, I've just started a picture of my grandmother, Dorothy Wight. The figure will be blue and the background yellow.

I'm the the eldest child of her only child. She had a close relationship with each of us. She was a fearsomely intelligent, take no nonsense, extremely funny woman. I effectively left home when I was 12, when I went to boarding school (and never again had a room of my own at the olds'), but I had a model for keeping in touch from writing letters and sending drawings to Nana, which I did for as long as I can recall.

We especially had astronomy, science fiction (along with my mother), and discussions about time travel in common. Nana taught me to look at the stars, and a lot else besides.

I miss her very much. Stupid modern living.

Impressionism

2011-08-29T13:36:00.003+12:00

Sick of it

2011-08-26T22:12:00.001+12:00

I am sick of how difficult it is simply trying to live your life as an independent human being trying to do something worthwhile with that life, surrounded by fucking morons.

Sure, there could be reincarnation or some other kind of afterlife, but I sincerely doubt it. And in any case, you can't count on it.

All you can be sure you have is the life you have now, and of that life it is the work you do that matters, not the lifestyle you lead, despite what the marketers tell you.

But it is so fucking hard doing something worthwhile. Every single step, there is some idiotic cunt standing there with some stupidly smug idiotic suggestion or objection.

Clueless motherfuckers, fuck off.

If you have nothing to say, shut the fuck up and get out of my way.

I should stop being so earnest.

Something in Auckland to go to

2011-08-25T15:11:00.002+12:00

Cave painting

2011-08-25T13:03:00.001+12:00

I was very disappointed with Cave of forgotten dreams. I went twice.

I think the problem was that it was consciously made for middle America. If you consider your audience to be morons, the work you make will be moronic. That seems axiomatic to me.

As well as looking at the nice pictures, I wanted to know how they were made. Despite the film, I think I can reconstruct the process.

Let's say it is 35,000 years ago and you are a member of the world's second oldest profession. I think it more likely that you would travel around tribes and negotiate with the local shaman to exchange a painting for food and whatever other goods the tribe produces that you need. I doubt you would live permanently with the same tribe.

This is the same shaman who will, as soon as you leave, get the tribe fucked up on drugs and spray his stupid dots all over your nice composition.

You start by preparing your surface, by smoothing the cave wall, first with a stone adze and finishing with wet sand. You want the surface smooth and pale but not flat. You'll use the curves in the next stage.

The next stage is drawing the outline of your figures using charcoal and ad hoc perspective. You stand in the viewing spot and picture the finished figure on the wall in your mind. You draw the figure, stand back in the spot, and compare the drawing with the picture in your head.

You rub out half the figure and extend the lines further back around the curve.

Once you are satisfied, it is time to paint. You have pigments, a medium, and brushes. The pigments are from charcoal, clays, and plants. The medium is probably animal fat. No doubt you think that painting a representation of an animal using parts of that animal adds meaning and significance to that representation. The brushes are a mix of sticks with chewed ends and sticks with tufts of animal fur attached with leather and glue.

You also use the heat from your light source to help spread the paint.

If I were completely insane

2011-08-24T17:18:00.003+12:00

I would, next year when this Massey bollocks is finally finished, set up the Common-Sense Nihilist Party as a charitable organisation with an educational purpose and take on apprentices in my workshop, a common-sense nihilist painting school.

It would be run along strict early Renaissance lines (adapted for the context), which I think I understand well enough to replicate. You would start as a novice and pass degrees until graduating as a 3rd degree master.

To pass as such, you would of course have to be better than me, do things I cannot do. As Leonardo said, 'It is a poor master whose students do not surpass him,' which, as he well realised, was a sad indictment on himself. That's what you get when you dick around.

Luckily, though, I am not completely insane.

Painting

2011-08-24T11:24:00.002+12:00

A painting is a sequence of spacetime events. The sequence as a whole is what matters, not the particulars of any of its constituent parts.

Painting and baking

2011-08-22T16:55:00.002+12:00

That's Maltese bread rising in the bowl there. Except it isn't really, cos I've adapted the recipe and changed a couple of ingredients. I call it Cauchi bread.

Rose freaked out when I foolishly mentioned that it shares an ingredient with the painting. Initially, she refused to eat it but soon relented when presented with the result.

This is experiment no. 2.

Ice age hat

2011-08-17T18:09:00.000+12:00

Given ice age conditions, it seems to me sensible to apply ice age solutions, so this is what I've been wearing on fleeting visits through the sleeting to the studio:

Modernism

2011-08-15T11:20:00.000+12:00

A day of amazing sights

2011-08-15T00:24:00.000+12:00

Lech Majewski's The mill and the cross

2011-08-14T14:24:00.001+12:00

I strongly encourage you to see this film. It's based on the book The mill and the cross by the art historian Michael Francis Gibson, which I very much want to read (get back up there, dollar!).

It's the old gnostic heretic story of Jesus as representative of a distant, detached god who can only set things in motion and then watch as they play out. Jesus is of course against the established authority of this corrupt world, who rule because ordinary people going about our lives (that's you and me, people, just in case there was any doubt (well, actually, I don't know about you)) ignore what's going on.

Conspicuously absent from this story, and quite rightly so, is the resurrection. As Charlotte Rampling, playing Mary, says repeatedly: 'Nothing's going to happen.'

That is because, even if there were an underlying reality behind this world of appearances, it is logically impossible for there to be any connection between them.

I love that idea of the mill, perched up high there in the distance. Fuck it's good. Let's not go into quibbles about how the machinery operates.

Something in Wellington to go to

2011-08-14T13:54:00.002+12:00

The good painting

2011-08-12T16:47:00.001+12:00

I spent a lot of time in Akkers talking about the good painting.

This is something that is notoriously difficult to define. When I was in my early 20s, I thought I'd just lie around and think about it. I see no reason to contribute to this society. However, I found that, to think about painting properly, you need to make it. And then I found that, to make it properly, you need to exhibit it. You get far too close to the bloody things. You need someone else to tell you what you've been doing. And working out what that is from the lies and omissions is another notoriously difficult thing to do!

This is why I'm really happy with my show at Ivan's. I think it looked really good – the clearest statement I've yet made about what I think the good painting is (hence the title).

Trying to say the same thing through writing, on the other hand, I'm not so happy with.

Conceptual art

2011-08-12T14:03:00.000+12:00

Massey update

2011-08-12T10:24:00.002+12:00

I bumped into a friend the other day, and he hassled me for not updating what's going on at Massey here. 'They censored you, eh?' he said with a grin.

I pointed out that I've simply been mad busy. And, to their credit, that they haven't tried to censor me. I don't actually see how they could even if they wanted to.

I have had a couple of meetings to sort out supervision bizzo. It turns out one of my supervisors has been very ill, which I wish I knew about earlier. They've roped in an art historian from outside to help me with my writing, cos I need it.

I am very focused now on coming out of this debacle with the book I went into it for in the first place.

The conversation with the art historian was pretty amusing. It started with him sitting me down and carefully clarifying my intent: 'If you're just taking the piss, I don't want to be involved.' I said that, while there was a strong element of parody there, certainly, I want to present serious, academically rigorous arguments (hence the need for help). He said sternly, 'You can't have both!' I answered like a petulant child: 'But I want to have both!'

I am serious about not being serious!

Obsidium generis humani

2011-08-08T11:21:00.001+12:00

Ambition

2011-08-08T11:14:00.002+12:00

I want to do a fresco cycle in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica.

I would do it somewhere round here, cos that'd be much more convenient, but, what with the earthquakes and volcanoes and all, that'd also be stupid. Australia's fucked, but there's another big fuck off continent not too far away.

And I reckon it could look fucking fantastic.

It'd be better to do it on Mars, but Antarctica will do.

And back again

2011-08-08T09:56:00.002+12:00

I got back from Auckland yesterday arvo. Rose was off at films all day of course, but I do recommend dogs for gratifying welcomes. At least someone in the world is pleased to see me! Ho ho.

When I talked to Rose's son, on one of his brief emergences from his cave, and described the vernissage and after party, he said 'So it was rich art cunts getting wasted.'

As a one line summary, I don't think that can be beat. Fuck it was weird. Apparently, last time was in three different areas you had to walk between. This year, it was much more compact, a series of looping circuits.

There you go, a reasonably representative sample of the New Zealand art world right there (not forgetting the Aussies). And all under the same conditions. The only significant difference seemed to be the angle at which you got the light at various times of the day.

The main impression I got was that far too many people put up far too much stuff. And then there was the hilarity. Well, you've seen the best thing I saw. I knew it was going to be crass and vulgar, but I wasn't quite prepared for how crass and vulgar. People really were buying stuff off the wall and walking out with it under their arm, to have something else slapped up in its place, like cans of soup in a supermarket. Un-fucking-believable. (Needless to say, the good dealers stay aloof from that kind of carry on.)

I am wiped out once again. The last five days are a jumble of pictures, people, and lots and lots of talking (quite a few really good conversations in fact – and a great talk by Liz, during which Andy and I broke out into spontaneous applause). And I was just there for laughs. I don't know how the dealers do it. It's a pretty full on endurance race.

Oh, and, really, the best thing I saw was the Ensor at Brett's. He also had an excellent book I might have to hunt down.

I had a great time.

An idle thought

2011-08-06T23:31:00.001+12:00

I might start another intertemporal avant-garde art movement to compete against common-sense nihilism. It will be called 'selfishism'.

The best thing I saw on the night

2011-08-05T13:58:00.001+12:00

Something to aspire to

2011-08-05T11:05:00.001+12:00

Every great passion, be it love or hate, will in the end generate an authentic work. One may deplore it, but one must recognise it: Lovecraft was more on the side of hate, of hate and fear. The universe, which intellectually he perceived as being indifferent, became hostile aesthetically. His own existence, which might have been nothing but the sum of banal disappointments, turned into a surgical operation, and an inverted celebration.

The work of his mature years remains faithful to the physical prostration of his youth, transfiguring it. This is the profound secret of Lovecraft's genius, and the pure source of his poetry: he succeeded in transforming his aversion to life into an effective hostility.

To offer an alternative to life in all its forms constitutes a permanent opposition, a permanent recourse to life – this is the poet's highest mission on this earth. Howard Phillips Lovecraft fulfilled this mission.

– Michel Houellebecq, H.P. Lovecraft: Against the world, against life

A thought experiment

2011-08-02T17:26:00.002+12:00

Okay, so imagine that some unknown force transports you and a sample of other people from the past with roughly similar socioeconomic and educational/occupational backgrounds to a prehistoric spacetime zone. It doesn't really matter which. Any time after flowering plants appear will do. Let's say up until 40,000 years ago. Somewhere temperate.

For the purposes of this experiment, let us assume that there are no representatives from our future. Let's also imagine that the unknown force provides each of you with some kind of magic universal translator device.

What do you think will happen? More specifically, how well do you think you'd survive, compared to the others?

I reckon you'd be crappest at everything that doesn't involve advanced technology, which in this situation means everything. You'd just be the crappest. (And this would hold no matter what kind of outdoorsy, huntin' and fishin' background you have.) I also reckon that cross-cultural misunderstanding would make sustained meaningful communication impossible, even with your universal translators.

I reckon it'd end up like on Pitcairn Island. The first attempts at community building fragment into armed individual strongholds, from which only one person survives into old age.

Unfortunately, that's the kind of species we are.

Except for the artists of course. We'd get along.

Ha ha ha ha ha!

Answers on a postcard, please.

Direct your hate here

2011-07-31T12:48:00.000+12:00

Suprematist plugs

2011-07-30T14:16:00.000+12:00

The common-sense nihilist guide to art parahistory: An introduction

2011-07-28T15:26:00.004+12:00

This is the presentation I gave at Massey's Postgraduate Symposium, about which we're meeting tomorrow:

This paper will demonstrate both the art parahistorical method and why figurative painting is the pre-eminent vehicle for ideas – the true conceptual art – by arguing that perspective painting proves nothing exists.

Georges Braque said that ‘The hard and fast rules of perspective which [the Renaissance] imposed on art were a ghastly mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress.’ Apollinaire called it ‘that miserable, tricky perspective ... that infallible device for making things shrink’. The early cubists realised that perspective constructions, like photographs, do not accurately represent objects as they are. Rather, they are naturalistic illusions.

However, for the purposes of this paper, let us consider figurative painting – and, in particular, perspective painting – not as a means of representing objects nor as a naturalistic illusion but as a way of dividing a painted surface to convey meaning.

This is so important that it bears repeating in bold: The aim of figurative painting and drawing, including perspective painting, is not to accurately replicate the visual appearance of things in the world. The aim is to construct meaning on a two-dimensional surface using line and colour.

Take, for example, my painting Academic art. Both title and image occupy the same pictorial plane. To further emphasise that the painting is a pictorial construction rather than a naturalistic illusion, I use a continuous line to enclose the forms, which I’ve simplified, and bright non-naturalistic colours.

People sometimes ask me why I make my hair ‘ginger’ in self-portraits. I usually answer that people’s skin isn’t yellow either:

A useful comparison is with heraldry. In a heraldic coat of arms, conventions dictate that certain divisions of the surface, such as quartering, convey a specific meaning – in the case of quartering, a merging of two or more different coats of arms through marriage or other alliance:

Similarly to heraldic quartering, a perspective painter such as Masaccio used the conventions of perspective to divide the surface of a painting such as The trinity to convey specific meaning:

Through perspective, God, Jesus, Mary, and John appear behind the picture plane and the donors and the skeleton appear to be in front of the picture plane. Although the donors and skeleton are securely located in space,* the figures making up the trinity are not. Their depth is indicated only by their size – a sly ‘fuck you’ to the older tradition of using size to indicate the importance of figures.

[*Because of botched restorations, it is no longer possible to establish the skeleton’s position in space. However, it is reasonable to assume that it was possible when Masaccio painted it. It is also reasonably likely that that position was directly underneath or in front of the donors. The inscription on the skeleton translates as ‘What you are I once was, and what I am is what you will become.’]

In The trinity, Masaccio used perspective to create a separate pictorial space. The way that space interacts with the space occupied by donors, skeleton, and viewer symbolises the supposed interaction of the spiritual with the material in Christian mythology. ‘Masaccio’s differentiation in depth between the all-too-mortal world this side of the plane and the indisputably spiritual realm inhabited by God, Christ, Mary and John is an act of high genius. A new spatial technique has simultaneously been mastered technically and locked into the meaning of the picture in a way which only a few artists have since equalled.’ (Kemp, 21.) As we shall see, one of those artists was the stone cold avant-garde genius Piero della Francesca, the best painter of the 15th century.

It was because of paintings such as The trinity that Leonardo said ‘Painting is a thing of the mind’ – a conceptual art – which I prefer to translate as ‘Painting is a mental thing.’

It is important to note that neither Masaccio nor Piero was a slave to the ‘hard and fast rules’ of the perspective systems they used. Where the system delivered a result that would look wrong, they painted what looked right instead. This is something that Uccello, in his enthusiasm, often neglected to do, ending up looking like a horse’s arse.

We know that some form of perspective was known to the Ancients from fragments of paintings and references in written texts. However, the first documented use of it is Brunelleschi’s famous demonstration.

Brunelleschi kept his method of perspective construction secret. The first documented method for constructing perspective, also based (albeit roughly) on a mathematical rule, was published by Leon Battista Alberti in his book De Pictura in 1435. He published this book originally in Latin and again in 1436 in the vernacular as Della Pittura. Most painters of the time could not read Latin.

Since Masaccio’s Trinity was painted around 1427–28, it is likely that Alberti did not invent his method – the ‘legitimate construction’ – but rather documented and possibly formalised the method used by contemporary painters. By linking perspective to mathematics and the science of optics (perspectiva), Alberti argued that painting was the intellectual equal of the traditional subjects of a humanist education, such as music and astronomy (at the time indistinguishable from astrology).

In the early 15th century, painting was considered a craft performed by artisans. Because they were mostly paid for the materials they used, it was not uncommon for painters to be paid less for a painting than the carpenter was paid for the frame around it. And because the most expensive materials were gold leaf and the lapis lazuli that makes blue, these materials tended to predominate – and be the thing most valued – in the paintings produced under those contracts.

The arguments put forward by Piero and Alberti transformed the way painting was considered. In contrast to the generation before them – and their more slow-witted contemporaries – avant-garde painters such as Piero negotiated contracts where they were paid for ‘the skill of the hand’. Their paintings were valued not simply for being ostentatious displays of wealth but rather for being complex conceptual objects.

As Piero della Francesca wrote, in one of the first historical instances of avant-garde trash-talking of the conservative academic opposition, ‘Certainly many painters who do not use perspective have also been the object of praise; however, they were praised with faulty judgement by men with no knowledge of the value of this art.’

Piero wrote this in De prospectiva pingendi (On perspective for painting), which was written to be used by apprentice painters, as opposed to Alberti’s book, which was written to explain and justify perspective in general terms to patrons. It seems academics have always focused exclusively on the requirements of those funding them!

Despite its spurious appearance as a manual and its translation into the vernacular, Alberti’s book does not provide enough information to actually construct his scheme. Believe me, I’ve tried! In contrast, in De prospectiva pingendi, Piero set out his method for constructing perspective in rigorous detail. In doing so, he also incidentally provided the first ever mathematical proof of perspective:

In his introduction to the third book of De prospectiva pingendi, Piero argued for perspective on two fronts. The first was a technical argument. The second boiled down to the argument that the Ancients used perspective, and they knew what they were about, so you might as well too: ‘By following this practice, many ancient painters acquired immortal fame. Such as Aristomenes, Thasius, Polides, Apello, Andramides, Nitheo, Zeusis, and many others.’

They cared about such stuff in the Renaissance.

Piero’s technical argument for perspective was a bit more involved – and relevant:

‘[B]ecause [figurative] painting is nothing if not demonstrations of surfaces and bodies degraded or magnified on the limit [i.e., the picture plane], placed like the real things seen by the eye as subtending different angles on the said limit, and because for any quantity some part of it is nearer the eye than another, and the nearer part always presents itself as subtending a greater angle than the further one at the assigned limits, and since it is not possible for the intellect to judge for itself of their size, so I say it is necessary [to use] perspective, which distinguishes all quantities proportionately, as a true science, demonstrating the degradation and magnification of all quantities by means of lines (Field, 163).’ (Emphasis added.)

That last phrase can also be translated as ‘by the force of lines’.

Now, to the casual glance, it may seem as if Piero is justifying perspective on the grounds that it provides a convincing illusion of the real appearance of things. However, that is not the case. As is made clear in the propositions and theorems comprising the first two books, Piero is arguing that perspective is a true science – that is, that it contains a truth about the world – because it ‘distinguishes all quantities proportionately’ and constructs bodies placed on the picture surface ‘like the real things seen by the eye’ using lines.

In other words, perspective construction uses the same mathematical laws that we use to see objects in the world. Those mathematical laws are the truth about the world that perspective contains, not the illusions it can produce.

In his paintings, Piero consciously played down the illusionism that perspective can cause. In fact, many of his paintings do not use perspective at all. Perspective is merely one tool in his arsenal. When he did use it, he was well aware of the robustness of the perspective construction when viewed from non-ideal positions. It is often physically impossible for the viewer to stand in the ideal viewing position used to construct the scheme, and Piero realised that, within certain limits (which he mathematically defined), it doesn’t matter.

In both Piero’s and Alberti’s systems, the ideal viewing point is directly opposite a point inside the picture. However, paintings in the 15th century, such as frescos and altarpieces, were often so high on walls that the actual viewer was well below the bottom of the picture (or, more rarely, above the top of it).

In such circumstances, Alberti, being an academic rather than a practising artist, prescribed somewhat arbitrarily that the ideal viewing height be the eye height of a standing figure in the picture. Piero, being a painter, gives no prescription on how to deal with the problem in his writings.

The solution he adopted in his paintings, however, is more sophisticated than Alberti’s prescription. When the pictures will be seen from below, Piero places the ideal viewing point (and thus horizon line) below the eye height of standing figures in the picture, so that the perspective is seen from below. In the rare situation that the picture will be seen from above, Piero does the converse – he places the ideal viewing point above the eye height of a standing figure in the picture, so that the perspective is seen from above.

In his paintings, Piero used perspective in specific circumstances and for specific ends. The most important of those ends, like that of all the tools he used, was to construct meaning through line and colour on a flat surface – to say something about the world as he saw it.

In The resurrection, painted for the city hall in Piero’s home town and now that town’s coat of arms, the soldiers guarding Christ’s tomb and the columns of the architectural frame are seen from below, as is Piero’s practice when the picture is high on a wall. However, Jesus** clambering out of his tomb is shown front on, not in perspective. Like Masaccio’s Trinity, Piero has used his perspective scheme to create two separate spaces – the spiritual and the mundane:

In Piero’s Resurrection, the risen Christ confronts the viewer directly, no matter how lowly they may be or what their position is. All through the use of lines.

[**I didn't mention it in my talk, but I should note that soldier covering his eyes also appears to not be in perspective. That he is covering his eyes and not in perspective seems to be related.]

Similarly to Masaccio and Piero, but on a much more modest scale and to quite different ends, I have tried to incorporate two separate spaces in Painting. The pictorial space of Painting contains, as well as the perspective space occupied by the torch, the abstract space created by the black area at the top. These spaces operate with the light in the torch – a reflected external light rather than one emanating from the torch bulb.

Piero was a Neoplatonist. His use of perspective was all about translating the ‘perfect’ world of ideal forms into the ‘degraded’ world of appearances for particular religio-magical purposes that I will explore in my discussion of Piero’s Baptism (which is probably the best painting in the world).

Piero was completely right that perspective is a true science. However, he was completely wrong in what that truth is.

This is the thing with the avant-garde. The black square is the conduit for the intertemporal avant-garde thought virus through the ur-dimension, and the transdimensional telepathic contact can be patchy. Each historical manifestation interprets that contact using the categories and concepts available in the society it inhabits. However, we’re not here to talk about that.

According to both Piero and Alberti, the first step in constructing a perspective scheme is locating the viewer in relation to the space to be portrayed. Both methods recognise that the spatial relationship between objects is determined by the position of the viewer.

That is, an object's position in space is not absolute but relative to other objects from a given point of view. Space is relative.

As Kant points out, this means that perception of space (and time and causality) is not a property of the world but an a priori property of the viewer's mind. All objects that we can perceive exist in space and time, and have causes and effects. We can only perceive objects in those terms – any object not in space, in time, and subject to causality would be unknowable. This means that space, time, and causality are conditions that must be met for us to perceive an object.

As Kant says, ‘By means of outer sense, a property of our mind, we represent to ourselves objects as outside us, and all without exception in space. In space their shape, magnitude, and relation to one another are determined or determinable (Leech, 34).’

But things-in-themselves are not dependent on the conditions we have for perceiving them. Those conditions are properties of our minds, not of the things. Space, time, and causality are subjective framing devices with which we structure our sensations and combine them into the coherent world we observe. The world we experience, the world of appearances, is dependent on the properties of our minds.

Kant asks ‘Geometry is a science which determines the properties of space synthetically, and yet a priori. What, then, must be our representation of space, in order that such knowledge of it may be possible?’ Kant’s answer is that it ‘must be found in us prior to any perception of an object, and must therefore be pure, not empirical, intuition’, which is ‘the only explanation that makes intelligible the possibility of geometry, as a body of a priori synthetic knowledge.’ (Leech, 36.)

It is a symmetrical, reciprocal relationship. The viewing subject gives the world coherence through perceiving causal relationships in space and time. In turn, perceiving the world as coherent gives the subject coherence.

However, Kant continues, neither the subject nor the world is a coherent unity. Both subject and world are made up of contradictory elements. Because the world of appearances is unreal and illusory, and it has a reciprocal relationship with the self, then the self too is unreal and illusory. Any apparent unity is an illusion produced by the mind. Neither self nor world exist.

This is the true science that perspective contains. Perspective painting encodes the process by which both self and world are fictively constructed. This is the esoteric meaning behind the exoteric meaning of the perspective painting’s ostensible subject matter.  

Perspective painting proves nothing exists.

So, in conclusion, I hope that I have demonstrated how the art parahistorical method sits beside, or perhaps beyond, art history by examining the hidden connections between things, the intertemporal rather than the historical connections – in this case, between Piero’s and Kant’s conception of space as finite Aristotelian extension. How these conclusions are affected by non-Euclidian relativistic space will be explored in my discussion of the alchemico-magical operations of Friedrich Nietzsche and Francis Picabia (the best artist of the 20th century).

As an intertemporal avant-garde artist, I use these art parahistorical connections in my own work. For example, the viewer’s relationship with my paintings is very important. I use standard mass-produced canvases that are about the size of the human head and with which the viewer can have an intimate conversation. As a social species, we have, after all, evolved to respond to the faces of people standing in front of us. Therefore, when hanging a show, I try to replicate that experience, with specific exceptions for specific pictures (see here and here).

For my exhibition at the Ivan Anthony Gallery, This has to do with me, we hung The fall and Modernism high and Conceptual art low, so that viewing height could affect the content of each picture. I also plan to make certain consequences of one of Piero’s perspective construction methods an integral part of my next show at the Robert Heald Gallery. You’ll have to wait to see how.

List of books

Banker, James R., The culture of San Sepolcro during the youth of Piero della Francesca, United States of America: University of Michigan Press, 2003.

Baxandall, Michael, Painting and experience in fifteenth century Italy, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Baxandall, Michael, Patterns of intention: On the historical explanation of pictures, United States of America: Yale University Press, 1985.

Calvesi, Maurizio, Piero della Francesca, United States of America: Rizzoli International Publications, 1998.

Field, J.V., Piero della Francesca: A mathematician’s art, United States of America: Yale University Press, 2005.

Ginzburg, Carlo (trans. Martin Ryle and Kate Soper), The enigma of Piero, United Kingdom: Verso, 1985.

Kemp, Martin, The science of art: Optical themes in western art from Brunelleschi to Seurat, United States of America: Yale University Press, 1990.

Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg, Piero della Francesca, United Kingdom: Phaidon, 2002.

Leech, Peter, ‘The painting of philosophy: Space, perspectivalism, representability and consciousness’ in Mehigan, Timothy J. (ed.), Frameworks, artworks, place: the space of perception in the modern world, Netherlands: Rodopi B.V., 2008.

Levey, Michael, Early Renaissance, United Kingdom: Penguin Books, 1991.

Wood, Jeryldene M. (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Piero della Francesca, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Mopping the floors

2011-07-26T18:18:00.002+12:00

Painting

2011-07-26T00:30:00.001+12:00

An email exchange with my father

2011-07-21T12:59:00.002+12:00

This morning, I sent Dad an email entitled 'That idiot Jerome' with a couple of pics attached.

The email read:

Somewhere I have a book with an essay an art historian whose name I can't remember wrote as an indulgence after he retired, in which he set out his mad theory that Piero's Flagellation of Christ is in fact a Dream of St Jerome.

As I recall the story, God came to Jerome in a dream and said, 'Oi! Stop reading those dirty pagan cunts or you'll get whipped for all eternity, motherfucker.' When he awoke, Jerome thought 'Bullshit! I really like reading those pagan cunts. It's what I've dedicated my life to. But God doesn't want me to, damnit. What shall I do?'

So he went off to the desert, hung out with a lion, and beat himself with a rock instead.

So I thought I'd rip off Piero's pupil Luca Signorelli and do a picture of it.

It doesn't matter that it's Dante. People are always mixing the two up anyway cos their attributes are the same.

Dad replied:

Far be it from me to spoil your fun, but Jerome was no idiot. You should read his letters, which are copious and translated into English. He had a circle of women friends in Rome, all high-born Roman ladies, and one in particular, called Paula (herself now also a saint), was one of the women he wrote letters to. I remember specially the letter of condolence he sent her -- or maybe it was to another Roman lady called Fabiola -- when one of her children, I think a son, died. Yes, grief is all right, he told the grieving mother, but you mustn't overdo it, you mustn't abandon yourself to excessive grief and mustn't let your grieving go on for too long. (I'm relying on memory here, and hope I've got it more or less right.)

The fables about Jerome aren't to be taken seriously. Yes, he did withdraw to the wilderness. No, he probably didn't pull a thorn out of a lion's paw: that story was transferred to him from some other saint. But the story of his dream is his own account, and probably true enough. His life changed after it.

He is a splendidly human saint, given to wrath and impatience, and with an excellent command of invective against his heretical opponents.

Something in Auckland to go to

2011-07-21T10:08:00.002+12:00

You

2011-07-18T17:39:00.000+12:00

Academic art

2011-07-14T23:32:00.000+12:00

Compare and contrast

2011-07-12T15:57:00.002+12:00

This morning, I was reminded that I'd completely forgotten that I'd offered to do a paper for Matthew Dentith's parody academic conference Twecon (which I suppose I should properly render as #twecon, but won't).

The last few weeks have been completely mental, and I'm exhausted. However, as the subject for the paper was the same as the one I've just given at Massey's so-called Postgraduate Symposium (abstract here), I was able to quickly cobble together an argument in five tweets (despite initial appearances, all the papers are there – just scroll down). I should've included my title – Perspective painting proves nothing exists – as a numbered tweet, but I forgot that stipulation.

As soon as I'd cobbled it together, a couple of people (including the organiser, a PhD candidate in philosophy) immediately objected that my argument takes no account of modern physics. An extremely useful discussion ensued (which I'm going to have to work out how to cite). I think I can accommodate the objections, but we'll see.

The contrast with the discussion after my presentation at Massey's Symposium is marked. I was up first, which might account for the lack of engagement. As I recall, a couple of people asked me to repeat definitions, someone asked if I was going to deal with 'the copy' (even though such dealing was implicit, repeatedly, in the presentation I'd just given), and someone else waffled in a generalised, unanswerable fashion. However, it wasn't just me – the other presentations also met with a similar lack of critical engagement.

My friend remarked on it at the time. Most people brought up some interesting topics in their presentations, but every single time the discussion afterwards ignored those aspects and focused on inanities instead.

(I could go on here how they seem intent on destroying one of the other students in just the same way as they destroyed one of the PGDip students last year – what kind of art school produces people who are no longer capable of producing work!?! – but I can't be bothered. I refer you to my earlier comment re: being wiped out.)

And this is not just my friend's (and my) aberrant opinion. The other students have organised themselves another session later this week to make up for last week's waste of time.

I should note that Massey specifically – and at length – promoted this as the only opportunity during the MFA programme to get critical feedback on your 'research' other than your contact with your supervisors. Seriously, if you're in Wellington and considering doing an MFA, do it extramurally through Melbourne instead.

That's what I should've done.

Futurism

2011-07-12T08:47:00.002+12:00

The good shit, right here

2011-07-07T12:42:00.002+12:00

Photography

2011-07-07T12:02:00.000+12:00

In the email inbox this morning

2011-07-06T11:19:00.000+12:00

Subject line: you as a boy Mr Cauchi

Andy Cummins is a cunt.

Surrealism

2011-07-05T11:05:00.001+12:00

For the Elim kids.

A problem

2011-07-04T19:26:00.005+12:00

A gentleman has given his daughter in marriage, and to complete a necklace he needs 100 stones made up of pearls, rubies, sapphires, and balas rubies. He summons his agent and gives him 100 ducats and says: go to Genoa and lay out these 100 ducats in buying pearls, rubies, sapphires, and balas rubies; and make the total number 100 and do not spend more than one-third of a ducat per pearl and one-half per ruby and one per sapphire and three per balas ruby. I ask how many pearls, how many rubies, [how many sapphires,] how many balas rubies he will have.

This is a problem in Piero della Francesca's Trattato d'abaco. Oh, what a problem to have. The answer is 51 pearls, 8 rubies, 22 sapphires, 19 balas rubies. It is solved by the method of double false position, which Piero explains by solving another problem:

There is a plain on which there are two towers, one 40 bracci high, the other 50 bracci, and from one tower to the other it is 100 bracci. And on each tower there is a bird, which birds, flying at the same speed, set off at the same time to drink; and they arrive at the same moment at a fountain that is between one tower and the other. I ask how far the fountain is from the tower that is 40 bracci and how far from the tower that is 50.

What you do is assign a length to the fountain from the first tower (say 60 bracci) and calculate the flight path of the first bird (or rather its square) using Pythagoras' theorem. You then calculate the length to the second tower and the square of the flight path of the second bird. The two squares should be equal, because the birds arrive at the same time, but they probably won't be, because you're guessing.

You note the difference between the squares of the flight paths (1100) and make another guess of the length from the first tower (55 bracci). You then find the difference between the squares again (100) and use the two guesses and the two differences to calculate the correct lengths:

The excesses must be taken one from another; take 100 from 1100, there remains 1000, which is the divisor; now multiply 55 by 1100 [which] makes 60500, and multiply 60 by 100 [which] makes 6000, take this from 60500 there remains 54500, which you divide by 1000 and the result is 54 and one-half. And that is the distance from the fountain tower of 40 bracci, and [so] 45 and one-half from the fountain to the tower of 50 bracci.

This is all standard fare, derived from Islamic sources. Piero's big contribution in the Trattato d'abaco, which he casually introduces with no fanfare (just like how he casually provides the first mathematical proof of perspective in De prospectiva pingendi), is the first rediscovery of Archimedean solids:

Something else in Wellington to go to

2011-07-02T12:01:00.000+12:00

Some things in Wellington to go to

2011-07-01T19:17:00.000+12:00

And on 8 July, Massey University is holding its postgraduate symposium in the cryptically named 4B06, at which the MFA candidates (and one PhD candidate) present their 'research'.

Things kick off at 9.45am, and everyone is welcome. They're going in alphabetical order, so I'm up first at 10. Apparently, I talk for 20 minutes, then parry questions from the floor. I don't know if it's any indication, but my crit last week quickly descended into a shouting match between the staff and me.

Here is my abstract:

The common-sense nihilist guide to art parahistory: An introduction

What is art parahistory?

The prefix para- means ʻbesideʼ (as in paramilitary) or ʻbeyondʼ (as in paranormal). Therefore, art parahistory stands beside, or perhaps beyond, art history.

Art parahistory seeks out the hidden, or occult, connections between things – intertemporal, rather than historical, connections.

The most interesting of these connections are between the early Renaissance and early Modernism. They were both revolutionary avant-garde movements that utterly transformed painting, the only art form that matters. This presentation will focus on certain connections with the early Renaissance.

It will demonstrate both the art parahistorical method and why figurative painting is the pre-eminent vehicle for ideas – the true conceptual art – by showing how perspective painting proves nothing exists.

As Piero della Francesca wrote in one of the first historical instances of avant-garde trash-talking of the conservative academic opposition, ‘Certainly many painters who do not use perspective have also been the object of praise; however, they were praised with faulty judgement by men with no knowledge of the value of this art.’

The presentation will also discuss the implications these conclusions have for my wider non-MFA-related painting.

The PhD candidate, Peter Trevelyan, is last at 2.15pm. He will also be talking about perspective.

New paintings by Liz Maw

2011-06-30T21:33:00.000+12:00

This has to do with me

2011-06-30T16:18:00.003+12:00

More here and here.

Something in Auckland to go to

2011-06-23T16:53:00.000+12:00

The disintoxication

2011-06-20T17:41:00.002+12:00

Picabia:

Our ideal is 'the disintoxication'. We want to become an antidote for all the Immunised from our fallen art. We tend towards the White considered as a psychic entity or, in order to concretise this tendency thanks to innumerable rapports of colour and music, we tend toward the 'la' pure = 435 vibrations.

'Well-known occultist' Vivian du Mas:

I recognise in the paintings of Picabia the translation in aesthetic language of a part of that other world. I can vow that the representation of it is exact. I affirm that these paintings are not a simple fantasy, but a representation of the astral world.

Gertrude Stein:

Picabia has conceived and is struggling with the problem that a line should have the vibration of a musical sound and that this vibration should be the result of conceiving the human form and the human face in so tenuous a fashion that it would induce such vibration in the line forming it. It is his way of achieving the disembodied...

All his life Picabia has struggled to dominate and achieve this conception.

Should I be worried that this all makes complete sense to me?

And, speaking of being worried, I'm becoming increasingly concerned at this incursion of the neighbours' into my studio, which is growing at an alarming rate:

I might have to do something about it. I assume that, if anyone saw me trying to get round the back of the neighbours' place with a knife in my hand, they'd realise there's a reasonable explanation.

In other news, on Saturday, a couple of friends and I went to see Steve Ignorant and his Crass tribute band. It was excellent. On the way out, I heard one old punk say to another 'He's wearing glasses. You can't hit him.'

I looked around and, sure enough, there wasn't anyone else wearing glasses evident. When I related this, Rose's daughter Wendy helpfully pointed out:

Well, you do have one of those faces that people just want to hit.

Good painting

2011-06-17T01:06:00.001+12:00

Good painting is not what sells ... good painting does not exist; what exists is the man who has something to say and who uses the medium of painting ... to externalise his personality...

The personality which springs from a system can no more interest us than that of a maniac who could only write with orange ink...

Ah! Certainly I prefer the cubism of Picasso and Braque in 1913 ... the pity is that many people do not yet see how much creative spirit there was in the cubism of these two men; they often confound them with the group of idiots cast in their wake...

Delacroix, Ingres, Corot, Cezanne, Sisley, Pissarro, Seurat, Gustav Moreau, Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, these are men who have laid bare life, their life: their pictures have real pollen and their names can only be asserted under the nose of those who think that an epoch is great because it lasts a long time and those who participate in it are numerous. Such is the idea of the small school of the beaux-arts-cubists founded by L'Esprit nouveau; they know the why of everything, they have their laws, they know good and evil, they imitate God driving Adam and Eve out of paradise, God not being able to endure sin! Sin, the serpent, that is Dada!

L'Esprit nouveau will only be new when it is dead. At least then it will have evolved!

In several weeks 'the Salon of good painting', the Salon d'Automne, will open. In finishing, may I offer a word of advice to the members of the jury: to refuse pitilessly all that they like and accept only what horrifies them; in this way we might perhaps have an exhibition less stupid and less monotonous and some innovators would run the risk of having the great luck to exhibit in a palace consecrated to the glory of French art and decreed a public utility.

That's Picabia in 1922. I might have to steal 'beaux-arts-cubists' – but change it to 'beaux-arts-conceptualists'. Here's the artist Picabia'd like to see:

A man who would not be influenced by anyone, who would not be preoccupied with modernism or cubism or dadaism; who would not be socialist or communist or the contrary; a man who would simply be himself ... A man who would succeed in communicating to us the desire for a life of openness and full activity ... A man, finally, who would lead us to the new world to discover: the world of love which the mediocre have no desire to enter and which frightens the 'intellectuals' for fear of ridicule.

Jesus Christ invented that manner of life long ago; I would prefer it to the present dilution.