David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.


30 November 2010

freehand (#7: Protect the Environment )

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freehand: recent Australian drawing
Heide Museum of Modern Art

25 November 2010 - 6 March 2011

Phew!
(by the simplest of temporary means)
The Restoration

Pierrot in a bubble_sRGB_400
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ...


LOGOS/HA HA

29 November 2010

freehand (#6)

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freehand: recent Australian drawing
Heide Museum of Modern Art

25 November 2010 - 6 March 2011

breach in the bubble (continued)



One hypothesis for the Big Bang, as I recall, is a massive energy event at the point where parallel universes touch.



You are the lover that I've waited for
The mate that fate had me created for
And every time your lips meet mine

Baby, down and down I go
All around I go, in a spin
Loving the spin that I'm in
Under that old black magic called love

Johnny Mercer
That Old Black Magic


detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ...


LOGOS/HA HA

28 November 2010

freehand (#5 _ Regards _ Rain )

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freehand: recent Australian drawing
Heide Museum of Modern Art

25 November 2010 - 6 March 2011

Yesterday we saw how an artist at the local Heidleberg School recorded the drawmatic rain burst over Heide MoMA some days ago :



Here's how Francis Ponge observed it :

Rain

The rain, in the courtyard where I watch it fall, comes down at very different speeds. In the centre, it is a fine discontinuous curtain (or mesh), falling implacably but relatively slowly, a drizzle, a never-ending languid precipitation, an intense dose of pure meteor. Not far from the right and left walls heavier drops fall more noisily, separately. Here they seem to be about the size of a grain of wheat, there of a pea, elsewhere nearly a marble. On the moulding, on the window ledges, the rain runs horizontally while on the undersides of these same obstacles it is suspended, plump as a humbug. It streams across the entire surface of a little zinc roof the peephole looks down on, in a thin moiré sheet due to the different currents set in motion by the imperceptible undulations and bumps in the roofing. From the adjoining gutter, where it runs with the restraint of a brook in a nearly level bed, it suddenly plunges in a perfectly vertical, coarsely braided stream to the ground, where it splatters and springs up again flashing like needles.

Each of its forms has a particular speed; each responds with a particular sound. The whole lives as intensely as a complicated mechanism, as precise as it is chancy, a clockwork whose spring is the weight of a given mass of precipitate vapour.

The chiming of the vertical streams on the ground, the gurgling of the gutters, the tiny gong beats multiply and resound all at once in a concert without monotony, not without delicacy.

When the spring is unwound, certain gears continue to function for a while, gradually slowing down, until the whole mechanism grinds to a halt. Then, if the sun comes out, everything is erased, the brilliant apparatus evaporates: it has rained.

from:
Francis Ponge: Unfinished Ode to Mud

poems translated by Beverly Bie Brahic
published by CB editions (2008)
click here for the original French

Here's how Marcel Broodthaers ///////

(In Germany, 2000, your correspondent had the great happy fortune to watch in mesmerized delight the projection of this Marcel Broodthaers' 1969 16mm film loop.)

La Pluie (Projet pour un texte)


He writes/ it rains/ the writing runs/
He writes/ it rains/ the writing runs/
He writes/ it rains/ the writing runs/
He writes/ it rains/ the writing runs/
He writes/ it rains/ the writing runs/
He writes/ it rains/ the writing runs/
He writes/ it rains/ the writing runs/
He writes/ it rains/ the writing runs/
He writes/ it rains/ the writing runs/
He writes/ it rains/ the writing runs/
He writes/ it rains/ the writing runs/
He writes/ it rains/ the writing runs/
He writes/ it rains/ the writing runs/
He writes/ it rains/ the writing runs/

Here's how bLOGOS/HA HA
Fall of the Reign of Regard
after The Triumph of Christianity over Paganism
by Tommaso Siciliano (1585)


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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ...


LOGOS/HA HA

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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ...


LOGOS/HA HA

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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ...


LOGOS/HA HA

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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ...


LOGOS/HA HA


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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ...


LOGOS/HA HA


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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ...


LOGOS/HA HA


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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ...


LOGOS/HA HA

27 November 2010

freehand (#4)

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freehand: recent Australian drawing
Heide Museum of Modern Art

25 November 2010 - 6 March 2011

The blast of violent weather continues. Though officially we are only days away from summer, there are now flood warnings for much of Victoria.

The bureau of meteorology has located the initial breach point as over the Heidelberg area. As discussed in yesterday's blog, we have no doubt it was exactly over the
Heide MoMA tableau engagé of the four inward-looking interdependents and Marco Fusinato's Mass Black Implosion.

The depiction below was recorded at the time by an artist of the local Heidelberg School. It appears to confirm the reports of other witnesses,
that "the rain fell on Heide in the form of a furious drawing".

detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ...


LOGOS/HA HA

26 November 2010

freehand (#3)

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freehand: recent Australian drawing
Heide Museum of Modern Art

25 November 2010 - 6 March 2011

Bye to friends at the Bubble & Prick.

Out of that place and into a taxi for Southern Cross station. The driver is listening to music. Body compulsive, it's bhangra. We talk about Bhangra (
for dancing) and Qawwali (for trancing: sacred and seated).

Out of the taxi and into the Ballarat train.

Open the catalog for freehand. Domenico De Clario's introductory text focuses on the drawing of breath: drawing breath in, drawing it out. This he deepens by reference to the Bhuddist practice Tonglen:
...and in this sense is not the most splendid drawing of all the one Tibetan Bhuddists term tonglen, the art of breathing in difficulty and breathing out ease?
Also in the catalog, an edited essay by Francis Plagne addresses the Mass Black Implosion series of Marco Fusinato. Below is one of the 10 parts of Mass Black Implosion (Enantiodromia, Jani Christou) shown in freehand.



In the exhibition, curator Linda Michael has positioned this Mass Black Implosion opposite, or in front of, depictions of a man, woman, girl and boy, their gaze turned inward, each holding to a sign of dependent arising.



click upper and lower images to enlarge

Exit train at Ballan, enter car to drive home. Radio on: Mozart, Wind Serenade in E Flat by the Amadeus Winds.
And it's raining hard.

By Korweinguboora
, in the Wombat Forest, the rain is belting down. An extreme condition that demands concentration. From the radio, Brahms' Violin Sonata No 2 in A somehow seems perfect. As the headlights probe the blackness they illuminate the tracer lines of rain that bullet out in all directions from a single appearing-point directly in front of and somewhat above the now highly focused wheel holder.

Futurist metronomes strain to maintain the vision forward. The car wheels sheet up flares of blinding whiteness. Through a prick point in some bigger bubble, Mass Black Implosion is forcing through > inverts and transforms < into Mass White Explosion.
A tonglen force is drawing in black holes, breathing out radiant matrix.


Through the dark forest, the bubble and it's passenger move on.

In the rear view mirror ...

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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ...


LOGOS/HA HA

25 November 2010

freehand (#2)

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freehand: recent Australian drawing

Heide Museum of Modern Art

25 November 2010 - 6 March 2011

After the opening
they continued-on at the Bubble & Prick

2010_PT_Bubble & Prick_400
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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ...


LOGOS/HA HA

24 November 2010

freehand: recent Australian drawing

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Opening tonight at Heide Museum of Modern Art

freehand: recent Australian drawing

Curator : Linda Michael

Artists : Steven Asquith, Del Kathryn Barton, Peter Booth, eX de Medici, Marco Fusinato, Mira Gojak, Locust Jones, Newell Harry, Michelle Ussher, Gosia Wlodarczak, Eugene Carchesio, Greg Creek, Domenico De Clario, Matt Hinkley, Joyce Hinterding, Richard Lewer, Laith McGregor, Alasdair McLuckie, Robert MacPherson, Catherine O’Donnell, Nick Selenitsch, Sandra Selig, Aida Tomescu, Peter Tyndall, Ken Whisson


2010_PT_photocopy_Drink Draw Bloody Idiot_400
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A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/

someone looks at something ...


LOGOS/HA HA

23 November 2010

for T & an/a

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click to enlarge

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

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11 November 2010

eleven eleven eleven

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Today is celebrated by various names in various places as a day of remembrance for those who sacrificed their lives in war. This is symbolised by the red Flanders poppy.

The image below was made in France around the 1880s/90s, before any WW1 blood was spilled, before the red poppy was seen as it is now. Before a poem turned it into a symbol: John McRae's "In Flanders Fields" (1915)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Red Poppy Day_Remembrance Day
detail
A Person Looks At A Work Of Art/
someone looks at something ...

LOGOS/HA HA