on accidental installation #3

the image to the left i hesitate to call accidental because there is intent. the tarpaulins are covering something. what i like about it are the folds in the material and the sense of solid place that it has, as if it belongs. it reminds me of renaissance painting - in particular those that depict the death of the virgin. below are details from Hugo Van Der Goes (1480) and Fernando Yanez (1508). the drapery looks frozen like the tarps. cold and stiff. sculptural.

on The Dirty Three

i saw them a couple of nights ago in an old theatre. there is nothing like quality to level things out. to keep things real. you don't see it that much. nobody sounds like them, they're world class.

on Bio-Art

Last night on television was a short documentary on bio -artists. The idea of taking up a residency in a laboratory makes me cringe to begin with, but by the end of the show this was twofold. the 'bio-artists' - came off as Dr Frankensteins. sickly looking folk in lab jackets messing around with cells and placenta blood. aesthetically they were naive - a 6cm high 'jacket' growing? in a round vial - see photo. they then 'killed' the jacket by putting it in a petrie dish and squishing it with rubber gloved hands. it was really dumb.

They were attempting to make a point about life, but this 'jacket' was not self-sustaining or self-feeding. The cells self-perpetuated but of course they will. shaping it like a jacket is a cheap choice - a covering, a skin - and a really obvious attempt at being at the cutting edge of art yet not thinking beyond their wardrobes.

on Thomas Hart Benton

Thomas Hart Benton skirts a really strange area between postcard illustration and tripped out dreams. he painted "Trail Riders" in 1964 when he was 75. his style informs the modern low-brow techniques of recent times. it has a liquidity that produces a morphed space of unsureness. it sways like the ocean. Benton taught Jackson Pollock at the NY Art Students League in the early 1930's. Pollock always said that being there gave him something to rebel against, but because Benton was painting like this then, i think Pollock took a bit of the organic aesthetic on board.

on accidental installation #2

the decision of the person who dropped the bagged bottle to not pick it up defines it as installation, but they did drop it accidentally one would surmise. the depth and shape of the cracks participate as well by channeling the liquid in random design. Someone asked,"Was it a homeless guy?" Someone else asked."What was in the bottle?" i just happened upon the piece and it was probably gone soon after. It was TIME and SITE specific.

On Pollock & De Kooning

These 2 paintings were made at roughly the same time, but the Pollock is a little earlier. So De Kooning may have seen it? Tonally they are very similar. I don't like De Kooning. The pictures are muddy, messy and awkward. He has a strange attitude to women and the female form as well, verging on misogyny and at the least very angry towards them. Pollock called him a "French painter", suggesting that he covered things up with style.

Pollock is from another place altogether. When he happened upon the drip he invented a new artistic language and pushed it, abandoning the paintbrush and tapping into something raw that celebrated both sexes and the bubbling primordial soups of the cosmos. Not totally random but with mapped intelligence. "Painting is a state of being."

After Pollocks funeral, a story goes that De Kooning slurred, "I saw Jackson in his grave. It's over. I'm number one." Huh?

on graffiti #1

Graffiti is sloganeering. The most astute forms are absurdist social comment, and this form is the one that impresses me. A few words or letters - it works with the brick, wood, metal or concrete. Kind of like a badge on clothing.

You can tell its been done quickly - there is no attention to detail or precision writing - it is about getting it on. The adrenalin is visible in the letters.

Tagging is the worst form of graffiti. It is ego driven generic scribble that ruins the view.

on accidental installation #1

No preconceived notions of design, aside from the thought of getting the chewing gum near or into the garbage bin. The participants are many, some are probably aware of the others mouth-waste. But who knows?

It is un-compromised. A cosmic spittoon.

The compromise has been made by me - firstly by taking the photograph, secondly by calling it ART.

on war #1

The transparency of war.

Fought in full HD living room comfort.

There is no honey.

When the violence has subsided and watermelons rain the sky, when you rise up you're provided with horizons for your mind.

Do you believe that we're all free

Butterflies singing on autumn leaves

Blowing bubbles beneath the sea

Catching bullets between your teeth

on painting #1

After all the definitions of painting are exhausted ad nauseum, what is left is paint. Paint is paint. Beautiful paint - but only if it is oils - sexy, charged with history, rich and magical. Acrylics are the opposite and they stink (literally) like the plastic they are. Cheap. But some people dig them and that's fine, just keep them away from me.

A painting comes from nothing, perhaps sometimes it should have stayed nothing. There are a lot of paintings out there now, more than there has ever been. Painting is a part of our mass- culture. This can either dilute or enhance its heritage, and i am not sure which is winning right now.

Art-drones everywhere are pumping out the latest buzz style – remember not so long back DEER were in. They were everywhere. I saw a sculpture of one yesterday and it reminded me how big they were. Why? What makes people zoom in on an image and use it? What made deer popular and not some other animal?