Start ya Bastard

Start ya bastard

by william blake 5 Nov 2010






It’s an old English tradition to give your Land Rover a nick-name, It used to be ‘the bone shaker’ but mine got a new one this week; “start you fucking bastard”. I had just picked up a few lengths of RHS from my steel supplier, as I was supposed to start making up a frame for one of the ‘Sculpture on the Gulf’ debutantes. I was just about to hit the Sylvia Park onramp when the Landie just seized up, like an automotive heart attack.

I decided not to risk the motorway and pressed on through Onehunga, sputtering occasionally until it finally died outside the Fire Station. For once I had no tools and no cell phone, so I went door knocking until a kind lady passed an old broken flat head screwdriver though her security screen. A few minutes later I had the carburettor open and was cleaning out the float chamber when a soft, silky and sultry voice beckoned, “ are you ok?” I replied with a cursory muffled echo “it’s not dead yet” not an especially clever reply but most of my body was contorted into the engine bay.

I backed out of the engine and there before me was a young and utterly gorgeous South Auckland beauty. “Do you need a hand?” She asked, I made a little squeaking noise. “My boyfriends are really hopeless, sometimes they just stare at them and I have to sort it out myself” she was talking about cars I think. “ Just let me know if I can do anything,” she offered. I tried to speak again and instead I made an odd mucal pop, finally I formed a word, then a sentence, “what is your name?” I tragically asked. “Fiona” she said. I detumesced.

Fiona had her name carefully tattooed on her bicep in a neat copperplate. But why? Was it to remind herself in times of great forgetfulness or was it, as my partner pointed out, that her friends forgot her name and this was just another manifestation of her innate helpfulness.

I pondered this as I struggled back to base camp was this another manifestation of the simulacra culture? Was Fiona ‘like’ Fiona, was she sent by the gods to lure me into a gallery of mirrors and false pleasure, a Fire Station siren, if you will.

Isn’t so much art like this these days but? Gorgeous and alluring but so stoopid it can appear incredibly smart. Either the straight out copy that some new graduate thinks will fly under the radar. The drug addled installations, which could be issued as an Airfix kit. The regurgitation of some pop- minimal- abstraction type painting usually in a ‘new’ medium, usually computer generated, paint by numbers and all the rest.


I wonder if under their designer shirts somewhere, all of these artists have their names tattooed, unironically, in a tidy copperplate. I am sure that they are very well meaning though.

Movers and Shakers

Hamish Riordan took a pull on his flat white, it did no good; he felt truly awful. Hung-over from the wine and scotch and still groggy from the ganja; he stank of sweat and cigarettes and when he took the first piss of the day he realised he must have had sex with someone, he vaguely worried about the clap.

Riordan was sitting in an out of town café, all miss matched furniture and red paint, at least the coffee didn’t actually make him sick. There were nick-knacks everywhere, old type set boxes that he remembered as being fashionable when he was a child filled with trinkets, old tools screwed to the walls, batik cloth stapled to the ceiling, lamps everywhere, which in his condition, created disturbing light and shade. The effect desired was old hippy opium den the actual sensation was of confusion.

Riordans’ own style was far more urbane and he liked to think he had an eye for elegant sophistication, he preferred a stripped back brutal minimalism with a peppering of contemporary and period classic design. This place ‘The Bodhisattva Café’, made his head ache and his stomach churn.

Riordan was the Arts Manager for the City Council, a position he though he had earned with consummate management skills and political acuity. The reality was that he had drifted through projects and meetings with a milky eyed stupor often missing essential points with a startling lack of insight. His immediate colleagues thought him a dolt but further a field people thought he possessed a kind of Zen, and most of his projects bore fruit.

Riordan was meeting up with a young sculptor who he had heard of at a party. Fresh from art school, an ‘emerging’ talent his confidant had enthused, a term which he hated, as it reminded him of the crowning head of a new-born appearing from a bloodied vagina. He shuddered and shook the image off like a retriever shedding water. The ‘talent’ was late.

The scruffy youth appeared at the glass door and cupped his hands around his eyes as if he were holding binoculars. He tilted his head in recognition and opened the door, which announced his entry with the tinkle of the many small brass bells attached to it.
“Hey, Hamish” the young sculptor said.
Hamish hated this alliteration and thought to himself “hey yourself cunt” but actually said “good morning Peter,how are you?"
“long black thanks” answered Peter “and please; call me Pete”

The meeting had been set up the previous week to see if the young sculptor would be interested in a minor public commission, which of course he was. The site was a roundabout surrounded by a Library, an R.S.A., a medical centre, a kindie' and a lunch bar. There was a lot of visual clutter, lamp posts and a pedestrian crossing, signs advertising ‘Hot Pies’, a mural with a giant white bunny and several red and white spotted toadstools, a flag pole and of course, a 25 pound field gun.

The traffic management department had wanted some mid scale planting on the round about to slow the traffic. This was the sort of opportunity where the Arts Management team struck. A site and a budget, usually miniscule, but a starting point.

“What have you got for me Peter?” quizzed Riordan. He had briefed the sculptor the previous week to view the site and come up with some sketches. He had to be careful here to stress that it was all very informal and not to get his hopes up, which was an unspoken code for ‘we have no budget for the development of the work’. He knew most green artists would do pretty much anything for the opportunity.

The sketchbook appeared. Drawings with careful measurements and sightlines, delightful images of the shops with people gaily going about their business and drawing after drawing of a beautiful, lyrical process. The final sketch was inked over and had a delicate colour wash, which brought the scene to life. It was as if the sculpture already existed and he had carefully recorded it; he had nailed it.

Riordans’ heart sank, dismay adding to his incipient hangover, this was too much and this was too good. He knew what he had to offer should not buy work of this quality. But that was why he was Hamish Riordan Arts Manager, he could swing this.
“Well Peter, you have obviously spent time on the site but is this all you have come up with? I was hoping for a range of options, maybe not so worked up, to take to the committee” Riordan preached. “ this is fine but what if they don’t like it? Did you not think of that?”

Petes’ face darkened, “ that is top work, how can you ask for more than this?” he said with an even and steady voice. “ and before you start asking for more, I really need to know how much money the Council is putting up for this work.

“Shit, little cunt… fucker” thought Riordan “ No; I realise that you are very close to this work... being your first commission you are perhaps a little too close to it… we need, well, less quality and a little more quantity” It didn’t quite come out the way Riordan wanted it to and Pete pushed his chair away from the table.

“ What’s the budget Hamish?” he demanded.

“ Look as a starting point I am authorised to offer you $3,000 but who knows how much this can become as we develop the commission”. He lied. The $3,000 was the amount put aside for the planting of pittosporums on the round about. “ I will take these drawings to the committee and you could come up with some more concept sketches in the mean time”. Riordans bluster was fading as he watched Petes’ face harden.


“No” said Pete quietly, he picked up his drawings “ and by the way, you really need a shower” and left the café with a gently tinkling exit.

“ Fuck, fuck, fuck, ungrateful fucking…aaah, God” Riordan had royally messed that up, a bit too hung over to do the charm thing. Still he had a list as long as his arm of prospective sculptors, just his luck to strike one with talent. “Wanker.” He said out loud and one of the other customers looked at him darkly. He snarled.

Riordan opened his brief case and took out his diary and cell phone and wondered who was next on the list. In the process he knocked over the salt and pepper shakers, as with everything in the café it was mismatched, he held the weirdly phallic looking salt shaker and studied it. He knew someone in the film industry who was an expert with polystyrene and fibreglass and cheap.

The only Regret Hamish Riordan had was that he hadn’t thought of the idea sooner.

Giraffe-Bottle-Gun

I was in the Capital at the weekend and went to The Museum of New Zealand. They happened to be showing Judy Millar's Venetian Biennale effort Giraffe-Bottle-Gun. I have read quite a few negative posts around this work especially peoples dislike of the laser printing of the giant vinyl elements of the installation. I thought the whole effort was bloody marvelous.

The scale of the frames is as big as the titled giraffe and if we accept that these are paintings, they are more overwhelming than McCahon's giant canvass Hi-Fi and the only other works that I have experienced that are in this league are those of Anselm Keifer and Mark Rothko.

But then again they aren't paintings, they are printed copies of Millar's marks, simulations. I was made into an ant but unlike Keifer and Rothko I wasn't about to be crushed by their bombastic, hyperbolic truths.


The other point of contention raised by critics of the work, is the inclusion of Millar's original, authentic paintings; conventionally framed and neatly lined up. The marks on the paper are in proportion and unpixellated; dry rather than vinyl greasy and slightly op', slightly more ab-ex. The human scale makes them readable and approachable. The in scale action painting makes sense to the eye and the brain. They are the exact opposite of the vinyls.

And there it is; this polarisation of effects places the viewer as the arbiter of two manifestations of the same practice. Giraffe-Bottle-Gun is unique in treating the viewer to scale, style and respect.

Man Overboard

This is my new writing space. I have been posting to several other sites, mainly 'Artbasher' under the nom-de-plume William Blake. You may notice that in 'Blogger' the n-d-p has changed to Kim Finn-arty, this was mainly to keep one step ahead of other blogger posters who refuted pen names. Anonymity is a handy too in the tiny NZ art scene; because they are all petty, backstabbing bastards. Try saying that with your real name appended; even if it is the truth.

The n-d-p is also quite handy when dissing your mates, roasting your dealer or bemoaning the discounts that collectors can demand. There is also the twisty issue of tacky self promotion.

So the anonymity is a life preserver for the man going overboard.

The Cat In The Hat; King Hit Or Sucker Punch?

The year is 1959, a young Peter McCleavy has just stepped off the banana boat to Europe. He is in Naples, standing transfixed in front of Giovanni Bellini’s The Transfiguration.

“ Which I found overwhelming. In those days, you could stand right close to the paintings – there were no security guards…and you could see the man who painted
the thing. You could see the brush strokes, the bits of hair from the paint brush. For the first time, I realised art was made by someone, by a human being.”

(The Listener Nov-Dec 2009 p36)

No doubt an apocryphal tale; McCleavy must have seen original paintings before leaving New Zealand and understood the process of applying paint to canvass. Seemingly before McCleavy had his Neapolitan epiphany there were no artists of sufficient genius for him to realise the humanity in home-grown art.

On his return to New Zealand ‘the cat in the hat’ happened across another Catholic painter who also left hairs in his paint.

The year was 1964. The venue was Lewistown, Maine. An outspoken negro muslim named Cassius Clay was to challenge the enigmatic title holder, Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight championship. It was a rematch bout. The initial showdown had ended in controversial circumstances when Liston refused to leave his corner in the seventh.

Around two thousand people squeezed into the auditorium, watching Clay in his white Everlast booties dance gracefully for maybe the first minute. Liston watched too, jabbing occasionally. Moments later, The 'Big Bear' from Arkansas falls unconvincingly to the canvas. Few spectators see the knockout blow. The replay is inconclusive. The muslim does not retreat to his corner, and the count does not start. "Get up and fight, sucker!" he spits. Someone takes a photo.

The exploited crowd chants deliriously. "Fix! Fix! Fix!"

King Hit

1. The most hardcore, damage-maximising, chronicly solid punch that can be thrown. Send's the aggressor off balance if it doesn't hit the intended target.
2. A Very Very large sized bong of cannabis.
1. "He tried to King Hit me, so I easily dodged to the right, jabbed him twice in the stomach, then let go a King Hit of my own while he was still keeled over."
2. "Ohhh...That waz a King Hit!"

Sucker Punch

This occurs when someone hits someone else from behind, usually when the person being hit doesn't know it until afterwards. Usually considered shady or a "bitch move".
That motherfucker came up and sucker punched me!





Thanks to the Listener, The urban dictionary and the roast.

The Race

The 1957 German Grand Prix was a Formula One race held on 4 August 1957 at Nürburgring. The 22 lap race was won by Juan Manuel Fangio, (Balcarce, 24 June 1911 - Buenos Aires, 17 July 1995), nicknamed "El Chueco" ("knock-kneed") and is often cited as one of the greatest victories in racing history.

Fangio had taken notice of the tire and fuel-level selection of the Ferrari drivers, and realized they were probably going to run the entire race without a pit stop. Fangio decided he would use softer tires, and only a half tank of gas. This would allow the car to take corners faster, but also require a pit stop. Fangio took his pit stop on lap 13, in 1st place, and 30 seconds ahead of Hawthorn and Collins.

The pit stop was a disaster, the pit crew had trouble removing one of the wheels. Fangio left the pit lane in 3rd place, and 48 seconds behind Collins who was in 2nd place. Over the next 10 laps, Fangio broke and rebroke the lap record 9 times (7 of the records were in successive laps). Early in the 21st lap, Fangio was beside Collins on a straightaway, approaching a bridge that was barely wide enough for both cars to fit side by side. Collins backed off, and Fangio took 2nd place. Late in the 21st lap, during a left corner, Fangio cut past Hawthorn on the inside of the corner, with only his right tires on the track and his left tires on the grass. Fangio maintained his lead, and won the race.

After the race, Fangio commented, "I have never driven that quickly before in my life and I don't think I will ever be able to do it again".

He won five Formula One World Driver's Championships — a record which stood for 46 years until eventually beaten by Michael Schumacher

Many weeks away by boat in 1957 Colin McCahon begins a second series of French Bay paintings which are even more radically prismatic and brilliantly coloured than his first series. The view in these works is from the cliff-top looking down towards the water, rather than the scene as viewed from the beach. The paintings are densely faceted, full of tiny diamond shapes of colour and glow with a jewel-like intensity.

A day by TEAL clipper from New Zealand the 1957 Alexandra Bus Boycott began, it was a protest undertaken against the Public Utility Transport Corporation by the people of Alexandra in Johannesburg.

It is generally recognised as being one of the few successful political campaigns of the Apartheid era

The bus boycott lasted from January 1957 to June 1957. At its height, 70,000 township residents refused to ride the local buses to and from work. For many people this daily journey to downtown Johannesburg was a twenty mile round trip.


A hemisphere away Yves Klein, 'Aerostatic Sculpture (Paris)'. This was composed of 1001 blue balloons released into the sky. Klein also exhibited 'One Minute Fire Painting' which was a blue panel into which 16 firecrackers were set. Later in 1957 Klein declared that his paintings were now invisible and to prove it he exhibited an empty room. This exhibition was called 'The Surfaces and Volumes of Invisible Pictorial Sensibility'.

The race.

Love Me Tender

It was a hot August evening on Long Island; the big green convertible was speeding
along; powerfully propelled by its new 303 cubic inch V8 engine.

Slumped drunkenly in the back, Edith was drinking in the night air trying to sober up a little; that damn rummy, who was driving the Rocket 88, had been buying drinks at ol’Moe’s all night for Edith and her best friend Ruth, who had been having a very public affair with the rummy artist for the past six months or so.

Ruth was up front with one hand on the windscreen and the other inside Jackson’s pants and a whisper in his ear. “ do you love me Jackson?” The ‘Old’s engine lost a few hundred revs as the artist, surprised by the question and not a little drunk eased off the throttle. He seemed to consider the question and weigh up the possible consequences of his answer; why lie? “ah guess not” he confessed, he did not love his wife, his drinking buddies, his patrons he especially did not love his critics and regarded his audience with contempt, he realised that he probably no longer loved to paint.

Ruth took her hand out of Jackson’s flies and slapped the radio on, Elvis crooned out.
“Fuck you Jackson” she slurred. He didn’t care about Ruth but the realisation that his love affair with paint was over filled him with a deep sadness and with that realisation he did not notice their speed increasing or the bend at the end of the straight, or, until it was just too late the tree that would stop them dead.



Margaret shaved off a thick piece of yellow cheese and laid it on the slice of coarse bread cut from the loaf that her sister had baked the previous afternoon. She carefully wrapped the sandwich in some brown paper from the kitchen drawer and she put this with an apple and a bottle of water and her paint brushes and paper into the grey canvass pack and left the crib.

She climbed steadily for an hour through the wakening bush the air still cool in front of the heat of the day. She came to the side track and pressed on into an unknown part of the range. She was hot now and took off her coarse woollen jumper and tied it around her waist. The bush was now fully formed in sunlight and alive with the sound of cicadas.

The track was seldom walked and overgrown, it was steep and slow going. Margaret noticed that her socks were coated in long fine hooked seeds, sweat stung her eyes and she was panting like an old dog. At the top of the steep section of track she was brought to a halt by a vertical basalt outcrop. She could see the nature of the stone allowed for an easy ascent, almost a ladder, so she decided to go on.

Margaret reached the top in a few minutes but an overhang made the summit difficult. She reached up and blindly searched for a handhold, a jolt of panic ran through her body as she started to fall backwards. She was hanging; her hand had found a thick tree root that she gripped fiercely and with considerable effort she dragged herself up and lay face down for a time. She considered her stupidity and her mortality and, with a laugh, her achievement at getting there.
The root that had saved her belonged to and old Rata tree an ancient, tortured and stunted specimen but in full scarlet bloom and the view out from under the cool shade of the tree was far and eased to shades of violet. She saw a razor back ridge curving down to the cove where the crib hid, allowing an easy and obvious way home.

Margaret took out her paper and started to carefully sketch the scene and she decided to eat her sandwich after she had laid down her first wash of paint.

In Arcadia

Nigel Healy is sitting at the glass desk in the office of his gallery that lurks in an expensively fashionable part of the city. He is wearing a handmade Italian linen suit in a natural shade known as ecru. The jacket alone is worth more than some of his artists earn in a year; but one or two would still prefer to paint on it, than be seen in it.

Nigel has just smoked a cigarette past the filter, which explains the contorted leer on his face.

Nigel has been stood up; he had planned to have a ‘non-earner’ in the gallery this month, an installation by an outsider artist; however the artist and his work have vanished. He has had the gallery rebuilt, commissioned preview articles in art magazines and invited top clients for a lavish and expensive opening, which is just a few hours away.

“I should have known Mac would let me down… bloody lunatics. I should have made Tracey stay with them overnight. Fucksake, who can I get to fill the slot now?” thinks Nigel.

The gallery is pristine. The old kauri boards have been sanded and waxed, the walls have been replaced and laser levelled. Their surfaces have been regibbed, plastered and are having their final coat of paint. The space is a patchwork of scents: resinous kauri, damp plaster, fresh paint, glue and beeswax. A colour temperature light system is being test run by a technician and the space is quietly changing from cool to warm, like the start of a new day.

Healy also has a terrible hangover, which explains his inability to smoke a cigarette properly. A shout cuts through his headache like a saw.

‘Hey Nige’, when’s the farkin skip arriving?’ queried Terry the builder, loudly. ‘We’ve still got all the old framing to get rid of, mate.’

‘Oh fuck off’ thought Healy, but knowing that builders tend to be more temperamental than artists, he was politic, “ I will ask Tracey to get onto it’

“Better make it a farkin bigun, there’s all the old gib and seven big bags of sawdust as well”, yelled Terry from a few feet away.

A really stupid idea was forming in Nigel Healy’s cocaine and alcohol challenged mind. He spoke into his latest gadget, a fountain pen, bluetooth radio intercom, not realising how foolish he looked. ‘Tracey get on to the art school and get me a couple of interesting looking post grads, we will need them to do a site specific work, in the gallery, with timber and sawdust, tell them its about entropy or something and then find Ewan Woodie, we will need him to write it up. Oh and Tracey can you order the biggest skip you can find and get them to leave it out the front of the gallery, no don’t worry about the traffic, it should be quite sculptural, yes.. good.. see you back for lunch?. Ciao’

Healy puts his intercom pen back in his jacket pocket not realising that it was still transmitting and would continue to do so for the rest of the day.

‘Hey Terry’ shouts Nigel, with a faint stereo reverb that makes him resolve to go easy on the stimulants in future. ’Just stack all of that shit in the middle of the gallery and then you guys can knock off.’



Ewan Woodie the day before.

‘What can I say about this kind of thing; I can contextualise it as art if I am asked to, or more accurately, payed to. But what do you think? Are you swayed by my reviews and see this ‘arrangement’ in a new light, or are you one of those who see me as a secure and steady stream of bullshit? Or do you just hit the delete button?’

Healy had commissioned a piece on his latest find, an ‘outsider artist’ called ‘Mac’, who decorates the forests with old clothes, some pieces are like flags others, where the garments are filled with branches are quite figurative, but there is no art to Mac’s arrangements, only obsession. Healy insisted we meet the artist on site rather than at the gallery “for the true experience” and indeed, after a large reefer, the sun lit the silks and cotton and leaves in a riot. The tree people became sinister, atavistic totems. Mac and his smelly friend Bob were whooping and dancing in strange costumes, obviously off their heads. Sam got some of the scene on camera but didn’t quite catch the mood; I dare say in much the same way that something will be lost when Healy displays this nonsense in his gallery as an installation.

If this was a freelance job, and if Mac weren’t such a psycho, I’d do my usual on this lot; a big colour spread to exploit the art and then lay into the reasons why it could never be art. That way we all win, the newspaper loves the piccies, the public loves the rubbishing and the artists don’t care as long as they get the big picture published… well most of them don’t.



‘Bob’ the night before.

‘Mac, he’s a quiet one I’ve been sleeping rough with him for a while now and he’s never no trouble. His thing is clothes, oh and trolleys, some from the supermarket, a couple of kiddie’s pushchairs and at the moment an orange wheelbarrow that he nicked from a building site. He will fix his transistor radio to the trolley, tune in to a rock station and disappear for the day. He comes back with all sorts of stuff, some good, some not so; fags, booze, food, all good; but road cones, any bright plastic, rope, string, clothes, more clothes and underpants; men’s, women’s, kiddies, bloomers, g-strings, y-fronts, the lot, all freshly washed. He hangs them about the place, in the oak trees or on lines that he rigs between them like flags at a caryard. And his scarecrows, they just appear, I’ll find one in the bush and sometimes I get a hell of a fright.

I don’t get why this bloke Healy wants to put this shit in a art gallery, he must be soft in the head, I don’t think that Mac is gettin nuthin for it neither. Lest he hasn’t said nuthin bout any cash. I don’t know why Mac gives the bastard the time of day.

Kids have been following Mac again, better watch out for that. They’s a bloody nuisance and as sure as the rain they will bring trouble.

Mac surprised me last night by giving me a piece of advice. We’d been drinking our brew, of course, and the schoolies had some dope. Mac was relaxed, not his usual silent watchful self; he said, “Bob” and he paused for a heartbeat “always take a natural fibre over a synthetic” and his long, sad face broke into a beautiful smile.



Senior Constable Fairweather on the day of the opening.

At exactly 7.45 this morning I observed two vagrants making a campfire behind the gardeners hut at the old St Mary’s Hospital. We accosted the vagrants and evicted them from the grounds.

St Mary’s was closed in 1989 and is now derelict. I was acting on information supplied

by a Mr Wilson who had been walking his dog through the grounds on the evening of the 27th. He had witnessed several vagrants in a state of serious intoxication. He had also noted branches ‘decorated’ with clothes and the vagrants were wearing several layers of women’s underclothing. This would explain the rash of washing line thefts over the past months.

More seriously Mr Wilson stated that he saw pupils from St Mary’s college participating in the debauchery. After enquiry to date, none of the pupils have been identified.

Under the circumstances it was decided that constables, Blithell, Pudney, Scrimshaw and myself should apprehend the vagrants. They are at present in the cells and the mental health services have been notified.

Summer of Love ; Winter of Discontent

1969

An eruption occurred from the active crater of Ruapehu, destroying Dome Shelter and expelling a large volume of water from the lake. Volcanic mudflows cascaded down several major valleys. One lahar swept through the Whakapapa Ski Area and destroyed the kiosk near the Staircase T-Bar which lay in its path. No one was hurt as the mudflow occurred at night.



1972

A party surveying the crater rim saw the lake surface bulge, then burst skyward. Two of the men were drenched with acid water, blasted by choking ash and toxic gas and bombarded with rocks. One of the observers died from coronary thrombosis.




One of New Zealand’s finest poets and most controversial figures, James K. Baxter was often at odds with a society unable to face its disturbing reflection in his work. As a dramatist, literary critic and social commentator, Baxter often judged New Zealand society harshly, yet always from the perspective of one intimately involved in the social process.

He discovered his Auckland niche in a cluster of run-down squats in the suburb of Grafton. Number 7 Boyle Crescent, where he settled in Easter 1969, became a drop-in centre for drug addicts. Baxter, adopting the Maori transliteration of his first name, ‘Hemi’, set about counselling and attempting to establish a Narcotics Anonymous organisation similar to AA. His appearance—barefoot, bearded and shabbily dressed—attracted the attention of both media and police, who suspected his motives and morality. He put the drug users’ side of the story in ‘Ballad of the Junkies and the Fuzz’, and also published a selection of twenty years’ verse in The Rock Woman (1969), but poetry was not his main focus. By August 1969, the Boyle Crescent period had ended and Baxter was heading for Jerusalem, to begin his commune.

By August 1972 Baxter was drained, physically and emotionally. He sought refuge on a small commune in Auckland. On 22 October he died of a coronary thrombosis.


Woodstock Music & Art Fair (informally, Woodstock or The Woodstock Festival) was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music", held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm during the Northern summer of 1969.


Sound for the concert was engineered by Bill Hanley, whose innovations in the sound industry have earned him the prestigious Parnelli Award."It worked very well," he says of the event. "I built special speaker columns on the hills and had 16 loudspeaker arrays in a square platform going up to the hill on 70-foot [21 meter] towers. We set it up for 150,000 to 200,000 people. Of course, 500,000 showed up." ALTEC designed 4-15 marine ply cabinets that weighed in at half a ton apiece, stood 6 feet straight up, almost 4 feet deep, and 3 feet wide. Each of these woofers carried four 15-inch JBL LANSING D140 loudspeakers. The tweeters consisted of 4x2-Cell & 2x10-Cell Altec Horns. Behind the stage were three transformers providing 2,000 amperes of current to power the amplification setupFor many years this system was collectively referred to as the Woodstock Bins.

Max Yasgur refused to rent out his farm for a 1970 revival of the festival, saying "As far as I know, I'm going back to running a dairy farm." Yasgur sold the farm in 1971 and died in 1972 of coronary thrombosis.

Formalism Today

Formalism today

The concept of formalism in art continues to evolve through the 21st century. Some art critics argue for a return to the Platonic definition for Form as a collection of elements which falsely represent the thing itself and which are mediated by art and mental processes. A second view argues that representational elements must be somewhat intelligible, but must still aim to capture the object's 'Form'. A third view argues for a dialectic-discursive ontological knowledge. Instead, structuralists focused on how the creation of art communicates the idea behind the art. Whereas formalists manipulated elements within a medium, structuralists purposely mixed media and included context as an element of the artistic work. Whereas formalism's focus was the aesthetic experience, structuralists played down response in favour of communication.

Structuralism's focus on the 'grammar' of art reaches as far back as the work of Marcel Duchamp. In many ways, structuralism draws on the tools of formalism without adopting the theory behind them.




George Edward Foreman (born January 10, 1949) is an American two-time former World Heavyweight Boxing Champion, Olympic gold medalist, and successful entrepreneur.

He became the oldest man ever to become heavyweight boxing champion of the world when, at age 45, he knocked out Michael Moorer, age 26, to reclaim the title he held 20 years earlier.

During the summer of 1973, Foreman travelled to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) to defend his title against Ali. The bout was promoted as “The Rumble in the Jungle.”

During training in Zaire, Foreman suffered a cut above his eye, forcing postponement of the match for a month. Ali used this time to tour Zaire, endearing himself to the public while taunting Foreman at every opportunity. Nevertheless, Foreman was a heavy favourite, due in large part to the fact that Frazier and Norton had given Ali four difficult fights, lasted the distance in all, and won two of them, while Foreman had scored TKOs over both in the second round.

When Foreman and Ali finally met in the ring, Ali started on his toes, dancing around as advertised. Such was the intensity of Foreman's attack, however, that he was soon driven into the ropes. Foreman dug vicious body punches into Ali's sides; however, it quickly became clear that Foreman was unable to land a clean punch to Ali's head. The ring ropes, being reasonably elastic in nature, allowed Ali to lean back and away from Foreman's wild swings and then maul him in a clinch, forcing Foreman to expend extra energy untangling himself. To this day, it is unclear whether Ali's pre-fight talk of using speed and movement against Foreman had been just a diversionary trick, or whether his use of what became known as the "Rope-a-dope" tactic was an improvisation necessitated by Foreman's constant pressure.

In either case, Ali was able to counter off the ropes with blows to the face, and was able to penetrate Foreman's defence. As the early rounds passed, Ali continued to take heavy punishment to the body, and occasionally a hard jolt to the head, but Foreman could not land his best punches directly on Ali's chin. Eventually, Foreman began to tire and his punches became increasingly wild, losing power in the process. An increasingly-confident Ali taunted Foreman throughout the bout. Late in the eighth, Ali sprang off the ropes with a sudden flurry of blows to Foreman's head, punctuated by a hard right cross that landed flush on Foreman's jaw. Foreman after being hit in an awkward stance tripped and fell down. He managed to regain his feet, but the referee stopped the bout. Foreman later said that he was not hurt but more shocked that an opponent had knocked him down, which had never previously happened to him. Unsure whether he should immediately get up, he waited until the 8 count purposely before rising, then the ref called the fight. Prior to the bout nobody had ever even hit Foreman hard enough to slow him down,

Foreman also toured the world promoting the George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine. Foreman has said that he has made more money from his grilling machine contracts than he made during his entire boxing career, and has suggested that he is better known for the grill than he is for his boxing.

Foreman will not disclose how much he has earned as a product endorser, but he does not dispute a published estimate that his lifetime earnings are about $240 million—three times what he earned in the ring. In 1999, Salton Inc. bought the rights to use his name and selling skills in perpetuity for $127.5 million in cash and $10 million in stock. It stands as one of the biggest endorsement deals for any athlete. Under the original 1995 deal, Foreman had a right to 60% of the profits from the grills, which range in price from $20 to $150. At the height of its success, Foreman received $4.5 million a month in payouts according to former Salton CEO Leonhard Dreimann. But, in the past few years, consumers have put off replacing their old Foreman grills and Salton reported a loss of $3.2 million on sales of $274 million in a recent quarter.

The Foreman Grill is credited with saving millions of Americans and people around the world from the sudden death of coronary thrombosis.

Illustrations;

1. The Foreman Grill.

2. The Formal Grid.

Italy V West Germany

ITALY V. GERMANY


August Macke


August Macke (3 January 1887 – 26 September 1914) was one of the leading members of the German Expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). He lived during a particularly innovative time for German art which saw the development of the main German Expressionist movements as well as the arrival of the successive avant-garde movements which were forming in the rest of Europe. Like a true artist of his time, Macke knew how to integrate into his painting the elements of the avant-garde which most interested him.

In 1911 August Macke joined 'Der Blaue Reiter', a group of artists from Munich. On another trip to Paris with Marc he got to know Robert Delaunay and his orphic way of painting. This colourful form of cubism made a lasting impression on him. The trip to Tunis with Paul Klee and Louis René Moilliet in 1914 also contributed to the development of his own style of bright, intensive coloration and crystalline design. On 26 September 1914 Macke fell at the western front in France at the age of 27.

August Macke's world of paintings is unmistakable. Quiet compositions, scenes of nature, the open countryside or of places inhabited by monumental, faceless figures show his harmony-seeking look at the contemplative world of the regular citizen - until the outbreak of world war I.

“The most important thing for me is the direct observation of nature in its light-filled existence.” August Macke.


Giorgio De Chirico


At the beginning of 1910, Giorgio De Chirico moved to Florence where he painted the first of his 'Metaphysical Town Square' series, The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon, In July 1911 he spent a few days in Turin on his way to Paris. De Chirico was profoundly moved by what he called the 'metaphysical aspect' of Turin: the architecture of its archways and piazzas.

De Chirico is best known for the paintings he produced between 1909 and 1919, his metaphysical period, which are memorable for the haunted, brooding moods evoked by their images. At the start of this period, his subjects were still cityscapes inspired by the bright daylight of Mediterranean cities, but gradually he turned his attention to studies of cluttered storerooms, sometimes inhabited by mannequin-like hybrid figures.

De Chirico's later paintings never received the same critical praise, as did those from his metaphysical period. He resented this, as he thought his later work was better and more mature. He produced backdated "self-forgeries" both to profit from his earlier success, and as an act of revenge—retribution for the critical preference for his early work. He also denounced many paintings attributed to him in public and private collections as forgeries.

“To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere.”



The Match

The semi-final of the 1970 FIFA World Cup between Italy and West Germany is known as the "Game of the Century" (Italian: Partita del Secolo; German: Jahrhundertspiel;). It was played on 17 June 1970 at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City. Italy won 4–3 after five goals were scored in extra time, the only FIFA World Cup game in which this has happened. The match was watched by 102,000 fans.

Italy led for the majority of the match, after Roberto Boninsegna scored in the 8th minute. However, Karl-Heinz Schnellinger equalized for West Germany during injury time at the end of the second half. German television commentator Ernst Huberty exclaimed "Schnellinger, of all people!", since Schnellinger played in Italy's professional football league, Serie A, at AC Milan (and with AC Milan he rarely scored) and previously for A.S. Roma and A.C. Mantova. It was also his first goal in 47 matches. The second half ended with the scores level at 1–1, and at this point the match became a battle of endurance during the two periods of extra time.

Gerd Müller put West Germany ahead in the 94th minute, but Tarcisio Burgnich equalised four minutes later and Luigi Riva put the Italians back in front. Gerd Müller scored again for West Germany to level at 3–3. Yet, as television cameras were still replaying Müller's goal, Italy's Gianni Rivera scored the decisive goal in the 111th minute. Being left unmarked near the penalty area, Rivera connected a fine cross made by Boninsegna, securing the victory for Italy at 4–3.

The stress and effort expended in winning the hard-fought match proved to be the undoing of the Italian team in the subsequent final game, where the ‘azzurri’ were roundly defeated by Brazil 4 goals to one. Brazil thus became the first team to win three world football championships and, according by the rules set out by FIFA they were permanently assigned the Jules Rimet Trophy.


Illustrated;

1. Pele at the 1970 World Cup Final.

2. August Macke, 'Woman in a Green Jacket', 1913.

3. Georgio De Chirico. ' The Mystert and Melancholy of a Street', 1913.

Composed 24 April 2010. ANZAC Day.

Business As Usual

Leonard Fox paused in his writing to scan the horizon; aquamarine became azure rising to cerulean, a grey lizard crabbed from the shade of a stone to stare at him; it was 30 degrees in the shade. Leonard flipped the postcard over and it showed a remarkably similar horizon, except with dozens of small white plastered cubes, stepping down to the sea; the cubes all had identical cerulean blue windows. The postcard was to send to his mother in New Zealand.



It was another postcard that had set Leonard on the path that found him lying by the pool and owning the luxury modernist villa on the Greek Island of Spanakopita.



After a spectacularly modest career as a landscape painter, Leonard had hit upon the postcard plan. It was a simple plan and all that it needed was courage and time and nothing to loose. He sent postcards to MOMA, the Tate, and various Guggenheims and to all of the top galleries. He sent postcards to all of the big art magazines and the best dealers and then included them in his curriculum vitae.



With this magnificent CV Leonard was a shoe in for a CNZ ‘just let loose- 100% pure Kiwi’ travel grant; which produced more carefully chosen postcards from around the world. Soon anyone who considered themselves important in the art world hungered for a Leonard Fox postcard.



Now Leonard was rich and was living in exile from his Porrirua roots. It was a burgeoning exile managed by his gravel voiced agent Nigel Healy. Nigel had turned the postcards into cash and then into real estate or as he explained to the tax man the ‘manufactories of the raw production’ and grudgingly secured a fine concession from the revenue. Leonard and Nigel now owned thirteen deluxe properties around the world.



Leonard picked up his Mont Blanc and put his mothers address in the allocated space below the stamp and wondered about a beginning. Just then Nigel appeared, clinking with drinks.

“Who’s the postcard for Len?” he asked casually handing Leonard a tall, icy faintly blue drink.

“My mother back in New Zealand” he replied.

“What?” Nigel choked slightly while sipping on his gin. “You can’t fucking do that!” he coughed,” don’t you understand what an unproductive work like that could do to your stock?”

“…But its to my Mum” he replied weakly in a squeaky voice, as Healy took the card.

“No…no…no” scolded Nigel and flicked the card casually but accurately over the marble terrace into the azure.









Paul Gibbon had just made the breakthrough: it was a small lozenge of paint in the bottom corner of a giant striped painting. The stripes were in tones of grey: yellow grey, blue grey and light grey. The major passages were applied with house painting brushes and rollers but the finishing detail was worked up in glazes using the biggest kolinsky sable brush that money could buy. Gibbon had long ago dispensed with canvass had worked through plywood, then aluminium panel and now painted exclusively on titanium sheet which floated exactly 5mm from the wall and was custom made in Finland. The whole work reeked of good taste and considered expression.



He only painted stripes. He saw them as boundaries or horizons, collisions or pairings. He could paint the same work over and over and the small detail of the lozenge could salvage him from the “insanity” that Kipling referred to in his famous quote “as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”. He had heard this often enough at his A.A. meetings but preferred Einstein’s version as being positivistic and progressive, “ The world we have made, as a result of the level of thinking we have done thus far, creates problems we cannot solve at the same level of thinking”



Gibbon had come to the attention of the art world early on with a large work on canvass, three metres by ten, with black and white stripes and a, relatively small panel of gamboge yellow, entitled ‘The Wasp’. Art critic Evan Woodie had cried foul, and sketched a dismissive review; agreeing that the work was committed by a white Anglo male, but lacked a sting in the tale. Gibbon’s next piece identical, except for the panel being layered in cadmium red and being titled’ The Bull” was panned in Woodie’s column with a photograph and the simple dismissive headline ‘Bullshit!’



Woodie was back in his paper the following day with another photograph, this time with a hand to his rapidly closing eye and bleeding nose and a furious looking Gibbon being forcibly restrained by his dealer, Nigel Healy. Paul Gibbon’s career had never looked back.



The breakthrough that Gibbon had made in the latest piece was painting the lozenge in the same shade of grey that surrounded it. It relieved Paul from the responsibility of finding an eloquent colour to shoulder the burden of the work and it was a continuation of the stripe while not being part of it… It was the actualisation of Einstein’s ‘different level of thought’.



Paul lit a victory cigarette with his paint smeared lighter and he poured himself a good measure of scotch. The peaty drink seemed to ease the headache that he got daily from the paint fumes. He wondered what that cunt Woodie would make of this masterful painting.









Nigel Healy adjusted his left shirt cuff by exactly five millimeters to better expose the navette cut ruby cuff link. It was one of the small details that he felt set him apart from the rest. On the right cuff was a link of similar cut, but emerald, of about two carats; he was going sailing later in the day.

But he needed to earn his keep this morning and so he was representing a sculptor by the name of Brigitte Castle, an older woman but still strikingly beautiful, even if she was dressed like a mechanic.



They were in the grubby offices of Kitschen Engineering, a failing manufactory only just keeping afloat by the good sense of the foreman who had insisted that they reinvest the meager profits of producing stainless steel kitchens into the latest technology and so just keeping ahead of the Chinese importers. It was for this technology that they were here.

Brigitte looked unimpressedly at the ageing lad manager,Dave Kitschen, a migrant from the North of England, shaved head, black and white striped soccer shirt, smoking a taylor made; she was reminded of a mangy whippet her father once owned.

“You want fookin’ what?” Dave fumed.

“We want a whale Dave” Brigitte patiently explained. “A sperm whale, made out of stainless steel”

“ I suppose you will want that life size an all” laughed Dave sarcastically.

Nigel thought it was time to straighten things out before they got out of hand.

“ No Mr. Kitschen, not life size; twice life size actually. Oh and we will pay handsomely. It should get your er.. business out of the doldrums”



Jimmy, the ferret eyed alcoholic foreman who was leaning against the doorjamb interjected.

“ We can do it, no worries, with the cad-cam cutters, epicycloidic rollers and the nitrogen-plasma welder, we should be able to knock off a project of that scale”

“I know, that’s why we are here” said Nigel through his teeth.

Dave observed the ill matched couple for a moment and then asked the seemingly dumb question. “Why?”

Brigitte began her story, which was polished by use to a deep luster. It described other work made by other factories, her philosophy of form and, in this instance, a deep distrust with the still dominant patriarchal hierarchy, in society.

“..and that’s why I’m calling the piece ‘Moby’s Dick’; it’s twice the size of Melville’s .”



That was a couple of years back and Dave thought back to how much of a wanker he was then, not up for it, it was Jimmy who saw the opportunity. The whale job was a good earner for the company but did little for the artist if he remembered correctly, she made hardly any money from the job but that agent guy seemed to do ok.

Dave looked out from his new office at the recently installed promotional orca at the front gate, business was booming, whales, pods of dolphins, seals (with or without balancing balls), schools of tuna, swordfish: the whole marine world was his oyster.

Whats Up Doc?

The Creative PhD Seminar


Speakers:
Professor Andrew Barrie – School of Architecture and Planning
Dr Carol Brown – Dance Studies Programme
John Coulter – School of Music
Associate Professor Murray Edmond – English Department
Associate Professor Annie Goldson – Film, Television and Media Studies Department
Linda Tyler – Centre for New Zealand Art Research and Discovery
Dr Ruth Watson – Elam School of Fine Arts


The seminar was held in a dim dank lecture theatre redolent of Stalins’ Russia; threadbare bottle green carpet, three giant rolladex blackboards, of the type that used to be marked with a substance called chalk, and steel framed pivoting bench seats that sprang up with a clang that rang of longevity over comfort and with the concept of durability foremost in the design it occurred to me, given the age of the classroom, that we were their intended victims.

I arrived early and the seminar started late. The handler for the evening was the post grad dean Dr Nicholas Rowe, he had a cold.


As midwife to the nascent ‘creative’ Phd programme he seemed subdued but assured in his delivery of the new rules and specifications. There was only one ‘audible intake of breath’ moment when Dr Rowe asserted the 60,000 word written component of the new thesies, was to articulate the nature of the creativity embodied by the original corpus of work that comprises the remainder of the Phd. Did this mean that the evil capitalist moulinex also known as NICAI Was going to start a knowledge bank of creative practice for consumption, digestion and excretion by the business school? We wondered.

First up was John Coulter from the School of Music, suave in Armarni and black T shirt, he spoke briefly of his six year quest for the doctor hat. He had attached a bugle or some other musical instrument to a retinal scanner, so when the performer / listener peered into the eyepiece they came away with their own tune played by their eye movements, rather than the traditional inky circle.
The snippet that Dr Coulter lulled us with was redolent of Eno at his most transient and left the auditorium slightly bewildered, which was no mean feat considering that this was a group of Aucklands most highly educated with minds honed to a surgical keenness by years of creative practice.

Second was Dr Carol Brown who completed a Phd in 1994 in Surrey. This was to be a theme of the evening, that the Phd’s on display bore no relationship to the one indicated on the packet.
She spoke intensely and steadily of the body, her body, the body of a dancer as the site of the embodiment of theory, all kinds of theory. She mentioned her nipples and took a wee plastic doll out of a suit case, we were mesmerized. Her theory had cleared a space for the body to fly; where ego, I go.

Prof Barry had the unenviable task of following in the wake of this humid performance. He showed his favorite map, somewhat stealing some of Ruth Watson’s thunder, which was a 1725 map of little bits of NZ, Australia and Indonesia. He saw this as analogous to knowledge; but conveniently chose to ignore the fact that the map has now been completely coloured in. The completion of global exploration seems more analogous to the new ‘creative’ Phd’s as all of the other available academic spaces have also been coloured in and the only untrodden parts are the bottom of the mariana trench and the like.

Dr Ruth Watson spoke of her maps and her thesis accrued under the old rules ( from memory the written part can fit on a postcard). She said the old rules still apply at Elam and if you wanted a Phd without the 60,000 word bit see her after class.

Linda Tyler from the Gus Fisher spoke of a mate / colleague, who had just completed a Phd in Edward Bullmore. I found this the most challenging / motivating part of the evening. Soon there will be curators buzzing around the country looking for suitable subjects of study ie. Artists and presenting exhibitions of their work as a corpus toward the thesis; WARNING major structural shift ahead.

Then Annie Goldson came along and tipped over the whole cart. She put forward a two minute trailer of Briar Graces’ successful documentary of a sinking Pacific atoll (as in; one day it won’t be there atoll). Annie said that this COULD have been a successful thesis if it had been supported by theory in areas for instance such as ‘the history of film in the Pacific’ or ‘an analysis of climate change’ then she mused about how difficult it is to make a film anyway and how the extra work would probably sink the project along with the atoll. Oh dear.

So its there, the big solipsistic entity that is a creative Phd. A giant piece of research, illustrated by a body of work, a finely crafted piece of art; self reviewed, or a dynamic, critical engine fully cognisant of contemporary theory that clears a space for the actualization of theory and the colonisation of pastures that have been left unburrowed.

Thats all folks.