Who am I kidding?

So yesterday I got all “who am I kidding?” -suburban housewife writes about art- what a joke, but then I don’t profess to know what I am talking about so that’s ok….. I got onto this partly because I was considering going to a new gallery/studio “Manky Chops” and realised that it was probably not my best idea and that I have the street cred of a potato.

However that and other conversations did get me exploring the idea of how different art impacts differently on you and how part of this is being “of it” or not.

Examples - yesterday I read a story that I immediately identified with and it resonated (I think due to it being beautifully written). At the same time I was looking over some poetry that did not have the same resonance (a different frequency perhaps) but spoke sharp, cutting truths. Both works were wonderful but for completely different reasons. Also others who read the story just didn’t like it AT ALL. It made me look further and I found this great article by James Brown (the poet), who makes these comments.

“The two most revered New Zealand poets are probably Baxter and Curnow, and people tend to prefer one over the other. I used to be firmly in the Curnow camp…but the truth is in recent years I’ve found myself reading Curnow less and less, and now I think I’ve moved toward the Baxter camp…I don’t think Curnow’s poetry has aged as well as Baxter’s. Curnow is a high modernist, and his poetry seems trapped in that period, whereas Baxter’s later voice resonates better today…Curnow is probably New Zealand’s foremost technical practitioner…brutal, tactile and also deeply philosophical, this is not poetry for the people.”

Diversity it beautiful. I have no expectation that what I like (which is a pretty mixed bag) and what others like will be the same. We might connect in some areas, even be a similar ‘tribe’ but our views on occasion can be diametrically opposed.

Which is why some people like/buy Monet and some Duchamp. And why you don’t need to sound apologetic to say an artist “is not really to my taste” and also ok to understand a work and appreciate it on an academic and technical basis but hate it on a gut level. And why a “pick and mix” approach to life is probably ok too. 

So to end today’s lecture some more stuff I like.

Industrial Decay
Flox

by Flox

A literary interlude

I see David Beach won the Prize in Modern Letters for his book of poetry, Abandoned Novel. It sounds complex - “Abandoned Novel introduces a strikingly different new voice to New Zealand poetry. These sixty decasyllabic sonnets are formally rigorous and bracingly anti-poetic.” A lot was made of his job as a mail sorter. I guess jobs with NZPost lend themselves to poets, artists and writers because of the hours. JK Baxter for example - who I can’t stop thinking of as “Dopey” now, after reading Roma Potiki’s interview with JC Sturm in Trout.

I sort of wonder how many ‘mistakes’ were made with delivery by Baxter - or Clairmont in Waikanae in the ’70s? And which other artists or writers have worked as posties?

I have also been thinking about correspondence by ‘real’ mail and letters. So much of our history is in “The Letters of XXXX”. I doubt email will be preserved in the same way.  Email can be also be deadly as it is too quick and immediate sometimes and I wonder if it makes people too available? I am a bit of an email addict, so I love the stuff but I like the idea of sitting down and writing a well thought out and contemplative letter. The act of hand writing is so different and the selection of paper, pen, ink comes into play as well.

Technology changes so much. For instance the use of word processing. Apart from all the other advantages, I guess it does make it easier to produce an index. I was reading an autobiography today and was looking at the index and it almost felt like I was cheating a little. However other books I have with poor indexes or none at all can be very frustrating.

Another techno advance (for you art buffs) is this: MFA Mobile.

There are some interesting comments of this here.  “Seems like an opportunity missed: Does the likely audience for Harnett and Eakins care about its cell phone ‘wallpaper?’ And does the likely audience for cell phone ‘wallpaper’ want to pay $2 for Harnett and Eakins?“. I was thinking about a NZ version… But how would a McCahon look squished into your phone? Perhaps as a slide-show of the Northland Panels? Or maybe a marketing angle for emerging artists?

And back to literature, I got a bunch of Mark Pirie’s books in the mail this week which has been good reading, it reminded me of the recent DomPost article about his and collaborator Michael O’Leary’s work on their album cover recreations.

 

I like the detail in the first - that’s John Quiliter in the background. I wonder if Pirie ever worked as a postie?

Remembrance of Things Past

Firstly I have to admit I haven’t read Proust. I do know a little about the themes (which I suppose makes this is a bit like “How to talk about books you haven’t read“) but his ideas of memory seem to apply somewhat to my feelings towards photography.  The photos that resonate for me and draw an emotional, often visceral response and transport me to a place from my memory. However, memory is unreliable and sometimes maybe I am responding to something imagined, a dream or a nightmare.

So yesterday I got out a few books, Laurence Aberhart’s ’domestic architecture’  and “Contemporary New Zealand Photographers” and also a video about Annie Liebowitz. The South Bank Show episode on Liebowitz was a disappointment as it was made at the height of the celebrity Hollywood portraits, although it did look at the Rolling Stone work and had an interesting interview with Hunter S Thompson. I remember an exhibition of her work at the City Gallery some time ago (1997!) that seemed much broader and her book “Women” is excellent. Also just take a look at this portrait. I personally think it says a lot. There is a good commentary about this photograph here from the Guardian.

Mind you, to me you couldn’t better the Mapplethorpe exhibition at the City Gallery in 1996. I don’t why I like his photographs so much when they are simply a different world. Maybe it appeals to my voyeuristic nature?

So back to the New Zealand photography. Aberhart’s house’s are great and appealed because I also love what I call “wedding cake houses” the Art Deco flat roofed NZ style that features largely in the book. I used to live in a ‘nest’ of them in historical Savage Crescentin Palmerston North. That development is quite amazing in itself. Ernst Plischke was one of the architects.

Anyway that reminded me of a book I have “Images of a House” by Robin Morrison, another NZ photographer that I am fond of. His ‘Sense of Place’ was exactly that for me and many of his photos capture the South Island of my childhood memories.

The slighty sepia toned photos in “Images of a House” capture something I can’t quite put into words. Even though the house is occupied there is a late afternoon, dusty loneliness.

Another photograph that caught my eye recently was this (on trademe!) :

JAMES K. BAXTER HAVING BREAKFAST AT JERUSALEM ON THE WHANGANUI RIVER

This image appeared in the book “James K. Baxter: A Memorial Volume 1926-72″ with text by Michael King, Maurice Shadbolt, Tim Shadbolt and others.  Its says photographer unknown.

For a more recent view of photography the Contempoarary NZ book was great. Many of the images entered into the dream/nightmare category for me for example Yvonne Todd.

Speaking of Todd, nice to see a partial(?) list of proposals submitted to CNZ  for the 2008 Venice Biennale at Over the net. I cannot understand why an official list cannot be made available. Its public money surely? Lots of analogies have been made but you wouldn’t see his kind of thing happening with the major book awards.

Further to that story…

Dog - Found! 
“Thank you for your enquiry re the large dog that used to sit outside the Dowse. The Large White Dog is made by Barry Lett  in 1990 and is currently in the collections store at TheNewDowse. Due to fragility it cannot be sitting outside exposed to elements. ”

I had totally not picked this for Barry Lett because it was made of river stones not scoria and I’d only seen those skinny red dogs (lesson - listen to your “art elders”). It looked more like a Keith Haring dog. Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me. I wonder why is sat outside for what I recall as “years” and now is too fragile.  I wonder if its in pieces? At least now I don’t have to offer a reward to locate it.

The McCahon (online) Database ”contains some 1600 works, including paintings and drawings“. It does not have a subject index but you can search it. I searched for iron and cross and looked under religious so I am fairly confident his iron cross sculpture is not there - maybe it isn’t meant to be (because its just paintings and drawings)?

EDIT: - see comments. This IS in the database and I am an idiot :-) I do worry about a database that didn’t find it when the term sculpture was put in the search field though. Who would think I used to design and develop databases for a living huh? I do admit to searching on “iron cross” when its not made from iron. I am sure I entered cross but I was having a “mummy” day at the time.

I tried to watch the Kurt Cobain movie “About a Son” on Saturday night. I had heard good things about it and it was quite different for a doco. Interesting cinematography and choice of imagery with audio edited from interviews with KC about his life. Unfortunately I was also baking a bright pink Barbie layer cake at the same time and the two activities were not mutally conducive. I think the cake won out.

Also I just got my hands on a copy of JK Baxter’s kids book “The Seagull”. It would be somewhat romantic to hope that it will be the first book my daughter reads by herself but I can try…