Quote of the day

They say that Apelles used to hide behind his painting, so that viewers could speak more freely and he could more honourably listen as they went through the flaws in his work. I therefore want our painters to ask and listen to everyone's opinion, openly and often. For this helps the painter, among other things, to acquire favour. Everyone thinks it an honour to express their opinion on someone else's work. And there is no need at all to fear that the judgement of censorious and envious people can detract from the painter's praises. For the painter's merit is public and known to all, and they can call their own well painted work as a talkative witness on their behalf. Therefore they should listen to everyone and, after first thinking the matter through for themself, make corrections. Then, when they have listened to everybody, they should follow the advice of the more expert.

- Leon Battista Alberti

Miscellaneous

Last night's efforts

Well, I think it went all right. Apparently the 'Dada Manifesto' in particular went well. I think we lost it a bit towards the end. 'Random Fucken Abuse' was meant to be Paul and me abusing each other, but Paul wussed out so I had to abuse the audience instead. From all accounts, I succeeded in offending and annoying most of them. Then I had a few technical problems with 'Global Fascist Police State' and forgot to refer to my notes.

It was fun.

Can't Play Won't Play playing

My band Can't Play Won't Play will be performing live for the very first time at the open mike thing at the Adelaide this evening. After drunkenly heckling last week I rashly put us down to play, and so we've had to come up with something to can't play. If somehow everything goes to plan, we'll do four original (if somewhat minimal) songs and cover a Dada manifesto from 1920. It will of course be a total shambles.

An amusing diversion

A friend of mine sent me a link to the Communist Manifesto illustrated by Disney.

Riot

I need to beef up the colour of course, but you get the idea.

Something in Auckland to go to

Andrew McLeod has a show at the Ivan Anthony Gallery opening on 22 November.

Some more blither

I bought a couple of books recently. One was Dada: monograph of a movement, which has lots of good pictures and some good essays in it. My favourite essay was one by Richard Huelsenbeck on 'Dada and existentialism'. The other was The Dada reader: a critical anthology, which is an anthology of texts from the various Dada magazines translated into English. It is an excellent read and a wonderful resource.

I've prepared a couple more canvases. One I had to rescue from where I'd left it in a friend's studio in Lyall Bay. The other's still drying.

I got pictures back from the framers last week. They look really good. I only got two framed and will pin the rest to the wall. Getting them back means I'm all ready for the show. All I have to do now is get my website ready to be updated when it opens.

And, finally, check out the Artbasher's blog for some good links.

Plane

This and that

I've drawn a line under my show. Finished the last things over the weekend (the last one being the image above). Not going to do any more work for it but move on to the next thing instead. To that end I splashed out on a nice linen canvas at the end of last week. Since then it's been sitting there staring at me reproachfully.

Went to a fun experimental music and film gig at the jazz fest on Sunday night. It was enlivened by the smoke for the final guy's laser show setting off the fire alarms. I especially liked Campbell Kneale's film.