Jesus Motherfuck

I've just redone a couple of pictures the cat destroyed the other night. The other couple will have to do as is.

Fuck man, drawing is fun and all, but redoing them isn't. It's both disheartening and stressful. I really liked the originals, and I'm far from sure that the new ones are ok.

I'd much rather be doing new ones.

Max Beckmann

I'm reading Beckmann's collected writings. They're quite a lot of fun so far, not that I've got very far, just the early diaries.

They start off very serious and earnest, when he was 19 and reading Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. He'd set out his philosophy of beauty and go on about Minna Tube, who would be his first wife. It's like an extended love letter, one which includes explanations of why he'd have to sleep with other women – because he's an artist who reads Nietzsche basically.

Apparently, in later years, he'd read these diaries aloud to Minna of an evening.

I particularly like the one from Paris in 1904. It can be paraphrased thusly:

I'm in the pub. Gee, drinking wine's quite good, eh? I'm getting quite pissed.

Later now, and I'm really pissed. Woohoo!

Hey, that's fucking Edvard Munch sitting over there!

Ye gods, I can imagine the reaction if I tried sitting Rose down and reading this blog aloud to her!* Let alone if I tried the artist who reads Nietzsche line.

But then, we do live in much more conservative, strait-laced times.

I mean, fuck, when Picabia went a bit mental, his wife wrote to his girlfriend and said, 'You look after him. I can't be fucked.'

Minna Tube gave Beckmann the flick in 1915, cos he kept on sleeping with other women and cos he wouldn't let her have a career of her own. She became an opera singer.

Gabrielle Buffet (Picabia's wife) had an affair with Duchamp before giving Picabia the flick.

*After reading this, Rose pointed out that I do sit her down and read Nietzsche aloud.

Time for some drunken abuse

Fucking hell, what are these stupid things we call social gatherings. I've just been to this literary opening thing at Robert's, and fuck it was weird.

These fucking word people. I shouldn't go on about them, because the art people are just as bad.

It's the only vaguely funny game in town, so what the fuck else are you going to do!?!

Fucking hell!!!

Cunts.

Only good game in town.

How else are you going to amuse yourself in this miserable existence?

Pictures beat words every single time.

Ans this is the date on which the TARDIS explodes.

Something in Wellington to go to

That bloody cat

I came very close to strangling the bloody cat this evening after he walked over several, not just one but several, drawings with his muddy paws.

The little bastard.

Sick

Rose and I are both sick. It's pretty grim – and very annoying. Bad timing.

Bloody typical.

Something in Auckland to go to

Metaphysical socks

The only religion that makes even the slightest bit of sense is gnosticism. Their idea is that a mad demigod created the world by mistake, and we're all trapped here.

However, if all we had to deal with is the world being deeply and fundamentally fucked, we'd be sweet. But, no, we've also got to deal with all the petty everyday things.

I could, if I were sensible, keep my sock drawer tidy and match each pair. Instead, it is jam-packed with odd socks, most of which have holes. Finding a wearable pair of socks of a morning is a long and arduous task characterised by frustration and annoyance.

If I don't have to get up for anything in particular, which is most days at the moment, I'll lie there until I've mustered the energy and courage to take on the sock drawer. This can take hours.

The benefit of this arrangement is that, no matter what else I am confronted with during the ensuing day, I know the worst is behind me.

Marks

I've got my marks back from school already already. I got an A- for the theory paper, and a B+ for the studio paper. The comment for the latter is well worth quoting in full:

David – the start and end of your semester are intriguingly different points on the spectrum of your project. Without a doubt, it is good to see the video works arrive on the scene as part of your dialogue with(in) both the poetic and the absurd, the black humour of bleakness and (yes) a resolute optimism that is becoming finely balanced in your work. The tree is a great example of how a work presents this ‘double’ bind – and it was a lovely surprise to see it alongside the straight-out hilarity of the other two works. We think this is a good move at this time (and this will come as no surprise).

Your body of work also constitutes the set of drawings that you have been building for the ‘book project’. Of importance here is your willingness to shift sideways – while you determine how to proceed with a ‘print project’. You work consistently and determinedly on these drawings and initially you were focused on one particular outcome for them. This can be done – but is by no means the only option you have to consider for their circulation. My criticism is that, for some time, you were resistant/reluctant to try other possibilities – other means of making work that could be built into the language and idiosyncrasies of a broader project – and indeed, may suddenly reveal new possibilities for making work.

In this way, while the blog is to be considered another lynchpin in your work, it has not necessarily been a vehicle that broadens the terms and references of this project – actually, on these grounds, I think it is patchy, fairly thinly attended to. It is a lens of a sort, but can afford to become more acute, or else find other ways to collect, reflect on and present the information that is informing the project. It would also have been useful to present ‘version 1’ of the A4 drawings at this cusp. David and I are looking forward to how the project develops and in what directions…

Good call on the blog. It has been thinly attended to. I'll have to ramp it up next semester.

School's out (and Doctor Who's in)

So we handed in the rest of our stuff for school last week. Then we had some drinks. Now we're on a break until mid-July some time. This is good, as it gives me a chance to get stuck into doing some drawings, on which front I've been a bit lax of late.

I'd like to say it's all school's fault, but I can't. It's mostly school's fault.

Anyway, enough of these fripperies, on to something much more important: Doctor Who.

I'm loving this new series, loving it quite a lot. The actor is brilliant, and the stories have been consistently good, except for the Dalek one. How they managed to fuck up such a great concept as Churchill enlisting the Daleks to fight the Nazis is beyond me, but they did.

The episode that played on Sunday was a particular highlight, managing to be both creepy and funny. And the TARDIS covered with ice looked pretty spectacular.

Whacking zombie pensioners with a 4x2, and knocking them off the roof with a lamp? Great stuff. Plus there were some very good lines, especially the one about 'If we have to die, at least we can go out looking like a Peruvian folk trio'.

Oh, and Vincent van Gogh shows up in a couple of weeks.

Doctor Who!

Final hand-in

It's time to hand in something for the first semester studio paper. I've been wondering for a while what to do. The book is an ongoing project and is far from finished. I could've done a mock-up of how it's looking at the moment and stuck that on a plinth in Massey somewhere, but that didn't seem very satisfactory at all.

So then I thought, since they've been hassling me to do some videos for so long, I'll do some bloody videos. And here they are.

The first is The superiority of painting (2:10):

The second is The dog ate my homework (8:08):

The third is Blow hard (1:23):

Enjoy!

Rose's radio show

After a bit of a break, Rose is doing her radio show again. As you'll see, it's been a bit full on recently. It's not exactly an upbeat show.