Telling it like it is

So I went along to check out the Rita Angus show yesterday arvo. I'd had high hopes for it but was bitterly disappointed. Part of it may be the way it was put together. There was far too much work in there, and far too much mediocre and bad work in particular. But that's not it – I can't just blame the curators. I was forced to come to an uncomfortable conclusion about Rita herself, and about New Zealand art in general.

What I like about Rita Angus is her non-compromising attitude to art. She took making art very seriously, and at the same time had some fun with it. She made work for herself. That's what we like to see. And if you never make unsuccessful work, you're obviously not pushing yourself – just mindlessly repeating a successful formula. But to have a survey of your life's work where there's barely a handful of good works? That's not good. You're a minor artist.

Let's face it. New Zealand art history is not very critical. It puts people up on pedestals and then genuflects towards them forevermore. Colin McCahon is a case in point. Most of his work is shit. Those cubist landscapes? How can you possibly take them seriously? Those stupid word paintings!?!

There are too many received ideas uncritically accepted in this country. Someone needs to put the boot in, tear down the idols. We have a very conservative, conformist culture. People don't like to rock the boat, especially in public and especially under their own name. Bollocks to that.

The art scene here is far too cosy – a nice comfy chair and cup of milky milo. Stop worrying about what other people think. Stand on your own two feet and drink strong black coffee instead, and maybe our art history will end up with more than a few good works scattered sporadically through it.

Some of us are trying to make good work, rather than make a career. What we need are critics and art historians to keep us on our toes.

Ye gods

What is with these people who want to ban things they don't like? Smokers seem to be the one segment of the population that it's socially acceptable to discriminate against. First smoking in pubs and cafes was banned. Then the warnings on the packets got bigger and bigger and more strident, until they got replaced by graphic images of bits of dead people.

Quite apart from the smell of desperation about putting these images on cigarette packets ('oh no, the warnings aren't working, let's make them really repulsive'), there's a real question of balance here. The decision has been made (note use of passive tense) that the interests of everyone who may see what are deliberately disgusting images (who are not just smokers of course, but could be anyone – including children) are outweighed by the so-called benefits of possibly scaring some people into giving up smoking. Is it just me, or is there something very wrong here?

Of course, once the images came in, people simply and quite rightly covered them up or put their tobacco into a different container. I've seen it seriously suggested that selling covers for cigarette packets should be banned. This is the behaviour of monomaniacs and zealots, the kind of people for whom the ends justify any means. It is a very dangerous mindset.

And so now this Poneke person (who of course is anonymous) wants to ban smoking in busy public places. Why? Because the smokers have all the best spots! It's really laughable. Boo hoo! There's nothing stopping non-smokers from sitting outside in smoking areas. My non-smoking friends do it all the time.

To do this, though, you need to tolerate people who are different from you, not try to legislate them out of existence. But not these anti-smoking bigots. They seem to think their intolerant prejudice should be backed up by law.

I don't like the sight or smell of cooked flesh, but do you see me advocating for a ban on eating meat in public? Of course not. If I choose to go out to a restaurant or bar, I know I'll be exposed to it. I accept that. It's part of living in a civil society.

Drunk and abusive

I've just been ranting in my comments to the last post, and then went out to smoke a cigarette, but it hasn't calmed me down.

We are a disgusting species. I mean, honestly, what are you here for? I have not yet seen any human being satisfactorily justify their existence (and of course that includes me).

What are you doing with your life? What possible justification do you have for the shit you produce? Do you produce anything? What the fuck point are you? Don't tell me you've produced kids. That just defers it. What the fuck point are they?

How dare you think your life has intrinsic value!?! You bunch of idiots, tell me why you matter any more than an insect.

What the fuck is the point in painting? To make something that, at best, gives some arsehole an hour's entertainment!?! Fuck that.

The world is built on suffering. Nature red in tooth and claw. And what do we do about it? Replicate it in our society, everyone out for themself, making money anyway they can. Lazy, self-satisfied, complacent cunts. You are all really horrible.

(Oh man, Rose is going to really hate this when she reads it, and, yes, Steve, you can be offended by this.)

Advice for public galleries

We popped out to the Dowse yesterday. I won't go on about the depressing display of derivative work that was the Wallace finalists. It's not as if there were any surprises there.

I will, however, mention the wall labels for other exhibits. It is not reasonable to mention one or two spelling and grammatical mistakes in a piece of writing. With the best will in the world, these can still slip through. However, when you have one every three or four lines (and the lines are only five or so words long), that's a problem.

It's not just retired English teachers with nothing better to do than write letters of complaint who pick up on these things. Having a lot of mistakes like this destroys your credibility. It tells me you haven't taken much care about your work, and makes me wonder whether you've taken as little care over the factual accuracy. It's simply unprofessional.

Running a spell-checker over it isn't enough. A spell-checker won't tell you that 'hay day' should be 'hey day'. What you need to do is hire a proofreader. The benefit significantly outweighs the cost. Their hourly rate will probably be a quarter or even a fifth of a graphic designer's. It's not that hard people, and it stops you looking like lazy illiterate arseholes.

The best bands in the world

The best band in the world is the Fall. The second is the Terminals.

These are indisputable facts. Get used to it.

Stupid shit

I thought this was my most hated johnny-come-lately NZ arts blog, but it turns out it's first equal with this one.

I don't know the Barrs personally, and they could well be nice people, but everything I know about them gives me the shits. You can see why from their blog (linked to above). The other one, the anonymous blogger who doesn't allow comments, is just wrong for that very reason.

What is common-sense nihilism and what does it want in New Zealand?

Ladies and gentlemen: Those parts of humanity not too busy trying to survive every day breathed a collective sigh of relief that the 20th century – which brought us such delights as industrialised warfare and genocide, the atom bomb, and the triumph of global consumer capitalism – was finally over. Maybe we could just kick back and enjoy life for a while. The 90s were kind of fun, eh? Unfortunately it wasn’t to be. A group of religious fundamentalist psychopaths seized control of the world’s foremost military power and rapidly began trying to reshape the world according to their mad schemes. They knew we’re screwed.

According to report published by the British government that is being used as a basis for long-term planning, the next 30 years will see:

- the development of neutron weapons that destroy living organs but not buildings and ‘make a weapon of choice for extreme ethnic cleansing in an increasingly populated world’. Such weapons would be dispersed by means of unmanned vehicles, leading to ‘application of lethal force without human intervention, raising consequential legal and ethical issues’;
- implanted brain chips standard for all citizens in developed nations;
- a mass revolt on behalf of the middle classes of the developed world in opposition to rampant immigration, an urban under-class, and the deterioration of social order;
- the revival of Marxism as a replacement for religion in an increasingly morally relativist age;
- unchecked globalisation that effectively ends the nation state and leads to wars based on territorial belief systems rather than country against country;
- endemic unemployment, instability, and threat to the social order as a result of population increase; and
- the emergence of a ‘terrorist coalition,’ an alliance of belief systems that oppose the state, from environmentalists to ‘ultra-nationalists’ and remnants of religious groups.

And this doesn't even mention the global environmental collapse that's already under way.

But, being religious fundamentalist psychopaths, none of this worries the madmen in charge one bit. They just wanted to make sure they’d stay on top, calling the shots for their own short-term benefit – at the expense of the rest of us (and any future generations, in the unlikely event that there are any).

What are we going to do about this? Well, the obvious first thing is to stop buying what they’re selling. You might think your interests coincide with theirs, but they don’t. You don’t need lots of money. You don’t need to accumulate lots of shoddily made consumer crap (built-in obsolescence indeed!). You don’t need to believe in fairy tales to give your life meaning. Only you can do that, through what you make of yourself in the circumstances you’re in.

You don’t need to kill other living beings for food. There’s more than enough suffering in the world as it is without us spending so much time and effort at increasing it. You don’t need nations, governments, or laws. These are just fictions made up to keep us all in line. You don’t need armies or police. Seek out like-minded people and make alliances. Be careful who you work for and what you have to do.

We don’t have to put up with this situation. Everyone can do something about it. The world is insane. It has always been insane, at least since civilisation started 6000 years ago. But it doesn’t always need to be insane. Tell the nutters firmly: ‘You are dangerous and insane, and you need to stop.’

Common-sense nihilism demands:
1 the international revolutionary union of all creative and intellectual men and women in the name of common-sense nihilism;
2 the introduction of progressive unemployment through the comprehensive mechanisation of every field of activity;
3 the immediate expropriation of all property, the communal feeding of all, and the conversion of all prisons and police stations into community art centres;
4 the introduction of pipe and pipe tobacco depots in convenient locations to issue citizens with the pipes and pipe tobaccos of their choice;
5 the introduction of pipe smoking rooms in every dwelling and workplace;
6 that every Wednesday be declared Pipe Smoking and Black Magic Day, with only pipe smoking and black magic allowed on that day;
7 that numbers be banned;
8 the immediate organisation of a large-scale common-sense nihilist propaganda campaign; and
9 the immediate regulation of all sexual relations through the establishment of a common-sense nihilist sexual centre.

David Cauchi
SORCEROR-GENERAL
Common-Sense Nihilist Revolutionary Central Council