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.

Second instalment

Here is a link to the first instalment. When we last left our heroes (Francis Picabia, Piero della Francesca, and me), they had just arrived at a large island in the Caribbean in 1482 and invited on board some people from a canoe. Click on a picture to see it full size.

Heretic

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	High

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

Quote of the day

I champion the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the simple and the persecuted. I maintain that whosoever benefits or hurts a man benefits or hurts the whole species. I sought my liberty in the liberty of all, my happiness in the happiness of all. I wanted a roof for every family, bread for every mouth, education for every heart, light for every intellect. I am convinced that human history has not yet begun, that we find ourselves in the last period of the prehistoric. I see with the eyes of my soul how the sky is diffused with the rays of the new millennium.

- Anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti

First pages from first draft

Click on a picture to see it full size.

A novel idea

One of the things I've been playing with over the last few months is an idea for a novel. I've got a plot roughed (and I do mean roughed) out. I was thinking of narrative text with a lot of illustrations, but now I'm thinking a graphic novel. Last night, I started a first draft/storyboard. If I get it together, I'll scan and post some pages.

I'm the main character, and I can travel in time. After visiting the future and seeing what an unmitigated nightmare it is, I persuade Francis Picabia and Piero della Francesca to come discover the New World with me ten years before Columbus rolls up.

A poll

On the right there, you'll see I've added a poll.

Richter on Picabia's arrival in Zurich in 1918

Picabia's first appearance, plying us all with champagne and whisky in the Elite Hotel, impressed us in every possible way. He had wit, wealth, poetry and a Goya head set directly on his shoulders with no intervening neck ... A globetrotter in the middle of a global war! ...

An artistic temperament which demanded spontaneous self-expression was matched in him with an intellect that could no longer see a 'meaning' in this world at all. He was, at one and the same time, a creative artist, compelled to go on creating, and a sceptic, who was aware of the total pointlessness of all this creative activity, and whose Cartesian intellect ruled out all hope ...

Picabia confronted us with a radical belief in unbelief, a total contempt for art, which proclaimed that any further involvement with the 'communication of inner experiences' would be sheer humbug ... Over and above this, there was an urge to deny that there is any sense or meaning in life as such, a rejection of art in so far as it constitutes an affirmation of life ...

I met Picabia only a few times, but every time was like an experience of death. He was very strange, very magnetic, challenging and intimidating at the same time.

Common-Sense Nihilist Party

The Common-Sense Nihilist Party has a blog that, among other things, details how to join.

Burning my bridges before I cross them

According to the conditions of entry for the Wallace Award: 'Artists are encouraged to include supporting material in writing that ... explains how they would benefit from the experience of an overseas residency.'

This is what I've put:

I must admit I struggle with this. I do not believe I am particularly special or out of the ordinary. The benefits that I would get from an overseas residency are, I imagine, much the same as the benefits any artist would get, except perhaps that, as I travelled extensively around NZ instead of going on the traditional OE, I have not yet visited any international art galleries or museums.

For the bit about the work, I just pretty much reproduced what I said in the previous post about where the title comes from.