Crit week

At about half two or three the other night, I was sitting in my studio having a cigarette break when I suddenly remembered it was crit week. I checked my computer to see what day it was and what day my crit was, and discovered I had to be there at half nine that morning.

Boy was that an adrenaline shock. And, boy, was I glad I remembered. Not showing would not have been a good look. So I toddled off to bed, fruitlessly of course, being all hyped up to paint.

However, I did make it, and make it through both days in fact, despite not sleeping the other night either. The first crit was a bit rough, a video work with a loud Pink Floyd sample repeating endlessly. It did my head in. But next up were Picabia-style mechanomorphs, which cheered me up immensely.

I ended up saying whatever came into my head during each crit, which only got me into trouble a couple of times (my mental filing system is a bit haphazard – I file things under rude jokes). And I tend to swear a lot when I get carried away.

I had a great time, and my crit in particular I found very useful for what I've to do next.

One thing that struck me was the difference in the kids a couple of years makes. Even though I did call them all fascists at a couple of points, they really impressed me. When I first went a couple of years ago, the kids were dull, sullen, and inactive. These are – or most of them are – quick, interested, and active. The second years in particular (though I got a bit confused who was what doing what when). The ones doing their own work. It was really good to see. (The inactive print studio not so much.)

With this lot, once they get their new building and administration bizzo sorted, Massey could well be a force to be reckoned with. If they want to.

Massey update

I bumped into a friend the other day, and he hassled me for not updating what's going on at Massey here. 'They censored you, eh?' he said with a grin.

I pointed out that I've simply been mad busy. And, to their credit, that they haven't tried to censor me. I don't actually see how they could even if they wanted to.

I have had a couple of meetings to sort out supervision bizzo. It turns out one of my supervisors has been very ill, which I wish I knew about earlier. They've roped in an art historian from outside to help me with my writing, cos I need it.

I am very focused now on coming out of this debacle with the book I went into it for in the first place.

The conversation with the art historian was pretty amusing. It started with him sitting me down and carefully clarifying my intent: 'If you're just taking the piss, I don't want to be involved.' I said that, while there was a strong element of parody there, certainly, I want to present serious, academically rigorous arguments (hence the need for help). He said sternly, 'You can't have both!' I answered like a petulant child: 'But I want to have both!'

I am serious about not being serious!

The common-sense nihilist guide to art parahistory: An introduction

This is the presentation I gave at Massey's Postgraduate Symposium, about which we're meeting tomorrow:

This paper will demonstrate both the art parahistorical method and why figurative painting is the pre-eminent vehicle for ideas – the true conceptual art – by arguing that perspective painting proves nothing exists.

Georges Braque said that ‘The hard and fast rules of perspective which [the Renaissance] imposed on art were a ghastly mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress.’ Apollinaire called it ‘that miserable, tricky perspective ... that infallible device for making things shrink’. The early cubists realised that perspective constructions, like photographs, do not accurately represent objects as they are. Rather, they are naturalistic illusions.

However, for the purposes of this paper, let us consider figurative painting – and, in particular, perspective painting – not as a means of representing objects nor as a naturalistic illusion but as a way of dividing a painted surface to convey meaning.

This is so important that it bears repeating in bold: The aim of figurative painting and drawing, including perspective painting, is not to accurately replicate the visual appearance of things in the world. The aim is to construct meaning on a two-dimensional surface using line and colour.

Take, for example, my painting Academic art. Both title and image occupy the same pictorial plane. To further emphasise that the painting is a pictorial construction rather than a naturalistic illusion, I use a continuous line to enclose the forms, which I’ve simplified, and bright non-naturalistic colours.

People sometimes ask me why I make my hair ‘ginger’ in self-portraits. I usually answer that people’s skin isn’t yellow either:

A useful comparison is with heraldry. In a heraldic coat of arms, conventions dictate that certain divisions of the surface, such as quartering, convey a specific meaning – in the case of quartering, a merging of two or more different coats of arms through marriage or other alliance:

Similarly to heraldic quartering, a perspective painter such as Masaccio used the conventions of perspective to divide the surface of a painting such as The trinity to convey specific meaning:

Through perspective, God, Jesus, Mary, and John appear behind the picture plane and the donors and the skeleton appear to be in front of the picture plane. Although the donors and skeleton are securely located in space,* the figures making up the trinity are not. Their depth is indicated only by their size – a sly ‘fuck you’ to the older tradition of using size to indicate the importance of figures.

[*Because of botched restorations, it is no longer possible to establish the skeleton’s position in space. However, it is reasonable to assume that it was possible when Masaccio painted it. It is also reasonably likely that that position was directly underneath or in front of the donors. The inscription on the skeleton translates as ‘What you are I once was, and what I am is what you will become.’]

In The trinity, Masaccio used perspective to create a separate pictorial space. The way that space interacts with the space occupied by donors, skeleton, and viewer symbolises the supposed interaction of the spiritual with the material in Christian mythology. ‘Masaccio’s differentiation in depth between the all-too-mortal world this side of the plane and the indisputably spiritual realm inhabited by God, Christ, Mary and John is an act of high genius. A new spatial technique has simultaneously been mastered technically and locked into the meaning of the picture in a way which only a few artists have since equalled.’ (Kemp, 21.) As we shall see, one of those artists was the stone cold avant-garde genius Piero della Francesca, the best painter of the 15th century.

It was because of paintings such as The trinity that Leonardo said ‘Painting is a thing of the mind’ – a conceptual art – which I prefer to translate as ‘Painting is a mental thing.’

It is important to note that neither Masaccio nor Piero was a slave to the ‘hard and fast rules’ of the perspective systems they used. Where the system delivered a result that would look wrong, they painted what looked right instead. This is something that Uccello, in his enthusiasm, often neglected to do, ending up looking like a horse’s arse.

We know that some form of perspective was known to the Ancients from fragments of paintings and references in written texts. However, the first documented use of it is Brunelleschi’s famous demonstration.

Brunelleschi kept his method of perspective construction secret. The first documented method for constructing perspective, also based (albeit roughly) on a mathematical rule, was published by Leon Battista Alberti in his book De Pictura in 1435. He published this book originally in Latin and again in 1436 in the vernacular as Della Pittura. Most painters of the time could not read Latin.

Since Masaccio’s Trinity was painted around 1427–28, it is likely that Alberti did not invent his method – the ‘legitimate construction’ – but rather documented and possibly formalised the method used by contemporary painters. By linking perspective to mathematics and the science of optics (perspectiva), Alberti argued that painting was the intellectual equal of the traditional subjects of a humanist education, such as music and astronomy (at the time indistinguishable from astrology).

In the early 15th century, painting was considered a craft performed by artisans. Because they were mostly paid for the materials they used, it was not uncommon for painters to be paid less for a painting than the carpenter was paid for the frame around it. And because the most expensive materials were gold leaf and the lapis lazuli that makes blue, these materials tended to predominate – and be the thing most valued – in the paintings produced under those contracts.

The arguments put forward by Piero and Alberti transformed the way painting was considered. In contrast to the generation before them – and their more slow-witted contemporaries – avant-garde painters such as Piero negotiated contracts where they were paid for ‘the skill of the hand’. Their paintings were valued not simply for being ostentatious displays of wealth but rather for being complex conceptual objects.

As Piero della Francesca wrote, in one of the first historical instances of avant-garde trash-talking of the conservative academic opposition, ‘Certainly many painters who do not use perspective have also been the object of praise; however, they were praised with faulty judgement by men with no knowledge of the value of this art.’

Piero wrote this in De prospectiva pingendi (On perspective for painting), which was written to be used by apprentice painters, as opposed to Alberti’s book, which was written to explain and justify perspective in general terms to patrons. It seems academics have always focused exclusively on the requirements of those funding them!

Despite its spurious appearance as a manual and its translation into the vernacular, Alberti’s book does not provide enough information to actually construct his scheme. Believe me, I’ve tried! In contrast, in De prospectiva pingendi, Piero set out his method for constructing perspective in rigorous detail. In doing so, he also incidentally provided the first ever mathematical proof of perspective:

In his introduction to the third book of De prospectiva pingendi, Piero argued for perspective on two fronts. The first was a technical argument. The second boiled down to the argument that the Ancients used perspective, and they knew what they were about, so you might as well too: ‘By following this practice, many ancient painters acquired immortal fame. Such as Aristomenes, Thasius, Polides, Apello, Andramides, Nitheo, Zeusis, and many others.’

They cared about such stuff in the Renaissance.

Piero’s technical argument for perspective was a bit more involved – and relevant:

‘[B]ecause [figurative] painting is nothing if not demonstrations of surfaces and bodies degraded or magnified on the limit [i.e., the picture plane], placed like the real things seen by the eye as subtending different angles on the said limit, and because for any quantity some part of it is nearer the eye than another, and the nearer part always presents itself as subtending a greater angle than the further one at the assigned limits, and since it is not possible for the intellect to judge for itself of their size, so I say it is necessary [to use] perspective, which distinguishes all quantities proportionately, as a true science, demonstrating the degradation and magnification of all quantities by means of lines (Field, 163).’ (Emphasis added.)

That last phrase can also be translated as ‘by the force of lines’.

Now, to the casual glance, it may seem as if Piero is justifying perspective on the grounds that it provides a convincing illusion of the real appearance of things. However, that is not the case. As is made clear in the propositions and theorems comprising the first two books, Piero is arguing that perspective is a true science – that is, that it contains a truth about the world – because it ‘distinguishes all quantities proportionately’ and constructs bodies placed on the picture surface ‘like the real things seen by the eye’ using lines.

In other words, perspective construction uses the same mathematical laws that we use to see objects in the world. Those mathematical laws are the truth about the world that perspective contains, not the illusions it can produce.

In his paintings, Piero consciously played down the illusionism that perspective can cause. In fact, many of his paintings do not use perspective at all. Perspective is merely one tool in his arsenal. When he did use it, he was well aware of the robustness of the perspective construction when viewed from non-ideal positions. It is often physically impossible for the viewer to stand in the ideal viewing position used to construct the scheme, and Piero realised that, within certain limits (which he mathematically defined), it doesn’t matter.

In both Piero’s and Alberti’s systems, the ideal viewing point is directly opposite a point inside the picture. However, paintings in the 15th century, such as frescos and altarpieces, were often so high on walls that the actual viewer was well below the bottom of the picture (or, more rarely, above the top of it).

In such circumstances, Alberti, being an academic rather than a practising artist, prescribed somewhat arbitrarily that the ideal viewing height be the eye height of a standing figure in the picture. Piero, being a painter, gives no prescription on how to deal with the problem in his writings.

The solution he adopted in his paintings, however, is more sophisticated than Alberti’s prescription. When the pictures will be seen from below, Piero places the ideal viewing point (and thus horizon line) below the eye height of standing figures in the picture, so that the perspective is seen from below. In the rare situation that the picture will be seen from above, Piero does the converse – he places the ideal viewing point above the eye height of a standing figure in the picture, so that the perspective is seen from above.

In his paintings, Piero used perspective in specific circumstances and for specific ends. The most important of those ends, like that of all the tools he used, was to construct meaning through line and colour on a flat surface – to say something about the world as he saw it.

In The resurrection, painted for the city hall in Piero’s home town and now that town’s coat of arms, the soldiers guarding Christ’s tomb and the columns of the architectural frame are seen from below, as is Piero’s practice when the picture is high on a wall. However, Jesus** clambering out of his tomb is shown front on, not in perspective. Like Masaccio’s Trinity, Piero has used his perspective scheme to create two separate spaces – the spiritual and the mundane:

In Piero’s Resurrection, the risen Christ confronts the viewer directly, no matter how lowly they may be or what their position is. All through the use of lines.

[**I didn't mention it in my talk, but I should note that soldier covering his eyes also appears to not be in perspective. That he is covering his eyes and not in perspective seems to be related.]

Similarly to Masaccio and Piero, but on a much more modest scale and to quite different ends, I have tried to incorporate two separate spaces in Painting. The pictorial space of Painting contains, as well as the perspective space occupied by the torch, the abstract space created by the black area at the top. These spaces operate with the light in the torch – a reflected external light rather than one emanating from the torch bulb.

Piero was a Neoplatonist. His use of perspective was all about translating the ‘perfect’ world of ideal forms into the ‘degraded’ world of appearances for particular religio-magical purposes that I will explore in my discussion of Piero’s Baptism (which is probably the best painting in the world).

Piero was completely right that perspective is a true science. However, he was completely wrong in what that truth is.

This is the thing with the avant-garde. The black square is the conduit for the intertemporal avant-garde thought virus through the ur-dimension, and the transdimensional telepathic contact can be patchy. Each historical manifestation interprets that contact using the categories and concepts available in the society it inhabits. However, we’re not here to talk about that.

According to both Piero and Alberti, the first step in constructing a perspective scheme is locating the viewer in relation to the space to be portrayed. Both methods recognise that the spatial relationship between objects is determined by the position of the viewer.

That is, an object's position in space is not absolute but relative to other objects from a given point of view. Space is relative.

As Kant points out, this means that perception of space (and time and causality) is not a property of the world but an a priori property of the viewer's mind. All objects that we can perceive exist in space and time, and have causes and effects. We can only perceive objects in those terms – any object not in space, in time, and subject to causality would be unknowable. This means that space, time, and causality are conditions that must be met for us to perceive an object.

As Kant says, ‘By means of outer sense, a property of our mind, we represent to ourselves objects as outside us, and all without exception in space. In space their shape, magnitude, and relation to one another are determined or determinable (Leech, 34).’

But things-in-themselves are not dependent on the conditions we have for perceiving them. Those conditions are properties of our minds, not of the things. Space, time, and causality are subjective framing devices with which we structure our sensations and combine them into the coherent world we observe. The world we experience, the world of appearances, is dependent on the properties of our minds.

Kant asks ‘Geometry is a science which determines the properties of space synthetically, and yet a priori. What, then, must be our representation of space, in order that such knowledge of it may be possible?’ Kant’s answer is that it ‘must be found in us prior to any perception of an object, and must therefore be pure, not empirical, intuition’, which is ‘the only explanation that makes intelligible the possibility of geometry, as a body of a priori synthetic knowledge.’ (Leech, 36.)

It is a symmetrical, reciprocal relationship. The viewing subject gives the world coherence through perceiving causal relationships in space and time. In turn, perceiving the world as coherent gives the subject coherence.

However, Kant continues, neither the subject nor the world is a coherent unity. Both subject and world are made up of contradictory elements. Because the world of appearances is unreal and illusory, and it has a reciprocal relationship with the self, then the self too is unreal and illusory. Any apparent unity is an illusion produced by the mind. Neither self nor world exist.

This is the true science that perspective contains. Perspective painting encodes the process by which both self and world are fictively constructed. This is the esoteric meaning behind the exoteric meaning of the perspective painting’s ostensible subject matter.



Perspective painting proves nothing exists.

So, in conclusion, I hope that I have demonstrated how the art parahistorical method sits beside, or perhaps beyond, art history by examining the hidden connections between things, the intertemporal rather than the historical connections – in this case, between Piero’s and Kant’s conception of space as finite Aristotelian extension. How these conclusions are affected by non-Euclidian relativistic space will be explored in my discussion of the alchemico-magical operations of Friedrich Nietzsche and Francis Picabia (the best artist of the 20th century).

As an intertemporal avant-garde artist, I use these art parahistorical connections in my own work. For example, the viewer’s relationship with my paintings is very important. I use standard mass-produced canvases that are about the size of the human head and with which the viewer can have an intimate conversation. As a social species, we have, after all, evolved to respond to the faces of people standing in front of us. Therefore, when hanging a show, I try to replicate that experience, with specific exceptions for specific pictures (see here and here).

For my exhibition at the Ivan Anthony Gallery, This has to do with me, we hung The fall and Modernism high and Conceptual art low, so that viewing height could affect the content of each picture. I also plan to make certain consequences of one of Piero’s perspective construction methods an integral part of my next show at the Robert Heald Gallery. You’ll have to wait to see how.

List of books

Banker, James R., The culture of San Sepolcro during the youth of Piero della Francesca, United States of America: University of Michigan Press, 2003.

Baxandall, Michael, Painting and experience in fifteenth century Italy, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Baxandall, Michael, Patterns of intention: On the historical explanation of pictures, United States of America: Yale University Press, 1985.

Calvesi, Maurizio, Piero della Francesca, United States of America: Rizzoli International Publications, 1998.

Field, J.V., Piero della Francesca: A mathematician’s art, United States of America: Yale University Press, 2005.

Ginzburg, Carlo (trans. Martin Ryle and Kate Soper), The enigma of Piero, United Kingdom: Verso, 1985.

Kemp, Martin, The science of art: Optical themes in western art from Brunelleschi to Seurat, United States of America: Yale University Press, 1990.

Lavin, Marilyn Aronberg, Piero della Francesca, United Kingdom: Phaidon, 2002.

Leech, Peter, ‘The painting of philosophy: Space, perspectivalism, representability and consciousness’ in Mehigan, Timothy J. (ed.), Frameworks, artworks, place: the space of perception in the modern world, Netherlands: Rodopi B.V., 2008.

Levey, Michael, Early Renaissance, United Kingdom: Penguin Books, 1991.

Wood, Jeryldene M. (ed.), The Cambridge companion to Piero della Francesca, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Compare and contrast

This morning, I was reminded that I'd completely forgotten that I'd offered to do a paper for Matthew Dentith's parody academic conference Twecon (which I suppose I should properly render as #twecon, but won't).

The last few weeks have been completely mental, and I'm exhausted. However, as the subject for the paper was the same as the one I've just given at Massey's so-called Postgraduate Symposium (abstract here), I was able to quickly cobble together an argument in five tweets (despite initial appearances, all the papers are there – just scroll down). I should've included my title – Perspective painting proves nothing exists – as a numbered tweet, but I forgot that stipulation.

As soon as I'd cobbled it together, a couple of people (including the organiser, a PhD candidate in philosophy) immediately objected that my argument takes no account of modern physics. An extremely useful discussion ensued (which I'm going to have to work out how to cite). I think I can accommodate the objections, but we'll see.

The contrast with the discussion after my presentation at Massey's Symposium is marked. I was up first, which might account for the lack of engagement. As I recall, a couple of people asked me to repeat definitions, someone asked if I was going to deal with 'the copy' (even though such dealing was implicit, repeatedly, in the presentation I'd just given), and someone else waffled in a generalised, unanswerable fashion. However, it wasn't just me – the other presentations also met with a similar lack of critical engagement.

My friend remarked on it at the time. Most people brought up some interesting topics in their presentations, but every single time the discussion afterwards ignored those aspects and focused on inanities instead.

(I could go on here how they seem intent on destroying one of the other students in just the same way as they destroyed one of the PGDip students last year – what kind of art school produces people who are no longer capable of producing work!?! – but I can't be bothered. I refer you to my earlier comment re: being wiped out.)

And this is not just my friend's (and my) aberrant opinion. The other students have organised themselves another session later this week to make up for last week's waste of time.

I should note that Massey specifically – and at length – promoted this as the only opportunity during the MFA programme to get critical feedback on your 'research' other than your contact with your supervisors. Seriously, if you're in Wellington and considering doing an MFA, do it extramurally through Melbourne instead.

That's what I should've done.

Some things in Wellington to go to

And on 8 July, Massey University is holding its postgraduate symposium in the cryptically named 4B06, at which the MFA candidates (and one PhD candidate) present their 'research'.

Things kick off at 9.45am, and everyone is welcome. They're going in alphabetical order, so I'm up first at 10. Apparently, I talk for 20 minutes, then parry questions from the floor. I don't know if it's any indication, but my crit last week quickly descended into a shouting match between the staff and me.

Here is my abstract:

The common-sense nihilist guide to art parahistory: An introduction

What is art parahistory?

The prefix para- means ʻbesideʼ (as in paramilitary) or ʻbeyondʼ (as in paranormal). Therefore, art parahistory stands beside, or perhaps beyond, art history.

Art parahistory seeks out the hidden, or occult, connections between things – intertemporal, rather than historical, connections.

The most interesting of these connections are between the early Renaissance and early Modernism. They were both revolutionary avant-garde movements that utterly transformed painting, the only art form that matters. This presentation will focus on certain connections with the early Renaissance.

It will demonstrate both the art parahistorical method and why figurative painting is the pre-eminent vehicle for ideas – the true conceptual art – by showing how perspective painting proves nothing exists.

As Piero della Francesca wrote in one of the first historical instances of avant-garde trash-talking of the conservative academic opposition, ‘Certainly many painters who do not use perspective have also been the object of praise; however, they were praised with faulty judgement by men with no knowledge of the value of this art.’

The presentation will also discuss the implications these conclusions have for my wider non-MFA-related painting.

The PhD candidate, Peter Trevelyan, is last at 2.15pm. He will also be talking about perspective.

School report

Part of the MFA course is what they call the postgraduate symposium. Each student gets up and talks about their research for 15 minutes, then answers questions from the floor for five minutes. This will happen this year on 8 July.

I expect it will be hard going, to say the least.

We are also meant to provide a two to three thousand word essay summarising our research so far.

I've just tried to write out the guts of my argument as a series of points (the idea being that each will become several paragraphs).

It should give you a laugh.

It's called 'Perspective painting proves nothing exists':

1. There is no intrinsic meaning in the world – neither god nor science.
2. Individuals cannot construct meaning, because any such meaning would be fictional.
3. No other meaning is possible.
4. Therefore, the pursuit of any meaning to life is futile.
5. The only way to live life free from illusions is to embrace its meaninglessness.
6. However, the individual is embedded in society, a meaning-making machine.
7. Social institutions + constructed meaning = social control.
8. That leaves avant-garde art and crime.
9. As Guy Debord recognised, art occupies a 'privileged position' within society – part of it on one hand, but separate on another.
10. It is in this separate sphere that I choose to operate – within pictorial space.
11. Consider perspective painting: not as the naturalistic illusionism decried by early modernists but simply as a method of dividing a painted surface to convey meaning – a meaning that says something profound about the way the individual relates to the world.
12. The first step in constructing a perspective scheme is locating the viewer in relation to the space to be portrayed – this gives you the 'visual pyramid' from the viewer's eye to the corners of the picture surface, which is to be considered as a window on that space.
13. That is, space is relative – an object's position in space is not absolute but relative to other objects from a given point of view.
14. As Kant points out, this means that perception of space (and time) is an a priori property of the viewer's mind.
15. The viewing subject gives the world coherence through perception of space and time. In turn, perceiving the world as coherent gives the subject coherence.
16. However, neither the subject nor the world is a coherent unity. Both subject and world are made up of contradictory elements. Any apparent unity is an illusion produced by the mind. Neither self nor world exist.
17. Perspective painting encodes the process by which both self and world are fictively constructed.
    
    Perspective painting proves nothing exists.

Reassuring

New Zealand universities are sliding down a key world scale with the country's leader, the University of Auckland, at its lowest overall rating ever.

No New Zealand university is in the top 50 world universities, while Australia has five...

Massey University ... has dropped deeply and is now at 302nd place.

Response

One of my supervisors sent me an email last night offering an 'amendment to [my] interpretation' in this post:

I do take issue with your (as always creative) interpretation of the supervisor's meeting in which speaking of the process of making your Goya homage came up. I thought the notion of you painstakingly describing the painstaking process of making these works was brought into our conversation but I never would advocate you making some performance of this or reading or whatever. I just think [we] both were thinking your writing should keep playing a role in the midst of your pictorial experiments (as it usually does).

This is not to cross sabres or be pedantic but to make a minor amendment to your statement so that you perhaps aren't really thinking we ALWAYS are advocating absurdly unsuitable paths for your artmaking.

Score!

This! is what Massey is good for. I ask for this (a classic text on Picabia that I've waited quite a few years to read), and the University of Newcastle in New South Wales sends it to me. Ha ha ha ha!

This is why I call Masters a really expensive library card. It's not as if Massey is good for anything else. They've got far too narrow a conception of what art can be to be a proper art school. They're actively hostile to any other conception. For example, I have been quite clear throughout my time there that I'm interested in using pictorial means to construct and convey meaning. And yet, at my second supervisors' meeting, when they actually looked at what I was doing for once and I was talking about what was going on in a particular Goya picture, one of them suggested that my final work could be a spoken performance or written description of the Goya pictures!

Yes, as a cunt out, it was quite funny, and there's a good classical precedent (ekphrasis), but still.

But I digress.

I've only got this Picabia book for a few weeks (during which time I've got a conflicting priority), so I'll have to drop the Piero for the meantime, even though I'm right in the middle of something.

But David, you may ask, you're copying Goya for your Masters, shouldn't you be reading about him, rather than Piero and Picabia? And isn't Piero and Picabia a rather odd combination anyway?

Well might you ask!

(PS Do you like my innovative punctuation in the first word there? It's meant to indicate a vocal emphasis, upraised finger, and slight widening of the eyes.)

Morons

I had a rather dispiriting meeting with my supervisor yesterday. Once again, they have nothing to offer me except obstruction.

The supervisor hadn't bothered to read the draft proposal I'd sent, and so pontificated off the top of their head instead. I won't go into the ins and outs of the entire conversation, but will highlight two particularly egregious examples.

I started by saying I've got a couple of shows lined up for this year, and I thought the timing fit in well. The response I got to this was the same as I'd had from the other supervisor. It is quite interesting.

Having shows outside of the institution isn't a good thing, apparently, but a problem. This is because dealers require 'safe, middle of the road' work, in complete contrast to the innovative, experimental work produced in the 'laboratory' conditions of the art school!!! These are real quotes, told to me with a straight face! Fucking incredible.

This is pure bigotry: treating an entire class of people as if they were indistinguishable stereotypes.

My experience – actual (though limited) experience not just knee-jerk prejudice founded on an intimidated fear of the unknown – is the complete opposite.

I have no constraints put on me on by dealers. I have had, and expect to continue to have, a free hand. I show what I like, how I like, and have been told that it's quite all right if there's quite major damage to walls etc as a result.

At school, however, there are a whole range of constraints. I've been told what I can and cannot do, because of academic requirements or ethics requirements or what have you, and even such a minor thing as including rude words in a wall drawing occasioned a warning sign at the entrance.

Herein lies the difference: your dealer answers to no-one but themselves, but your academic answers to a whole range of different committees.

Your innovative, experimental laboratory (such as it exists at all) is in the dealer galleries, not academic or public institutions.

But no, the fucking morons at Massey can't see that. Much easier to rely on lazy, complacent, self-serving received ideas instead.

I mean, fuck, if there was even the slightest bit of truth to their assertions, their end of year student shows would be evidence of it. Ha!

Ah fuck this, I was going to go on about the other really egregious comment – being told why having a knowledge of art history that informs your work is a bad thing(!!!) – but I can't be fucked.

Oh, and it was reported back to me that one of my assessors from last year was telling this year's PGDips how 'annoying' it was having me blog about them.

Here's a tip: you don't want me blogging about your really quite shocking limitations? Do something about them then. Stop being so intellectually narrow. Develop an open mind and some basic critical thinking skills. Actually be interested in art.

It's not that hard.

And we're off

School started for another year last night with drinks. Most of the MFA class didn't show up, the wankers, so we'll have to wait till Friday to eye 'em up. That's when we have our first proper meeting, and sort out studios and shit.

From the conversations about the class I had last night, I'm a little dubious. But we'll see. It also seems as if the studios will be fairly fucking noisy, with construction work going on all fucking year by the sounds of it.

Once again, my studio at home comes into its own.

The schedule is reasonably imposing. It's a relentless march of deadlines in bold capitals surrounded by asterisks – **SUPERVISION AGREEMENT & EXTENDED PROPOSAL DUE**, **CRITIQUE #1**, **POSTGRADUATE SYMPOSIUM**, etc – culminating early next year in the rapid succession of **FINAL WRITTEN COMPONENT DUE**, **EXAMINATION WEEK**, and the quite rightly no longer deserving of capitals **MFA Exhibition Week**.

I've not actually got much of a clue what precisely my 'research' will consist of. I want to play around with both paintings and wall drawings. Colour will play a big part. But beyond that, nothing. Well, nothing much.

That's all right though. I'm not worried. (We'll see what the supervisors think of this at our first meeting next week.) But fuck it, we've got till 4 April before the **SUPERVISION AGREEMENT & EXTENDED PROPOSAL is DUE**.

Masters interview

I had my Masters interview this arvo. I think it went okay. For some reason, I was a little nervous. My heart was going quite fast, and I could feel that my face was going bright red. That was annoying.

But the conversation went all right. The most amusing moment was when my assessor for the studio paper this year mentioned considering giving me my assessment as a comment on this blog. This was in the context of a discussion about which poor sap would be my supervisor, and how they'd have to deal with me posting every conversation I have with them here – 'which is quite exhausting'. Apparently, this is a problem because I 'paraphrase or edit [conversations with staff] to skew them for [my] own purposes' (I am, of course, paraphrasing here).

Some pics

The nice photos are by Shaun Waugh.

Here we go (part 1)

I have my mark for the studio paper back. I got an A- and this great comment, which I have dutifully transcribed in full:

Dear David – I'm handwriting this in the hope that you have the annoyance of transcribing it into that nice typeface you use on your blog site. My annoyance is having to write this out as 'good copy' from a previous draft – public document that it is and all!

To be clear to your readers, what you presented for assessment was: a link to pointlessandabsurd blogspot, three wall drawings (to be considered as one work) and [three] smaller works on paper, each titled separately.

You were 'derailed' (I presume by me) from producing a book ... which is a little overly dramatic for what was essentially a suggestion that, for your your own interest and entertainment as an artist, you might like to consider a number of other ways common-sense nihilism could expand its horizons – good practice usually ... looking for ways to get work to a place it wasn't at before and thinking through ideas, making decisions that might add qualitatively to the work itself.

Many of our conversations this year have been within this territory. I posed a series of questions to you about how you would approach the blog now that it was seen in relation to a set of assessment criteria, to which, for better or worse, it would be referred against.

You are an astute mind and without a doubt there are moments of acerbic and comic brilliance in the project (as a whole). It rides an uneasy line of having to contend with the requirements of this institution and your own (frequently 'cuntish') dismissal of all that this stands for. BUT:

Two thoughts

Yes, you have got your feet squarely in both camps. But it's a compromised position and it needs more work to compromise it further or it risks heading into dullness, repetition, and ceases as 'critical' entertainment or to advance the 'thesis' of the project.

OR, on the other hand, it's now a signature work that is becoming sure of what it does best and has clear editorial decisions and some clever manipulations at work, steadily developing its 'argument', and kicking the walls that it hits up against ...

?

Obviously, I needn't have bothered with the bloody drawings.

Which reminds me that I should post some pics some time.

Another year

The only proper subject for art is the utter ridiculousness of it all.

I don't mean just the ridiculousness of the art game, though that is pretty ridiculous. Art is an integral part of human society, and human society is an integral part of the world. Therefore, the ridiculousness of art leads inexorably to the ridiculousness of the world.

And how ridiculous the world is! This spinning ball of mud with these ridiculous creatures crawling across its surface, deluded by pretensions of grandeur.

You have to laugh.

It's final hand-in for the studio paper today. Said hand-in will form part of the end-of-year exhibition, which opens on 5 November.

It's been an up and down kind of year, but I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. What made all the difference was our class. I'm not much of one for groups, but this one is all right. We've had a good time.

The last thing I've got to do, before I can put academia behind me for the year and get stuck into some painting, is come up with a proposal for Masters next year.

I was derailed from doing a book this year. Maybe I should do one next year?

Then again, there's a general election next year, and it'll probably be quite funny. Maybe I should stand as the common-sense nihilist candidate for Wellington Central?

Decisions, decisions.

Oh, and I'm bitterly disappointed with the lack of response to the caption competition, you useless cunts. This is an interactive, multidisciplinary art work, don't you know, and so as such it needs some fucking interaction! If I fail, it's all your fucking fault.

Arseholes.

All quiet on the blogging front

Yeah, so it's been a bit quiet around here recently. That's all right. I'm not one of those wankers who put inane shit up every day just so they can have inane shit up every day.

No! There are gaps between my inane shit!

I've been trying to get my essay for school written – and over and done with – so I can concentrate on painting instead. Like all things that you want to be over so you can move on something far more interesting, it's dragging on and on and on...

Bollocks.

I can't believe I forgot this

A friend sent me a link to an article about how Massey has been ranked as the worst university in the country.

They do have a point about it being a tad unfair. However, it's very funny and very gratifying.

Useless qualification from the worst university! All right!

The readings

...assuming you can read them – and work out where the first one begins and finishes.

Seminar

Last week, we had a pretend crit as preparation for the real one next week.

The next day, I had to give a seminar for the theory class. I was up second, but the guy who was meant to go first was so disorganised that he had to reschedule.

For the seminar, you select three readings, formulate five questions about those readings, and then lead the discussion about them. I chose The Amorphist manifesto from 1913, The cacodylic eye from 1921, and a rather long but very readable article about the transition from Picabia's Amorphist paintings to his mechanomorphic ones.

It was a good thing the first guy was so useless. I was most of the way through the first two of the five questions when the tutor interrupted me to say that it'd been an hour already already. I was deeply shocked. It had seemed like about 20 minutes.

I rushed quickly through the rest of it, which was a shame, as we'd been having a good discussion, with almost everyone in the class getting stuck in. When we'd finished, the tutor, who'd been visibly twitching throughout the proceedings, asked me to respond to the criticisms of the avant-garde, particularly those of postmodernism.

I didn't laugh, tempting though it was.

Best comment for a while

I'm at school in the middle of my crit right this very minute.

We're talking about this comment a lot:

No fuck you, you useless piece of shit whino art cunt. How exactly are you helping the fucking world out? By taking art at Massey? lol.
Eat shit in fire and die in a hail of frozen sewage you tiresome failbucket.

The intertemporal avant-garde is old fashioned anyway. :P