Just because I've been so slack...

...I thought I'd get another post in today.

I got new glasses on Friday, and they're taking some getting used to. The optometrist reckoned the prescription hadn't changed that much. I really noticed it when I wandered out on to the street though. I felt about a metre tall cos the ground seemed so close. It was like I could reach out and touch it.

In a possibly misguided attempt to help the adjustment process I've mostly spent the weekend reading Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World and Michael King's Being Pakeha Now.

The Wheen book was a fun read, even though it was preaching to the converted. It's nice to have your prejudices confirmed every now and then, as long as that's not all you do. The King book was a bit of a disappointment - it was made up of bits and pieces from a variety of sources and the seams showed a little too much. Maybe because it was so autobiographical, it made me reflect on my own situation.

When I was a kid I didn't really feel like a New Zealander (I'm the first Cauchi born here). In a funny kind of way, I'm a direct product of British imperialism. My Maltese grandfather probably wouldn't have married my English grandmother if Britain hadn't taken Malta off the French during the Napoleonic wars, and my parents wouldn't have met if New Zealand hadn't been a British colony for them to emigrate to. I think I had a funny idea about being more British than New Zealander until I actually met some British people and realised how foreign they were - and not at all like the image I'd formed.

When I left school I had no interest in going on the traditional OE, but travelled extensively around the country instead, much more than most people I know. I've lived in Auckland (though not since I was seven), Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch, and Dunedin. I've driven down all of the main roads and many a back road between Cape Reinga and Bluff. My whakapapa might be Maltese and English, but this is my turangawaewae - my place to stand.

Photo London

My brother Ben and his partner are over in London at the moment. Ben's one of the artists Paul McNamara took to Photo London (the official website is crap - but this site has some images to peruse). You can also have a look at the NZ contingent Paul's taken over here. Not that you'd be able to find your way there from the official website but.

With the wonders of modern technology (text messages and email) Ben's been keeping us up to date with his adventures - lots of galleries and the odd swanky party. Sounds bloody good. Bastards.

Shifted

I've moved most of my stuff now. Steve came round with his van and Matt with his car yesterday, and we did most of it in one fell swoop. There's just a car load of miscellaneous shit remaining at the old place. I've still got a bit of sorting out to do, especially somewhere to paint, but we're pretty sussed.

Ho hum

I haven't done much painting since the last thing up on here, just a small thing over the weekend. I'm gearing up to do a whole string of canvases in a row. I want to try grouping them together in various forms to see what they look like. At the moment I'm drawing glyphs on small pieces of paper. When I have a sufficient number I will add some blank pieces of paper and then deal them out in a three by three grid and use that as a basis for a composition. I can't just use it straight though, for several reasons. The most important one is that the glyphs need to have some conceptual relationship to each other. The random lay out will (I sincerely hope) provoke connections that can be worked up to a finished composition.

There were a couple of things that lead me to this. I've been thinking about tarot cards ever since a session at Sandra and Stephen's listening to a krautrock concept album based on the tarot and playing round with a deck designed by the same guy. I knew there was something there that could be useful but couldn't put my finger on it. The other thing was something someone said when I was talking about the grouped canvas thing. They reckoned they functioned like Killeen's cut-outs, which just hit me like being slapped round the head with a wet fish. I can be pretty dense and hadn't seen the link.

Of course some people might sneer that I'm just 'copying' Killeen, but it's too late in the evening to go into the seriously large amount of things wrong with that idea.

In other news, I've started the process of moving in with Rose. I need to do a mission to rescue my art books one evening later this week (the rest have been stashed at Rose's in the interim anyway) and then a friend with a van has nicely agreed to move my larger items over the weekend.

Update on the update

Well, I've got got rid of the frames and got a new look going on on the old website.

Some more pics and things

I also sussed out the snake one. I got rid of the Te Kooti figure and replaced it with Te Kooti glyphs.



The Piero timeline below is for my own reference. Some of the dates are pretty contentious, and not just the ones with question marks either.

I'm also in the process of updating the website. I've put up interim crappy phone pics of new stuff that will have to do until I get around to taking proper ones. They're the same ones that're dotted around here, but I thought I might as well put them all in one place.

I'm going to get rid of the frames and go back to a simpler structure. That should be later on today with any luck.

Piero della Francesca timeline

1411–13?
Born in Borgo San Sepolcro. Father Benedetto della Francesca, owner of a shoe-making business, mother Romana di Carlo da Monterchi.

1420s
Piero goes to abacus school, then is apprenticed to heraldic painter Antonio d’ Anghiari.

1432
Payment by Antonio d’ Anghiari to Piero as a painter in his own right.

1437–38
Piero working with Domenico Veneziano in Perugia. On 8 January 1438 Antonio d’ Anghiari settles all debts to Piero and moves to Arezzo.

1439
Piero in Florence with Domenico Veneziano, where he sees lots of influential stuff, including council between Western and Eastern churches to deal to the Turks, and could possibly have met Leon Battista Alberti, whose On Painting he has probably read.

1445
Piero signs contract for Misericordia altarpiece.

1447
Piero and Domenico Veneziano on a commission in Loreto that is cut short by plague.

1450
(Possibly from 1448) Piero in Ferrara working for Borso d’ Este, where he meets Rogier van der Weyden. Also possibly in Rome for Holy Year. Paints St Jerome Penitent and writes On the Abacus.

1450–55?
Piero paints St Jerome and Devotee and Baptism.

1451
Piero in Rimini working for Sigismondo Malatesta on fresco for Tempio Malatesta.

1453
Piero issued with crossbow and takes part in practice battle in case of war between Florence and king of Aragon.

1454
Piero signs contract for Sant’ Agostino altarpiece.

1455
Writ served on Piero in absentia ordering him to return to Borgo within 40 days to complete the Misericordia panels or forfeit advances.

1456
Battles with the Turks on the Danube possibly provide iconographical scheme for Arezzo cycle.

1457–58
Piero does preliminary work on Arezzo cycle: cartoons, some heads.

1459
Piero in Rome working for Pope Pius II, paints St Luke the Evangelist, but leaves for mother’s funeral.

1460–66
Piero completes Arezzo cycle.

1460
Piero member of the civic reform commission in Borgo. Paints Madonna del Parto.

1463–64
Piero paints Flagellation.

1464–66
Piero in Arezzo. In 1465 Piero and his brothers Marco and Antonio are gifted a house in Borgo.

1465–70?
Piero paints Sant’ Antonio altarpiece (finished in 1468), Sant’ Agostino altarpiece (finished in 1469), Hercules and Resurrection.

1466
Piero paints Mary Magdalene, St Julian, and St John the Evangelist.

1468
Piero and his brothers Marco and Antonio buy more property. Piero in Bastia to avoid plague.

1469
Piero in Urbino to assess panel by Uccello on behalf of Giovanni Santi (Raphael’s father).

1470–80?
Piero writes On Perspective in Painting.

1472–74
Piero paints Brera altarpiece for Federico da Montefeltro.

1472
Piero in Borgo as part of body that appoints doctor.

1474
Piero paints portraits of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza. Directs fortification work in Borgo.

1475–80
Piero prior of San Bartolomeo confraternity.

1478–80
Piero paints Senigallia Madonna.

1482
Piero rents furnished house and kitchen garden in Rimini.

1483–87
Piero paints Nativity.

1486
Piero writes On the Five Regular Bodies.

1487
Piero writes will.

1488
Piero pays niece’s dowry.

1492
Piero dies.

Oh happy day

I've given notice on my grotty room and am going to move back in with Rose.

It's half two in the morning

I suppose that's what drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes late in the evening does to you. It's really freezing. Apparently there's lots of snow down south. Rose has been hard at work, and I've been sitting here wrapped in a blanket trawling through Internet weirdness. I think it's time for bed.

Craziness

How to make fire with a coke can and chocolate.