Waxworks

I went to see Waxworks, a silent German Expressionist film from 1924, last night. I really enjoyed it, especially the sets and costumes. Basically, an out of work poet is hired by the proprietor of a fairground booth to write stories about his waxworks figures: the Caliph of Baghdad, Ivan the Terrible, and Jack the Ripper. In the first story, he's a baker and married to the proprietor's daughter, the most beautiful woman in Baghdad. While the Caliph tries to woo the wife, the baker tries to steal the Caliph's wishing ring. Baghdad looked like a cross between Gaudi and Dr Suess. In the second story, the poet is a nobleman about to marry the proprietor's daughter. Ivan the Terrible, paranoid about assassination, gets the bride's father to take his place on the way to the wedding, and doesn't like it when people seem to be upset that the bride's father got killed. He abducts the bride and arrests the groom, but ends up going mad. The sets are very constrained, evoking the paranoid atmosphere very effectively. The last story was a dream sequence where the poet dreams that Jack the Ripper comes to life and chases him and the proprietor's daughter around the fairground. It was all multiple exposures and very cool.

Something in Wellington to go to

On Wednesday, 5 September, at 5.30 pm at the Peter McLeavey Gallery, there is the opening of an exhibition of new work by Andrew McLeod.

To be precise, it is an exhibition of 'exciting new things and madnesses'. How can you go past that?

Graphic novel background notes

• Picabia's wealth did come from a Cuban sugar plantation. He was very successful until Dada fell apart in the early 20s. He did indeed end up poor and critically maligned, though his reputation has been rehabilitated somewhat recently (one day I'll set out why I reckon he's the greatest artist of the 20th century and why I reckon Duchamp stole all his ideas). Several of Picabia's contemporaries remarked that he was a physical coward (except for when he was behind the wheel of a car). He much preferred egging other people on than doing things himself.
• Claiming that Piero invented double-entry book-keeping is a bit of a stretch. History records that it was Luca Pacioli, who was Piero's pupil. However, Pacioli was accused of plagiarising Piero, and so I've assumed Pacioli stole the idea for double-entry book-keeping from Piero. It's also possible to interpret Piero's Baptism as being about the mystical significance of accounting.
• Columbus fluked the right route to the New World. You need to hit the right latitude for the right prevailing winds.
• We do indeed get barbecues, hammocks, and smoking tobacco for pleasure from the Taino. According to Peter Martyr, 'It requires so little to satisfy them that, in that vast region [Hispaniola, which I've named Libertaria], there is always more land to cultivate than is needed. It is indeed a golden age, [for] neither ditches nor hedges nor walls enclose their domains; they live in gardens open to all, without laws and without judges.' They were completely wiped out within decades of the Spanish's arrival.
• Caciques (chiefs) and bohiques (priests) would take cohoba to cure illnesses, see the future, and talk to the gods. Before taking it, they would ritually purge themselves using specially carved wooden sticks. On cohoba, things appear upside down, movements and gestures are reversed, and you see shifting and intense kaleidoscopic colours. At the beginning of time, the gods overlaid the world with layers of geometric design that can only be seen on cohoba. Destructive spirits rip holes in this fabric and cause illness, crop failure, and hurricanes etc.
• Although the Classic Mayan civilisation had collapsed a long time ago, there were still Mayan cities when the Spanish arrived. The Spanish did, on one occasion, get invited to dinner and then attacked. You'll find out why in the next instalment.
• My working title is The New World: A revenge fantasy.

NB: If you click on the label 'graphic novel' you'll see the first two instalments. The third will probably not be posted till early next week, the way things are going.

Labels

I've added some labels to posts. Of course, for them to be of any real use, I should go through and label every post. However, as this is the 599th post on this blog, that may not happen any time soon.

Practical matters

I had a very good day yesterday: out for breakfast, up the Coast for a friend's kids' third birthday party (barbie and bubbly), out for dinner, off to the flicks, and finally to Happy for a Stumps gig. It was all good.

I had a couple of conversations, one at the barbie and one at Happy, about artistic practice. I am convinced that the most important thing is that you do what you want to see, not what you think other people want to see.

This year has been a dead loss for painting. If I were to only count finished paintings, I'd've done bugger all all year. However, I don't only count finished paintings. I see the graphic novel I'm working on, the book I did for the twins, the lecture at the Film Archive, this blog, and various other activities (even aspects of my day job) as all part of a whole. That whole is my practice.

I'm only just starting out. But I hope that, when I'm done, that whole will have a well-defined shape – and that other people will get something out of it as well.

There's only one way to find out...

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.