Formative assessment

I got a formative assessment of my studio project today. Unfortunately, it is singularly lacking in quotable comments (i.e. snark). Instead it has some useful suggestions that are suprisingly close to what I've been thinking – about the use of text in the paintings. I'd been thinking, given the time left, that I'd do some without it.

However, I am after all morally obliged to do the opposite of what my assessor suggests, so I'll do a purely text-based work first.

In other news

I think my favourite of the Ballard tributes is Michael Moorcock's. The Guardian has put together a nice page. A couple of the articles mention how he wanted to be a painter but settled for being a science fiction writer instead. That resonates with me because I wanted to be a science fiction writer but settled for being a painter instead.

Closer to home, and on a more cheery note, here are a couple of things that made me laugh recently: John Hurrell calls Andrew McLeod a Wellington artist, and Nicky Watson talks about modelling for Liz Maw.

That Hurrell piece made me think that a good test for people is whether they see the humour in Bocklin's work.

Everyone must die

No prizes for guessing why I chose this question to answer for my critical studies essay:

Roland Barthes' 'Death of the Author' initiated a re-examination of the totalitarian author. Is such a nihilistic approach necessary? Discuss with regard to art practice.

I won't bore you with the whole essay, but here is the last paragraph:

Unfortunately, it seems Barthes’ approach was not nihilistic enough. The death of the totalitarian artist left a gap that was filled not by the revolutionary birth of the viewer but by the totalitarian rules of the art game. To overthrow this new tyranny, it is up to those playing roles within the art world to change the rules of the game. For art to be free, we must wage a revolutionary guerrilla war by subverting and disrupting the structures of our roles until they no longer play the same tyrannical functions within the system. The death of the totalitarian author must be followed by the death of the totalitarian art world. Everyone must die.

Dodgy

Visual art hierarchy

1. Works that are visually compelling and conceptually coherent
2. Works that are visually compelling but not conceptually coherent
3. Works that are conceptually coherent but not visually compelling
4. Works that are neither visually compelling nor conceptually coherent

I suppose I should really define my terms and/or give examples, but I'm not going to.

Boomerang

Last week, I showed up at the reception for my old day job and was greeted with ‘Oh yes, come to beg for your job back, have you?’ The answer of course was yes, but only for the holidays. So this is where I am.

It’s quite strange being back, though (as I told my boss) there are some similarities: studio politics are very much like office politics. The students are not necessarily that much more immature either.

Oh yeah, and I was quite chuffed to discover that it’s taken two women to replace me.

On thinking

It's sobering how little of any person's internal experience – thoughts, feelings, insights, etc – can be conveyed or recorded. Words are wholly inadequate to the task, very crude and simplistic tools indeed. Pictures are better (one of the main reasons I make them), but not by much really.

Once your thoughts have been reduced, simplified, and bent out of all shape to fit into the box you're using to convey them, they're pretty unrecognisable. It's not so much that you can only convey a fraction of what goes on in your head but that that fraction is a hideous travesty of it.

All the people who ever lived, all their epiphanies, gone forever without much of a trace, if at all.

Quarter of the way in

Last week, I showed my assessor my studio project (see below) so she could make a 'formative assessment' of it – a non-graded written indication of how I'm going. This arvo NSRU1 are meeting the tutor for our sound course for an informal verbal version of the same thing.

On Thursday, for critical studies, I've got to hand in an essay worth 50% and give a presentation on a reading worth 25%. We could choose which readings to do, and, being an idiot, I chose based on content without regard to the calendar. So my first assessment for that course is worth 75% of the final mark. If I stuff it up, it's pretty irrecoverable.

Oh well, it'll be good to see how I'm going.

A joke

During his speech at the opening of the World Cinema Showcase last week, Bill Gosden said he didn't want to talk about the programme but the global economic crisis. To the chorus of groans that greeted this announcement, he compared it to early drug experimentation: everyone's anxiously asking each other 'Are you feeling anything yet?'

Quote of the day

Suprematism is to all previous painting as philosophy is to journalism.

- Yurkevich