Quote of the day

Highly significant for Piero is that he emerged from a family unskilled in the figurative arts. Rather than being totally enveloped within the inherited procedures of a family of painters or a strong local artistic tradition that provided a set of procedures, Piero matured in an artisan family with mercantile aspirations; his father sought to distance himself and his children from the family's origins as leather-tanning artisans. With this orientation Piero early adopted the practice of careful reflection evident in all his paintings and writings, and rejected the habitual practice of local painters of accepting repair work and minor commissions.

Nostalgia

Here are a lot of crappy photos of a story a friend of my Mum's made for me when she was living in Paris. I think I was about 4. It made a big impression on me then, and it still does now (hence the number of pics):

Something in Wellington to go to

And his house is on fire

Two copies of Goya and some trash talking by Ensor

My fighting spirit kept me at Les XX, but even within the group I was surrounded by hostility and excessively criticised (even though the benefits of some of my experiments had spread across the group). I enjoyed painting masks. My predilection for them has never left me. I could thus reflect in a philosophical way on the hypocritical, hidden, calculated, and sneaky faces of all the cowards who were crushed by my disapproving evolutions. It was a carefully chosen path. He logically required excessive or hefty colours. He reflected the calculated criticism of colleagues. The ignorance, the bad faith, the incompetence of the critics, the low and narrow-minded attacks from ex-imitators helped me greatly in continuing down this exceptional path of light and extravagance where imitators and pasticheurs dared not follow me.

I always had to contend with unfortunate circumstances at the Salons of L'Essor and Les XX. My experiments were pure, absolutely personal; my imitators numerous and malicious. Subsequently, my development was interpreted condescendingly. Yet my vision was personal and new, and I was able to work in the most diverse genres, for I always understood the importance of light and invariably the line was influenced accordingly. This personal vision has no doubt maintained me in the higher spheres.

I was incorrectly characterised as an Impressionist, a pleinarist, devoted to light colours. The form of the light, the transformations that it imposes upon the line, has never been understood before me. It was not considered to be important, and the painter did not trust what he observed. I was indifferent to the Impressionist movement. Edouard Manet never succeeded in transcending the old masters. Nice, bright, and distinguished colours, contrasting with large opposing fields, as in Japanese art. A great elegance of line, but a total absence of the effect of light. In other words, too much of a meretrician! My enquiry is also far removed from the great fluencies of Claude Monet, a jovial and sensual painter, and user of thick pastes. Accomplished colourist. Plump maker of paintings. Rather vulgar vision. Except for the 'cathedrals'.

The experiments of the pointelleurs left me cold. They merely wanted to capture the vibration of light. They coldly and methodically placed their stipples in between two correct but cool lines. The uniform and all too restrictive procedure is not conducive to further experimentation. This explains the absolute lack of personality in their work. The pointelleurs succeeded in capturing just one facet of light: i.e. its vibration. The formal aspect is not discussed. My experiments and vision are different from those of the aforementioned artists.

I daresay I am an exceptional painter.

Endorsement

The Common-Sense Nihilist Party endorses Hone Harawira in the upcoming general election.

It is nicely stretched

For heaven's sake: and it was her mother

The flat and round painter

Once upon a time there was a painter-chap who painted his paintings in the air – not plain flat figures with flat paintbrushes on flat canvas, which were painted so flat that they looked really flat and plain – but he painted round figures round in the air.

So he painted a queen. She had an enormous velvet skirt on her legs, and a crown on her head, and a shock of hair under the crown, which looked like a cake, so beautifully was it done. And her graceful arms with slim fingers and the big brilliant rings on her fingers moved, as the fingers of a queen used to move.

Then the wind came and blew Her Majesty the Queen away, and the painter observed this display with anxious eyes. The queen wobbled and bubbled in the air., and swayed and waved just as the air under her waved and swayed. Suddenly she grew quite thick round the middle, blew herself up, burst, and fell in two pieces. The skirt with the legs by itself, and the bosom with the crown by themselves. When the painter-chap saw this, he got very serious, and painted, in a great hurry, a page-boy in the air. Not a plain flat page-boy with flat paintbrush on flat canvas who was painted so flat that he looked really flat and plain, but he painted a round page-boy round in the air. He had a tightly fitting dress on his legs, and big longing eyes under his page-crop, and his fingers were as graceful matches.

Then the wind came and blew the page-boy in the direction of the queen who had burst. He trembled and scrambled in the air, and he shivered and schwittered, like the air under him schwittered and shivered. And his eyes and fingers were longing to put the queen in order again. Therefore, he kicked his little legs in the air so that he might get ahead a bit more quickly, and he slipped several times and fell, for it was cold, and the air was slippery with ice.

Suddenly, as he reached the parted parts of the departing queen, he grew thick round the middle, blew himself up, burst, and fell in two pieces.

The tightly fitting dress with legs by itself, and the longing eyes with the fingers by themselves, for he was quite near his beloved queen.

Now, his legs and his fingers had still kept the direction of the fast chase. And thus his legs put themselves under the fat bosom of the queen, and the longing eyes with the match fingers put themselves on top of her enormous skirt, and they grew on there.

But it looked so horrible that the painter, full of fright, decided to paint himself in the air in order to rearrange them in the right order; for his brush was not long enough.

He did not paint himself plainly flat with a flat brush on flat canvas like the other painters who used to paint plain, flat figures – as you already know – on flat canvases, which were painted so flat that they really looked flat and plain, but he painted himself with his round brush round in the air. Then the wind came and blew him in the direction of the two figures. He kicked his legs in the air as much as he could, because he wanted to get to the place of the accident quickly; he slipped several times and fell, because nobody had strewn ashes on the air.

Suddenly as he reached the two figures, he grew quite round in the middle, blew himself up, and burst not in two pieces, but in so many small parts that he could no longer be seen, and with him burst the ability of the painters to paint round figures round in the air with round brushes.

Therefore, painters now paint plain, flat figures with flat brushes on flat canvas.

– Kurt Schwitters, 1941

On the lack of time travelling tourists

Okay, so one of the standard arguments against time travel goes something like this. Let's say at some point in the future time travel is invented. It doesn't matter when. Unless the civilisation that produced the inventor is suddenly wiped out immediately after the invention, people from that civilisation would start travelling in time.

Every single future person from that point on who travels into the past to witness a certain historical event, such as the crucifixion of Jesus, was at that historical event. However, billions of time travelling tourists didn't attend all the big significant historical events.

You'd think someone would've noticed if they had.

The only reason, the argument goes, they aren't there is because at no point in the future does anyone invent time travel.

Now, the problem with this argument is that it assumes that time is one fixed block-like whole. That isn't, however, necessarily the way the world is. Consider instead that time is fluid, made up of multiple, dynamic, interacting timelines. The way that modern physics tends to see it.

In this model, a time machine is an alternate world creator. Every trip into the past splits off a separate timeline. Therefore, even if a civilisation builds time machine factories producing billions of time machines over thousands of years, each such time machine is at the centre of a conglomeration – or nest – of timelines it's created.

Or to put it another way, from the perspective of one particular world (such as ours) out of the infinity of alternates there can only ever be one time machine in operation, not billions.

Logically, it should be mine.