Friday reading

Two pieces on semi-colons (I am a frantic over-punctuater, and have begun in some correspondence to use square brackets inside my normal brackets in order to arrange my nested thoughts -- and I am not averse to the dangling hyphen, en- or em-dash either. It is salutary then to be reminded of what these little marks are actually there to do ...)

'Semicolons: A love story', Ben Dolnick, New York Times


'Semicolons; So tricky', Mary Norris, The New Yorker


And in a completely different vein, MIT economist Abhishek Nagaraj has used the digitisation of 70 years' worth of the Baseball Digest to analyse the re-use of this material in articles on baseball players in Wikipedia, finding that "the full benefit of the digitization process accrues only to players who played before 1964, and therefore more likely to feature in an issue of Baseball Digest that is out of copyright. Further copyright seems to impede the process of democratization that digital books engender through which less well-known pages become more popular." 


'MIT Economist: Here's how copyright laws impoverish Wikipedia', Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic


Nagaraj's proposal for Wikimania 2012

A little bit of a love letter to Patrick Lundberg

Patrick Lundberg's work does not photograph well. It photographs well enough to reach out of my monitor and make me go visit anything of his I can see in the flesh immediately, but it doesn't photograph well enough to give you any idea of what that in-the-flesh experience is like.

This isn't the work's fault, of course. In fact, inversely, it's the success of the work. Lundberg's mixture of subtlety and strength is one that doesn't translate to camera: it has to be felt to be understood.

I'm a unabashed fan. (I feel I should be upfront and say I've bought a number of Lundberg's pieces - why this feels like a slightly dirty thing to admit, I don't know - there's such a pleasure to be had in committing to the work of an artist who you admire.) I'd be hard pushed to explain Lundberg's work to anyone, although I'm sure that if I had a better grasp on the aftereffects of modernism and the contemporary abstract painting scene, I'd do a better job.

Take the current show at Robert Heald Gallery in Wellington, for example. 'Points, planes, eddies, regresses' contains three installations made up of scattered marble-sized balls of gesso, beautifully painted and floating on the skin of the wall, anchored by two of his signature 'shoelace' works. And I use the word 'anchored' pointedly. As the globes range along, up, and across their respective walls - like tiny planets or magnified microbes - the shoelaces hang with a weightiness completely disproportionate to their size. The strips of darker colour are a solid resting point for your eyes between each of the paler, more delicate installations - a strong vertical pause between each of the colour-scatters that your eyes have to work harder to move around and pull together. And while I use words like beautiful, exquisite, and delicate to describe this show, there's nothing weak or reticent about it. Lundberg holds that space - makes the space a part of the work and makes it apparent to you as a viewer - as surely as if these were swaggering statement works. There is something deft, considered, and effortless here that made me, when I walked into the gallery on one of those lost-in-space days, feel like the world had fallen back into its proper alignment again.

In contrast, looking back at the collaborative work Lundberg produced with Roman Mitchell for Prospect 2012 at City Gallery Wellington, that installation now looks positively tough and rough - although at the same time, a large space was effortlessly held by a small number of quiet works. In that case, Lundberg's incised and painted pieces of found material were bound together with a slim, sprawling pencilled wall drawing. A single hanging work drew out the installation into three dimensions. Like 'Points, planes, eddies, regresses', this installation was so much more than the sum of its parts - it reached out and colonised the space. And like the current show, there was a lightness of touch; a sense that the artists had walked away at exactly the point when the effort returned just the experience they wanted to create, without undershooting or overcooking. I doubt it was a crowd favourite, but it was definitely one of mine. 

I think 'Some broken lines' at Robert Heald Gallery early last year was the first time I saw the 'shoelace' works. I've come to view these works - rightly or wrongly, and it doesn't really matter - as experiments or discoveries. I like to imagine Lundberg taking this very limited canvas, and then seeing what he can do to it, without overstepping some mysterious self-imposed boundaries. (I guess this is abstract painting in a nutshell, right? In this case, a long, slim nutshell that is soaked or tinted with colour and then marked out with dividing lines.)

'No Longer Exactly the Same (as Before)' - Robert Heald's opening show in April 2010 - was my first in-the-flesh experience of Lundberg's work. I can remember wandering around this brand new space (brightly white against the dinge and grime of Cuba Street's Left Bank mall) and through these mysterious hanging objects (each piece of rough-edged, incised, marked-up material suspended from a satisfyingly thick piece of cord) and thinking Wow. I don't know exactly what's going on here, but I really, really like it. Sure - finding a piece of wood, doing something to it, and putting it in a gallery is hardly an earthshattering act of innovation. But there were the first signs of what I've come to look for in Lundberg's work - a mastery both of material and space - that I really responded to. 


These first encounters are something I am thinking a lot about now. When I recall walking into that first show and this most recent one, I have the sensation of taking a deep breath and then slowly letting it out, and with that act, surrendering myself to the moment. Of having something impressed on me ... and being impressed in return.


Images, from top 
Three installation views and details of 'No title (5)', 2012, from the exhibition 'Points, planes, eddies, regresses' at Robert Heald Gallery, Wellington.
Installation and detail from Roman Mitch and Patrick Lundberg's collaborative work for 'Prospect 2012' at City Gallery Wellington.
Installation view and details of 'No title (7)', 2010, from the exhibition 'Some broken lines' at Robert Heald Gallery.
Installation view and 'No title (1)', 2010, from the exhibition 'No Longer Exactly the Same (as Before)' at Robert Heald Gallery.

Poem of the day

As I slowly try to tune my ear into poetry, I'm collecting pieces I like into a Google doc. (Where would life be without Google docs, dear readers?) And every week day I try to share one of these through Google+. (Life without Google+, on the other hand, would be extremely close to life with Google+, only with less moaning on the tech blogs.)

Anyway. This is the poem I am sharing today - it came to me via a friend from Jolisa Gracewood, in return for the review(ish) I wrote last week.

A Contribution to Statistics


Out of a hundred people

those who always know better-- fifty-two

doubting every step-- nearly all the rest,

glad to lend a handif it doesn't take too long-- as high as forty-nine,

always goodbecause they can't be otherwise-- four, well maybe five,

able to admire without envy-- eighteen,

suffering illusionsinduced by fleeting youth-- sixty, give or take a few,

not to be taken lightly-- forty and four,

living in constant fearof someone or something-- seventy-seven,

capable of happiness-- twenty-something tops,

harmless singly, savage in crowds-- half at least,

cruelwhen forced by circumstances-- better not to know
even ballpark figures,


wise after the fact-- just a couple more
than wise before it,


taking only things from life-- thirty
(I wish I were wrong),


hunched in pain,
no flashlight in the dark-- eighty-three
sooner or later,


righteous-- thirty-five, which is a lot,

righteousand understanding-- three,


worthy of compassion-- ninety-nine,


mortal-- a hundred out of a hundred.Thus far this figure still remains unchanged.

Wislawa Szymborska


If you fancy more daily doses (and the odd weird insight into my internal working) feel free to come find me in the depths of Google+.

Tender beginnings

Hey, look! City Gallery Wellington has started a blog ...

Flashback

The highlight of a trip to the Auckland Art Gallery at the beginning of the week (aside from a scintillating interpretation of the first room of the contemporary collection hang by my visiting-buddy) was getting to see for the first time since 2005 a group of Allen Maddox's paintings.

Maddox's works are up as part of 'Made Active', the latest exhibition drawing on the Chartwell Collection. By and large, the exhibition - featuring works by Alicia Frankovich, Nick Austin and Daniel Malone - was causing some seriously puzzled and incredulous visitor expressions. I was rather taken by the ruined beauty and delicacy of the Stephen Birch installation, but it was the Maddoxes that really stood out for me, perhaps precisely because they didn't fit smoothly with all the other pieces brought together on the general theme of 'artworks that activate everyday materials'.

It's impossible for me to look at a work like Maddox's Untitled Painting and not think of Julian Dashper's extraordinary velvet paintings, like my adored Purple Rain at Glorit - and to not be a little stunned that the two were painted only five years apart. (This is what happens when you missed the 1980s. You're surprised by things that make other people go duh.) 

Of course, you're taught to see Maddox's abstract expressionism as sincere (and substance-fuelled) and Dashper's as ironic (was Julian ever more sincere than when he was being ironic?). And indeed, standing there in the gallery, one of Julian's immortal quotes popped into mind ...

they were all made by holding the tube and squeezing it. So I never touched or embraced the painting. I could have made them wearing three piece suits. They were like lies in terms of artistic expression or angst.

But now I badly want to bring some of these works together - later Maddox and Fomison, perhaps,  with earlier Reynolds and Dashper - and just see what happens.

After the visit, I talked about how I feel the lack of small, swift shows that let us revisit our recent art historical past. I want to see more than the odd Don Driver or Allen Maddox in a collection hang. I don't want to wait for a MA student to write a thesis that slowly leads to a show. I just want eight or ten paintings and a few prep drawings hung well in a big enough space for a month so I can spend some time with them. I want to stage visual experiments rather than textual ones - ask questions with art and answer them with my eyes.

(I've made a set of all the Maddoxes available on DigitalNZ - contributions from Te Papa and Auckland Art Gallery only. This is a much larger selection of Dashper's work, also largely from Te Papa and the AAG. And dear Auckland Art Gallery. It would make me so happy if you would start feeding large thumbnails through to DigitalNZ. Consider it the only thing I am asking for this year.) (UPDATE: Hooray for people who listen and respond - see the comment from the AAG's online coordinator below. Next on my list: Christchurch Art Gallery. Luscious big images, folks. It's all I ask for.)

Images 
 llen Maddox, Untitled painting, 1980. Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 1985. 
Julian Dashper, Purple Rain at Glorit, 1986. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, purchased 1986 with Ellen Eames Collection funds.

On the radio

Yesterday on Nine to Noon I got a whole, luxurious 15 minutes - no ferry sinking, High Court announcement or long-running lawyer to make me chop material on the fly to fit into half the time I'd prepared for.

I talked about Michael Parekowhai in Christchurch, the Circuit website, and (very briefly) an Italian conservation project. You can get all the links and an image gallery on the Radio New Zealand site.
 

Review

Reading comes hard at the moment. Poetry is easiest. Hardest to talk about, easiest to read.


I have fallen head over heels for Wislawa Szymborska (and am even now able to spell her name without looking). 'View with a grain of sand' , translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh, brings together a handful of poems from each of a number of collections published between 1957 and 1993. The poems are remarkably consistent in tone and approach - Syzmbroska seems to have landed her mixture of playness and elegant skewering early, and maintained it. Her poems are both wide-ranging and narrowly focused; the intimacy of Syzmbroska's voice carries you through wry observations on love, the aftermath of war, loss, and joyful observations on the unending, unfolding world.

My favourite in the collection is 'Could Have' --

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you.

You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. The left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.

You were in luck -- there was a forest.
You were in luck -- there were no trees.
You were in luck -- a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
A jamb, a turn, a quarter-inch, an instant . . . 

So you're here? Still dizzy from
another dodge, close shave, reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn't be more shocked or
speechless.
Listen,

how your heart pounds inside me.

The urgency, the gratitude mixed with disbelief, that piercing, thankful, visceral last line ...

The image of a world in a raindrop in 'Water' captures the simultaneous scope and intimacy of these poems for me --

A drop of water fell on my hand,
Blood-let from the Ganges and the Nile, 

from the Ascension-day voyage off a seal’s whiskers to heaven,
from water out of the shattered pitchers in the cities of Ys and Tyre. 

On my index finger
the Caspian Sea is open 

and the Pacific meekly joins the Rudawa,
that same stream that floated as a little cloud over Paris 

in the year seven hundred and sixty-four
on the seventh of May at three in the morning. 

There are not enough mouths to utter
all your fleeting names, O water. 

I would have to name you in all tongues,
pronouncing all the vowels at once 

while also keeping silent–for the sake of the lake
that waits to be named 

and doesn’t exist on this earth, just as the star
reflected in it is not in heaven. 

Somebody drowned, someone dying was
crying out for you. It was long ago and it was yesterday. 

You have saved houses from fire, you have carried off houses
as you did trees, forests as cities. 

You’ve been in christening fonts and courtesan’s baths.
In kisses and coffins. 

Gnawing stone, nourishing rainbows,
in the sweat and the dew of the pyramids, the lilacs. 

How light is all this in the raindrop.
How gently the world touches me. 

Whatever, whenever, wherever has happened
Is written down on the waters of Babel.

There's a touch of Cummings' word-acrobatics to 'Allegro Ma Non Troppo', and that opening stanza just slays me --

Life, you're beautiful (I say)
you just couldn't get more fecund,
more befrogged or nightingaily,
more anthillful or sproutspouting. 

I'm trying to court life's favor,
to get into its good graces,
to anticipate its whims.
I'm always the first to bow 

always there where it can see me
with my humble, reverent face,
soaring on the wings of rapture,
falling under waves of wonder. 

Oh how grassy is this hopper,
how this berry ripely rasps.
I would never have conceived it
if I weren't conceived myself! 

Life (I say) I've no idea
what I could compare you to.
No one else can make a pine cone
and then make the pine cone's clone. 

I praise your inventiveness,
bounty, sweep, exactitude,
sense of order – gifts that border
on witchcraft and wizardry. 

I just don't want to upset you,
tease or anger, vex or rile.
For millennia, I've been trying
to appease you with my smile. 

I tug at life by its leaf hem:
will it stop for me, just once,
momentarily forgetting
to what end it runs and runs?

This is how I feel about life right now - close to overwhelmed by its bounty, clinging to the crest of the wave.

I loved 'Pi' - again, that dancing tone;

The admirable number pi:
three point one four one.
All the following digits are also initial
five nine two because it never ends.
It can't be comprehended, six five three five, at a glance,
eight nine, by calculation,
seven nine, or imagination,
not even three two three eight by wit, that is, by comparison
four six to anything else
two six four three in the world.
The longest snake on earth calls it quits at about forty feet.
Likewise, snakes of myth and legend, though they may hold out a bit longer.
The pageant of digits comprising the number pi
doesn't stop at the page's edge.
It goes on across the table, through the air,
over a wall, a leaf, a bird's nest, clouds, straight into the sky,
through all the bottomless, bloated heavens.
Oh, how brief -- a mouse's tail, a pigtail -- is the tail of a comet!
How feeble the star's ray, bent by bumping up against space!
While here we have two three fifteen three hundred nineteenmy phone number your shirt sizethe year nineteen hundred and seventy-three the sixth floorthe number of inhabitants sixty-five centship measurement two fingers a charade, a code,
in which we find hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert
alongside ladies and gentlemen, no cause for alarm,
as well as heaven and earth shall pass away,but not the number pi, oh no, nothing doing.
it keeps right on with its rather remarkable five,
its uncommonly fine eight,
its far from final sevennudging, always nudging a sluggish eternity
to continue.

(And I am fascinated by how other translations I have read change the tone)

 ...The caravan of digits that is pi
does not stop at the edge of the page,
but runs off the table and into the air,
over the wall, a leaf, a bird's nest, the clouds, straight into the sky,
through all the bloatedness and bottomlessness.

And finally, a work that is not in the collection, but which I found online, and can sympathise with so much: the effort to maintain normality, the saying of things and refusing to hear them, the hearing of things and refusing to say them - the saying and the hearing that you perform, but that never touches you ...

'Identification'

It’s good you came—she says.
You heard a plane crashed on Thursday?
Well so they came to see me
about it.
The story is he was on the passenger list.
So what, he might have changed his mind.
They gave me some pills so I wouldn’t fall apart.
Then they showed me I don’t know who.
All black, burned except one hand.
A scrap of shirt, a watch, a wedding ring.
I got furious, that can’t be him.
He wouldn’t do that to me, look like that.
The stores are bursting with those shirts.
The watch is just a regular old watch.
And our names on that ring,
they’re only the most ordinary names.
It’s good you came. Sit here beside me.
He really was supposed to get back Thursday.
But we’ve got so many Thursdays left this year.
I’ll put the kettle on for tea.
I’ll wash my hair, then what,
try to wake up from all this.
It’s good you came, since it was cold there,
and him just in some rubber sleeping bag,
him, I mean, you know, that unlucky man.
I’ll put the Thursday on, wash the tea,
since our names are completely ordinary

This week on the radio

Tomorrow (flights permitting) at about 11.45am on National Radio's Nine to Non programme, I'll be talking about:

Michael Parekowhai’s ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ in Christchurch (see also
Donna Robertson’s terrific photos of the installation)

An Italian conservation project that's winding up after 34 years

The Circuit website for New Zealand's moving image and film artists (see also here)

(You know, I would kill for suggestions of things to talk about. If an idea or request ever comes to you, please let me know.)

Setsy

I am still terribly obsessed by Digital New Zealand's set making functionality. Over the past three months I have really discovered my love of art - there is something about having been broken open that has let art flow back into me. I find myself rediscovering and lingering over all the things I have seen in the past 15 years, falling in love over and over again, surprised and surprised and surprised.


As part of this, I have found myself diving through the DigitalNZ site, pulling together collections of artists who are well represented. As part of this, a massive shoutout must be made to Te Papa, for their rigorous clearance process and also their willingness to put up luscious big images (Auckland Art Gallery please take note - I don't add you to my set because you are only providing dinky little thumbnails. Art was made to be looked at. Big.)


Photography is particularly well-served. Perhaps because it is easily digitised; perhaps because institutions tend to collect in series or bulk, rather than large one-off purchases. Whatever the reason, it's been a delight reacquainting myself with decades of practice. Here are some of the things I have gathered together:


Anne Noble

Laurence Aberhart 

Eric Lee Johnson 

Frank Hofmann 

Steve Rumsey 


Gavin Hipkins

Peter Peryer 

Fiona Pardington  

Smoking & modernism 

Milestone

This is the 1000th post on Best of 3. When I opened the account in December 2006 in order to - if I recall rightly -  say something to Pippin Barr about an early post on Over the net* - I really didn't give any thought to the fact that five and a half years later, I'd still be here, still doing this (although admittedly with the odd hiatus).

Earlier this year I actually thought about quitting this site and my radio spot. Everything had gotten too hard. There was little fun, little discovery left. It all felt dutiful and grey.

Over the past three months I've rediscovered art. I've been shown afresh how what I have seen and what I have thought over the past 15 years colours so much of the way I approach the world. I've fallen in love again, and I even, at times, feel a little giddy about it all. And that's something for which I am very grateful.

*The name of the site was quickly chosen in response Jim and Mary Barr's blog. And then I was stuck with it. I like to think of this constituting the table tennis motif of New Zealand art blogs. I like to imagine that one day an earnest Honours student, writing about the early 21st century phenomena of art blogging, will read a great deal into this. I hope this explanation has disappeared into the internet graveyard by then.

Friday reading

I'm a tad perfume obsessed, but even my mind is thrown into a whirl by this dizzying Slate piece by Patrick House on Chanel No. 5, cat pee, brain parasites and Egyptian gods.

House also links to this classic 2007 piece by Chandler Burr, describing some beautiful interactions between a Givaudan perfumer and a team of executives

The large plasma screen behind him showed us a picture of civets. They look like house cats who’ve been painted to look like zebras. He explained that the perfume material from the anal gland is found in both males and females. And it smells — quite simply — like anus.
“This is in perfume?” asked the marketer doubtfully.
“Absolutely,” said Guichard. “My father was testing it. They were using small blotters, and they were scooping out the cream —”
“It’s a cream?”
“Yes, and my father was tasting it. Rolled the cream around in his mouth.”
Dead silence. People stared at their blotters, which were emitting the strong, persistent smell of dirty underwear.
“And then he was going home and kees my mother,” Guichard added, grinning. He made a kissing motion.
“Well!” said the marketer brightly. “Perfume made of butt cream!”

In which I am particularly puzzled by an art website

Sometimes you wonder ... is it them or me? Sometimes you wonder (like when you ecstasise over Shaun Gladwell's commission for the Govett-Brewster, and then your friend asks you So what makes that different from any other home video?, and you have no answer except Because we have decided it is so) if the art world is an incredibly elaborate house of cards. Sometimes you just wonder where the money's coming from, and why.

Such was my reaction to Art.sy.

That's what you see if you're not logged in. At the moment, membership of the site is only by invitation.

That's (part of) what you see when you're logged in. And I just don't understand. I don't understand what this site is for. I don't understand who it is for. Sure, I can see that it can serve to give you access to current information about shows and artists, images of works, and tell you what's available for sale - but why?

I guess what I'm saying is I don't understand the itch that Art.sy is scratching. Perhaps it's just not my itch?

The same friend who asked So what makes that different from any other home video? asked whether looking at art onscreen is similar, or a replacement for, looking at art in the flesh. And as much as I love the web, my answer is no.

In response to that question, I told the story of wandering around the corner at the NGV International and laying eyes on Maurizio Cattelan's We are the revolution. And simply laughing aloud. It was so unexpected, so perfect, so satisfying. And it was the act of moving into the work's physical space that made the experience for me. I felt like I had met the work. That we had (excuse me while I get a little woo here) come upon each other in a shared moment. And describing this made me realise how much moving around the physical gallery space means to me; both the walking up to and away from, and side to side of, the individual work, but also the aggregation of work upon work, whether that's a collection hang where you're trying to figure out the curator's thought process, or a body of new work in a dealer gallery where you're trying to figure out where this artist is going now. When I look at art onscreen my mind so rarely moves into that 'figuring out' mode. I look, accept, move on. I rarely ponder or marvel. It's not that the web experience is worse (and dear god, please don't take this as encouragement to not worry about digitising collections and stop butting your head against copyright and getting your own work online). But it is functional rather than emotional - for me at all. And to try it all back - at the moment, as far as I can see, Art.sy is neither functional nor emotional for me. But perhaps - like I say so often - I just need to look closer.

(Oh, wow. Just after I drafted this post, I received an email from my 'designated Art.sy specialist, complete with an email address and phone number for contacting her with any questions about the art on the site. Jeepers.)