La Grand-mère D'Olympia

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) - The Grand Odalisque, 1814

The faculty of the imagination is both the rudder and the bridle of the senses.

Simone de Beauvior

It is not sufficient that what one paints should be made visible. It must be made tangible.

Georges Braque

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations.

Paul Cezanne

The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh. The effect that they make in space is as bound up with them as might be their colour or smell . . . Therefore the painter must be as concerned with the air surrounding his subject as with the subject itself.

Lucian Freud

Born of the sensibility, art sows and creates life in its turn.

Remy de Goncourt

Body experience . . . is the centre of creation. I rarely draw what I see. I draw what I feel in my body.

Barbara Hepworth

The senses are our bridge between the incomprehensible and the comprehensible.

August Macke

I want to reach that state of condensation of sensations which constitutes a picture.

Henri Matisse

All the arts are based on the senses. What they do for the person who practices them, and also the persons interested in them, is make that particular sense more active and more acute.

Henry Moore

Nothing exists in the intellect that has not first gone through the senses.

Plutarch

The Week In Review

Films:

Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City), 1945 - d. Roberto Rosselini
Paisà (Paisan), 1946 - d. Roberto Rosselini
Germania, anno zero (Germany Year Zero), 1947 - d. Roberto Rosselini
Crumb, 1994 - d. Terry Zwigoff
Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist, 1997 - d. Kirby Dick
In the Realms of the Unreal, 2004 - d. Jessica Yu
The Edge of Heaven (Auf der anderen Seite), 2007 - d. Fatih Akin

Television:

Entourage: Series 1-3

Books:

Baudelaire by Claude Pichois

Articles & Chapters:

Salon Rhetoric by P. ten-Doesschate Chu
City vs. Country: The Rural Image in French Painting from Millet to Gauguin by R. Herbert
To Create a Living Art: Rethinking Courbet's Landscape Painting by Mary Morton
Pre-Raphaelite Realism: Landscape and the Human Model by Elisabeth Prettejohn
Courbet and Popular Imagery: An Essay on Realism and Naivete by M. Shapiro
Rejecting Nothing, Selecting Nothing by A. Staley
The Topographical Aesthetic in French Tourism and Landscape by Greg M. Thomas

Exhibitions:

Fiona Hall: Force Field - Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney)

Music:

String Quartets - Benjamin Britten
String Quartets - Michael Nyman
Third (2008) - Portishead
String Quartets - Michael Tippett

A Catalonian Cosmology: Part Two

Joan Miró (1893 - 1983) - The Constellations (12-22 of 23), 1941


'Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth. Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has ever lived, in this universe, there shines a star.'

Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008)

The Week In Review

Films:

Be Kind Rewind, 2008 - d. Michel Gondry
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, 2007 - d. Sidney Lumet
The Bride Wore Black, 1968 - d. Francois Truffaut
Day for Night, 1973 - d. Francois Truffaut
Death Proof, 2007 - d. Quentin Tarantino
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, 2007 - d. Julian Schnabel
Planet Terror, 2007 - d. Robert Rodriguez
A Scanner Darkly, 2006 - d. Richard Linklater

Television:

Monk: Seasons 1-2

Books:

Miró by Jacques Dupin

Articles & Chapters:

Cannibalism, Senegal, Géricault's 'Raft of the Medusa' by E. G. Grigsby
Delecroix and the Orient by Maurice Sérulaz
Liberty in the Barricades: Women, Politics and Sexuality in Delecroix by M. Pointon
Orient or France?: Nineteenth-Century Debates by Roger Benjamin
Portraying Monomaniacs to Service the Alienist's Monomania: Géricault and Georget by Albert Boime

Exhibitions:

Game On - ACMI
The Medieval Imagination - State Library of Victoria

Music:

Dummy (1994) - Portishead
Portishead (1997) - Portishead
Roseland NYC Live (1998) - Portishead
Blue Lines (1991) - Massive Attack
Protection (1994) - Massive Attack
Mezzanine (1998) - Massive Attack
100th Window (2003) - Massive Attack

Six Images In Search Of An Exhibition VIII

Not Thinking Of England: Six Centuries Of The Gynecological Gaze

Titian (1485-1576) - Venus of Urbino, 1538

Rembrandt (1606-1669) - Jupiter and Antiope, 1659

François Boucher (1703 – 1770) - Leda and the Swan, c. 1740

Edouard Manet (1832-1883) - Olympia, 1863




Pierre et Gilles (b. 1949 & 1953) - Nina Hagen, 1983




Vanessa Beecroft (b. 1969) - VB45, 2001

'Reciprocity of sensation is not possible because to share is to be robbed.'

Angela Carter

The Week In Review

Films:

Fanny and Alexander, 1982 - d. Ingmar Bergman
1900, 1976 - d. Bernardo Bertolucci
The Leopard, 1963 - d. Luchino Visconti

Television:

Six Feet Under: Season 4

Books:

The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon - David Sylvester
Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation - Gilles Deleuze
The Colour of Time: Claude Monet - Virginia Spate
Constable: The Great Landscapes - ed. Anne Lyles
Monet and Japan - David Broomfield, Gary Hickey, Shigemi Inaga Akiko Mabushi and Virginia Spate
Monet by Himself - Richard Kendall
The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings - James D. Ganz and Richard Kendall

Articles:

Birth of the Seaside - Andrew Lambirth
Impressions of Normandy - Susannah Woolmer
Nature Transforming Itself - Jeffrey Myers
The Sea, The Sea - Laura Gascoigne
The Unknown Monet - Lindsay Rothwell

Music:

Sonic Investigations Into The Trivial - Essendon Airport
Music To See Through - David Chesworth
OHM+: The Early Gurus Of Electronic Music - Various
Possible Musics and Music For Airports - Brian Eno

Six Images In Search Of An Exhibition VII

AES+F Group: Have We Met Before?














AES+F - Last Riot (selection), 2005-7

'Clichés, clichés! The situation has hardly improved since Cézanne. Not only has there been a multiplication of images of every kind, around us and in our heads, but even the reactions against clichés are creating clichés . . . Every imitator has always made the cliché rise up again, even from what had been freed of the cliché. The fight against clichés is a terrible thing. As Lawrence says, it is already something to have succeeded, to have gotten somewhere, with regard to an apple, or a jug or two. The Japanese know that a whole life barely suffices for a single blade of grass. This is why great painters are so severe with their work. Too many people mistake a photograph for a work of art, plagiarism for audacity, a parody for a laugh, or worse yet, a miserable stroke of inspiration for a creation.'

Gilles Deleuze

The Week In Review

Films:

Four American Composers, 1983 - d. Peter Greenaway
Histoire(s) du cinéma, 1988-98 - d. Jean-Luc Godard
Jour de fête, 1948 - d. Jacques Tati
Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot, 1953 - d. Jacques Tati
Mon Oncle, 1953 - d. Jacques Tati
Playtime, 1967 - d. Jacques Tati

Television:

Six Feet Under: Season 3

Books:

Constable's Skies - ed. Frederic Bancroft
John Constable's Clouds - Kurt Badt
Constable: Impressions of Land, Sea and Sky - Mark Evans, Anne Galbally, Anne Gray, John Gage, Conal Shields and Mary Anne Stevens
Impressionists by the Sea - John House and David Hopkin
Monet and French Landscape: Vétheuil and Normandy - ed. Francis Fowle
Monet In Normandy - Richard Brettel, Heather Lemonedes, Lynn Federle Orr and David Steel

Articles:

Constable's Clouds - John Thorne
Constable, Duranty, Mallarmé, Impressionism, Plein Air, and Forgetting - Joel Isaacson
Constable's Sky Sketches - Louis Hawes

Art:

Body Language: Contemporary Chinese Photography - National Gallery of Victoria
Turner to Monet: The Triumph of Landscape - National Gallery of Australia

Music:

Yellow Man With Heart With Wings, Automatic Writing, Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon and She Was A Visitor - Robert Ashley
Sinfonia, Eindrücke and Ekphrasis - Luciano Berio
Fifty Synthesiser Greats, Badlands and Cosmonaut - David Chesworth
Preludes for Piano - Claude Debussy
Orion and The Voyage - Philip Glass
Memento Mori, Sun Song, Sun Music and From Uluru - Peter Sculthorpe

The Sky Is Not The Limit

John Constable (1776-1837) - Cloud Studies, 1821-22

'I have done a good deal of skying. I am determined to conquer all difficulties and that among the rest. . . .Certainly if a sky is obtrusive, as mine are, it is bad; but if it is evaded, as mine are not, it is worse; it must and always shall with me make an effectual part of the composition. It will be difficult to name a class of landscape in which the sky is not the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment '.

John Constable

The Week In Review

Films:

I Shot Jesse James, 1949 - d. Samuel Fuller
The Baron of Arizona, 1950 - d. Samuel Fuller
The Steel Helmet, 1951 - d. Samuel Fuller
Fixed Bayonets, 1951 - d. Samuel Fuller
Pickup on South Street, 1953 - d. Samuel Fuller
House of Bamboo, 1955 - d. Samuel Fuller
Forty Guns, 1957 - d. Samuel Fuller
Shock Corridor, 1963 - d. Samuel Fuller
The Naked Kiss, 1964 - d. Samuel Fuller
The Big Red One, 1980 - d. Samuel Fuller

Television:

Six Feet Under: Seasons 1 & 2

Books:

Staging Empire: Napoleon, Ingres, and David by Todd Porterfield and Susan L. Siegfried

Art:

Peter Graham - Tolarno Galleries
NEWO8 - ACCA

Music:

Complete Works for Solo Piano - Luciano Berio
String Quartets - Luciano Berio
Gesang der Jünglinge -Karlheinz Stockhausen
Kontakte - Karlheinz Stockhausen
Piano Pieces - Karlheinz Stockhausen
Mikrophonie I & II - Karlheinz Stockhausen

The Week In Review

Books:

J. L. David: Brutus - Robert L. Herbert
David's 'Death of Marat' - eds. William Vaughan and Helen Weston

Films:

The Great McGinty - d. Preston Sturges, 1940
Christmas in July - d. Preston Sturges, 1940
Sullivan's Travels - d. Preston Sturges, 1941
The Lady Eve - d. Preston Sturges, 1941
The Palm Beach Story - d. Preston Sturges, 1942
Hail The Conquering Hero - d. Preston Sturges, 1944
The Great Moment - d. Preston Sturges, 1944
The Bad Seed - d. Mervyn LeRoy, 1956

Television:

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Seasons 1-5

Music:

Complete Piano Sonatas - Ludwig van Beethoven
Goldberg Variations - J. S. Bach

Violin Concerto (To the Memory of an Angel) - Alban Berg
Ad Dominum cum tribularer - William Byrd
Piano Trio in D - Claude Debussy
Scheherazade - Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
Piano Sonata in A - Franz Schubert
Forest Scenes - Robert Schumann
Symphony No. 3 (The Poem of Ecstasy) - Alexander Scriabin
Concerto for Chinese Water Percussion - Tan Dun

Pain In My Heart - Otis Redding
Dance To The Music - Sly & the Family Stone
SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century - Sonic Youth
Absolute Garbage - Garbage

Because His Eyes Held Hands

Paul Klee (1879-1940) - Insula Dulcamara, 1938


'One eye sees, the other feels.'

Paul Klee

The Week In Review

Films:

Shadows in Paradise (Varjoja paratiisissa) - d. Aki Kaurismäki, 1986
Ariel - d. Aki Kaurismäki, 1988
The Match Factory Girl (Tulitikkutehtaan tyttö) - d. Aki Kaurismäki, 1990
Lust, Caution (Se, jie) - d. Ang Lee, 2007
No Country For Old Men - d. Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007
There Will Be Blood - d. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007

Television:

Rome (HBO): Series One

Books:

Nineteenth Century European Art - Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu
Art In Theory, 1815-1900: An Anthology of Changing Ideas - eds. Charles Harrison, Paul Wood and Jason Gaiger

Art:

Benjamin Armstrong - Tolarno Galleries
Black in Fashion - National Gallery of Victoria
Resonant Visions - National Gallery of Victoria
Sidney Nolan - National Gallery of Victoria
Warhol - Queensland Art Gallery

Music:

Symphonies 1-9 - Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphonies 1-10 - Franz Schubert
Winterreise (Winter Journey) - Franz Schubert
Symphonies 1-4 - Robert Schumann

Why Being Bad Can Feel So Good

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep, 1989 - Paula Rego (b. 1935)


'I've needed an impulse from within, a lot of emotional energy to do this stuff, and a kind of desire. It's a very aggressive thing . . . It's not an aggression like you're hitting it; it's a sensual aggression, if you like.'

Paula Rego

'Marina Warner, who senses Goya's influence and a 'post-Freudian mordancy', says: 'They're beyond morality; she's more interested in the power of feeling than in good conduct. She sees sexuality everywhere'. For Rego, 'there is adulthood in childhood; children have uncommonly strong desires and fears; they're very aware of their own bodies and sexual feelings. We only put a name to it later'. She is sometimes compared to Balthus . . . [Yet] for Warner, 'Balthus is voyeuristic, looking at little girls who are unaware of their sexuality. But Paula's are in possession of their own feelings, which we are invited to feel too.''

From Secret Histories by Maya Jaggi


'The remarkable thing about the sex taboo is that it is fully seen in transgression. It is inculcated partly through education but never resolutely formulated. Education proceeds as much by silence as by muffled warnings. The taboo is discovered directly by a furtive and at first partial exploration of the forbidden territory. At first nothing could be more mysterious. We are admitted into the knowledge of a pleasure in which the notion of pleasure is mingled with mystery, suggestive of the taboo that fashions that pleasure at the same time as it condemns it. The revelation through transgression has certainly not remained constant throughout the ages. Fifty years ago the irony of sex education was more obvious still. But everywhere - and doubtless from the earliest times - our sexual activity is sworn to secrecy, and everywhere, though to a variable degree, it appears contrary to our dignity so that the essence of eroticism is to be found in the inextricable confusion of sexual pleasure and taboo. In human terms the taboo never makes an appearance without suggesting sexual pleasure, nor does the pleasure without evoking the taboo. The basis is a natural urge and in childhood the natural urge acts alone.'

From Erotism: Death and Sensuality by Georges Bataille

The Week in Review

Films:

Bullit, 1968 - d. Peter Yates
Cool Hand Luke, 1967 - d. Stuart Rosenberg
Death Wish, 1974 - d. Michael Winner
Death Wish 2, 1982 - d. Michael Winner
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, 1972 - d. Luis Buñuel
Easy Rider, 1969 - d. Dennis Hopper
The French Connection, 1971 - d. William Friedkin
Midnight Cowboy, 1969 - d. John Schlesinger
Patton, 1970 - d. Franklin J. Schaffner
Red River, 1948 - d. Howard Hawks
Three Colours: Red, 1994 - d. Krzysztof Kieslowski
The Wild Bunch, 1969 - d. Sam Peckinpah

Books:

The Monk - Matthew Gregory Lewis
The Story of the Eye - Georges Bataille
Story of O - Pauline Réage (Anne Desclos)
Venus in Furs - Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch

A Conference Of Organs

Tony Oursler (b. 1957) - Station, 2002


'We are all haunted houses.'

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)

The Week in Review

Films:

Dirty Harry, 1971 - d. Don Siegel
Magnum Force, 1973 - d. Ted Post
The Enforcer, 1976 - d. James Fargo

Television:

The Mighty Boosh: Series 1 and 2

Books:

My Last Sigh - Luis Buñuel
Diary of a Genius - Salvador Dalí

2001: An Inner Space Odyssey

2001, A Space Odyssey, 1968 - d. Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999)


'A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.'

Stanley Kubrick

The Week in Review

Films:

Crash, 1996 - d. David Cronenberg
Dog Day Afternoon, 1975 - d. Sidney Lumet
Midnight Cowboy, 1969 - d. John Schlesinger
Three Colours: Blue, 1993 - d. Krzysztof Kieslowski
Yes, 2004 - d. Sally Potter

Television:

Family Guy: Season One

Books:

Camera Lucida - Roland Barthes
On Photography - Susan Sontag
Regarding the Pain of Others - Susan Sontag

Music:

Horses (1975) - Patti Smith
Radio Ethiopia (1976) - Patti Smith
Easter (1978) - Patti Smith
Wave (1979) - Patti Smith