Verso VIII

Méret Oppenheim (1913-1985) - My Nurse, 1936

(Dame) Vivienne Westwood (b. 1941) - Sex, 1974-76

Six Images In Search Of An Exhibition X

Tales of the Quotidian Sublime

Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-1996) - Untitled (Perfect Lovers), 1991

James Turrell (b. 1943) - A Frontal Passage, 1994

Thomas Demand (b. 1964) - Room (Zimmer), 1996

Andreas Gursky (b. 1955) - Times Square, New York, 1997

Rachel Whiteread (b. 1963) - Untitled (Paperbacks), 1997

Matthew Barney (b. 1967) - The Cabinet of Baby Fay La Foe, 2000

'The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.'

Marcel Proust

Coda I: Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957-1996)

A Requiem In Paper, Light, Stone And Candy

Loverboy, 1990




Untitled, 1990




Untitled (The End), 1990




Untitled (Public Opinion), 1991




Untitled (Portrait of Dad), 1991




Untitled, 1991

Untitled (Revenge), 1991

Untitled (Placebo - Landscape - for Roni), 1993




Untitled (Lovers - Paris), 1993




Untitled, 1992-95

'L.A. 1990. Ross and I spent every Saturday afternoon visiting galleries, museums, thrift shops, and going on long, very long drives all around L.A., enjoying the "magic hour" when the light makes everything gold and magical in that city. It was the best and worst of times. Ross was dying right in front of my eyes. Leaving me. It was the first time in my life when I knew for sure where the money for rent was coming from. It was a time of desperation, yet of growth too.

1990, L.A. The Gold Field. How can I deal with the Gold Field? I don't quite know. But the Gold Field was there. Ross and I entered the Museum of Contemporary Art, and without knowing the work of Roni Horn we were blown away by the heroic, gentle and horizontal presence of this gift. There it was, in a white room, all by itself, it didn't need company, it didn't need anything. Sitting on the floor, ever so lightly. A new landscape, a possible horizon, a place of rest and absolute beauty. Waiting for the right viewer willing and needing to be moved to a place of the imagination. This piece is nothing more than a thin layer of gold. It is everything a good poem by Wallace Stevens is: precise, with no baggage, nothing extra. A poem that feels secure and dares to unravel itself, to become naked, to be enjoyed in a tactile manner, but beyond that, in an intellectual way too. Ross and I were lifted. That gesture was all we needed to rest, to think about the possibility of change. This showed the innate ability of an artist proposing to make this place a better place. How truly revolutionary.

This work was needed. This was an undiscovered ocean for us. It was impossible, yet it was real, we saw this landscape. Like no other landscape. We felt it. We traveled together to countless sunsets. But where did this object come from? Who produced this piece that risked itself by being so fragile, just laying on the floor, no base, no plexiglass box on top of it . . . A place to dream, to regain energy, to dare. Ross and I always talked about this work, how much it affected us. After that any sunset became "The Gold Field." Roni had named something that had always been there. Now we saw it through her eyes, her imagination.'

Excerpt from The Gold Field by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, 1996

A Tree Is A Tree Is A Tree

Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) - The Oak of Flagey, 1864


'I have never seen angels. Show me an angel and I will paint one.'

Gustave Courbet

Verso VII

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) - The Tree of Crows, 1822


'If the artist sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting what he sees before him.'

Caspar David Friedrich

Palimpsest II

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) - Moonlight Study, 1831


'Close your bodily eye, that you may see your picture first with the eye of the spirit. Then bring to light what you have seen in the darkness, that its effect may work back, from without to within.'

Caspar David Friedrich

Like A Murmur Between Two Silences

Vintage Circus Posters

'To really enjoy pleasures, you must know how to leave them.'

Voltaire

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

Addendum III

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) - Monk by the Sea, c. 1809

'Art may be a game, but it is a serious game.'

Caspar David Friedrich

Palimpsest I

With A Little Help From His Replicators

Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960) - Untitled, 2002

Eric Doeringer - Maurizio Couldn't Be Here, 2005

The Little Artists - Maurizio Cattelan's La Ballata di Trotsky (The Ballad of Trotsky), 1996


'You see, all art has now become completely a game by which man distracts himself; and you may say it has always been like that, but now it's entirely a game. And I think that that is the way things have changed, and what is fascinating now is that it's going to become much more difficult for the artist, because he must really deepen the game to be any good at all.'

Francis Bacon