Entries Tagged 'DIVERSIONS' ↓

Forgive me. Trying to fit Afghan war art into a western canon of art history sometimes results in jokes at our own expense. Putting “our” art history to one side, this is a detail of one of the few Afghan “war carpets” I have seen that could be said to represent the outsider symbolically. Images of snakes and dragons are a common way of representing the evil Other in the pictorial carpet tradition. And given that the word “Omar” is written in Roman script (that is, not in Dari or Pashtun) one could say that it is meant for the outside world to take heed… Let me just tweak the colours a bit so you can read the letters on the cuff…

The disembodied hand itself is not new. Precursors exist in the propaganda posters of the 1980s, and subsequent carpets, representing the Soviet Union.

P.S. And, to bring  the metaphor into the present, Reuters reports (ex WikiLeaks):

“Cut off the head of the snake,” the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, quotes the king Abdullah  as saying during a meeting with General David Petraeus in April 2008.

so if I reproduce you reproducing him photographing her photographing her… from ArtDaily. She sold for $42.6m.

write about art. As much as I enjoy the afternoon surprises at ArtDaily, most of it is press release hype.  The looking is great, but the reading can be excreable. This, for example:

“It’s all about knowing the rules of the game. Those who don’t know the rules will never recognize the order that governs things…. I am of the opinion that each thing also contains its opposite.” Boetti’s practice was governed by his own systems wherein rules extend to not only his visual vocabulary, but to his name, incorporating himself, as artist, in his studio practice. With the addition of “e” (and) between his first and last names in 1967 the artist became “Alighiero e Boetti,” exploring dualism within identity.

“But beyond individual expression, Boetti sought to create conceptual riddles that unravel questions of humanity, society, nature and the world. Singularity and multiplicity, repetition and variation, order and disorder, alternating and dividing, etc., the artist used time itself as a medium to paraphrase principals of nature and mathematics. The placement and order of stamps on a letter could begin as a puzzle or mathematical exercise in permutation, but would end as an aesthetic creation. Likewise the ballpoint and embroidery works were conceptually Boetti, but produced by others within his rules or more accurately the rules the artist already saw existing in nature. “The ballpoint drawings are concentrated time” and concurrently pure gesture. Perhaps the most apposite statement about Boetti comes from the artist’s own woven text – concisely stated “Un’idea Brillante” (A Brilliant Idea).”

N.B. The embroideries “produced by others” were made to order in Afghanistan. Their millions of “pure gestures” were paid at a pittance and sold for a fortune. Relatively. Now that’s a brilliant idea. Not.

Have you never seen Ridley Scott’s first Mac advertisement?

worth a look. I’m still searching for the backstory. Now. Could someone please explain? Is this transgressive (appropriation) or mainstream?

It is a little-known fact that Rene Magritte visited Afghanistan as a young man. Astrally…

…is not looking too good in Canberra this morning. Last night the Spacedome and Planetarium was burnt. But at least the escape vehicle survived!

P.S. there is some relevance for Art Historians in this post: the Flying Saucer was built by Kym Bonython Enterprises in Adelaide in the 1960s…

Giorgio de Chirico portrays the loneliness of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Canberra 1942.

enjoy the images by Alain Delorme