Defaced

At Monash Gallery of Art on the weekend for the opening of the Photography Meets Feminism: Australian Women Photographers 1970s–80s exhibition I found myself on the floor where pencils and paper had been provided for the kids. I doodled with the monkeys who were enjoying the materials and space. Otto found loose sheets of photocopies, reproductions of early photographs and got busy defacing them. Shortly afterwards assembled in the large hall for comedian and art history graduate Hannah Gadsby's opening address things got a bit raucous. Speaking without notes, Gadsby dropped a few expletives. Nothing too outrageous but someone left the room in protest. Gadsby enjoying the unfolding scene called out to Otto "What is the rudest word you know?". Was there something in the cheese? The air? I can't say for certain but it was kinda funny.

From the archives: Dolfi Trost

That saying, ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’, I’m not so sure about it. I have a pretty good idea how little I know but what’s the use dwelling on that. I’m still feeling sore about the parking ticket from yesterday. Still, every time I stumble across a new artist, someone I feel like I should have known about years ago, I can’t work out whether my education let me down or new discoveries should fall under the category of new research/internet mania.

I spent years studying modernism and then years teaching modernism. I came at it from different departments – art history, cinema and later design. Sure, by the 2000s there was a lot of hoo-ha about modernisms, plural. But I’m still wondering how Romanian Surrealist Dolfi Trost (1916-1966) escaped my cross hairs. How come I never heard of him? Here was someone who was investigating the surrealist drawing technique entopic graphomania in Bucharest (a youtube tutorial might go like this: Draw dots on a page. Join them together.)

I never knew. He published his drawings in a serious looking publication in French if I’m not mistaken Vision dans le Cristal, Oniromancie obsessionelle (Et neuf graphomanies entoptiques from1945. Then he went to Chicago. What did he do in Chicago? Why was he there? Did he marvel at the skyscrapers designed by that well-known European modernist, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and his students at Illinois Institute of Technology? At this point we can only speculate.*

*In the English language, on the web, I can’t find anything.

William Kentridge numba 1

If you live in Melbourne it's pretty hard to miss that South African artist William Kentridge is own his way. His exhibition Five Themes opens at ACMI 8 March. Between billboards and tabloid supplements I am prepped, keen, and a little delirious with anticipation. I never resort to CAPS but on this occasion, anything less would be playing it cool. Kentridge does not play cool. He is warm, humane, wise and oh so good. I know, it's like I know him, which I don't, so that's a sure fire sign I am a fan. This retrospective, a last stop on a giddy world tour, has been organised according to Kentridge's thematic obsessions. I am looking forward to the animations and charcoal works, and also, seeing more than a few pieces, which is how I've viewed Kentridge's works up until now in biennale's over the years. Just over the weekend I was ruminating on Kentridge's appeal. Not for him small artworld conversations. On paper his work doesn't sound promising: figurative, narrative, political. What is it? The 1980s? Okay, he has breathtaking draughtsmanship skills. But an appreciation of his formal abilities–awe inspiring though they may be, sidesteps his true gift. In the forceful lines laid down and erased, in the dense pastels and smudged charcoals there's confusion, compassion and love for humankind.