Bite 49: Unknown - Female Figure, Greece, c. 4250 B.C

Female Figure, Greece, c. 4250 B.C, marble, h: 21.5 cmHaving discovered farming and the domestication of livestock, human beings in the Neolithic period (c. 6000-3000 BC) were freed to take on more diverse roles in their new settlements. Thus the creation of finely crafted artifacts became possible. This female figure found in Greece is one such, surviving, early example. Being over 6000 years old the work is surrounded in an aura...

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Bite 48: Méret Oppenheim - Ma Gouvernante (My Governess), 1936

Ma Gouvernante (My Governess), 1936, sculptureWell-worn high-heel shoes lie trussed-up on a silver platter. Mini chefs hats adorn the heels as if they were legs of poultry. A surrealist object, it cleverly juxtaposes objects as a parody on the display of feminine vanity and the fine line between female sexuality and being merely the object of male desire. Subtly suggesting cannibalism and bondage, the bizarre, quirky...

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Bite 47: Claude Cahun - Que Me Veux-Tu? (What Do You Want From Me?), 1928

Que Me Veux-Tu? (What Do You Want From Me?), 1928André Breton, founder of the Surrealist movement, called her “one of the most curious spirits of our time.” Although she produced a huge amount of work, as well as significant writings, Claude Cahun operated on the fringes of the Parisian Sureallist movement. It was not until the 1980's that she was discovered (by François Leperlier), and soon became seen as a forerunner to queer theory and feminist...

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Bite 46: Hans Bellmer - La Poupée (The Doll), 1935

La Poupée (The Doll), 1935Parts from several dismembered pubescent-sized dolls have been combined to create a four legged creature, all torso. Seen to represent a private obsession in response to the artist's lust after a young girl, Bellmer's La Poupée series - all depicting 'dolls' in various positions and erotic contortions - certainly seems to stem from  a deep objectification of the female body and, an extension of this, a mentality...

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Bite 45: Salvador Dali - The Persistence of Memory, 1931

The Persistence of Memory, 1931, oil on canvas, 24 x 33 cmThis is a scene from a place of strange, other-worldly happenings, a place of the unexpected, a place to get lost in. In visualising a dream-state or the hallucinatory vision of the mentally disturbed Dali embraces absurdity and surreality, creating an imaginary world using realist techniques.A realist use of perspective and a fine rendering of detail would often be used to ground a composition....

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Bite 44: René Magritte - Portrait of Edward James, 1937

Portrait of Edward James, 1937, oil on canvasIn Magritte's characteristic style of realist-surrealism he presents a portrait - or rather a non-portrait - as both banal and sinister. Cleverly playing on the Freudian concept of the doppelgänger - the uncanny existence of a double, often a ghostly double, who haunts its fleshly counterpart - the subject of the work seems to almost turn in on itself creating a claustophobic, haunted space even as Edward...

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Bite 43: William Henry Fox Talbot - The Open Door, 1843

The Open Door, 1843This is the birth of photography as an art form. Plate 5 from Talbot's groundbreaking photobook (one of the first ever) The Pencil of Nature - an apt descriptor for the new medium - he explained the work as an example "of the early beginnings of a new art." The first to see this potential, Talbot invented the calotype photographic process in England simultaneously with Niépce and Dageurre's invention in France. Although it...

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Bite 42: Louis Daguerre - Boulevard du Temple, c. 1838

Boulevard du Temple, c. 1838This is probably the first portrait photograph ever taken - albeit somewhat unintentionally. During a several-minute-long exposure Louis Daguerre, who is seen as a co-inventor of the photographic medium, has captured a pedestrian who has stopped to have his shoes shined. No other subject or vehicle shows up. Only this anonymous figure was still long enough to become a silhouette on the light sensitive surface of the...

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Bite 41: Joseph Nicéphore Niépce - View from the Window at Gras, 1826

View from the Window at Gras, 1826The first 'photograph'. Although controversially regarded so, Niépce's View from the Window at Gras is none-the-less widely seen as the earliest existing photographic image.The technology for the recording and fixing of light - through the invention of the camera obscura and the discovery of light sensitive silver halide - existed for many years prior to this image being created. Here Niépce brings the two discoveries...

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Don DeLillo on Writing

"Writing is a concentrated form of thinking... a young writer sees that with words he can place himself more clearly into the world. Words on a page, that's all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pressures and feelings. He learns to think about these things, to ride his own sentences into new perceptions."                                                     ...

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Bite 40: Andy Warhol - A Woman's Suicide

A Woman's Suicide, 1963, silkscreen print, installation view"There was no profound reason for doing a death series, no 'victims of their time'; there was no reason for doing it at all, just a surface reason."                                                     - Andy Warhol The subject matter here is not so much a...

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Bite 39: William Eggleston - Southern Environs of Memphis, 1969-70

Southern Environs of Memphis, from William Eggleston's Guide, 1976"Eggleston's photographs look like they were taken by a Martian who lost the ticket for his flight home and ended up working at a gun shop in a small town near Memphis. On the weekends he searches for that lost ticket - it must be somewhere - with a haphazard thoroughness that confounds established methods of investigation."                ...

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Bite 38: Peter Panyoczki - New Zealand Sheep in Manhattan Dreaming of Home, 2010

New Zealand Sheep in Manhattan Dreaming of Home, 2010, inkjet and perspex on aluminum and backlight, 150 x 150 x 65 cmThe Keeper of Sheep XXXIX The mystery of things – where is it?Why doesn't it come outTo show us at least that it's mystery?What do the river and the tree know about it?And what do I, who am no more than they, know about it?Whenever I look at things and think about what people think of them,I laugh like a brook cleanly plashing...

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Bite 37: Sam Foley - Intersection, Serpentine Ave and Canongate Rd, 2008

Intersection, Serpentine Ave and Canongate Rd, 2008, oil on canvas with projection, 200 x 118cmA car approaches. You hear the dull, steady hum. Ghostly, appearing only as light on the canvas, headlights beaming, indicator blinking as it turns, a car passes across the painting. Streetlights flicking, the scene is eerily quiet - like any suburban street after dark - the only life the bright windows of houses hinting at the domesticity within,...

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Bite 36: Ryuzo Nishida - Self-Portrait, 2004

Self-Portrait, 2004, nails and paint on board, 100 x 100 cmEach 'pixel' here making up the face is a gray or black nail driven into board. Yet despite the apparent drawbacks of Nishida's chosen mixed-media method, this self-portrait none-the-less remains remarkably commanding and highly expressive. In fact the use of nails seems somewhat appropriate to this mans expression - his eyes silently scream just as his wide mouth does - while the 'calming'...

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Bite 35: Theo Schoon - Geothermal Study No. 6, c. 1950

Geothermal Study No. 6, c. 1950Through extreme close-up, decontextualising geothermal pools from their surroundings, Schoon is able to draw an abstract beauty and symmetry out of unique but natural phenomena found in Rotorua,  New Zealand. Altogether transcending traditional tourist imagery of the twentieth century he had an obsessive purpose - to reach past the trite and commercial to the unique, the magical, the true beauty of these areas,"...

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Bite 34: Charles F. Goldie - The Widow, 1903

The Widow, 1903, oil on canvasWeighed down by the burden of her 'dieing culture', as well as by the loss of her husband, an old Maori woman with a moko crouches on the floor of a thatched whare (house). By her lies her husbands pounamu mere (club) and huia feather. She meditates on a pounamu tiki, a further emblem of her grief but also of her culture and heritage. In reverie her mind is cast back to happier days.Goldie seems to indicate that this...

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Bite 33: Roger Fenton - The Valley of the Shadow of Death, Crimea, 1855

The Valley of the Shadow of Death, Crimea, 1855 "Once he left his studio, it was impossible for the photographer to copy the painters' schema. He could not stage-manage the battle, like Uccello or Velázquez, bringing together elements which had been separate in space and time, nor could he rearrange the parts of his picture to construct a design that pleased him better.From the reality before him he could only choose that part that seemed relevant...

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Bite 32: Arthur Rothstein - Mr and Mrs A. B. on their Farm near Kersey, Colorado, 1939

Mr and Mrs A. B. on their Farm near Kersey, Colorado, 1939A farmer and his wife photographed for the Farm Security Administration by Arthur Rothstein. The purpose of the small but highly influential FSA photography program between 1935 and 1944 was to raise national awareness in the United States on the plight of the rural poor.This couple seems immensely pleased to have been chosen to be photographed and noticeably proud of their produce, which...

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Bite 31: Rachel Whiteread - House, 1993

House, 1993, concreteAs a work of art Rachel Whiteread cast in concrete the rooms of a condemned house in the East End of London (where she previously lived). The house, as 193 Grove Road, came to stand as a memorial of domesticity and the passing of time. The space once occupied by the density of life becomes literally dense, a sculptural "multi-faceted monument to the sum of all memories," as journalist Andrew Graham-Dixon puts it. The paradoxical...

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Bite 30: Käthe Kollwitz - Mother with Dead Child, 1903

Mother with Dead Child, 1903, etchingThere is no condolence here. The viewer is faced with the brutal fact of mortality - death far too soon - just as the mother depicted is. She is shown as a dark, jagged, hunched-over mass, clinging to what is left of her child, who is etched as almost angelic in comparison, with delicate features and a bony shoulder emphasising his vulnerability. In many ways the child is more present here. The overwhelming...

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Bite 29: Caravaggio - The Calling of St. Matthew, 1599-1600

The Calling of St. Matthew, 1599-1600, oil on canvas"The Calling of St. Matthew depicts five men sitting round their usual table, telling stories, gossiping, boasting of what one day they will do, counting money. The room is dimly lit. Suddenly the door is flung open. The two figures who enter are still part of the violent noise and light of the invasion. (Berenson wrote that Christ comes in like a police inspector to...

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Bite 28: Mary-Louise Browne - Font, 2009

Font, 2009, basalt   "But all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well".                                                                - St. Julian of NorwichA shallow fountain leads away from St. Patrick's Cathedral in Auckland, directly adjacent...

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Bite 27: Caspar David Friedrich - The Monk by the Sea, 1808-10

The Monk by the Sea, 1808-10, oil on canvasInsignificant before nature the small figure sits just below the horizon, visually swamped by the sea and sky before him. The 'monk', sometimes seen as the figure of the artist, appears to float on the sand. Barely grounded yet centreing the composition. Originally met with bemusement and even annoyance the work is now seen as a forerunner to abstraction, appearing almost like a Rothko if the figure is removed. Yet...

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