Bite 69: Jorge Macchi - Parallel Lives, 1998

Parallel Lives, 1998, two glass mirrors, 60 x 80 cm eachTwo mirrors. One cracked with a hammer and nail, the other painstakingly chiseled to be identical to the first. An abstract pattern, random and coincidental, yet carefully crafted. A unique moment facsimiled - one a reflective representation of the other cracked reflection (but which is which?). One taking moments, the other hours, to create.This is a conflation of destruction...

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Bite 68: James Rosenquist - I Love You With My Ford, 1961

I Love You With My Ford, 1961, oil on canvas, 210 x 238 cm“When I copied a 1940s spaghetti illustration, I had to ask myself, why am I doing this? I didn’t honestly know. It was just an instinct about images as pure form… in a sense the spaghetti is like an abstract expressionist painting. De Kooning loved it. He said it was sexy.”                                ...

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Bite 67: Jasper Johns - Three Flags, 1958

Three Flags, 1958, encaustic on canvas, 78 x 116 x 13 cmOne flags sits in front of another which sits in front of another; the Stars-and-Stripes in reverse perspective, flat and painterly while simultaneously sculptural (sitting out from the wall) and 'pure' appropriation. This is not the flag itself but rather the reference of a reference of the flag of the United States of America - a monument to the flag as simulacra.Where does painting cease...

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Bite 66: Ford Madox Brown - The Last of England, 1855

The Last of England, 1855, oil on panel, 83 x 75 cmA baby clutches its mother's hand. The mother in turn holds tight to her husband's. He holds his hand to his chest. Lost in anxious thought they gaze uncertainly toward their future: Australia, many months travel ahead of them. The White Cliffs of Dover, England, are behind them. They struggle to leave.Ford Madox Brown, in one of his most successful paintings, brings the small yet momentous moment...

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Bite 65: Kegan Fisher - Earthquake, 2006

Earthquake, 2006, acrylic on canvas, 213 x 152 cmChristchurch, New Zealand has been torn apart again by a devastating earthquake. This time dozens have died.  The total effect and lives lost is yet to be determined. It is, however, no doubt, New Zealand's worst disaster in over 30 years.My thoughts are completely with the people of Christchurch at the moment. I can only imagine the horror of the earth beneath your feet continually shaking...

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Bite 64: Richard Avedon - Peter Orlovsky and Allen Ginsberg, 1963

Peter Orlovsky and Allen Ginsberg, Poets, New York, December 30, 1963"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water...

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Bite 63: Duane Michals - The Illuminated Man, 1968

“How foolish of me to believe that it would be that easy. I had confused the appearance of trees and automobiles, and people with a reality itself, and believed that a photograph of these appearances to be a photograph of it. It is a melancholy truth that I will never be able to photograph it and can only fail. I am a reflection photographing other reflections within a reflection. To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.”    ...

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Bite 62: J. W. Black - Walt Whitman, c. 1860

"Whitman late in his life identified the date of this photo as between 1845 and 1850, but no one has agreed with him; Dr. Bucke guessed 1856, but most estimates have been a later date. Seeing this photo late in his life, Whitman exclaimed, "How shaggy! looks like a returned Californian, out of the mines, or Coloradoan," but he was fascinated with "the expression of benignity" that shone through, though he felt "such benignity, such sweetness, such...

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Bite 61: Shigeyuki Kihara - Sina Ma Tuna: Sina and Her Eel, 2003

Sina Ma Tuna: Sina and Her Eel, 2003In the series Vavau - Tales from ancient Samoa Shigeyuki Kihara mimics the tradition of velvet painting through photography and self-portraiture. “Where the velvet painters are notorious for portraying Pacific people from the colonial gaze, what I do is re-occupy that gaze" she says. "I come from a point of view from the insider.” The work Sina Ma Tuna: Sina and Her Eel  depicts Kihara in the role...

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Bite 60: Shigeyuki Kihara - My Samoan Girl, 2004-5

My Samoan Girl, 2004-5In a similar vein to the Fa'afafine work, My Samoan Girl also utilises a mimicry of traditional studio portraiture of the late 19th century. Colonial portraiture came in many forms but one ongoing theme in the representation of the exotic female was one of ownership. As the historian Anne Maxwell points out “[s]uch images endowed indigenous peoples with the romantic characteristics associated with renewal, while...

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Bite 59: Shigeyuki Kihara - Fa’afafine: In the Manner of A Woman, 2004-5

Fa’afafine: In the Manner of A Woman, 2004-5The colonisation of Samoa coincided almost exactly with the announcement of the invention of photography in the early 19th century. By the 1850’s photographers were travelling from Europe all over the world with anthropological aims to capture through photography a cultural ‘Other’ whom they saw as exotic and savage, bringing back the images for study and sale within a number of contexts. Over time Samoa...

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Bite 58: Barnett Newman - Broken Obelisk, 1963-9

Broken Obelisk, 1963-9, Cor-Ten steel, 750 x 319 x 319 cmThe top of a broken off obelisk 'kisses' the top of a pyramid. Both symbols from Egyptian art, they are borrowed here, combined in a kind of 'surrealist' object, becoming a monument to nothing, a monument to everything, a monument to monuments themselves. The point of meeting in the work - mathematical triangles barely touching yet one mass holding up the other - creates a sense...

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Bite 57: Andrew Wyeth - Christina's World, 1948

Christina's World, 1948, tempura on gessoed panel, 82 x 121 cmOne of the most popular works in the permanent MoMA collection (although not necessarily so highly-acclaimed among academics), Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth can be seen as somewhat against the grain of the Modernism of the period. Considered an example of 'Magic Realism', each hair and blade of grass is minutely defined and the entire scene is imbued with a dense ambiguous...

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Bite 56: Lucio Fontana - Spatial Concept: Expectations, 1959

 Spatial Concept: Expectations, 1959, synthetic polymer paint on slashed burlap, 100 x 82 cm Q: By slashing the canvas does the artist turn this painting into a sculpture?In the collection at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New Y...

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Bite 55: Jackson Pollock - Full Fathom Five, 1947

Full Fathom Five, 1947, oil on canvas with nails, buttons, key, coins, cigarettes, etc., 129 x 76 cm "Imagine a man brought up from birth in a white cell so that he has never seen anything except the growth of his own body. And then imagine that suddenly he is given some sticks and bright paints. If he were a man with an innate sense of balance and colour harmony, he would then, I think, cover the white walls of his cell as Pollock has...

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Bite 54: Piet Mondrian - Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-3

Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-3, oil on canvas, 127 x 127 cm"Art is only a substitute while the beauty of life is deficient. It will disappear in proportion, as life gains in equilibrium." - Piet MondrianStaccato beats of colour create the illusion of line and depth: The grid of New York streets, seen from above - more taxis than other cars. The bright lights of Broadway. The organised confusion of American jazz.As Robert Hughes points out, "once...

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My 'Grand Tour'

"Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,Healthy, free, the world before me,The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose."- Walt Whitman, Song of the Open RoadIn a little over a month I will be leaving New Zealand. Travelling via L.A, Las Vegas, San Diego and New York, I will base myself in London to explore all that Europe - the birth place of western art and civilisation - has to offer. This will be my Grand Tour. It is a Pilgrimage, and the art masterpieces of the world are some of my key destinations. This blog...

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Bite 53: Thomas Eakins - Max Schmitt in a Single Scull, 1871

Max Schmitt in a Single Scull, 1871, oil on canvas, 82 x 118 cm"There is so much beauty in reflections," Eakins observed, "that it is generally well worthwhile to try to get them right." Here, painting his childhood friend Max Schmitt in commemoration of a  successful championship, he certainly achieves that, portraying perfectly the Schuykill River in his native Philadelphia bathed in that specific late-afternoon sun when the world appears...

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Bite 52: George Caleb Bingham - Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, 1845

Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, 1845, oil on canvas, 74 x 93 cmA genre painting created for an urban north-eastern American audience in the mid-nineteenth century. An audience which still viewed the 'frontier' as rustic, naturally splendid, mysterious, and peopled by 'simple folk'. Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (originally titled French-Trader and Half-Breed Son, it changed when submitted to the American Art Union) encapsulates...

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Bite 51: Unknown - Unicorn in Captivity, c. 1500

Unicorn in Captivity, Netherlands, c. 1500, tapestry, 368 x 252 cmMay be part of a narrative series or a stand-alone work, Unicorn in Captivity is one of the most beautiful and complex works that exists from the Middle Ages. Little is known about it or its authorship. In the Middle Ages tapestries were one of the most costly art-forms. This particular work incorporates gold and silver gilt and is finely detailed throughout. It would...

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Bite 50: Unknown - 'New York Kouros', Greece, c. 585 BC

'New York Kouros', Greece, c. 585 BC, marble, h: 193 cm"Feet firmly planted between movement and rootedness, he simultaneously stands and walks. Crisp-cut, almond eyes, such beautifully bobbled hair patterned against the skin-smooth stone of flesh. Naked, but for that headband so deliciously tied and the choker with its knot before his neck. Muscles marks, precise, not natural but the sign of what it is to be a man. Not sexualized but archetypally...

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