tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47972641734631637572024-03-06T15:44:59.583+13:00Art, Life, TV, Etc.The low-brow and the high-mindedCheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.comBlogger313125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-91229627692980359602013-07-29T12:12:00.001+12:002013-07-29T12:12:22.918+12:00On climate changeOn climate change: the awful truth.
Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-27637533685810167722013-04-05T12:26:00.002+13:002013-04-05T13:03:28.760+13:00Landscape ValuesIn 1936, artist Rita Angus travelled from Christchurch to Cass with two fellow artists, Louise Henderson and Julia Scarvell, for ten days' painting and sketching in the mountains. Presumably they took the train, disembarking at the tiny rural station which Angus was to turn into a national icon with her painting Cass, now in the collection of the Christchurch Art Gallery. (I photographed the Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-56749073052194896542012-12-14T09:07:00.000+13:002012-12-14T09:07:00.273+13:00The cost of words
So far I owe $2.50.Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-25530730774825315892012-11-20T13:30:00.000+13:002012-11-20T14:52:43.443+13:00Hiding in plain sightSometime around the middle of the 1960s, artist Bill Sutton used to fly regularly between Christchurch and Wellington. He'd been appointed to various national art committees; this was the moment when New Zealand high cultural infrastructure for the visual arts was starting to be built. On his way to and from the meetings, he'd look out of the window of the plane, the ochres and umbers Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-81397672946075183812012-09-18T11:15:00.002+12:002012-09-18T11:16:34.539+12:00Lies I Have Told My Children
No. 2 in an occasional series.
"Mum, what's this button for?"
"That's the ejector seat."
Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-29200904806399296402012-09-17T10:33:00.000+12:002012-09-17T10:33:37.635+12:00The proper photographer
A photographer asked to take our picture yesterday. "I'm a proper photographer," he said. "Works in the public art gallery collection."
He was taking photos of Christchurch people in the ruined
city.
"Have you lived here forever?" he asked, looking down through
the view finder.
"No," we said.
He made a portrait of us in front of the ruin of Shands Emporium, a small Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-57130144483403736002012-08-21T14:19:00.001+12:002012-08-21T14:20:04.235+12:00This is educational
Every day the small guy has to fill out his homework exercise book with a description of the book he's currently reading, and do his spelling words. He's quite a good speller so is allowed to choose his own words from the dictionary: recent choices have included 'critique', 'corrupt', 'pessary', 'muscovado' and 'Freudian'.
Here's a recent homework page featuring a description of a reading book Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-48267766395231741742012-07-11T14:27:00.001+12:002012-07-11T14:27:22.133+12:00The small guy on Socrates
Socrates: Annoying.
"Mum, you know Socrates? I think he would have been really annoying because when the other philosophers said anything, he'd just go WHY.
Saying WHY to everything was what his philosophy was about. He died because they made him drink poison, and people were probably quite glad."
And people say that watching TV isn't educational.Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-52354983937260316132012-07-05T12:57:00.002+12:002012-07-05T15:04:13.265+12:00BlockedLast night I watched TV3's premiere of The Block NZ. It's a DIY home renovation reality show based on an Australian model in which four couples compete to do up dilapidated houses (or as TV3's website had it, "depilated homes"*, which makes it sound more like The GC). The first episode appeared to consist of a half-hour commercial for Bunnings.
These are the four houses the Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-68600495433660247362012-07-04T09:42:00.000+12:002012-07-05T12:58:43.039+12:00The box of lost names
Central London, 1961. Photographer: Charles W. Cushman. Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection. Via The Retronaut.
My brother and I are second-generation London migrants. We were
born in the West Country, and never lived in the capital, visiting only as
tourists; but the cultures of the East End and the streets of North London
informed our home life. It has only been recently that I Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-34533048809631049992012-06-20T15:23:00.002+12:002012-06-21T09:40:27.004+12:00Waters above, waters belowOn Sunday we visited 'Waters Above, Waters Below', an installation by artists Hannah and Aaron Beehre at the Christchurch Art Gallery's temporary premises in Madras Street. (The Gallery is closed, like half the city, for earthquake repairs: it will reopen sometime in 2013.) To find the art you skirt the edge of the shrinking central-city red-zone, and park next to hurricane fencing surrounding a Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-43863701397673376922012-05-10T14:39:00.000+12:002012-05-10T14:39:12.380+12:00Mental health services
Mental health services in Brisbane. Cheap!Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-23337258751306296412012-04-11T11:01:00.000+12:002012-04-11T22:33:06.187+12:00William McAloon, 1969-2012
I am deeply, deeply saddened to learn of the death of William McAloon, one of New Zealand's foremost curators and art historians. An old friend. As a writer, you have an imaginary close reader, a person whom, as you write, you envisage reading your writing and commenting favourably or unfavourably on your style and the development of your ideas and your means of expression. William was that Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-12549209543158189292012-04-08T10:35:00.001+12:002012-04-08T14:46:07.878+12:00The people's plinthInspired by local art teacher Henry Sunderland's instructions in The Press, to celebrate Easter this year we made bunnies out of plastic milk bottles. (Henry Sunderland is the originator of the idea of putting flowers in road cones as a commemoration of the first anniversary of the fatal 22 February Christchurch earthquake.)
The big guy screwed the rabbits on to some short lengths of wood.
ThenCheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-61951532859471317742012-02-22T15:29:00.000+13:002012-02-22T15:29:07.377+13:00River of flowersAll over the city today, to commemorate the anniversary of the Christchurch earthquake, people have been placing flowers in the tens of thousands of road cones which cordon off broken areas of the footpath or which mark particularly bad potholes in the road. It's a form of spontaneous public art.
For those unable or unwilling to attend the big public commemoration in Hagley Park earlier today,Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-51420619460214419842012-02-22T12:51:00.011+13:002012-02-22T14:23:44.466+13:00Tomorrow will be the same, but not as this is
Colin McCahon, Tomorrow will be the same but not as this is, 1958, solpah and sand on board, Collection Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu; presented by A Group of Subscribers, December, 1962
If Christchurch Art Gallery were open, at 12.51pm today I would stand in front of this painting by Colin McCahon and think about what we've lost, and what we carry forward with us.Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-329335090646261452012-01-06T10:53:00.001+13:002012-01-06T11:27:54.545+13:00"Love falls down and covers the people"I'd meant to blog this much earlier, of course; put it down to what in the local vernacular is called "quake brain", a state of mind in which things are misplaced, forgotten, fall off the back of the desk, dry up, falter, and generally slip through your fingers. Quake brain (I loathe this and other chummy cliched coinings around Christchurch's natural disaster, but it's an accurate description, Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-71826763753212376262012-01-03T10:53:00.001+13:002012-01-03T10:55:00.624+13:00Small bang theory
"If Daddy did a massive fart, and you lit it with a match, then BOOM! There'd be a new sun."
The small guy explains the formation of the universe.
(How uncouth.)Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-522074604071499202012-01-01T11:55:00.002+13:002012-01-01T16:27:29.515+13:00The Daisy Boat
On a walk to Mona Vale last year, my three-year-old daughter made a sculpture. It was a few days after the big earthquake in June, and it was the first time we'd been out for a long walk. For a while, afterwards, you need to stay close to home. Immediately after a big earthquake, when the windows have stopped rattling and the ground is still again you hold the children close, and Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-66588690181690550372011-12-31T12:41:00.000+13:002011-12-31T12:41:17.020+13:00PoutamaThat was 2011: my year in mobile phone pictures.
(With acknowledgments to Philip Matthews, whose idea this was.)
Pyne Gould Corporation Building, Cambridge Terrace, Christchurch. 13 February 2011
Oxford Terrace Baptist Church, 13 February 2011
Rose, St George's Hospital
St George's Hospital, Merivale
War Memorial, Elmwood School, 22 February 2011
Merivale, 22 February 2011Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-37091551350688074662011-10-15T15:23:00.001+13:002011-10-15T16:03:30.790+13:00Modernism and a chunky rump pieWe're just back from a family holiday on the Sunshine Coast of Australia, which, as ever, involved plenty of sea and sand, and only as much culture as could be gleaned from the shelves of the Crocodile Hunter's Australia Zoo shop.
Some characteristic cultural merch.
Unfortunately I had quite a lot of work that I needed to take with me. There were several occasions during which I lay by the Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-32552933318460175512011-09-30T08:33:00.000+13:002011-09-30T11:10:05.859+13:00The man with the ponytail"Hey! Hey!" The three-year-old, in an accusing tone, pointing out of the car window. "That man has a ponytail!"
The small guy, immensely weary, age seven, dragging his eyes up from his book. "Where?"
"There!"
"Where?"
"There! The man with the ponytail!"
"Oh, OK."
"Why does he have a ponytail?"
"Dunno."
"Do you have a ponytail?"
"Cretin. You know I don't."
"Why does that man have a Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-8584922720886604832011-09-29T14:56:00.000+13:002011-09-29T19:30:17.633+13:00Verbal restraintAs regular readers will know, one of the things I miss about being in the formal workplace (and consequently the subject of my occasional semi-wistful bloggery) is the swearing. I have no idea if other professional workplaces--accountants' offices, perhaps, or legal chambers--are as sweary as art galleries, whose denizens rival printers, mechanics and even various off-duty doctors of my Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-4525571793878316802011-09-23T13:13:00.000+12:002011-09-23T13:53:48.374+12:00Art dinners
Tintoretto, Last Supper, oil on canvas, Venice, Italy, 1594. Via The Art Writer
Over the years, I have been to a lot of art dinners. Some of these have been relaxed, stylish, enjoyable affairs: others have not. I've eaten dinner with art people after exhibition openings in cheap and cheerful Chinese restaurants where dinner is a thinly veiled excuse for terrible Karaoke performances. I've Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4797264173463163757.post-6686669323369622032011-09-17T16:21:00.001+12:002011-09-17T16:21:13.111+12:00Forgive me
At school recently, the small guy and his classmates had a go at writing poems in different styles, using models written by great modern poets. The small guy felt a particular affinity with the example he read by William Carlos Williams, and wrote this in homage.
This is just to say
I have put
a rat
in
your bed
in which
you were
probably going
to sleep
Forgive me
you said
you liked
Cheryl Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05831267597649352995noreply@blogger.com5