Lies I Have Told My Children

Over at the Herald, Sideswipe columnist and miscellanist Ana Samways has quoted a couple of Lies I Have Told My Children.

1. If you pee in the swimming pool, red dye appears in the water around you and an alarm goes off. 
   
2. If you type in my smartphone password wrongly 10 times in a row, the phone will explode.

Useful? You're welcome.

Great spaces

I was listening the other day to a podcast of architect Guy Marriage in conversation with Lucy Orbell on Radio New Zealand's 'Arts on Sunday' programme. (Available here for a short time.) They were speaking about the architecture of the Adam Gallery, an institution which last year celebrated its tenth birthday. As they walked through the gallery, Marriage spoke about why he thinks the Adam -- designed eleven years ago by Athfield Architects -- is such a successful building.

It was an extraordinarily challenging site; a thin wedge of space between existing buildings, which incorporated an existing three storey staircase. The architects covered the staircase with black rubber, giving the Adam that tyre-shop smell I always love, and created a building with a variety of flexible gallery spaces. Very little of the building is seen from the outside, apart from the monumental blank north wall, pictured above, covered in zinc. When you enter the building, you have no idea what to expect. As Marriage walked through the gallery, describing what he saw, I recalled that sense of jaw-dropping surprise I had the first time I visited the building, at its opening party, coming through the squeeze of the front foyer gallery and turning the corner to peer over a three storey void. The grandeur of that enormous wall dropping away below the visitor is one of the great architectural experiences of New Zealand.

Here's how Guy Marriage concluded his walk-through:

"I guess people think that architects just design buildings. But my philosophy is that architects design spaces. And once we've designed the spaces then we figure out how to build the buildings that enclose the spaces. So it's very important to think about the space first. It's something as New Zealanders that we often forget. We don't have many grand spaces in New Zealand: we tend to have lots of little slices. So I really love it when we have a grand space like this that someone's taken the trouble to think about."

Julia Morison, wall drawing for 'Wall Works', Adam Art Gallery (showing lower level), 2009.

While I don't think I've ever seen an Athfield building that I didn't warm to from the outside, it seems to me that it's Athfield's use of internal space which is one of his great skills. There's a humanness to his designs, as well as frequently a sense of daring and functional grandeur. He creates spaces that people are comfortable to be in, to congregate with others and move through. I always think of the Wellington Public Library, as well as the City to Sea bridge, as a couple of his most successful spatial designs. Not only do they look beautiful, and reference the history of the place in which they stand, but they're used, happily and creatively, by many hundreds of people every day. The scale and grandeur of their designs are balanced with a concern for the way people use them and exist within them.

Guy Marriage's remarks on the paucity of grand internal spaces in New Zealand architecture got me thinking. He's absolutely right, I suspect, but there are a few. In addition to the Adam Art Gallery and Wellington Public Library, I thought the following might constitute the beginning of a list of great New Zealand architectural spaces, albeit a list rather biased towards art-related buildings and Christchurch. Each of the spaces below reveals that sense of functional grandeur which the Adam so epitomises; astounding on first encounter, yet ultimately accommodating of the human presence. I'd be interested in further suggestions.

1. The central dome gallery of the Sarjeant Art Gallery, Wanganui. 1932. Architect Donald Hosie of Edmund Anscombe and Associates.

2. The A1 Arts Lecture Theatre building at the University of Canterbury. (I don't know who the architect was.)

3. The Great Hall at Christchurch Arts Centre, 1882, architect Benjamin Mountfort.

4. Level 5 at Waikato Museum in Hamilton, 1987, architect Ivan Mercep.

5. The Britomart Project, 2008, architect Mario Madayag with Jasmax.

6. The Christchurch Town Hall auditorium, 1972, architects Miles Warren and Maurice Mahoney.

Signs to live by

Yesterday I flew to Auckland to farewell a dear friend. I think funerals are private affairs, so I'll just confine myself to saying that the commemoration was as warm, as funny, as packed with people, as surprising and yet as straightforward as befitted the intensely well-lived life being celebrated.

In moments of heightened emotion, or at times of some kind of historical import, I often find myself looking around for some kind of object or image to fix on, something that will provide an anchor point in my memory for the events of the day. Writing it in my head, I suppose, before it's even done. Significant moments always seem surrounded and heralded by signs in the physical world: equivalences, perhaps. Blame it on all the art history (I certainly do); especially those several years I spent grudgingly studying medieval iconography, whose method I still can't seem to shake off, try as I might. Often the details I look for seem like a kind of lodestone, a visual symbol from the everyday world which has the story folded up inside itself like an old map waiting to be smoothed out.

At the church yesterday I looked for that image which might contain the day, but I didn't find it in the single candlestick, nor in the stained glass windows, nor even the slides which were screened later in the church hall. I'm not sure, really, what I was looking for. A drum kit? A bull's-eye? A circle in a square on a piece of paper blowing along the road? When the service was over everyone walked out of the church and stood in the churchyard and lined the pavement. There was a heaviness, and a profound sadness, and hardly anyone was talking. Then it started to rain, and I took my scarf out of my handbag and put it over my head. When the car drew away from the church and turned down the road, the rain stopped and I put my scarf away. I thought then of the various tangi I've been to where the rain's fallen, though none's been forecast -- roimata, they call it, or tears of heaven -- and I wasn't surprised that it rained today.

Funerals offer a chance to reflect, not only on the person who has gone but on one's own life. It's a marking point, a time to take stock. I realised, sitting there, surrounded by art people, that this -- writing about art, thinking about the artworld, considering the ways art provides analogies for everyday life -- is what I've been doing for twenty years now and it's unlikely that I'll ever do anything else. It was a strange moment, but I felt comfortable. It's a worthwhile project that we're all engaged on, and that's enough.

When I got home I felt exhausted, wrung out by the travel and the sadness. I had a glass of wine and told the big guy about the day and sat down in front of the computer. I read my emails, and idly looked at the site stats for Art, Life, TV, Etc. And suddenly I saw it. The thing to remember, the thing that might tell the story. It had been here all the time: the hundreds of hits from all over the world which had come from people googling 'Julian Dashper' over the past few days.

When I wrote down a list of some of the places where he has come to mind, suddenly the world seemed a very small place. The hits reveal a community of strangers with Julian Dashper in common, people whose internet searches appear like tiny points of light being illuminated all over the globe. If any other proof were needed of the significance of the artist and the work, I think this list reveals it.

Auckland, New Zealand
London, England
Wichita, Kansas, USA
Omaha, Nebraska, USA
Berlin, Germany
Brooklyn, New York, USA
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Eugene, Oregon, USA
Mission, Kansas, USA
San Francisco, California, USA
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Seoul, Korea
Palmerston North, New Zealand
Dipton, Southland, New Zealand
San Diego, California, USA
Takaka, Nelson, New Zealand
Austin, Texas, USA
Redhill, Surrey, England
Seattle, Washington
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Christchurch, New Zealand
Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia
Lower Hutt, Wellington, New Zealand
Windsor, New South Wales, Australia
Southampton, New York, USA
Chatswood, New South Wales, Australia
Maspeth, New York, USA
Wellington, New Zealand
Jamaica, New York, USA
Versailles, Ile-de-france, France
Toronto, Canada
Sydney, Australia
Hong Kong
Syracuse, New York, USA
Buena Park, California, USA
North Shore, Auckland, New Zealand
Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Roswell, New Mexico, USA
Dunedin, New Zealand
Weston, Missouri, USA
Hilversum, the Netherlands
Lincoln, Nebraska, USA
Invercargill, New Zealand
Jeffersonville, Indiana, USA
Verl, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Camberwell, Victoria, Australia
Richmond, Virginia, USA
Dhaka, Bangladesh
Houston, Texas, USA
Gisborne, New Zealand
Attiki, Athens, Greece
Hamilton, New Zealand
Nelson, New Zealand
West Burleigh, Queensland, Australia
Tuakau, New Zealand
Montreal, Canada
Salina, Kansas, USA
Durham, North Carolina, USA
Columbia, Pennyslavania, USA

A brief list of things I learned from Julian Dashper

I was lucky enough to work with Julian Dashper several times over the years, and each time was an unforgettable experience. The most precise and exacting of artists in regards to the presentation of his work, he was also one of the most straightforward and delightful people I've ever worked with.

Over the past day, I've been thinking back over those times. Each project was characterised by a cluster of funny anecdotes (things that happened over the course of the project, as well as stories recounted by Julian about other projects). Each time I worked with Julian I went away with an increased confidence in the significance of public art galleries in bringing important work and ideas to public attention, and a series of valuable new reflections on curatorial practice and the workings of on-the-hoof art history. He was genuinely inspiring. I'll always remember a talk he gave to a bunch of high school kids about how he spent his day as an artist: he was just about mobbed afterwards by them, everyone wondering where they could sign up. While he'll be remembered chiefly by the extraordinary body of work he left behind, Julian's role as a teacher and mentor -- both formal and informal, variously of younger artists, curators, writers and public gallery staff -- shouldn't be underestimated.

As I wrote yesterday, I think the importance of Julian Dashper in shaping New Zealand's contemporary culture will become increasingly clear. It's already evident that someone of great significance has been lost to our culture.

Just for now, I want to make a brief list of some of the things I learned from him.

1. That the smallest details are worthy of consideration.
2. A different way to look at the relationship between form and content, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
3. That distance could be a strength and a source of distinction.
4. That contemporary art and popular culture aren't positioned at opposite ends of the cultural spectrum but instead run parallel to one another.
5. The evergreen coolness of Al Hunter.
6. The importance of collaboration between artists and writers.
7. That the placement of a semicolon can be of critical importance.
8. To wear my Noconas with pride.
9. That it's always all about the details.

Julian Dashper

I learned this morning of the death of Julian Dashper with great sadness. He was not only one of New Zealand's most important artists, he was also a warm-hearted, hilariously funny, and optimistic person who quietly opened the door for so many others. The New Zealand art world will be a poorer place without Julian in it, and I expect the exact nature of his significance as an artist and a thinker will become increasingly apparent in the time ahead.

Just for now, I'm looking again at this great list Julian made four or five years ago of all his favourite things, and I'm thinking of him.

(More here.)

What we don't do

The first week of the school holidays, it rained. And the baby had a cold. We were like caged lions prowling around a pen, thoroughly bored with the unchanging scene and, it must be said, with one another's company from time to time. It seemed that everything interesting the small guy thought of to do, an adult would forbid. And when an adult thought of something to do, that happened to be the exact thing that no one much fancied doing right at that moment.

But the small guy, ever resourceful, sat down and spent a couple of happy hours compiling a list of Wild and Dangerous Deeds. Here's his personal guide to the Things We Don't Do.

1. Riding a bike off a cliff.
2. Running with scissors off a cliff.
3. Microwaving an egg.
4. Jumping off a high diving tower.
5. Sleeping in a roller coaster.
6. Sleeping on a ferris wheel.
7. Saying you stink to a bully.
8. Jumping out the window.
9. Playing cricket in the street.
10. Sleeping on the windowsill.
11. Surfing in the sewer.
12. Walking on the fence.
13. Touching your nose to the hose.
14. Climbing up a tall building.
15. Jumping off the Grand Canyon.
16. Eating a fly.
17. Eating a dynamite sandwich.
18. Eating a bug.
19. Using the clothesline as a flying fox.
20. Eating a poo. [Bit desperate, this one. Just to bring the count up to the round 20.]

Quota

A few of my favourite things: some quotable lines I've come across in the past few days. (Now I need to engineer the opportunity to use them.)

1. Don't we all...

"He gets into trouble with freestanding sculpture or easy narratives using animal life, tribal figures or women’s orifices."

New Zealand's hardest-working art critic John Hurrell, on Rohan Weallans's new show 'Rogue', at Ivan Anthony.


2. The Judi Dench 'fiddler's fuck' factor

"Almost every time Dame Judi swears in a film, regardless of its category, we can expect a number of complaints."

The British Board of Film Classification, on an unprecedented trend among whingers with too much time on their hands.


3. Bruce Naumann on the kind of art he'd like to make:

Art that's “like getting hit in the face with a baseball bat. Or better, like getting hit in the back of the neck.”

4. Gilbert and George: on politics

"I'm nothing, but George is a Conservative," says ­Gilbert. "Strangely, that's completely acceptable with any taxi driver, any waiter, but not in the art world," says George. "For them, left equals good. Art equals left." Gilbert adds: "They believe in equality. We don't. We want to be different."

On having their stove removed from their flat

"We used to have a stove, but it was taken away." Why? "Because it wastes so much time, shopping and washing up, disposing of waste. We keep our brains for the more important things. We only have an electric kettle."

How they spend their time:

'Their day starts at 6am. Breakfast is in their favourite café at 6.30am; from 7am to 5pm they work, and then watch a "soothing" episode of Midsomer Murders before dinner in the same Kurdish restaurant in Dalston that they have visited nightly for 30 years. Their house is kitchenless, to save time-wasting and mess. "We cannot do any work at all," says Gilbert, "if there is even a minuscule spot of mess."'

(I will consider awarding a small chocolatey prize to the first person to email me with the name of the New Zealand public art gallery director who similarly removed the stove from his apartment, to my eternal admiration.)

Older than Elvis

The big guy said something interesting the other day. (I should stress that this event in itself isn't the point of this post: he is often quite interesting, both on and off his specialty subjects.) We were talking about the extraordinary outpouring of emotion on Twitter and in the old media about the death of Michael Jackson. I was quite surprised about it, probably because I haven't thought anything he'd sung since Billie Jean is much chop. The big guy, however, pointed out that I'm swimming against the stream of 750 million album sales, which would mean that quite a lot of people do think Michael Jackson is reasonably good.

So then I thought about the celebrity deaths which have been meaningful in some way to me.

1. Elvis 1977
2. John Lennon 1980
3. Ian Curtis 1981
4. Princess Diana 1997 (cough cough; no excuse for this really)

And of these, of course, the greatest and most significant was Elvis.

'Do you think Michael Jackson was the black Elvis?' I asked the big guy, and also put it out for consideration on Twitter: the answer from both sources was a resounding no. In a royal smackdown between the King of Rock 'n Roll and the King of Pop, 'Presley', as my father always referred to him, would take care of business on all fronts.

When I wondered aloud if the estimable Harry Hutton might be correct in his assessment that 'Michael Jackson touched the hearts of simpletons everywhere', ('No display of ass-hattery will be judged excessive in the coming days. If Blair himself read a prayer at Jackson's funeral then led the congregation in an embarrassing dance, I would hardly wince'), the big guy suggested that it was more likely to be an age thing. 'People affected by Michael Jackson's death are too young to remember Elvis's,' he said.

Comparisons, though odious, are also quite interesting as well as being good money-spinners for hack writers, and someone's bound to do a fine job pulling together all the links between Elvis and Michael Jackson: the entourages, the crazed shopping sprees, the prescription medicines, the odd relationship with food, the physical wreckage, Lisa-Marie.

Michael Jackson certainly had the comparison in mind. I came across this sad quote from his 1998 memoirs: 'The way Elvis destroyed himself interests me, because I don't ever want to walk those grounds myself.' Which is just inviting any number of sappy feature articles lambasting the cruelty of the global capitalist celebrity mincer machine and referring to butterflies broken on the wheel, candles in the wind, etc etc. (In the midst of all the emoting, however, I was pleased to hear that Bubbles the chimp is doing it easy 'listening to flute-and-guitar music' away from the media spotlight at a sanctuary in sunny Florida. Damn shame someone who cared about him couldn't have got Michael Jackson to one, as well.)

Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988. Ceramic.

In 1988 Jeff Koons made a large-scale porcelain sculpture immortalising both Michael Jackson and Bubbles, who was then a very young chimp. Interviewed by Farah Nayeri, Koons commented on Bloomberg.com this morning: 'I wanted to show Michael as a contemporary Christ figure: I wanted to give the viewer a sense of a spiritual authority. The type of adulation, the type of support that’s given to pop artists -- this was the contemporary type of support that I thought that Christ would have received in his time.'

Now that I am considerably older than Jesus, the next big birthday milestone will be the Older than Elvis birthday. I can't imagine a similar marker point at 50, the final age of Michael Jackson, but you never know.

Being serious for a moment

Bertrand Russell, a well-known serious person.

Erwin Panofsky: more the earnest type.

"All serious people seem to have a good sense of nonsense, as opposed to earnest people, who don't know what to make of nonsense. Today, there are too many earnest people in the arts and not enough serious people."

--George Rose, via 98Bowery

Very rarely have I read anything that I agree with more. In fact, having taken a few moments to review my acquaintance of the New Zealand visual artworld, I can confidently state that there is no one who does not fall neatly into one or other of these categories. (I'm wondering if I should run a little 'match up' poll, but then again it might be considered bad form. By the earnest people, at least.)

Christmas list

Yes please.

Richard Prince, Nurse Hat Chair , limited edition


No thank you.

Damien Hirst, X Levi’s X Warhol Factory Collection, a series of limited edition jeans, t-shirts and denim jackets.

Both via Art Observed.

Friday Miscellany

A few bits and pieces that have caught my eye this week.


1. Before Madonna and Posh Spice, there was ... Rita Angus?

Rita Angus, Self Portrait, 1936-37, oil on canvas. Image from The Angus Clan

Hamish Coney reviews Te Papa's 'Life and Vision' show in Idealog magazine, and decides that Rita Angus, "Christchurch's answer to Greta Garbo", produced the blueprint for post-feminist girl-power in New Zealand.


2. The poetry of the street

Exasperated by his sons' wrestling antics, essayist and blogger Martin Edmond sent them for a run around the block. On their return he asked them to write down what they saw. A great fan both of peculiar lists and the detritus of the street, the results made me laugh like a drain.


3. Vegetable man


Growing up in Christchurch in the 1980s and listening to Flying Nun bands, for my friends and I a supergroup like Pink Floyd represented the enemy; on a par for all-round crapness with REO Speedwagon, Foreigner and Emerson Lake & Palmer. Yet Syd Barrett, their early lead singer, was somehow exempt from our scorn, and after I heard that he wrote Vegetable Man, covered by the Jesus and Mary Chain, I bought the single and played it non-stop for a while. Various commentators have suggested that the song documents the beginnings of Barrett's monumental breakdown, in which he left the band, shaved off all his body hair, grew very stout and lived as a recluse for the rest of his life.

I was interested to read about an exhibition of Barrett's paintings due to open in his home town, Cambridge, next week. A report in The Independent notes that few of the paintings he produced during the last twenty five years of his life survive, due to his tendency to spend weeks on a project and then photograph the piece before burning it.


4. Table stakes

The 2008 version of the artworld's Power 100 list is out, published by ArtReview. There are four criteria, as judged by a panel which includes John Maeda from the Rhode Island School of Design, and art critic and TV presenter Matthew Collings: "genuine influence over the production of art, international weighting, art-market relevance and their contribution to the art world over the past 12 months". Unsurprisingly, Damien Hirst comes in at no.1: perhaps equally unsurprisingly, no Australasian dealer, collector or artist appears on the list.

Five on Friday: Manet's Olympia

Of course, Manet himself was inspired by the Venus of Urbino, but there's no excuse for any of this...


Mel Ramos, Manet's Olympia 1972


Paul Spooner's automata, from The Southern Arizona Chapter of the arizona designer craftsmen


Susan Herbert, After Manet II; Olympia (detail)


Archemedes, Manet's Olympia Found in Translation, from Worth1000


Rosalind Trigg, After Manet's Olympia (Borzoi), from nobledogs.com

The Last of England

English words I had no use for after 1979.

1. Aniseed balls.
2. Lollipop lady.
3. Weir.
4. Abbatoir.
5. Milk float.
6. Belisha beacon.
7. Washing-up bowl.
8. Nil-all draw.
9. Pelican crossing.
10. Third division.
11. Pier attractions.
12. Copse.
13. Viennese fancy.
14. Walnut whip.
15. Water diviner.
16. Plimsolls.
17. Radiator.
18. Ace.
19. P.E. kit.
20. Leylines.
21. Lean-to.

22. Allotment.

23. Scullery.

24. Chukka boots.

25. Whelks.

Trust the brush

Last week, Art, Life, TV, Etc. ran a survey into which visual art professions are the most trusted. The results are in, and readers, there's some shocks in store.

Firstly, some longstanding prejudices were once again confirmed. The closer to the money, the deeper the snouts in the trough: nobody has much time at all for auctioneers, who came a resounding first in the dodgy stakes. Art dealers and critics, you felt, were much of a muchness; both predictably, but not spectacularly, dishonest. (Interestingly, someone identifying their own profession as art dealer rated 'critic' as the most dishonest of the art jobs; but they rated 'dealer' as the second most dishonest. And I guess they should know.)

Art curators probably received the greatest spread of responses, spanning the gamut of dirty to clean, which fits entirely with my own experience of them. Curators are tough on themselves, though; they were more likely to rate their own kind as dodgy than any other profession. By contrast, painters were more likely than any other profession to rate themselves as the most honest. I'm not entirely sure what to make of this, but am reminded of Mahatma Gandhi's useful exhortation to never trust anyone who first advises you to trust them.

The chief surprises came in your ranking of artists. From my own experience, I would rate sculptors as the most fundamentally honest of artists -- something to do with truth to materials, in a Bauhaus sort of way. Sculptors know how physical things work, and how much you can fake it before the whole edifice falls over. (They are also very good at putting up shelves, emergency plumbing, and home renovations; if you're thinking of marrying an artist, a sculptor beats every other category hands-down. Stay well clear of painters. You will save thousands on tradesmen's bills.) But that's not how you saw it, at all.

Sculptors reached a miserable third in the survey, more honest in your opinion than collectors and conceptual artists, but not by much. Far more honest than sculptors, in your opinion, were art installers (really? have you ever met any?). Painters topped the list as New Zealand's most honest art profession (but as I say, I am rather suspicious of the rampant self-interest displayed in the voting).

The real surprise came in your ranking of new media artists as the most clearly dodgy practitioners of any art medium, by a very, very long chalk. Why? Was it the awful sight of Sean "Jackass" Kerr lighting his own farts at the Physics Room recently? (Actually, I'm not entirely sure if it was the artist's own bottom being filmed, but on balance of evidence I suspect it was. Happy to be corrected on this, as ever.) I am completely at a loss to explain this result...

Vote early, vote often

One last quickie today: if you haven't already taken last Friday's survey into which are the most trustworthy artworld professions (and a surprisingly large number of you already have -- really!), you can click the link below.

Results posted here tomorrow.

It's not actually coming out as I expected...

Click Here to take survey

Friday Flash: Who do you trust, artworld?

A couple of days ago, the results of yet another asinine survey were released, filling up that day's soft copy sinkhole in the newspapers. Taking time out for a moment from mailing me plastic keys and literature about "Prizes I may already have WON!!!", the Reader's Digest surveyed New Zealanders' opinions of the trustworthiness both of prominent individuals and professions.

I'm sure I wasn't alone in noticing that there was no one from the visual arts on the trustworthy list (although there were literary types like Margaret Mahy (#2) and -- pushing it a bit -- Nicky Hager (#61), as well as an opera singer or two). Nor did any job remotely connected to the visual arts feature in the top 40 most trusted professions.

Uncertain as to whether this might be due to the generally low public profile of the visual arts as a career choice, or a general perception of the artworld as a den of vice and inequity so far below that even of sex workers, psychics, telemarketers and politicians that it fell off the bottom of the list, I thought it might be instructive to run my own survey and see which art profession is New Zealand's most trusted.

Will auctioneers outbid gallerists? Are conceptual artists fundamentally more honest than painters? Do art curators speak truth to power, or are they making it all up? Make your point of view count.

Click Here to take survey

A highly scientific analysis of results posted here in a week or so.

Critical care

Tracey Moffat, Fourth #1, 2001, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery. A truly fantastic work, and not the subject of a stiff review on eyeCONTACT.

Over at eyeCONTACT, New Zealand's hardest-working art reviewer John Hurrell's been writing up a storm lately. He's been calling it how he sees it; "The venue is not the sort of venue I take seriously. Too small, usually too much work closely hung, often part of a framing business and a lot of undersized and mediocre work. The type of gallery commonly found in Parnell." Take that! And elsewhere: "despite all that work... the results invariably look gross. Clunky, mixed with a dreary civic narrative." Ouch, etc. But as John says in his site introduction, eyeCONTACT is "about direct talk, perhaps two people speaking face to face, one of them asserting an unpopular position and staring down the opposition."

I would imagine he's going to need to do a fair bit of staring down after those recent reviews.

Something I've particularly enjoyed are John's musings on how an artist might have made his work more "intriguing". "If C---’s paintings were a lot bigger, maybe vertically bifurcated with conventional paint used in one of the halves ... Perhaps they need extension of surface and complexity of composition?" But then, perhaps wisely, John veers away from finishing the work for the artist: "I’m thinking out loud here (and starting to burble). He’d have to test the options."

I was reminded of this yesterday when filling out the Massey Arts Journalism survey at the behest of Bestof3. (Only a few little tweaks to the truth to make myself sound more impressive -- blogging does count as arts journalism, doesn't it?) One of the questions was whether you believed it was ever acceptable for a critic to advise an artist on how to make their work. Well, it depends on who the critic is -- and the artist -- but there wasn't a box to tick for that. Another one was whether you think it's acceptable for a critic to exhibit their own work. I ticked yes, thinking of Rita Angus's point of view (discussed recently by Artandmylife) that only practitioners are qualified to criticise another artist's work (no box for that, either). Actually I don't think it matters what a critic's day job is, as long as they can write well and have something to say. John Hurrell's eyeCONTACT scores on both counts.

I have been on the receiving end of some stiff reviews myself over the years (luckily none of them from Mr. Hurrell). Some of them would strip paint. Of course, at those moments I have done what everyone does when confronted by negative criticism: 1. Laughed and said it didn't worry me; 2. Made offensive and filthy remarks about the reviewer's intellect, personal appearance, and dress sense. And felt a bit better. I understand Colin McCahon had a list -- an actual, handwritten, itemised list of critics and other people who'd done him bad turns -- headed 'Hate List'. He kept it for decades.

At a book launch, I once met a critic who'd given me a shite review about 15 years previously. Pretending to be mature and nonchalant, and like it had just popped into my mind, I laughingly quoted the particularly choice line which was still burned into my memory like a plasma screen left on pause too long. He looked a bit shifty. "Did I really write that?" he said. Chuckled, and changed the subject, and disappeared off to the drinks table, and that was it. I felt vaguely disappointed, but I'm not entirely sure why. Well, clearly it was more important to me than to him: maybe that was the problem. Perhaps we want our critics to care...

Most artists I know pretend not to read their reviews. There's nothing worse than being asked by someone else what you think of a terrible review of your own work. Best to pretend that it didn't even enter your radar. (And then add the reviewer's name to your own handwritten list...)