“The Tent” :: is apocalyse now?
Culture Mulcher
by W H Chong
4y ago
THE TENT: a mini essay Pictures, paintings and art: in contemporary practice these often do not overlap. Rick Amor is one of Australia’s premier painters of pictures: a traditional skills-based realist, with expressionist and surrealist tendencies. His exhibition of recent work includes the memorable painting “The Tent”. An elephant stands to one side of a big top, which is not in cheerful circus livery but white like a shroud. Leavening the grey monotone are dull shades of blue and streaks of terracotta. Two things struck me. The white tent is a tour de force of tonal painting, deftly evoking ..read more
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Last Words from a Master
Culture Mulcher
by W H Chong
4y ago
The last book of any author is a testament to their talent. Some, like F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon, are unfinished, unsatisfying and taken from them before they were done. Others, such as George Orwell’s 1984, are the culmination of a life’s work and perhaps unsatisfying because readers wonder what might have been with a few more years. It’s impossible to read Denis Johnson’s The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, his last collection of short fiction, without resonances of his death from liver cancer. Johnson’s breakout was a 1992 collection of short stories, Jesus’ Son, that became a well ..read more
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Is Gerhard Richter the world’s greatest living artist?
Culture Mulcher
by W H Chong
4y ago
One of the publicity quotes for the GOMA show declares that Gerhard Richter is the world’s greatest living painter. Q: Is Gerhard Richter the world’s greatest living artist? : : : A: No.1 of Six Greatest Living Artists – Vanity Fair A: Saviour of contemporary painting – Deutsche Welle A: The Top-Selling Living Artist – Wall Street Journal A: One of the most influential painters working today – MoMA A: ‘Recognised as one of the greatest living painters’ – Malcolm Turnbull On inspection, GOMA’s The Life of Images is a knockout, the first survey of Gerhard Richter in Australia. Not having seen ma ..read more
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Hobart: It’s DARK, it’s MOFO
Culture Mulcher
by W H Chong
4y ago
Hobart at night is awash with pools of red light. Building facades, boats, reflections, windows. Black hoods with red crosses — we’re in Dark Mofo. PUSSY RIOT & CATTLE KILL The program is thick and deep with allure. The hot buzz was for Pussy Riot, Paul Kelly and Mogwai — “Did you see Mogwai?’ was Sunday’s refrain. The night before a tall female in Disco Goth waved us down in the street, ‘Want tickets to Mogwai?’ Thanks, but no. Beyond music, there was artist Mike Parr’s mystery act on Bruny Island. You had to be up at 2am to catch the boat for that, and stay till 5am. The prospective aud ..read more
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John Clarke, We Need You More Than Ever
Culture Mulcher
by W H Chong
4y ago
Vicious, I know, but why isn’t it instead, who’s dead: a liar or hypocrite or spouter of shite? Who will we trust now to pull the rug, unmask the thug and deflate the smug? To call humbug. Nice and slow your straight face told how the world was bent. Your heart was gold well spent, John, we lol’d. _ JMC 1948-2017 Drawing (2013) and verse by W.H. Chong See a loving tribute from his publisher Michael Heyward.   ..read more
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O, bummer (POTUS 2017)
Culture Mulcher
by W H Chong
4y ago
FUTURE BUMMER Don’t think, we tell the kids, that bad things aren’t happening right now. That it’s all behind us and will never happen to you. Remember: There is …           NO NORMAL!, they chant right back. Something we learn in painful instalments.   ..read more
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Nine Powerpoints on John Berger
Culture Mulcher
by W H Chong
4y ago
  By W.H. Chong ONE — Berger always begun with, or eventually arrived at, love. Once he wrote, remarkably, that seeing the beloved can be recognised as love itself, even more fully realised than through sex: ‘When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match: a completeness that only the act of making love can temporarily accommodate.’ TWO — Berger’s writing is wide and deep, radical and wrought. His famous “Ways of Seeing” (1972) begins ‘Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognises before it can speak.’ He was interested in co ..read more
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Dylan’s Nobel: Pointless and Stupid:
Culture Mulcher
by W H Chong
4y ago
Of course Bob would be hugely chuffed. But largesse and recognition from the secretive gollums of Stockholm are only of use to the under-recognised. There is no sensible reason for the celebrated Philip Roth or Les Murray to keep anxious watch on their mobiles every October. And of course there is also no reason for Bob to decline the glory and $$$$ but the N-committee has confused meatballs and herring, wishfully giving a prize for a category that doesn’t exist on their list, ie Music. Dylan had a prodigious youth, producing all his seminal works by the time he was 35 with Blood on the Track ..read more
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It’s Painting, Stupid! Why Painting Will Never Die
Culture Mulcher
by W H Chong
4y ago
‘Painting is dead,’ said Paul Delaroche in 1839, a French painter ironically best known for his fateful quote. That was the year the world was introduced to the daguerreotype, the photograph as we know it. Recently the art critic for Melbourne’s and Sydney’s non-Murdoch dailies wrote: ‘Painters and curators know that painting is dead but have powerful incentives to believe that it might be revived.’ WHY PAINTING LIVES But I say, No! Painting lives! And it will outlive all its critics. Nobody asks why singers sing and tells them to stop, or criticises dancers for dancing. Or tells children to s ..read more
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DEFEND OZ LIT #2: Richard Flanagan
Culture Mulcher
by W H Chong
4y ago
Australian literature is in peril — this is not an exaggeration. The Turnbull government says that it will remove PIR (parallel import restrictions) on books, a copyright arrangement that has allowed Australia to punch well above its weight to become the14th largest publishing industry in the world, without any government subsidies.  Consumers can already buy books online from anywhere — but the government wants to take territorial rights away from our authors and publishers, even though these rights are protected in the US, the UK and Canada.  Defend books. Don’t vote for the Coalit ..read more
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