Tuesday, August 31, 2010

White scars invisible same white as flesh

Apparently coloured mosaics are out of fashion. Colour is gauche... too expressive, too emphatic, too prescriptive of one aesthetic experience imposed on the viewer. This sounds like a load of cobblers to me, but the University is paying us to rip up the Library Quadrangle with its polychromatic design by Colin McCahon and pave it again as a monochrome, so we're not complaining.

As you see, we are constructing a version of Malevich's 1918 painting Suprematist Composition - Translucent Black Capes. It is hard physical yakka sweating all day under the baking hot sun of Palmerston North, tempers are short, and the next passer-by to say "Look! A Jasper Johns!" will be the recipient of a tessera to the noggin.

We have plenty of tesserae.

15 comments:

ckc (not kc) said...

...are they allowed to look at the cover of the box?

J— said...

Step aside, Copababana!

J— said...

Copacabana. No babana nor banana.

fish said...

the next passer-by to say "Look! A Jasper Johns!" will be the recipient of a tessera to the noggin.


How embarrassing when they obviously meant Rothko.

mikey said...

Still way better than if they say "Look! Sammy Johns!"

Substance McGravitas said...

White Suprematism is offensive.

tigris said...

Malevich chauvinist.

Smut Clyde said...

I will get back to tigris with a joke about Manzoni after a few more cups of coffee.

Step aside, Copababana!
To be honest, I was only thinking of La Passeggiata degli Artisti.

Smut Clyde said...

White Suprematism is offensive.
You should have registered your objection a few months ago.

Hamish Mack said...

It's not the work I mind, it's the going blind while doing it that gets me.

tigris said...

I will get back to tigris with a joke about Manzoni after a few more cups of coffee.

And it all comes together

tigris said...

My comment, bloogger eated it!

Anyhoo, linky! Also

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Colour is gauche

Au contraire, colour is gouache...

Smut Clyde said...

I sing of a painter from Rome
Who eschewed hue and went monochrome.
He worked with white gouache
which he spread with his 'tache
all over Man Ray's metronome.

Snag said...

The color of guano.

Coincidence?

Perhaps.