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:

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

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  2. Copacabana. No babana nor banana.

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  3. 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.

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

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  5. 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.

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

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

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

    And it all comes together

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  9. My comment, bloogger eated it!

    Anyhoo, linky! Also

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  10. Colour is gauche

    Au contraire, colour is gouache...

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  11. 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.

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  12. The color of guano.

    Coincidence?

    Perhaps.

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