Wildframe

After the announcement of the packers’ choice a week ago of television handyman Scott Cam, judges have narrowed the list of some 787 Archibald hopefuls down to just 35 finalists–sans Scott. With an annoucement only days away, now is a good time to head over to the Archibald Prize website and make your pick.

Thanks to Lauren over at the Australian Art Forum for the heads-up.

There can be no representation without a subject and there can be no abstraction without representation. All semantics aside, you cannot abstract nothing because the word nothing is just an illogicality created to explain the absence of everything. Contrary to popular belief you cannot find nothing. Nothing is, quite literally the absence of existence. Nothing is hell. As Picasso said "There is no abstract art. You must always start with something."

Unprinted photo titled Rikyu View: The philosophy of grey depicting the the Jetty’s end at Picnic Bay, Magnetic Island looking out across Cleveland Bay. Photographed on a Shen-hao HZX 4X5-IIA Field Camera, Rodenstock 150mm Sironar S @ f/22, 90sec on Polaroid 55p/n film.

Rikyu View’s punctum is the perceived ambiguity of dimension. In spatial terms the foreground jetty appears three dimensional due to the presence of perspective markers such as shadows and vanishing point clues in the timber planking.

New York Times (Andy Grundberg) – Gordon Parks, the photographer, filmmaker, writer and composer who used his prodigious, largely self-taught talents to chronicle the African-American experience and to retell his own personal history, died yesterday at his home in Manhattan. He was 93.

Read the full story by Andy Grundberg at the New York Times website.

Although I have seen ready recognition of the influence of African sculpture in Picasso’s work I have never seen any mention specifically made of Picasso’s Camera with it’s cracked lens given to him by the Italian futurist Gino Severini around 1905.

"The box camera’s cracked lens caused the facial plane in Picasso’s photo-portraits to be broken themselves, and raised slightly on one side. Attributes he would soon utilize and transpose to his early sketches and preparatory drawings for the seminal LES DEMOISELLES D’AVIGNON."