Bob Georgeson, Lips, Photomontage, Private collection.
Self Administering Surrealistic Sex Machine
Bob Georgeson, Self Administering Surrealistic Sex Machine, 2007, Photomontage
I don't know if it's old age, but I was going through a cupboard the other day, and had forgot I had even made this piece. Cynics might say it's a pity you remembered at all...
Surrealism
Dusan Marek, Title unknown, 1962, Oil on aluminium, Private collection.
I cannot remember the first time I encountered surrealism or the first time I saw a surrealist painting, but I can remember in the heady stoned days of the late sixties it was hard to enter a hippy pad anywhere without seeing a Dali or Magritte poster along side of Hendrix or The Doors. The word 'surreal' was often used to describe anything that was out of the ordinary. 'Wow, that sunsets surreal man!'
I had probably seen surrealist, or 'in the style of' surrealist painting at the Art Gallery of South Australia without realising it's context. In those days there were a number of Australian artists in public collections that had been affected by the movement. Artists such as Jeffrey Smart, Ivor Francis, Eric Thake, Jacqueline Hick and Stan Ostoja-Kotkowski had all been influenced by the 'revolution' in Europe, but few of them had made a long term commitment to the surrealist aesthetic. Even though I didn't know what the art was about, I often felt as if I knew the artists, felt like they were my friends.
About this time I had a job as a Numbers Porter with South Australian Railways. My job was to meet trains as they pulled into Adelaide Train Station and record the numbers on the carriages into a ledger. Why, I never knew. It wasn't like train carriages go missing very often, and I soon learnt that except for the two interstate trains the same carriages made the same journeys day after day, month after month, year after year. I would arrive at work, write all the numbers from the previous day in the ledger, which would take around ten minutes, and then settle down to sketch or read a book.
It was here that I noticed another numbers porter reading a book on film making. His name was Denys Finney, an aspiring film maker and art enthusiast. We quickly became friends and he showed me the path to how I could become an artist, something I had never thought feasible. We had passionate discussions about art and film, and about what constituted great art. He also introduced me to the world of the European film directors including Luis Bunuel, perhaps the most 'complete' surrealist of all.
I started to study the surrealists in more depth and found myself drawn to their vision. At that time my mother was working in one of the few commercial galleries in Adelaide, and had struck up a friendship with surrealist artist Dusan Marek, who's studio lay in the Adelaide Hills. She took me to visit him on two occasions and it was these meetings that have charted a course that I have followed ever since. Dusan was a Czech immigrant who had fled to Australia in 1948. He had decided to become a surrealist at 13 years old, and remained committed to the path throughout his life. He had also worked at the Railways and was very amused by my description of my job. He used it to teach me some valuable lessons about surrealism.
"Surrealism is not just an art movement. It is a way of life, a way of thinking, and a way of viewing the world. It is about discovering the marvellous in our existence. But most importantly it is about absolute freedom of thought and expression." he said.
He was patient, not at all patronising and happy to teach me more about a subject that I was increasingly passionate about. A profound influence on my life...
The last time we met was shortly before he was to take up a teaching post in Tasmania. He said "Bob, we surrealists must stick together". He left the next day.
For the definitive essay on Dusan Marek click here...
Marilyn Monroe by Cecil Beaton
To commemorate Marilyn's birthday 1 June 1926. A truly great photograph shot at that split second where reality intersects with glamour.
Marilyn Monroe by Cecil Beaton, New York, 1956
Descending nude
My second movie! Where's the red carpet? Oh well...look on the bright side, it's only a minute long, the soundtracks groovy and it does feature June Palmer...
...mmmm
Enough of the pontification! Who really cares about the state of art? Well, I do but I am not going to let it get in the way of my primary interests! After all, what can be more endearing than a beautiful derriere and seamed stockings? And I just love the look on his face...
Bob Georgeson, ...mmmm, 2010, Photomontage
Too many curators spoil the wrath
Raoul Hausmann, The Art Critic, 1919-20, Photomontage, The Tate, London.
Regular readers would already have noticed I have 'issues' with curators, and being curated. After 45 years of looking at, studying, thinking about, and occasionally making art, I think I have a pretty good idea what work of mine should be seen, how it should be presented, and to whom. Therefore I now blog where I have control over these factors. I don't need a curator. However these days it is hard to go anywhere in the art world without seeing the result of curatorial input. Do curators add value to the art experience, or are they stifling it?
I don't want to tar all curators with the same brush. There are curators who bring scholarship and innovation to the process. One example is Simon Gregg at the Gippsland Art Gallery, who in a recent exhibition Dreamweavers showed he could draw together diverse artists across continents and decades who might not have seen the links between their work, and present it all in an intelligent fashion. He also has the capacity to write about it in a way that is easily understood. (More about this show later).
I find I am not the only person considering the curatorial dilemma at the moment. How have we reached a stage where the curator is more important than the artist? And where one can do a curatorial course without having a prerequisite understanding and knowledge of art history? Well, certainly the arts organisations have not helped in their penchant for bringing in overseas curators, directors, conductors, principles, etc. at the expense of local talent. The grass is always greener syndrome. Only trouble is these people have to waste time learning who the local talent is, and then bow to corporate sponsorship which often results in treading a very conservative path and one that can exclude anyone outside the establishment scene.
In the latest issue of Broadsheet Contemporary Visual Art + Culture Vol 41.1, Brad Buckley and John Conomos (Associate Dean & Associate Professor at the Sydney College of the Arts) have written a polemic called 'The Delinquent Curator: or how curators shafted Australian art'. In it they say:
And yet who today, among our curators, is looking, and is not strictly governed by a non-risk taking, self -congratulatory and self-perpetuating ethic of more of the same? After all, looking should be one of the cardinal points of our compass of artistic creation, exhibition and understanding...
Sadly, what we have locally is a proliferation of curators who wish to be media circus stars and celebrities, and who are lost in the contemporary art scene's aesthetic of razzmatazz and the spectacle.
No wonder many artists today, myself included, are choosing to turn their backs on the traditional gallery, museum, it's who you know, brown-nosing, artist as performer scene and exhibit in public places where artistic integrity can be maintained. Curators take note...the white cube may be suddenly empty.