| EUROPE 2008 |
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24thof July 2008
Room 29 of the Centre Pompidou, Paris
The Unfinished Works of Georges Rouault
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25thof July 2008
| It is good to see that some things change but with little or no effect. Since my last visit in 2004, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa had been moved to a different area on the first floor of the Louvre (a large room adjoining the 15th Century Italian paintings and the Large scale Frenchies), in an attempt to make it more accessible to the hungry viewers, tourists, et al. My last experience with Madame Lisa consisted of being herded into a line, pushed through by visitor and security guard alike, only to miss really seeing it due to a large sunburned (complete with peeling back) American tourist, and the arms and devices of every person trying to photograph her.(see photograph below) Now, she is clearly visible to all and sundry, mounted into a roughly scumbled plaster wall, behind bullet-proof glass, secured by one permanent barrier and another makeshift barrier (unknown prescribed distance) which the hoards stand behind. I had a quick look at the painting but I think I've got more out of looking at the fine reproductions from the recent large-sized Taschen book on the artist. Just about every other painting in the Louvre could be touched if you felt so inclined to do so. As scale goes, viewing the Mona Lisa is like trying to tell the time on a wrist-watch from approximately eight metres. |
(below) 2004: peeling back tourists, loud guards shouting. Bad experience all round.
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27thof July 2008
Museums in Madrid; The Prado, Fundacion Lazaro Galdiano, Renia Sofia and San Antonio de la Florida (Goya's Pantheon)
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28thof July 2008
Left: Petris Christus' Lady of the Dry Tree at the Museo Thyssen-Borndemisza, Madrid Right: The Birth of Couper. Oil on feathers. 2007. Exhibited at Rear Window. DPAG, Otago | |
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28thof July 2008
Calle signs, Madrid
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31stof July 2008
left: video still of Messina paintings (Ecce homo and The Annunciation) at the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice
right: my version, Apparition of Love and Death. 2007. Pencil on paper. 170mm x 130mm. Private collection, Kerikeri
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1stof August 2008
left: prison cells and prison wall art; right: entrance sign for some weird occultist illuminati secret society thing, both at Doges Palace, Venice
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3rdof August 2008
Masaccio and Mussalino frescoes at the Brancacci Chapel in Santa Dell Carmine, Florence
below: detail of my catalogue The Museum of Inherent Vice, showing The Birth of Death (Under Black Light)
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5thof August 2008
Relics and Reliquaries in Florence
from left to right: part of Saint Francis of Assisi's shawl (Santa Croce); The thorns of Christ,
a piece of bone from Saint Sebastian and a fragment of garment from Saint Mary Magdalene (the cloisters at Santa Maria Novella)
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4th of August 2008
Uccello's Thebaid at the Accademia in Florence and The Law and other Inexplicable Fallacies, 2007, oil on linen
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5thof August 2008
left: Confraternity figure from the Church of San Francesco, Arezzo (home of the True Cross Cycle, centre, by Piero della Francesca)
right: my painting, Fraternity, 2005, oil on canvas, private collection, Wellington
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6thof August 2008
St Francis' vision of the flaming chariot on my shoulder.
Giotto's fresco cycle in the upper basilica of San Francesco, Assisi
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8thof August 2008
left: Constantine's Hand, Capitoline Museum, Rome
right: two ex-votos with hands
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9thof August 2008
Fra Angelico's grave in Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Rome
same again but during my last trip in 2004
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10thof August 2008
My painting, Sanctum Hill at the New Zealand Embassy, Rome
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12thof August 2008
Volkerschlachtdenkmal Memorial in Leipzig
(at bottom left: Victor Berezovsky, myself and Gerd Beck in Mueller soccer pose)
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14thof August 2008
Dessau. Left: Bauhaus. Right: Kandinsky and Klee's Masters house
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16thof August 2008
Warhols outside the Pergamon, Berlin
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