da Scriffles

Matisse: Drawing Room - more than an afternoon gallery stroll

"Old Masters" - do people call the Impressionists-Expressionists-Surrealists old masters?

The phrase probably belongs to Rebrandts and Renaissance artists but the reason I think of Matisse as an old master is not because of his place in art history or his age or his talent.

The first time I saw photographs of Matisse I was dumbfounded by his appearance - he didn't look like a radical artist that he was. He revolutionized the use of colour and line, composition and shape. He was a man of beautiful vision. But he looked like a banker. I guess he was a banker of ideas.

This realisation gave me heart because I realized then that artists do not have to be "extraordinary" - their work is extraordinary. They may be ordinary people but they see the world differently.

What I find interesting in this exhibition is Matisse's use of charcoal - rather than pencil. Every artist is born to work in particular mediums. I find his simple line work in pencil a little wonky but when he picks up charcoal it all comes to life. Pencil is so starkly unforgiving. Of course, Matisse's pencil drawings are elegant but his charcoals showcase his talent - see the nudes.

We all walk around with a bucket over our heads to hide ourselves from the world and to keep the world out. But sometimes we peep when a writer or an artist says: "Look, look at this!" I have developed a theory that some of the people society labels as crazy-mad actually see the world as it is - they just can't close their minds.

I stood in front of Matisse's large canvas of a woman lying with a bull and thought: "What would his friends (who weren't artists) have thought of this?"

Artists throw away the bucket. It is not possible to walk around with a completely open mind. But if you never peep then there is no "innovative thinking" no real "progress" no real "appreciation" - no wonderment.

This is why Queensland's art galleries are so, so important. Children stake a claim in this place by sticking their dots in the spotty room, by building art from trash to hang in the gallery, by engineering white lego structures, drawing, designing patterns on computers... They own the gallery as a space of wonderment. Free wonderment! Wonderment should be free. Fly, fly, fly and be free... spots on the ceiling... spots on the piano... giggles... with dad... with mum... with friends.

The Gallery of Modern Art may only be five years old but it extends the Queensland Art Gallery's extraordinary efforts to lay the foundations for a Matisse to rise in Brisbane. Who knows what lights switch on in the brains of all those beautiful youngsters who place a dot in the spotty room or stroll through the Pip & Pop Show. Thank God for small wonders!

If you have an open mind, you might even stop in The Drawing Room, sit down at an easel, pick up a pencil and put yourself in the shoes of a banker of ideas.

Here are my entries in the competition to win a trip to Paris - you enter a random draw by emailing your entry on the tablets provided.

As a kid, I caught the bus on steamy Brisbane summer days with my grandmother. Back then no buses had air-con and by the time you got into the city your clothes stuck to you and you stuck to the seats. Back then, my grandmother made me stand for adults. 

I caught the bus the other day and school girls from Brisbane State High and Kelvin Grove sat chatting pretending not to see their standing elders. Traditions fade but memories don't.

The Kerri Craig Emporium in the beautiful Brisbane Arcade is a must for fossicking - especially around Christmas time and particularly when the Arcade holds its annual market with little stalls in the corridor from one end to the other.

It's great for anyone who collects fabric and trims and creative inspirations - or new, leather shoes for $10.

I found the heart fabric on sale at Sewco at Mt Gravatt's Big Top - a the January sale with 30 percent off. That's where I bought the pattern some time ago.

The heart buttons I bought three years ago in Grafton, on my way home from Christmas in Pearl Beach. 

So I mixed and matched everything to come up with this birthday gift for my niece. Not for sale. Sewing is very much a brain tease and a dexterity test. But it's a pleasure when you have materials to play with at hand. 

The other shop in the city I like is the delectable sweets store in the Myer Centre - I think it's called Chocolate Boulevard. They sell liquorice sherberts, liquorice of all kinds and Tiny Tots. 

I often feel like a character out of a Jane Austen novel - rarely the heroine these days.

I know my character flaws and over the years I have tried very hard to be the "good", do the "right". If I were a character in a Charles Dickens' novel I would be the one who never got away with anything and was always required to "be good".

My belief is that life is not about actual "right". It's not about actual "good" because these are relative - you can be right all the time if you hang out with people who think like you do. You can all be wrong together. Just think of the climate change debate. Just look at the political reporting about the Labor leadership and Prime Ministership of Julia Gillard.

All the fuss over who said and who did what to whom boils down to nothing but hot air. I guess if you want to be remembered do something worthwhile, say something worthwhile. 

Do you think that Alexander The Great should be considered "great" just because he conquered the "known" world? Maybe. But it didn't last long - well, he died so he didn't have time to do anything, so I guess he's great. Does anyone know what benefits flowed from this "great" acheivement? So he used elephants! But he did add to the sum total of knowledge at the time and probably opened up new trade routes. You probably can find Greek pottery in India thanks to Alexander. Many a mere ordinary mouse appears to think themselves an Alexander these days.

I fear that today we don't examine this idea of "worthwhile" too much unless it applies to us personally. I won't be around when the Torres Strait Islands sink beneath the waves and the stars go black so I don't care. How many times have I heard a similar refrain? 

For some people, worthwhile is bringing up a family, for others it is cooking food for others, or teaching. It's all cool and awesome in my book. It's "great"! 

Maybe worthwhile is as simple as peace of mind, the ability to turn the other cheek and show compassion. That's not easy. The ABC recently screened a series by Jimmy McGovern called The Accused - you should catch it if you can. It is crazy amazing and awesome!

There's a norm and you've got to find it and conform otherwise ... I think this is the part in the Bible which refers to "the meek". The meek shall inherit the Earth, not the powerful, because it takes immense (great) strength to be meek.

Try not exploding over dinner with someone you have known forever who obviously has an axe to grind but does not say a word in order to apply the pressure - there's Dickensian bile.

If you manage to show compassion, or do something worthwhile,  six out of 10 times (that is a passing mark) people still tend to only count the four times you didn't turn the other cheek. Fat people must walk the plank along with old people, poor people, people of different races ... the list could go on depending on who you meet. 

Legislate all you like to stamp out discrimination but the Dickensian Truth of Humanity and the Darwinian Theories will prevail. 

Sydney University's Professor Paul Griffiths spoke at last year's Happiness Conference in Brisbane about Darwin's theory of Group Selection - he tried to explain how altruism flourishes in society.

Google this topic and all you get are academic/scientific abstracts - no wonder this kind of thinking does not pass into general knowledge. I can't think that a busy teacher would have time to read this stuff in a world saturated with information.

Prof Griffiths told the 2011 conference that Darwin's theory of Group Selection had been discredited but was again gaining credibility. A successful society co-operates. FACT.

So even though it appears that selfishness prevails in our society there are enough altruistic individuals in our midst to dissipate the selfishness. As altruism flourishes in one group, individuals break away to move to another group to seed the process again. Eventually, selfish groups should become extinct because they fail. See Libya, Syria... despotic regimes. 

The more I blog, the more I write, the more I am in awe of great writers like Charles Dickens who build the truth of the world in words. If I could have dinner with anyone alive or dead it would be Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin.

If only Charles Dickens were alive to provide the commentary on our rapidly transforming world today! Recognizing a Dickensian moment is possible but putting it down on paper with panache - that's something else.

Define "good", "worthwhile", "great", "awesome". Define "right". Then take your self-interest out of the equation and redefine it. Who says there is nothing left to explore?

A song will long outlive a sermon in human memory - it's true. A poem, a saying, a line of a great play, a great philosophic thought, anything that reveals the spark of humanity.

Politics very rarely lights the darkness. Athenian democracy shone a light so bright that the Greeks dined on it until the 21st Century. Talk about degustation!

Civilizations are built on songs, stories, murals, pottery, paintings - why exactly do you think we cling to these? Identity. Otherwise, why don't we just have a big clean up and just throw all this clutter out?

Perhaps we should turn the Queensland Art Gallery into a train station? Let us make the State Library into a creche and gym for the aspirational public servants who have tenure. And, just to be fair, let us excise the Queensland Museum from Queensland, Australia, and turn it into a refugee prison. That will remind us that we are a tiny part of a bigger world.

Human beings cling to the relics of their history - and build their stories upon these histories because it creates an order, an identity, a place to belong. It's called culture.

When I wrote for the state newspaper on the arts, I had to on occasion write a story questioning the value of the arts - usually in response to a similar story on another media outlet. There would be this outcry about profligate governments wasting public monies on "art" that no one ever watched, visited or heard. 

And you know, they do have a point. I came to this conclusion on Saturday as I listened to a talk at The Edge (State Library). 

Horst Hortner gave a free lecture called Converging Realities, kind of on the intersection between art and science. He founded a venture called Ars Electronica - and it is astounding in many ways.

For one, the centre is 75 percent funded by the City of Linz and 25 percent funded by surrounding regional governments. Secondly, Ars Electronica's artworks tour the world to acclaim. 

I was gobsmacked as Hortner ran through examples of new media art created for clients such as SAP, Seimens, Nokia. You think classical ballet, or classical music is passe? Think again! 

Using multiple cameras, something like 70 microphones, a live orchestra, a live dancer and computer-generated real-time images slapped on a large screen, they turn The Rite of Spring on its head. (Just as Nijinki and Stravinsky did in their own times.)

Watch it... and try to keep your mouth closed.

Watch Apparition.

They created a portrait of a business flow for SAP using flowing ones and zeros, computer-generated creatures and a river of water that traveled up to a visitor's centre in a lift with you. 

So the question the talk left in my brain was: "How come Australia can't produce something similar for all the millions spent by the Australia Council, all the state arts and film bodies. Why?" I know that artists and companies dream of it. The Boy From Oz? Sir Robert Helpmann? Nick Cave? But government didn't have the insight to identify the "IT" factor. These artists and producers went out and made their dreams come true.

Tim Winton, Peter Carey, J.M.Coetzee are some of the writers who have won the Queensland Literary Award over the years. Our new Premier scrapped the $244,475 awards today. I have to say, I don't agree with his decision. It's a paltry sum to give writers something to hope for. He spent $3.2B on the Clem 7 tunnel which Brisbane people refuse to patronize. Is that taxpayers' money well spent?

The Renaissance followed The Dark Ages. The Enlightenment followed despotism.

I guess we have to wait a little longer for an Australian renaissance. The inability to pick the "IT" factor doesn't mean you can't fund "it" when it doesn't yet have caps.

I wish I wrote down how many people Ars Electronica employs ...

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To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking. - Johann von Goethe

Defamation Tute: JR 212

My old uni notes (20 years old)

* Unlawful to publish defamatory matter unless it is protected, justified or excused by law.

Need proof of:

• publication

• it was defamatory matter

• no defences - protected, justification or excuse

"Liar" "Cheat" "Thief" "Coward" "Murderer"

I found a suitcase of old uni notes in the garage all dusty but readable.

The last time I did a "Law for Journalists" course - around 2002-2003 I think - the law had not changed. High Distinction too.

All the amateur publishers - for that's what most everyone is on the web in these days of social media - don't know anything about all this. That' why the mainstream publishers cry in their soup at night because there's nothing better than the thrill of pushing that envelop to the edge. A lot of what is published these days anywhere is careening down a chasm.

And the law - on paper hasn't changed - all the cases still stand. But you wouldn't think so watching what's been happening in our society with the Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and his crew calling the Prime Minister Julia Gillard a liar all the time, for example.

Interesting really. As if people in real life don't have to compromise, as if circumstances don't change, as if you don't change with the circumstances.

Reading these old notes I realised that I hadn't changed with the circumstances because the stuff of these notes is still what I believe. And reading my old Ancient History tute papers I see that politics hasn't changed at all either.

Tutorial No 5: The Alkmeonidai and Marathon: What was the significance of the signal at Marathon in the context of Athenian politics in the early 5th Century BC?

A record made by Herodotus of a shield signal to the Persian invading fleet of Darius was made probably by members of a pro-Persian force - possibly a respected Athenian family, the Alkmeonids. Lot of possibles there. No defamation laws. No defences.

Recorded in stone. Were the Alkmeonids defamed? They apparently did not believe that Athens could beat the Persians so they wanted to be on the winning side. Does all this sound familar at all?

I think that Arts students and generalists - as opposed to engineers, librarians and specialists - do get a better "education". Pity we don't rule the world. ;)

"Capacity is at the forefront of public transport challenges in Australasia" _ Chris Hale, Civil Engineering Office UQ (The Australian Planner: New Approaches to Strategic Urban Transport Assessment)

I often doubt the sanity of "planners" behind our transport networks as I stand in a packed bus on a jammed busway and watch the cars with one occupant move faster.

But since reading the soul searching of urban planners in the Australian Planner I see that it may not be their fault - entirely.

They are just as frustrated about the mess that some might call a network or even a configuration.

In fact, urban planners look down the track and worry about the "oil vulnerability" of our auto-reliant cities - particularly of low socio-economic Australians forced to live on city fringes and in regions.

Some insane scenarios are being played out without anyone questioning the sanity - or so I thought.

I mean regional Australians commute for hours to work in cities because there are no jobs where they live and they can't afford to live in cities - what the? It's all in ABS stats if you care to look.

You might think that petrol prices are high but actually the reason why 7.5 percent of households have two or more cars is because petrol is still relatively cheap.

Households actually minimize travel costs by owning two cars - rather than reducing the amount of driving.

"Our continued dependance on cheap oil and its products has the potential to render our society vulnerable when demand exceeds supply," write three University of Queensland academics in one article. (Oil Vulnerability: The Effect on non-metropolitan areas and master planned estates in SEQ 2001-2006).

The Queensland Government forecast for the peak and decline of global oil supplies is 2013 - next year.

Other accepted studies say it peaked in 2006. And another quoted study says it will happen no later than 2020.

Australia's outlay on oil imports adds more than $9.3B to Australia's current account deficit (2008-2009) - and that figure's going to hit $25B by 2015. So has anyone asked yet what exactly happens if - when - the price climbs because of oil shorages?

The Australian Planner - a subscription trade magazine published by the Planning Institute of Australia - is pretty much an academic journal, so I don't believe all the soul searching ever reaches the light of day in a public arena.

And I can't see many politicians (apart from Christine Milne) lying awake worrying - considering they have limos and credit cards at their disposal.

Volume 47, Number 4, of the Planning Institute of Australia's professional journal is dedicated to Cities and Oil Vulnerability. But what's more interesting is that the Queensland Government - under Anna Bligh - provided a grant to help produce the issue and fund the establishment of an Australian urban oil vulnerability research network.

And I am wondering where the change of government leaves them now. I recently drove through the Clem 7 tunnel (read bankrupt tollway) to skip the morning traffic to find that I had the place almost to myself while overhead traffic was standing still.

You know I don't think that the Australian film industry should think too badly of itself as a failure - when put in context - I think they do much better than transport planners do.

And they don't even have to make a profit to survive - they probably get public service bonuses, as well as credit cards.

I know you will think me odd or at least two-face when I admit to driving rather than taking a bus more often than not because it's cheaper and faster.

I was aghast to find I could drive and park for the day at Kelvin Grove for about $10 all up probably, compared to $15 catching two buses - and being stuck in massive crowds and traffic jams.

I would say our mass transit network is a complete failure. What do you say?

You be the DJ

Play the tracks at different paces