Who is Martin Davies?
Well said, and how refreshing!
(But how the f..k did he manage to get published in the SMH with all those typos!)
I do wonder if he caught Bettina the Ham on a recent Q&A trotting out that stale old cupids-will-once-more-be covered joke to a gaggle of nodding automatons.
Haw haw. Seems original ideas and critical thought are at such a premium that celebrity libertarians are having to resort to stand up comedy to conceal their intellectual vacuity.
But such tactics are mere fig leaves over the sad fact that it is me/myself/I - not the idea - that seems to matter most these days.
So if the Little Boy Lost artist is ripping off Ron Mueck, does that mean that Mueck is ripping off Duane Hanson? Or has Martin Davies not heard of him?
Gosh Martin I think God must be really pissed, after all didn't S/He
have the prototype for the human form. I wouldn't be surprised if a flood or two were to head our way. I mean God is generous no doubt given us the universe and all to hang out in but I reckon there are limits. How many hundreds of years have mere mortals been copying Her/His inventions. Get real Martin this is bigger than even Mr Muek's bloated copies!
I don't think this necessarily follows, MR. Aren't you referring to what is really just an uncontentious shared participation in a (hyper-realist) genre (Patricia Piccinini and Ricky Swallow being other local participants)?
Shouldn’t a logical distinction be made between participation in an art movement or genre and within-genre 'rip-offs" of form, concept, scale, media, intention, etc?
Original aesthetic expression is possible within the parameters of genre, but I do not believe this is the case here.
Duane Hanson explored new social realism and exploited new media to express mundane, poignant humanity.
Mueck's work genuinely moves at a profound psychological level.
Trefry's 'Little Boy Lost' reaches the dizzying aesthetic heights of flying ducks over a mantelpiece and displays the technical mastery of a Barbie doll.
Trefry is a model-maker at the Canal Road Film Centre. He is, in terms of his status as a 'sculptor', a mere hobbyist. If a set-builder from the Australian Opera, say, submitted some packing crate rubbish reconstituted into something vaguely resembling Rosalie Gascoigne's magnificently resolved abstract works into next year's SBTS and passed it off as original, how should it be critically interpreted and received?
The issue of plagiarism clearly occupies the foreground for Martin Davies, who makes no mention of the recent pettifogging brouhaha over Trefry's LBL being in the buff. One can only admire his sense of priorities. If not plagiaristic, the work is a triumph of sentimental, populist kitsch, with its subsequent cladding merely adding to the whole absurdist enterprise.
I would submit that Trefry's piece is also, given the zeitgeist, sensationalist and gratuitous in the same manner as last year's Art Monthly cover by Polixeni Papatrou (http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/
fullcomment/archive/2008/07/23/paul-rapoport-on-
nude-children-in-aussie-art-kids-need-protection-
but-art-isn-t-porn.aspx), a crude point-scoring exercise that as an HSC offering would not have made the shortlist for Art Express.
Despite such uncritical lapses, Sculpture by the Sea is generally pretty satisfying. One thing I would say to Mr Davies, however, is that while 91 year-old May Barrie's Granite Monolith was not a particularly new idea, it was at least sincere, if not heroic.
"Trefry is a model-maker at the Canal Road Film Centre. He is, in terms of his status as a 'sculptor', a mere hobbyist."
Australian-born and London-based artist Ron Mueck is a is a former television and film model maker with no formal art training.
"Mueck's work genuinely moves at a profound psychological level."
Not for me, I find it the 3D equivalent of an Anne Geddes photo - all surface, no content.
Haven't seen sculpture by the sea but... I use to look forward to Friday's smh metro supplement and the art reviews. And then slowly but surely it deteriorated to the point where it's less than half a page of descriptions, not actual reviews. All the smh supplements have gone to hell in a handbasket.
I don't mean to denigrate anyone's genuine creative achievement but can we draw the line at plagiarism? My point was not to compare art trainings (Mueck, by the way, had plenty of technical training – essentially all an artist needs and a whole heap more than many artists receive on average) but to make a distinction between an established artist's dedicated realization of an original aesthetic idea (whether one likes it or not is immaterial), and "hey, why don't I do an oversized, distressed, naked little boy just like a Ron Mueck and enter it in a local art prize!" by a Sunday-painter with no CV who has located a ready-made formula in another artist’s oeuvre.
Mueck, furthermore (so far as I’m aware), does not install his expressions of human vunerability and helplessness in situ to make his point.
It is intriguing that Trefry’s doll’s fiberglass genitalia were sought to be clothed, as if it were a real child. Pedophilia is not about dolls nor even about genitalia per se but is about real live children.
Sticking the doll in duds was just a piece of political pragmatism to stave off tedious controversy in favour of a passing irritation, and does not even rate as censorship. Trefry knew exactly what he was doing.
If MR finds Mueck as superficial as Anne Geddes, how does he rate the work of Edmund Capon’s new best friend, photographer Bill Henson, who prefers to pose real, naked, vulnerable children in order to make a wily ex post facto point about the vulnerability of adolescence?
Sometimes it's just nice to have a little chat about art.
Edmund Capon is a world class tosser, not sure if Bill Henson is really his best friend, I presume red factor is just putting on the 'pompous but witty codger' act. Bill Henson is fine with me, he's a sincere and original artist who makes beautiful and compelling work. I recall a bizarre hatchet job on him in this very blog a year or so back, with lurid suggestions of what can be seen in the shadow areas of his photos when lightened in photoshop.
The post in question was not a "hatchet job" but a rather eccentric [and admittedly fringe take] on Henson's work. It was published here in the interests of promoting debate. - Art Life Management
Strange... "beautiful and compelling" are etched in my brain as the overdrawn cliches favoured by Kapellmeister Capon to spruik art inherently incapable of enlivening itself (not mentioning any names).
Even the chronically obsequious Sebastien Smee had reservations about "I Blame Duchamp"...
http://www.themonthly.com.au/boo...uchampquot-
2016
For heaven's sake, MR, what is wrong with critical debate?
Oh, ply me with that sweet scholar Barry Pearce anytime over the Talking Ed.
Commenting by HaloScan
