Ransen's Blog

I recently made a trip to Sicily. I'm not one for monuments but I love the Pretoria Fountain (Fontana Pretoria) in Palermo. It is lovely, above all the wonderful animal heads in all four quarters... The fountain has the added attraction of having annoyed the eccliasiastical authorities. Sometimes it is called the Fountain of Shame (Fontana della Vergogna) maybe because of the naked ladies and gentlemen. I didn't take photos of those. Google will show you plenty. There is a legend that says that the nuns in the convent  next to  the fountain only came out at night so they would not see the naked ladies and gentlemen. I walked around the fountain twice to get a good look at those animal heads. And it occurred to me that the sculptors did better work than the nuns who lived next door to the fountain, and who competed to see who could whip themselves with thorn branches the most. As I saw these sculptures with my own eyes, I saw the hard sharp thorn

There is a film of some fruit in a jar by Tacita Dean... According to the Guardian's art editorial this eleven minute film is: Elegiaic. Reserved. Thoughtful. Epic. Intimate. In touch with history.  Elemental. About decay. About nostalgia. Treating contested geographical borders. Has a deep back story. About the death immanent of things. It is an editorial and I can't find the by-line. I imagine the author is too embarassed to admit to writing such tripe. It is easier to say "Thoughtful" than to think. It is easier to say "Epic" than to create. Anyway that was the last straw. I listen to arts podcasts and read reviews of art, books and films in the hope or learning about something brilliant lovely interesting new. But only 10% of what is written or said by the critics makes any sense. The rest is pompous and pointless. So I'm going on a diet from critics, the pain of the 90% cannot be offset the pleasure of the

You become a monster when you don't concentrate... A Freakonomics podcast... ...speaks of Continuous Partial Attention, never concentrating on a single thing. Willful Blindness by Margaret Hefferman...  ...explains that attention is not divisible . Buddhism has the idea of one pointedness... So when we are discussing the angle of a mechanical cut, and at the same time you are emailing a Japanese distributor about pricing, and you say "I'm listening I'm listening..." you are deluded or lying.

The first and only really original conceptual artwork was Duchamp's urinal. A "found object" as art. The next imaginative leap should have been: " The whole universe is a found object, we can appreciate that, we don't need to create other conceptual art. Nothing can beat the universe. " But that thought would not feed the art market nor the ego of the artists. So was born the idiocy of conceptual art, poor in concepts, rich in wool to pull over eyes. The upside is that many people create art ignoring the art market. John Craxton for example. And maybe you . Do it. Create it. Fuck'em all.

I've learned part of the The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám and one of the lines came to my mind as I sat on the sofa with a glass of wine balanced on the arm. " Come my little ones and fill the cup, before life's liquor in the cup runs dry. "  And the wine was nearly finished... ...and it occurred to me that the level of wine left in the glass might show how many years I have left to live. So when I was born I had a full glass. Now I don't. So I'd better get on with all those things I want to do and keep putting off. Strangely the thought was not morbid. Maybe I didn't really believe it, but certainly more than half my life has already gone. There's a Buddhist saying "Those who are mindful will never die." I personally take it to mean that if you are awake to life you'll enjoy it better. And when you die you won't know it. There is a sort of infinity there, everything you'll ever know is what you know whe