Prado, PUPS and Puerile Government

Shane Wombat with Prado pictures

G'day Petals,

Mrs Wombat and No2 daughter and self all took a jaunt to the National Gallery of Victoria t'other day to have a look at Italian masters from the Prado, Madrid.
An exhibition which contained a variety of surprises and oddly enough, parallels for this week's "Wombat droppings".

Pavi Sculptures and Children
There were in the Federation Court, sculptures.... well very colourful and big stuffed Polar Bear toys, that children of all ages were engaged by ... which was one of those odd parallels I mentioned...

Photographer with Pavi sculpture
....whimsical, one-liners and as said, the children enjoyed them but reflecting on them after viewing the Prado works a vague relationship to Australia's present social state and the religious iconography in the Prado show became apparent 

Italian Masters from the Prado, NGV
Although there was a very small sign and graphic meaning "No Photographs" on entering as my camera was in plain sight and no-one said anything .....I assumed it was mainly to deter people using flash.. which occasioned an amusing exchange...  standing next to a woman who was pointing her mobile at a work I said quietly, "I hope you're not going to use flash." "No,"  she replied as quietly, "It's turned off." "You saw the sign on the way in then?" I added,  "Of course." she deadpanned and proceeded to take her pic.
 I took few shots in the exhibition ...who want's a "scene"?

Pieta: Crespi
This work was one of my favourites. Lively paint handling, real weight of the figure of the dead Christ allied to the sense of Mary's supporting or lifting with the very expressive faces; and like others in this show an unusual composition that in this case rests on repeated squares within a subtle pyramid. Perhaps to avoid the liveliness that Baroque diagonals would have produced rather than this almost "Nature Morte."

Prado, Titian, Phillip 2
Titian is well represented and in the earlier works the influences of Bellini and the Florentine criticisms of the Venetian predilection for colour and paint handling rather than drawing as the basis of their art is very apparent.  The armor in this is beautifully handled but the portrait is almost too truthful of this arrogant, distrustful monarch and gives the work a hint of what is to come when Goya represents the Royalty of his times.

Doubting Thomas: Stom,
Matthius Stom (Stomer) presents another wonderful composition of a diamond within a circle and an assured hand.

Prado, Tiepolo
Tiepolo's son Domenico worked closely with his father and this is apparent in the "Crowning of Thorns" where the figure in the shadow on the left probably appears twice in Giambattista's "Banquet of Cleopatra"  at the NGV. Wonderful drawing again but the little work to the right "A New World" was a gem, a slice of Venetian life that perhaps signalled that had Domenico Tiepolo been born the the C20th he may well have been a Photo-Journalist.

Hugo Shaw
Then I was watching the real deal, Hugo Shaw an artist from Adelaide drawing  the people opposite him in fine fashion and a happy, willing conversationalist, too.

The NGV for those who don't know it, has a water wall behind the arch of the main entrance and I took a few shots as we were leaving....

Water Wall, NGV
A show well worth the effort of attending particularly as the works with most gravitas were not the religious pieces but the pieces like the 

Ribera: "Touch", the small Venetian Scenes by Tiepolo, and in the details of the cloth in Titian's Salome's dress and the pure exuberance and deftness of the paint handling in the late Baroque works. In contrast, the formulaic religious pieces became rather a lesson in why Monty Python humour exists...and why the monsters in Dr Who are as they are and have such resonance.... which brings us to 

WOMBAT DROPPINGS  or low-down Oz Politics.

The Palmer United Party or PUPS have been making merry with "Rabbutt-the-Hun's" excuse for a budget by inviting them into the kennel and giving them fleas. Demonstrating what an incompetent rabble these Liarbrils really were and are. 

With Our Second Biggest Miner and PUPS Leader, Clive, hogging so much of the limelight it has caused Nick "What's-my-Next-Stunt" Xenephon (SA, Right-Leaning Independent) and the "The Human Torpedo" to come down suffering Attention Seekers Deficit Syndrome. and doing whatever they can to get their faces in front of a camera and in Thorpe's case for a $400,000 fee. 

Both Mrs Wombat and I announce that we will both "come out" for a lot less... negotiations are now open. 

After years of accusing the Gillard-Rudd regimes of dysfunctional incompetence, stupidity, economic wantonness, arrogance and other sins, it should come as no surprise that was a case of "pot-calling-kettle-black-bum! "

They have turned as I always thought they would, into the very nasty, venal  incompetents they were in opposition and pathologically accused everyone else of being.

Their abject cruelty to the asylum seekers is making Australia a pariah in world affairs.

Their climate denial stance and soon to be legislated removal of Carbon Pricing with no effective Climate policy to replace it has Australia a laughing stock in the world.

Their final destruction of Australian manufacturing must have all those who take our raw materials laughing behind our backs,  particularly the Japanese, who 30 years ago were wanting this as an outcome for Australia.  

We, in their wishes were to be nothing but a hole in the ground and a source of raw food.  Now we have this rabble of a Government handing it to them and then praising their military of WW2.  

Shades of "Pig-Iron" Bob.... this mongrel lot is an embarrassment. 

(The only thing they're consistently good at)

Matthius "The Conman-of-HorseShite" Coormann has deregulated financial services so that the financial advisors DO NOT have to have the best interests of their clients at heart.

And they waste $60,000,000,000.00 on a Royal commission or two when the Commonwealth Bank has fleeced its customers of Hundreds of Millions of Dollars but this doesn't warrant investigation... guess who gets funded by CBA?

There's a FB page titled "The Worst PM Australia's Had".... of which I thought initially, that's a bit strong... but now... it's not strong enough. What is taking place is the destruction of democracy in this country being led by "The-Coots-With-Queer-Ideas-From-a-Parallel-Universe", The Institute of Public Affairs the thought-bubble tank for this rabble....Minions of Murdoch "The Ugly American" and Gina Rinehart (our Biggest Miner) and Tobacco companies.... we are in interesting times petals...

Into the Abyss...Night Movement


Cheers, Petals,
Shane