O: I am, therefore God exists.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

I am, therefore God exists.

Nicole Page-Smith, Tony Oliver Gallery, 1990,

Melbourne, Australia

Reading Rilke, when I was twenty, I realized I didn't know anything about a classical education, so I set about giving myself one. Art-school was next to useless in providing any information about the history of sculpture but I remember in our art history tutorials, my art history lecturer almost 'losing-it' because none of the six or so students had read Thomas Hardy. I found the situation interesting that someone could be so passionate about an author and consequently read almost all of his books. We were given topics for essays and encouraged to look at other University libraries, I also frequented the State Library of Victoria because it had an amazing art library, most of which was inaccessible to the public via direct access. I remember the staff being very helpful with the reference material required to access the archive but we would have to sit for a good ten to fifteen minutes, in the waiting section, looking at the international art magazines on offer, while they tried to find the book you were after. This was the time that I also came across a lot of European sculptors that I had not previously known about, for example Germaine Richier.

Germaine Richier, 1954

Photograph by Brassai

I liked studying in this library because of the enormous leather bound desks and old chairs. They also had a small selection of books available to the general public, mainly older books of European art with luscious black and white photographs, I felt seduced by the aesthetic.