Now you see it, now you don't … Antonio Dattilo-Rubbo's The Artist and The Model. Manly council digitally removed two cigarettes from the painting.
LIKE many men of his generation, the late artist Antonio Dattilo-Rubbo loved tobacco. In the dozens of self-portraits he painted before his death in 1955, he is often pictured with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
But when Manly Council decided to honour the former Manly resident with an exhibition and website, Dattilo-Rubbo's vice collided with the council's strict anti-smoking policy.
In an online news release advertising a website about the painter's life and art, one of his self-portraits - The Artist And The Model - was painstakingly altered by a member of the council's communications team. One smoking cigarette was airbrushed from the artist's mouth, a second was banished from an ashtray on the table.
The incident comes a week after France was outraged by advertisements showing the iconic French comedian Jacques Tati without his signature pipe. In posters promoting an exhibition at the Cinematheque Francaise, Tati's pipe was replaced by a toy windmill, a concession to France's strict anti-smoking laws.
Manly Council is also renowned for its anti-smoking stance. In 2004, it was the first local government area in Australia to forbid smoking at its beaches. It has also banned smoking at al fresco dining areas, sporting grounds and within 10 metres of the entrances to council buildings.
The art consultant David Hulme, who was commissioned to create the Dattilo-Rubbo website by the council-operated Manly Art Gallery and Museum as part of its 80th anniversary celebrations, said he was shocked by the intervention.
"It's ridiculous that this could happen," he said. "[Smoking] is what the artist was known for … It was not appropriate to take that cigarette out of his mouth. It was part and parcel of the man."
Yesterday the council insisted the case of the disappearing cigarettes was all a simple mistake.
A member of its management team had instructed a staff member in its communications department to remove the artwork featuring the cigarette.
Unfortunately, the instruction was misinterpreted and the staff member removed the cigarettes from the artwork instead. "Manly Council is a proud supporter of the arts and we would be opposed to any censorship - perceived or otherwise," the spokeswoman said.
Oddly, the "misinterpretation" was not spotted by the council for several months - the news release first appeared in late January. But within hours of being contacted by the Herald yesterday, the missing cigarette had reappeared in the image on the council's website.
found at: http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/spot-the-difference-council-sets-off-smoke-alarm/2009/04/22/1240079731177.html
Ride 'em in … Dylan Moran played to 65,000 people on his last tour here.
Photo: Quentin Jones
IF THERE is anyone who is unimpressed with recent advances in communication devices it is Dylan Moran. The 37-year-old Irish comedian, long disconcerted by aspects of modern living, cannot understand the current technological obsession with enhanced speed and accessibility.
"I'm amazed because it's the same stuff but quicker," he says on the eve of touring What It Is, his fourth live show in Australia. "All that's going to be at the end of the line is another bozo and you can just reach them quicker. Or they can reach you quicker.
"And they can reach you through your ear, you can wear it on your head, you can have it on your back pocket and in your bath. Just lying down [means it] takes a picture of you.
"It's the same thing, it's just going laterally now, it doesn't seem to be going forward. It's just: 'Where can we put the computer chip? Put it in the cat.' And you feel like whatever it is, there would be a queue for it. You could get some kind of electrified cow-pat and people would get in a queue to buy it."
During Moran's successful career, as an award-winning stand-up comedian, as the well-loved character Bernard Black in the hit television series Black Books and in roles in films such as Notting Hill, Shaun Of The Dead, Run Fatboy Run and coming Irish black comedy A Film With Me In It, he has regularly been described as a disgruntled, shambling miserabilist but hilarious with plenty of charm and a lot of intelligence.
The intelligence may explain Moran's general dislike of explaining his comedy, of years of being asked, "How did you get to be so funny?" and "Where do you get your ideas?" (one extra on his stand-up DVD Monster features Moran in a mock backstage interview reacting to this question).
He reckons he has, however, stopped avoiding queries about his passion for performing live. "I do, I do love it," he says.
"It took me years to realise that if I don't do it regularly, every year or so I get very odd. I start wandering around the house with a lost expression on my face opening cupboards and staring into them."
What need is satisfied by performing?
"I have no idea. To a certain extent, you know, you don't mess with the mysteries. I don't think I even want to know. It probably says something really clinically terrible about my character that I need to get up on a stage and go 'Ra ra ra' in front of people.
"Years ago I would have tried to put some spin on it and said it was just for me to know. You know: 'I can't talk about it, it's very personal.' Or say it means nothing. One extreme or another.
"But the truth is, it is all about that laugh, that feeling of release. Because I get off on it just as much as anybody who's enjoying it."
This is a good thing, as, with each new tour, his season dates extend further due to popular demand. Moran's previous Australian tour, featuring nearly 40 shows, played to more than 65,000 people.
He has been "bingeing on Australiana", finding out all the news and talking points.
"This tall-poppy syndrome is a real thing isn't it, still? That's a really big part of the culture, that if anybody seems to be getting above themselves, you cut them down to size really quick. It's very similar in Ireland. The old saying there was that it was the only place in the world where somebody would spend 20 minutes crossing a crowded room to come over and tell you you were a c---."
After the tour, Moran is keen to further his writing projects and is interested in writing a film. His most recent big-screen experience, A Film With Me In It, written by and co-starring award-winning Irish playwright Mark Doherty, he describes as the film he is "most proud of ever".
"We had no money, we were shooting in Dublin in the dark for most of it and we were using Mark's actual flat as the set. That's how little money we had. It was like we were able to do a dinner for 12 with a stock cube and a bun."
But Moran is the last to herald his film career as a burgeoning wonder.
"My film career is based on this. I get a phone call once every 18 months from some mad person who wants me to do something for less than no money and they give me about a week's notice.
"That's my film career, most of the time."
April 28, 8pm, Opera House, 9250 7777, $67.90 and May 2-5 and 14-15, 8pm, State Theatre, city, 136 100, $67.90.
Born in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Kusama has experienced hallucinations and severe obsessive thoughts since childhood, often of a suicidal nature. She claims that as a small child she suffered severe physical abuse by her mother.
Early in Kusama's career, she began covering surfaces (walls, floors, canvases, and later, household objects and naked assistants) with the polka dots that would become a trademark of her work. The vast fields of polka dots, or "infinity nets," as she called them, were taken directly from her hallucinations.
, faces, flowers) Kusama, in my opinion, best expresses her concept of the transcendental infinite - the sublime - through her installations.
Fireflies in the Water 2000 lightbulbs, water, mirror room 300 x 450 x450
Infinity Mirror Room - Phalli's Field, 1965
