Author Archive: Peter Jakobsen
The Fine Arts Party
A Fine Arts Party (Pieter de Hooch)
It being Friday 13th, The Varnished Culture will break from its traditional disdain of party-politics and weigh-in to the current imbroglio. There’s a federal election in Australia set for 2 July 2016, when we will have to watch the skies (it being World UFO Day as well). Recently, P suggested, innocently, that only a terrorist could enthusiastically, seriously, cast a vote for the Greens. Whereupon my two very reasonable and intelligent interlocutors informed me that they would be likely to vote for the Greens. (I am certain they are not terrorists). So ended my brief role as a pundit. Be that as it…
Continue Reading →Salvador, Feliz cumpleaños! 11 May
(photo of Dali, 1939 by Carl Van Vechten)
Salvador Dali was born today, 11 May, 112 years ago. We write about him in Avida Dollars. For now, let’s gaze upon one of his crazy, mixed-up dreams, rendered as ever with his unerring, golden touch, in Museum Ludwig, Cologne:
Continue Reading →Safety Last
Safety Last...Todd Russell 'clocks off' (checks in his personal safety tag)
9 May 2016 10 years ago today, Todd Russell and Brant Webb left the Beaconsfield mine in northern Tassie, where they had been trapped for two weeks. We honour them and their not-so-lucky comrade, miner Larry Knight, who perished far underground. However, their dramatic story remains ripe for political and commercial exploitation – there’s a TV mini-series in the offing, and a photo-opportunity has already availed itself on the campaign trail. See our updated link to Ace in the Hole for more details.
Continue Reading →Two Gentlemen of Verona
A better gentleman of Verona...Diesel (Crab), photo courtesy ATG
(By Will Shakespeare) (Adelaide University Theatre Guild, 7 May 2016) (Dir. Gary George & Angela Short) Early Shakespeare – it’s a kind of Dumb and Dumber – two friends scrap over the same girl, leading to slander, exile and attempted rape, with all merrily forgiven in the wash-up: not the Bard’s best by a long chalk, but no one can resist this early emanation of two great characters, the servant, Launce, and his mischievous dog, Crab. Let’s hear about Crab from the crypto St. Francis, Act IV, Scene IV: “When a man’s servant shall play the cur with him, look…
Continue Reading →Married Life
(By David Vogel) (1929 – translated by Dalya Bilu) Mr Rudolf Gurdweill is a struggling writer, small, slight, jewish, vacant and rather nice. He shambles through life, borrowing small sums of money and taking aimless, unsatisfying excursions about 1920s Vienna. His friends in Nescafe Society are the kind that obviate the need for enemies. Naturally he decides, on impulse, to marry a ‘Baroness’, the type of union that gives holy matrimony a bad name. His friend Lotte Bondheim, who carries a doomed torch for Gurdweill secret only to Gurdweill, is hysterical at the news: ‘”Oh, no,” she cried, “it’s too ridiculous…
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