Angel of Dissolution; Sketch

By Paul D RobertsonCharcoal and Chalk, 85 x 62 cms.

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I did a sketch for the piece "Angel of Dissolution" before I started it, an unusual and unlikely thing for me to do.

Of course Ileft it in my folio and it got all smeared. Just before my last exhibition I found it and resurrected it and this is the result.

"Support works" are not something I give much credence to. This is probably because it was something insisted on at university - like in high school math - show your workings and how you got there!

Feh.

They can all go to hell.

I never did it in high school either.

The further academia gets from hard science the sillier and sillier it becomes. There are a great deal of people writing very badly about things that are not important (and mostly entirely invention) in the academic world. I understand, to an extent - as the world gets smaller and more schools of higher learning open across the planet, there are more and more places for academics. These academics must have some way of ranking amongst themselves, and it also seems essential for them to justify their existence outside the quite noble aim of just being teachers.

They feel they must PUBLISH. And art criticism, ,and from that art in general, is slowly mutilated and distorted by their competition and by their innate inadequacy. It is hypocritical, elitist and could well be indicative of a new form of life - something that exists BELOW LAWYERS. I intend to do my best throughout my life to point out how they should be made to WORK FOR A LIVING and take a supply of signs saying "kick me I am an art critic" to every facetious sycophantic function that I go to and stick it to the backs of their tweed jackets.

I am not bitter about the whole thing - I have never received a bad review. But while studying I had the misfortune to have no choice but to read art theory. I appreciate that it must require a lot of effort to mangle the english language so thoroughly while succeeding in saying nothing, but still I couldn't help thinking that perhaps these people were the kids in kindy who would suck up to the teachers while secretly pinching the other children and stealing their crayons and their play-lunch.