Painting Fakes

The whole of Australia is full of yesterday’s formal apology to the Stolen Generation made by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on behalf of the Australian Parliament. It was inspiring to see the parliamentary gallery full of black faces including lots of people who’ve fought for an apology for years, and to see them giving a standing ovation at the end of the apology speech. Nonetheless, not everyone is happy. Of course there are plenty of Indigenous Australians who say “OK Mr Rudd, now what are you going to do?” or who see it as empty words when there’s no compensation fund to go with it. Who could blame them? More disturbing are those people who say the Stolen Generation thing is a beat-up, that most of the kids were taken away for their own good. That won’t wash. Just because people had good intentions that doesn’t make their actions right. More interesting are people like veteran Liberal MP Wilson Tuckey, a strident opponent of an apology. He was very caustic in an interview after the...

I learnt something about being offensive this week. I occasionally work for some of the Aboriginal housing organisations here in South-East Queensland and as a result I'm on an e-mail list that gets a lot of news from around the Indigenous community. The other day - right after Australia Day or Invasion Day as Indigenous Australians call it - I got an e-mail with this cartoon attached. The cartoon had appeared in our local newspaper on Invasion Day. It depicts the "first property deal, 220 years ago", and the Indigenous auctioneer is saying "... sold for no money to the weird white fella in the funny hat". The person who sent this image added some indignant comments that included the following "I'm astounded at how eurocentric and deluded this cartoon is in displaying the 'first property deal in Australia'. There was no deal...It outraged me and I shudder to think that many Aussies out there got a little chuckle out of it and kept reading...

This morning I rode my bike up Mt Cootha which is a mountain near the centre of Brisbane - it has a lookout which faces back towards the city so you can see pretty much the whole of Brisbane out to Moreton Bay, and the hills in the distance to the South and North. I got to the top and could see the clouds closing in around the city and rain falling on my home. A pleasant change after years of drought and anxiety about dam levels in South-East Queensland. As I rode down the mountain the wind whipped my face and blinded me, and by the time I got home I was soaked. Still, rain is such a novelty these days that I loved it. Since creating this blog precisely no-one has read it which is hardly surprising since I haven't told anyone it exists but hey, I needed to post something before I forgot how and also needed to log in before I forgot my password - too late, I'd forgotten already!

Arthur Koestler told this joke in his book The Act of Creation. An art collector once bought a painting from a dealer, which the dealer claimed was by Pablo Picasso. The collector wanted to make sure that it was genuine, so he visited Picasso in his studio. The great man was busy painting, so the collector waited, watching him for some time as he applied the paint to an almost-completed work. When Picasso was free he unwrapped his purchase. Picasso looked at it for a couple of seconds and snapped, "it's a fake!" The collector was disappointed, but nonetheless felt privileged to have spent time watching Picasso paint. Imagine his excitement when a few months later, visting a gallery, he saw on sale the very painting on which he had watched Picasso working. He bought the painting and went to see the painter again. Pablo looked at the new painting for a moment and once again snapped "it's a fake!" The collector was amazed. "But Pablo," he said, "...