What nobody seems to think worth mentioning is how corporate sponsorship changes the very meaning of these palaces of culture. The British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, in particular, are meant to stand for who we are as a people, as a democracy. They are the cathedrals of democracy. He really does seem to [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Art'
Awa’ with the fairies, this lad
December 21st, 2011 · 13 Comments
Tags: Art
Maxine Peake: Idiot
July 16th, 2011 · 13 Comments
What is your favourite smell? New shoes. Fair enough. Bit pandering to the female stereotype perhaps and requiring of a system that produces new shoes cheaply and efficiently so we can all have them. But still, fair enough. What makes you unhappy? Misogyny and capitalism. Oh well, fortunately we look to actresses for ability at [...]
Tags: Art
Absolutely fascinating
July 13th, 2011 · 8 Comments
So, Portugal closes down the Ministry of Culture, tells artists to go fend for themselves. Art thrives. So, when do we close the Arts Council?
Tags: Art
Artist? Meet the “who you know” conundrum
April 23rd, 2011 · 1 Comment
Tags: Art
Grossly overdone comparison of the day
January 5th, 2011 · 2 Comments
The current cuts to the arts and humanities spell out the end of the British people’s emancipation through culture. For me, it’s like ripping up the Magna Carta. The government spending less money on luvvies is exactly like abolition of the right to trial by jury, eh?
Tags: Art
On the price of scrap metal these days
December 21st, 2010 · 1 Comment
€30 of steel scrap or €800,000 of artwork? It is thought that one of the pieces the thieves were trying to offload for scrap was a steel sculpture by Basque artist Chillida titled “Topos IV”, valued at 800,000 euros (£675,000). Detectives at the time said the robbery had the hallmarks of “an inside job” and [...]
Tags: Art
Support the luvvies!
November 10th, 2010 · 8 Comments
Tomorrow morning Somerset county council will decide whether it will cut 100% of its direct grants to the arts, amounting to roughly half its total cultural spend. Mustn’t allow them to do that now, must we? You know, democratically elected politicians deliberating over how to spend the taxpayers’ money? No, of course not, that would [...]
Tags: Art
Ken Loach: You bastards!
October 16th, 2010 · 23 Comments
Amusing little theory here: Over a seven-year period, the US market share of box-office takings in British cinemas was between 63% and 80%. The UK share, which was mainly for American co-productions, was between 15% and 30%; films from Europe and the rest of the world took only 2% to 3%. So for most people [...]
Tags: Art
Yarn bombing
October 11th, 2010 · No Comments
This was a great and really fun article, people going out and beautifying (well, OK, to taste) the world through individual and communal action. No, really. Then the beginning of para 9 This might explain the increasing desire of councils and art institutions to commission yarn bombers to create official works of art. Yup, it [...]
Tags: Art
On the subject of Art
October 6th, 2010 · 2 Comments
I was once asked to look at a portfolio of pencil drawings by an ex-prisoner; they were trite, unaccomplished, cliched, clumsy and painful to look at. They were without a scintilla of merit. When I said so than man’s astonished representative said “But the prison art visitor said he has a rare talent”. “What was [...]
Tags: Art
But you don’t understand how complex arts funding is!
September 29th, 2010 · No Comments
And here we have it explained to us. How excellent, a better road map for what we should be cutting. You want it, you pay for it.
Tags: Art
OK, so this is about Paul Gauguin
August 10th, 2010 · 7 Comments
When Williams made this argument for what he called moral luck, it provoked huge controversy. Wasn’t an act either moral or immoral, regardless of the consequences? Would Gauguin’s abandonment of his family have been justifiable if he’d drowned on the way to Tahiti? Or if he’d been simply a bad watercolourist? The argument is being [...]
Tags: Art
Shock horror!
July 26th, 2010 · 7 Comments
Playwright says that arts subsidies should be spent on playwrights not the marketing department! Surprise, eh?
Tags: Art
Poor, poor luvvies
January 25th, 2010 · No Comments
On the horrors of having to do a day job while trying to be an artist: What a day job inevitably means, of course, is spending the majority of your waking hours not doing the thing you love: Just like everyone else then, eh?
Tags: Art
Avatar and plagiarism
January 14th, 2010 · 6 Comments
James Cameron, the director of the 3D blockbuster Avatar, has been accused of ripping off ideas from two popular Soviet Union science fiction writers. Well, yes, there do seem to be similarities. But then he’s also ripped off Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas and any number of other trite fables.
Tags: Art
Cretinous stupidity
November 14th, 2009 · 12 Comments
The Times disclosed in April that a sculpture bought by the Royal Festival Hall from the trust had been made by Colin Pitchfork, who was serving life for killing two teenage girls. The centre withdrew the item, publicly apologised and said that it would “have a conversation with the Koestler Trust about future policy”. Kath [...]
Tags: Art
Tony Hall
November 6th, 2009 · 12 Comments
The chief executive of the Royal Opera House writes….well, don’t bother to read it, I’ll give you a precis. We’re special, the arts, so we deserve more tax money. That’s pretty much it. No mention of the way in which the entire State arts budget is simply a subsidy from the non-metropolitan poor to the [...]
Tags: Art
Critique of the day
October 15th, 2009 · 2 Comments
And once you’ve accepted that Tracey is the art world’s Chantelle or Jade Goody, Mark Hudson.
Tags: Art
We need artists to explain the crash to us!
October 11th, 2009 · 1 Comment
Neither is John Veals, the odious hedge-fund manager created by Sebastian Faulks, who masterminds a cynical short-selling scheme that will make him millions but hasten the ruin of the Allied Royal Bank, a thinly disguised Royal Bank of Scotland. OK, but could those artists try and find out about the crisis before they start writing? [...]
Tags: Art
Excellent!
October 4th, 2009 · 7 Comments
THE artist Grayson Perry has woven the 21st-century answer to the Bayeux Tapestry. Instead of the Norman invasion, the Walthamstow Tapestry, which is 49ft long, tells the story of modern Britain’s conquest by the ideology of consumerism. … Three copies of the Walthamstow Tapestry have been made — one will hang at the Victoria Miro [...]
Tags: Art