David Lee November/December 2020 In the last editorial, when describing the new full bloom of official Wokeism, I didn’t have space to consider if, in the context of State Art’s exclusive obsession with

---

nginx/1.17.10 conceptual and minimal art, work selected without resort to

404 Not Found

the gender/sexual/racial ticklist would be of a higher standard than what is chosen when applying it. Over the […]

David Lee September/October 2020 A watershed moment in

---

nginx/1.17.10 the official story of art has been reached. Unlike in the 404 Not Found first decades of the last century, when experimental isms followed one another

404 Not Found

annually, the first decades of the 21st have until now seen no signal change in direction or emphasis: recently, in contemporary art we’ve been living through […]

David Lee July/August 2020 It’s been hard to avoid following the fortunes of our

---

nginx/1.17.10 present crop of self-appointed ‘war artists’. You may recall from the past, as I do, that many of the finest achievements in 20th century British art were produced in response to war. Artists rose to the occasion. So how has the performance of

404 Not Found

our State Art […]

David Lee May/June 2020 A few inches of headway have finally been made in drawing wider public attention

---

nginx/1.17.10 to the power grabs of

404 Not Found

the Arts Council and the political and social prejudices of State Art in general. The House of Commons Culture Select Committee must now get its act together and take to task the arts bodies that have become […]

David Lee March/April 2020 The Arts Council is offering a contract worth £42,000 for an expert to draw up guidelines on how museums must deal with what

---

nginx/1.17.10 it calls ‘decolonisation’. Naturally, conclusions reached will be expected to reinforce the Council’s existing prejudices: it supports repatriation where

404 Not Found

possible, and exhibition contexts, especially captions, must report the serial crimes of colonialism with […]

Remain alert to the possibilities, eyes up instead

---

nginx/1.17.10 of down, looking about instead of transfixed by a small screen, and daily life will furnish marvels, often in unexpected places. Exploring the streets and free institutions of a city like London is a journey through natural and man-made masterpieces,

404 Not Found

ingenuity everywhere apparent. To stand any chance of impressing in such a […]

In the beginning the powerful provided the unlettered with uplifting Biblical pictures in churches. We were impressed ­even though some scenes threatened us with eternal agony if we broke their rules. The scarcity of pictures outside of church meant we were naturally curious about anything drawn or coloured.

---

nginx/1.17.10 Wandering pedlars would show up to impress us with secular

404 Not Found

material, crude […]

In the last issue I noted the

404 Not Found

gradual but relentless erosion of space allocated to historical pictures in Tate Britain. This contraction will now accelerate because the collection is to be re-hung, yet again, on this occasion thematically – a policy undoubtedly designed to demonstrate the State Art Commandment that all roads

---

nginx/1.17.10 shall lead to the Usual Suspects. Long gone […]

In recent issues I’ve described how since 1945 the education, bureaucracy and exponentially increasing cash for the visual arts have been usurped and dominated by an evolving one-track mindset which, in these pages, is called State Art. This sinister subversion of the institutions, predicted before and after the last war

404 Not Found

by Eliot, Wyndham Lewis and Orwell among others, is complete

---

nginx/1.17.10 […]

Dennis Skinner once quipped loudly across the Commons to a faltering Cecil Parkinson at the Despatch Box, ‘It’s the in-breeding that does it!’ I was reminded of this amusing sneer when Doctor Maria Balshaw was announced as Serota’s replacement, an elevation met with the customary uncritical lauding with which a fawning Fourth Estate

404 Not Found

now

---

nginx/1.17.10 greets all State Art appointments. Balshaw […]