Editorials

in Editorials

The Mound in Your Pocket

David Lee Sept/Oct 2021 I took a wrong turn on

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my bike recently near Russell Square and came upon Wallis Gilbert’s 1931 Daimler car hire garage in Herbrand Street. Set back almost hidden, and only 301 Moved Permanently yards from where I attended university, I had never suspected its existence.
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It now pleases me so much I regularly detour past it. Now used […]

in Editorials

Let’s Pretend

David Lee July/August 2021 The National Gallery has prostrated itself before what Orwell called 


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‘the official mind’. It must have done because the less said about Rosalind Nashashibi, 301 Moved Permanently their current artist-in-residence, the better … but don’t worry I’ll bore you anyway. She is exhibiting her recent efforts among the 17th century Spanish

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pictures 301 Moved Permanently to which, it is […]

in Editorials

Joy Labinjo: Led To The Market

Across the last 30 years the narrative of official Contemporary Art has unfurled like a Chinese scroll. We can follow how,


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from around 1990, those commercial techniques pioneered 301 Moved Permanently to manufacture reputations

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by Charles Saatchi were adopted as a template by other speculators eager to cash in. This was the start of a racket which turned the art market into an […]

in Editorials

2020 Blindness

David Lee March/April 301 Moved Permanently 2021 Nothing


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much happened last year in the visual arts. The usual suspects promoted themselves with yards of trivia, usually about the NHS, but nothing serious was made except by those conventional sorts who go quietly about their business. National galleries tried to fill the gap by selling us ‘virtual’ and ‘digital’ ‘experiences’ by the dozen, but

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[…]

in Editorials

Let’s All Pretend Part 83

David Lee January/February 2021 Despite grovelling worthy of Darius on our 301 Moved Permanently part, The Jackdaw no longer qualifies for press view invites to the National Gallery. As a result I didn’t see the

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Artemisia Gentileschi show in the few weeks it was open before Boris announced the second slam dunk. It was in
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any case fully booked months in advance by […]

in Editorials

They All Look The Same To Me

David Lee November/December 2020 In the last editorial, when describing the new full bloom of official Wokeism, I didn’t have space to nginx consider if, in the context of State Art’s exclusive obsession with conceptual and minimal 301 Moved Permanently art, work selected without resort to the gender/sexual/racial ticklist would be of

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a higher standard
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than what is chosen when applying it. Over […]

in Editorials

Waking Up to Tyranny

David Lee September/October 2020 A watershed moment in the official story of art has been reached. Unlike in the first decades of the last century,

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when experimental isms followed one another annually, the first decades of the 21st have 301 Moved Permanently until now seen no signal change in
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direction or emphasis: recently, in contemporary art we’ve been living through a period of […]

in Editorials

Please Like Me, Please

David Lee July/August 2020 It’s been hard to avoid following the fortunes of our present crop of self-appointed ‘war artists’. You may


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recall from the past, as I do, that

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many 301 Moved Permanently 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 our State Art […]

in Editorials

The End of the Beginning

David Lee May/June 2020 A few inches of


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headway have finally been made in drawing

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wider public attention to the power grabs of the Arts Council and the political and social prejudices of State Art in general. The House of 301 Moved Permanently Commons Culture Select Committee must now get its act together and take to task the arts nginx bodies that have […]

in Editorials

Legalised Blackmail

David Lee March/April 2020 The Arts

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Council is offering a
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contract worth £42,000 for an expert to draw up guidelines on how museums must deal with what it calls ‘decolonisation’. Naturally, conclusions reached will be expected to reinforce the Council’s existing prejudices: it supports repatriation 301 Moved Permanently where possible, and exhibition contexts, especially captions, must report the serial crimes of colonialism with […]