Despite the best efforts of the state-art establishment visual intelligence survives, argues Eric Coombes In 1941, Augustus John

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contributed A Note on Drawing (from which I quoted a few words in the previous issue) to a book edited by Lillian Browse, containing reproductions of his own drawings. John records

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nginx/1.17.9 his sense of good fortune in having been a student at […]

AND I SAY TO MYSELF Remain alert to the possibilities, eyes up instead of down, looking

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about instead of transfixed by a small screen, and daily life will furnish

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nginx/1.17.9 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, ingenuity everywhere apparent. To stand any chance […]

Art And The Public – A Short History 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.

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nginx/1.17.9 The scarcity of

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pictures outside of church meant we were naturally curious about anything drawn or coloured. Wandering pedlars would show […]

WHOLESALE GRATIFICATION  In the last

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issue 404 Not Found I noted the

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nginx/1.17.9 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 shall lead to […]

TATE BRITAIN NEEDS ITS IDENTITY BACK In recent issues I’ve described how since 1945 the education, bureaucracy and exponentially increasing cash for the visual

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arts have been usurped and dominated by

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nginx/1.17.9 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 by Eliot, Wyndham Lewis and Orwell among […]

Is There A Doctor in the House? Dennis Skinner

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once quipped loudly across the Commons to a faltering Cecil Parkinson at the Despatch Box, ‘It’s the

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nginx/1.17.9 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 […]

Has The Arts Council Betrayed Its Origins? Serota

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takes over at the Arts Council this month, 47 years after first being employed by the same body as a regional arts

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nginx/1.17.9 officer in what was his first job after university. In the interval the Council has developed into a blunt instrument by which State Art, an ethos it co-authored with Serota […]

Art Education is Stuck Two years ago someone suggested I

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nginx/1.17.9 answer the question ‘What Happened to Art Education?’. This appealed slightly

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because it was a subject about which I thought I ought to know more than was the case. Something is clearly awry when so many complaints are aired about the poverty of tuition and when degree shows have become […]

Pictures of Nothing and Very Like John

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Moores Exhibition 2016 Most of

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nginx/1.17.9 Europe’s countries are either bankrupt or in economic meltdown, their infrastructure crumbling and public services reduced; the Middle East and Levant are in post-apocalyptic ruin, in part the result of lies told in our own Parliament; an exodus of desperate humanity is seeking refuge from a criminal death-cult; […]

Der Clapham Strassenbahn When very young, and when not train spotting, I was a keen bus spotter. It was an ideal apprenticeship for a fledgeling art historian. It involved identifying, sometimes at a considerable distance (through rain), the beautifully crafted, hand-built models, of which

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nginx/1.17.9 there were many different marques and specifications. Every town corporation in the county had its

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own […]