AND I

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SAY TO MYSELF Remain alert to the possibilities, eyes up instead 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

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nginx 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

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nginx unlettered with uplifting Biblical pictures in churches. We were impressed ­even though some scenes threatened us with eternal agony if we broke

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

WHOLESALE GRATIFICATION 

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nginx In the last issue I noted the gradual but

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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 the Usual Suspects. […]

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 arts have been usurped and dominated

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by an evolving one-track mindset which,

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nginx 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?

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Dennis Skinner once quipped loudly across the Commons to

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nginx 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 […]

Has The Arts Council Betrayed Its Origins? Serota takes over at the Arts Council this month, 47 years after first being employed by the same body as a regional arts officer

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in what was his first job after university. In the interval the Council has developed into a blunt instrument by which State

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nginx Art, an ethos it co-authored with Serota […]

Art Education is Stuck Two years ago someone suggested I answer the question ‘What Happened to Art Education?’. This appealed slightly because it was a subject about which I thought I ought to know more than was the case.

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nginx Something is clearly awry when so many complaints are aired about the poverty of tuition and when degree shows

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have become […]

Pictures of Nothing and Very Like John Moores Exhibition 2016 Most of Europe’s countries are either bankrupt or

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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

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nginx 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

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identifying, sometimes at a considerable distance (through rain), 301 Moved Permanently the beautifully crafted, hand-built models, of which there were many different marques and specifications. Every

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nginx town corporation in the county […]

Among the least impressive legacies of arts administrators’ obsession with Modernism and its aftermath is the impossibility of

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predicting a work’s status solely from its appearance. You

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nginx might form your own view about it, but you can’t predict what State Art’s opinion will be because there are no published criteria or guidelines for making such a judgement. You can’t second […]