A submission to the House of Commons’ Select Committee for Culture concerning their short enquiry into the commissioning criteria used by the Arts Council of England. From the editor of The Jackdaw Your interest in the artistic criteria underpinning ACE’s funding decisions is a subject which has long exercised me. I wish to demonstrate here that where they are not […]
The last three editorials have dealt with a charity called the Serpentine Gallery. We’ve observed limousines lined up outside signifying whose interests the gallery really serves. We have identified overmanning and fat cat pay increases for two directors. And, last time, we highlighted an outside PR agency working between press and gallery in order to disarm justified criticism. Apologies for […]
Most readers will be unfamiliar with Bolton and Quinn Ltd, a company which is the subject here. Invisible to the public at large, they operate in a murky hinterland between major galleries and the media encouraging positive coverage of State-approved art. One definition of State Art might simply cite a list of B&Q’s clients, for all the major promoters of […]
Arts administrators cleaning up in the name of charity In 2011, the Arts Council screamed daily that it was losing over 30% of its annual taxpayer subsidy. “Difficult decisions” and “hard choices” resulted in it cutting completely annual grants to 206 organisations, making many redundant. The Serpentine, meanwhile, was awarded the special status of “a regularly funded organization” – i.e. […]
Why should the interests of those in limousines be subsidised by the rest of us? What is the difference between a line of black limousines at a Mob funeral in Brooklyn and an identical cavalcade at the opening party of the new Serpentine Gallery annexe in Hyde Park? Well, not as much as you’d think. Although Cosa Nostra are undoubtedly […]
What is the difference between a line of black limousines at a Mob funeral in Brooklyn and an identical cavalcade at the opening party of the new Serpentine Gallery annexe in Hyde Park? Well, not as much as you’d think. Although Cosa Nostra are undoubtedly the subtler of the two coteries represented, both have a common interest in protection rackets. […]
I am not happy again. We have become used to hearing weekly wails of distress from the Arts Council about how broke they are followed by melodramatic predictions of the cultural desert awaiting as punishment for state parsimony. It is their belief they should be exempted from the austerity allegedly endured elsewhere. Their moans receive sympathetic hearings from a press […]
THE LINE IT IS DRAWN … BADLY The now routine phenomenon of paintings by celebrities shown in serious galleries defies belief. You’d think they’d be sniffy about this sort of populist stunt; and you’d be wrong. However bad the work is people swarm to see it, hexed by the name. Photos and paintings by pop stars and television personalities attract […]
Of the 183 works by John Piper in the Tate’s collection none is currently on display. One of the major British artists of early Modernism does not have a single item of his work on show in the national collection of British art, of which, incidentally, he was once considered sufficiently eminent to serve as a trustee. How could such […]
Recent paintings made in Japan will be showing at my exhibition ‘In The Footsteps of Hiroshige: The Tokaido Highway and Portraits of Modern Japan’, at the National Portrait Gallery from June 20th to September 15th (then touring the UK until May 2014). The exhibition is the result of being awarded the 2012 BP Portrait Award. My proposal for the award […]
