What is the difference between a line of black limousines at a Mob

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nginx/1.17.10 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

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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

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nginx/1.17.10 hearings from

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a press […]

THE LINE IT IS DRAWN … BADLY The now routine phenomenon of paintings by celebrities shown in serious galleries defies belief.

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nginx/1.17.10 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

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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

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nginx/1.17.10 not have a single item of his work on show in the national

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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

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15th (then touring the

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nginx/1.17.10 UK until May 2014). The exhibition is the result of being awarded the 2012 BP Portrait Award. My proposal for the award […]

In the last issue I considered the case of a single-minded good artist,  David Mulholland from Middlesbrough, whose memory, in the absence of any official recognition

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or support, has to be kindled for posterity’s sake by friends and family. By The Jackdaw’s usual standard of

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nginx/1.17.10 eliciting no comment whatsoever, this caused a considerable mailbag from many mentioning other artists who […]

Seven years ago the Courtauld Institute mounted a thrilling exhibition by showing only two works by Manet. Admittedly they were both undoubted masterpieces, the Barmaid at the Folies Bergere of 1883 and The

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Luncheon from Munich of 1868. It demonstrated that an absorbing experience could be staged with the import of only one picture. We

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nginx/1.17.10 all know what a brilliant, […]

This is the portrait of an intelligent, thoughtful and educated sitter with no less than a degree in art

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history. It is perfectly adequate for the boardroom of a supermarket but entirely inadequate for

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nginx/1.17.10 a national collection. Kate deserves better. We deserve better too, and so does the future. This commission – Kate’s first official portrait – demanded an artist, […]

“Maybe a man’s name doesn’t matter all that much.” (Orson Welles in F For 404 Not Found Fake) As so many gifted painters have discovered to their cost, having an unusual talent is not necessarily a passport to a meteoric career. So many whose

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abilities deserve to be recognised, or at the very least acknowledged, struggle cruelly in

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nginx/1.17.10 obscurity if […]

Last year it was Poussin in the National Gallery, this 404 Not Found year Rothko at the

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Tate. There will

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nginx/1.17.10 have been other examples of vandalism in between these which galleries hushed up, and it is likely that you wouldn’t have known about the Rothko episode had it not been witnessed and photographed. Museums don’t like admitting to attacks on […]