Selby Whittingham “Rhodes will likely fall,” gloomily writes Professor Nigel Biggar (UnHerd, July) after a decision by Oriel College, of which he was once chaplain, in favour of that. Another Rhodes watcher, Lars Larundson, says that the vote was taken amid thunder, lightning and torrential rain, perhaps an indication of internal dissension as much as of Rhodesian displeasure (The Critic, […]

Alexander Adams September/October 2017 New Order An Allegory Once upon a time there was a society which made objects that had meaning and that people enjoyed looking at. The society put these objects in museums so that more people could enjoy them. Then an elite of that society decided that the objects did not matter so much but the skin […]

Alexander Adams July/August 2017 Why Are Artists Poor? Imagine the most absurd and outrageous provocations about art that you can. For example: there is no such thing as a pure work of art; artists are unusually ill-informed; there is no market reward for good art; government subsidies make artists poor. Both defensive supporters of state funding and critical traditionalists will […]

Alexander Adams May/June 2018 The Road to Reparation – The Restitution Question This essay will discuss reparations. The definitions of “restitution” and “reparations” used in this essay are as follows: restitution is the return of specific unlawfully acquired goods to the lawfully determined owner or descendants (or estate) thereof; reparations are the return of goods or payment of compensation by […]

Introduction Since its beginning, and until very recently, Fine Art education has been evolutionary. Received wisdom that the modus operandi of teaching art were static until being gradually upset in the decades after 1945 is an exaggeration. The objective to produce basic competence in practical skills in painting and sculpture was indeed a constant ambition, but the methods by which […]

Imagine the most absurd and outrageous provocations about art that you can. For example: there is no such thing as a pure work of art; artists are unusually ill-informed; there is no market reward for good art; government subsidies make artists poor. Both defensive supporters of state funding and critical traditionalists will be muttering that art should not be viewed […]

The Times – God bless its little cotton socks – has just been celebrating the triumphal return of the 1990s as a creative force. “Suddenly contemporary art” it crows, “was part of popular culture. The Royal Academy’s landmark Sensation show in 1997 was a turning point.” It was so indeed, but not exactly in the terms the article intends. Here […]

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  ALEXANDER ADAMS rehearses recent arguments concerning freedom of expression before arriving at his own conclusion.   “One person with a belief is equal to a force of 99 who have only interests.” JOHN STUART MILL       On February 14th, 2015 an Islamist gunman attacked a café in Copenhagen where a debate on free speech was being held. […]

Giles Auty considers the purchase of Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles by the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra in 1973 and what such an acquisition signifies. A few months back, a rash of articles appeared in the press which commemorated the dismissal of the Whitlam government thirty years ago and commented on the continuing sense of grievance felt by his […]