Category: Essays

Public art: Richard Wilson’s slipstream

Richard Wilson’s 77-tonne, £2.5 million sculpture Slipstream in Terminal 2 at Heathrow looks better in small, professionally taken photographs. In the flesh it disappoints. Looking more like a plane crash or an imploded barrage balloon than the rolling Spitfire which is claimed to have inspired it, it is so huge and so easily disappears into… Continue reading Public art: Richard Wilson’s slipstream

BBC arts coverage (part 34)

Two months ago, having been criticised for their useless visual arts coverage, which tends to be levelled at children and others of grotesque collective ignorance, the BBC promised us a raft of excellent arts programmes. Perhaps things were looking up. One of these has now hit the screen … with a splat. The organisation has… Continue reading BBC arts coverage (part 34)

Imperial War Museum North: the pitfalls of novelty

In the first few years of the National Lottery, museums were built employing architects who had no interest in museums per se but instead limitlessly indulged their own vanity. Those who drew attention to the blatant unsuitability of resulting buildings were dissed as old-fashioned, traditional and behind the architectural times. The result of this defended… Continue reading Imperial War Museum North: the pitfalls of novelty

House of Commons art collection: hard bargains and money well spent

What a kerfuffle occurred recently concerning how much the House of Commons has spent – £250,000 in 20 years no less – on portraits of its more distinguished and long-serving members. How shocking and self-indulgent was the general tenor of the response. Well, no actually. To get two dozen paintings for 250 grand suggests someone… Continue reading House of Commons art collection: hard bargains and money well spent

Van Dyck self portrait: do we really want to pay £12 million for this?

The self-portrait by Van Dyck is the subject of a deferred export licence in order to give British museums an opportunity to find the £12.5 million required to stop it going abroad. The NPG, where the picture is currently on show drumming up donations, has started a campaign to raise £12.5 million to acquire the… Continue reading Van Dyck self portrait: do we really want to pay £12 million for this?

Graham Sutherland: exultant strangeness at Abbott Hall and Crane Kalman

Few save masochists would venture as far as Kendal in order to see work by Bethan Huws, not least because unless you happen to have attended one of State Art’s indoctrination sessions you won’t have heard of her. A taste considered acquirable only by the starving, Huws is among State Art’s chosen apostles. Sadly, she… Continue reading Graham Sutherland: exultant strangeness at Abbott Hall and Crane Kalman

National Rail Museum

The most elegantly streamlined of all British Rail’s steam locomotives was the Great North Eastern Region A4 class of which an engine called Mallard is the best known of the 35 built at Doncaster works. Designed in 1935 by Sir Nigel Gresley, whose earlier A3 class (of which Flying Scotsman is the preserved example) was… Continue reading National Rail Museum

Perming eight from twelve: Lowry and the painting of modern life at Tate Britain

Lowry deserves treatment as a serious artist, though more usually such an approach is denied him because of, firstly, his suspiciously wide popularity and, secondly, what is mistakenly characterised as stylistic primitivism. A strong whiff of the patronizing informed reviews of this exhibition, as though the work was a tad unsophisticated for critics used to… Continue reading Perming eight from twelve: Lowry and the painting of modern life at Tate Britain

Martin Creed: new definitions for ‘gift’

Regular readers may recall from a recent editorial that when ‘we’ bought Yinka Shonibare’s Trafalgar Square bottle to stand outside the National Maritime Museum ten times more was paid for it than had ever been paid for a work by this artist at auction. That story of casual profligacy is now repeated in respect of… Continue reading Martin Creed: new definitions for ‘gift’