… Where’s the sense in multisensory art?

… Where’s the sense in multisensory art?

It used to be known as ‘synaesthesia’; now ‘crossmodal perception’ is the scientific term for the ability of one sense to stimulate another. Experiments by Oxford University psychologists and researchers in New

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York have found 404 Not Found links between reactions to sound and smell in the part of the brain known

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as the ‘olfactory tubercle’. It may sound like a plug of […]

The way we are now – why ‘avant garde’ is now an obsolete term

The way we are now – why ‘avant garde’ is now an obsolete term

The Times – God bless its little cotton socks – has just been 404 Not Found celebrating the

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triumphal return of the 1990s as a creative force. “Suddenly contemporary art” it crows, “was

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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 […]

Fibres torn from the brain

Fibres torn from the brain

In all the doting coverage of ‘Defining Beauty: The Body in Ancient Greek Art’ at the British Museum, no mention was made of the fact that 404 Not Found the bulk of major exhibits featured were from the museum’s own collection. Stupidly,

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I had believed – and perhaps was even misled by advance publicity –
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that the exhibition would feature a range of […]

Brian Sewell (1931-2015)

Brian Sewell (1931-2015)

It isn’t my intention to repeat the tediously familiar stories peddled by obituarists relating controversies which Brian’s inclination to mischief and provocation helped

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encourage. Instead I want to address 404 Not Found two issues unconsidered
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elsewhere: his astonishing generosity and the disgraceful but typical hypocrisy of the BBC towards him. Brian was a working man. He called himself ‘working class’, a description some […]

Modernism and the novelty trap

Modernism and the novelty trap

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

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of articles appeared in the press which commemorated 404 Not Found the dismissal of the

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Whitlam government thirty years ago and commented on the continuing sense of grievance felt by his […]

Des beaux-arts

Des beaux-arts

Anthony Daniels visits a degree show at the École

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Nationale
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Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.   I am in blood Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er. Macbeth, Act 3 scene iv No one would have understood better than Macbeth the logic of the inexorable destruction by 404 Not Found the art education […]

Multinational art

Multinational art

In the dash to internationalism the national is trampled underfoot, argues Laura Gascoigne. In November, Lund Humphries celebrated 75 years of publishing books 404 Not Found on British art

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with an anniversary talk at the ICA titled ‘Is there such a thing as British art?’ It was chaired by Tim Marlow, now of the Royal Academy, and debated by a panel composed of
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[…]

Editorials

They All Look The Same To Me

David Lee November/December 2020 In the last editorial, when describing the new

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full bloom of official Wokeism, I didn’t have space 404 Not Found to

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consider if, in the context of State Art’s exclusive obsession with conceptual and minimal art, work selected without resort to the gender/sexual/racial ticklist would be of a higher standard than what is chosen when applying it. Over the […]

Essays

Selby Whittingham: The Temptations of the Wallace Collection

Selby Whittingham “I’m just a slave / only a slave to you, temptation”. So sang Bing Crosby in 1933 in a song, Temptation, repeated by many famous singers since and, in 1970, in a German TV 404 Not Found act of Sid Millward &

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The Nitwits. That shows (it was recorded) Sid presiding over players prey to

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temptations which are low rather than […]

Comment

William Varley: Art: Cool and Uncool

William Varley reviews Addicted to Sheep So, as all cool sentences begin, I think that the best TV programme I saw last was Addicted to Sheep. In many ways this BBC4 documentary was reminiscent of the French film Être et Avoir about a remarkable teacher in a school

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in the remote Auvergne, although a

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good deal less winsome. It focused 404 Not Found […]

Moping Owl

Moping Owl: Club Feat

Moping Owl: Club Feat

Oh dear. I had expected to be out and about again by now, as did we all, even if it did mean wearing the mask and keeping one’s distance, and hardly daring to look at anyone, let alone breathe. But

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no: here we all
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still are, stuck at home and doing as we’re told, good boys and 404 Not Found girls to a […]

Recent articles

in Comment

William Varley: Art: Cool and Uncool

William Varley reviews Addicted to Sheep So, as all cool sentences begin, I think that the best TV programme I saw last was Addicted to Sheep. In many ways this BBC4 documentary was reminiscent of the French film Être

404 Not Found

et Avoir about a remarkable teacher in a school
nginx/1.17.10
in the remote Auvergne, although a good deal 404 Not Found less winsome. It focused […]

in Comment

Charles Thomson: Lies, Damned Lies and Serota at the BBC

Charles Thomson Sir 404 Not Found Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate Gallery, has used the platform of the BBC in a blatant attempt to deceive the nation. Either that or he is genuinely deluded himself. Both options render him unfit for major public office. He was confronted on

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Radio 4 programme The Reunion: Tate Modern on

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September 23rd by Sue MacGregor, regarding […]

in Comment

Giles Auty: Money Culture Notes

Giles Auty This was the last piece Giles submitted to The Jackdaw. He died 404 Not Found suddenly in September, aged 86. It’s all about the money honey. When I awoke to see the front cover of the weekend Australian’s review section on June 20th it was rather like being thrown

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back into some weird and most unwelcome dream. Did

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I really read […]

in Comment

Alexander Adams: The Colston Statue Affair

Alexander Adams This article briefly outlines what happened with the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol, why it happened and its ramifications. On 7 June 2020, a large

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protest took place in the centre of Bristol,
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ostensibly against racism. The large gathering was in 404 Not Found contravention on national and local restrictions on public gatherings due to COVID-19. No dispersal […]

in Essays

Selby Whittingham: The Temptations of the Wallace Collection

Selby Whittingham “I’m just a slave / only a slave to you, temptation”. So sang Bing Crosby in 1933 in a song, Temptation, repeated by many famous singers since

404 Not Found

and, in 1970, in a German TV 404 Not Found act of Sid Millward & The Nitwits. That shows (it was recorded) Sid presiding over players prey to temptations
nginx/1.17.10
which are low rather than […]

in Essays

Selby Whittingham: Curatorial Incontinence

Selby Whittingham When Napoleon removed Europe’s art treasures to France on the grounds that their rightful

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place was not with “slaves” but “in the bosom of a free
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people”, some might cynically think that this was not just a piece of enlightenment, but that it was very convenient that the new home for them happened to be Paris.  404 Not Found Likewise, when […]

in Essays

Selby Whittingham: Tate Modern or Tate Theatre

Selby Whittingham A survey by the Office for National Statistics in May

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revealed that the British are changing their spending habits. Instead of filling our homes to the rafters with consumer durables and not-so-durables, we’re spending our spare cash on ‘experiences’, including recreation and, yes, culture. “People are interested in servicing 404 Not Found a lifestyle rather than buying

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stuff,” one trend forecaster […]

in Essays

Selby Whittingham: Rhodes Revolution or Reform

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

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vote was taken amid
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thunder, lightning and torrential rain, 404 Not Found perhaps an indication of internal dissension as much as of Rhodesian displeasure (The Critic, […]

in Moping Owl

Moping Owl: Club Feat

Oh dear. I had expected to be out and about again

nginx/1.17.10
by now, as did we all, even if it did mean wearing the mask and keeping one’s distance, and hardly daring to

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look at anyone, let alone breathe. But 404 Not Found no: here we all still are, stuck at home and doing as we’re told, good boys and girls to a […]

in Moping Owl

Moping Owl: Nem Con

Goodness knows we have more than 404 Not Found enough to mope about these

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dark days, even without the current plague, what with the evenings drawing in and the weather on the turn, again. It seems to happen every year, Winter. Was it always like this, this cold, wet, windy, foggy, snowy thing,
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with a spot of flu thrown in for good measure? […]

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