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 in the remote Auvergne, although a good deal less winsome. It focused […]
Charles Thomson Sir 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 Radio 4 programme The Reunion: Tate Modern on September 23rd by Sue MacGregor, regarding […]
Giles Auty This was the last piece Giles submitted to The Jackdaw. He died 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 back into some weird and most unwelcome dream. Did I really read […]
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 act of Sid Millward & The Nitwits. That shows (it was recorded) Sid presiding over players prey to temptations which are low rather than […]
Alexander Adams November/December 2017 Alexander Adams investigates the status of the canon in art under Post-Modernism and the dangers of undervaluing it. The canon of great art has never been the target of greater ire than it is today, but many leftist critics and their traditionalist opponents misunderstand the canon. The truth is unsettling for both groups. This essay seeks […]
Giles Auty From the raised kitchen window of my house I can see most of the birds which regularly visit the garden. In summer these are mostly magpies, currawongs and cockatoos while in winter quite large flocks of pale green female satin bowerbirds arrive which are often accompanied by an all-black male. The latter is, in fact, the only bird […]
Eric Coombes The near-destruction in the western world of a centuries-long tradition of visual education could be described – hyperbolically but not misleadingly – as having been accomplished overnight. The inherited gifts of that tradition are now being casually, ungratefully and even malevolently thrown away. In its chronologically long-range survey, What Happened to Art Education? provides the context in which […]
Selby Whittingham When Napoleon removed Europe’s art treasures to France on the grounds that their rightful place was not with “slaves” but “in the bosom of a free 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. Likewise, when […]
Selby Whittingham A survey by the Office for National Statistics in May 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 a lifestyle rather than buying stuff,” one trend forecaster […]
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, […]
