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 no: here we all still are, stuck at home and doing as we’re told, good boys and girls to a […]

Goodness knows we have more than enough to mope about these 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, with a spot of flu thrown in for good measure? […]

I don’t know about you, but I find it’s becoming increasingly hard to keep up in this brave new art world of ours, fly as I might. Perhaps it’s just my tired old wings, but I have a horrid feeling it might be rather more than that, even if I do manage to catch up with whatever it is for […]

Alexander Adams We are told that in many fields women face systematic disadvantage and are under-represented. It has become a core belief of many and goes almost unchallenged. When politicians came under pressure regarding supposed gender discrimination in the workplace, the British government conducted a survey of arts organisations. The 2018 report found that women comprise 56% of the British […]

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 “Was Lt Columbo’s name really Frank? We’ve all seen the freeze-frame close-ups of Columbo’s ID badge which states that his first name is ‘Frank”. But should we consider this canonical?” I’m becoming more and more confused by this ‘canonical’ business. The above is from Columbophile website. I love his joke about the Jewish lady who was walking down […]

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 […]

Michael Daley Questions proliferate on the disappeared $450 million Leonardo Salvator Mundi. Where is it? Who owns it? Who still believes it a Leonardo? Will it be exhibited this year at the Paris Louvre’s big Leonardo exhibition, as promised? Can it be true, as an artnet blogger now claims (on the claimed say-so of “two principals involved in” Christie’s 2017 […]

Michael Daley Fans of Tacita Dean will be delighted to learn that she is having yet another exhibition, this time at the Royal Academy… And it’s well up to her usual standard. This time she is “exploring the genre of landscape in the broadest sense.” Well, broad is the word. She’s blown up a number of black and white photos […]