“Why is there so much sewing?” demanded The Art Newspaper’s Christina Ruiz after visiting Christine Macel’s exhibition at this year’s Venice Biennale. “I get it: domestic work, women’s work, is important and undervalued. But is it in itself art? No it is not.” There was a time when so-called textile arts were prized above all others; when first unveiled in […]

TATE BRITAIN NEEDS ITS IDENTITY BACK In recent issues I’ve described how since 1945 the education, bureaucracy and exponentially increasing cash for the visual arts have been usurped and dominated by an evolving one-track mindset which, in these pages, is called State Art. This sinister subversion of the institutions, predicted before and after the last war by Eliot, Wyndham Lewis and Orwell among […]

Approached by Bridlington council officials to appear as a town tour guide during a summer charity weekend, David Hockney generously consented and, to the great amusement of the crowd, threw in a hitherto unknown talent for gurning. “He was easily the great attraction of the weekend, like the Pied Piper,” said council leader Bill Cumming. “I had a marvellous time […]