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

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nginx/1.21.1 reminiscent of the French film Être et Avoir about a remarkable teacher in a school in the remote Auvergne, although

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nginx/1.21.1 a good deal less winsome. It focused on the lives of the […]

Although I no longer live permanently in Britain, I have been fascinated to learn about the apparent stir caused there recently by this worthy and unusual little book. The feelings of indignation and

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nginx/1.21.1 outrage which underwrite it are understandable. Yet

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even the fiercest cultural arguments seldom seem to stir much in the way of violent emotions in Britain. By custom […]

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

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nginx/1.21.1 been usurped and dominated

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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 […]

Is There A Doctor in the House? Dennis Skinner once quipped loudly across the Commons to a faltering Cecil Parkinson at

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the Despatch Box, ‘It’s the in-breeding that does it!’ I was reminded of this

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nginx/1.21.1 amusing sneer when Doctor Maria Balshaw was announced as Serota’s replacement, an elevation met with the customary uncritical lauding with which a fawning Fourth Estate […]

Art Education is Stuck Two

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years ago someone suggested I answer the question ‘What Happened to Art Education?’. This appealed slightly because it was a subject about which I thought I ought to know more than was the case. Something is clearly awry

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nginx/1.21.1 when so many complaints are aired about the poverty of tuition and when degree shows have become […]

Pictures of Nothing and Very Like John Moores Exhibition 2016 Most of

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Europe’s countries are either bankrupt or in economic meltdown, their infrastructure crumbling and public services reduced; the Middle East and Levant are in post-apocalyptic ruin, in part the result of lies

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nginx/1.21.1 told in our own Parliament; an exodus of desperate humanity is seeking refuge from a criminal death-cult; […]

Among the least impressive legacies of arts administrators’ obsession with Modernism and its aftermath is the impossibility of predicting a work’s status solely from its appearance.

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You might form your own view about it, but you

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nginx/1.21.1 can’t predict what State Art’s opinion will be because there are no published criteria or guidelines for making such a judgement. You can’t second […]

The separate bodies contributing to State Art are now so interrelated, so cosily acquainted, their personnel so readily interchangeable and of

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nginx/1.21.1 identical mindset, that they might as well join forces.

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(… Liz Forgan is sacked from the Arts Council but remains a Trustee of the Art Fund; James Lingwood swallows his annual  million from the Arts Council and also sits […]

What is the difference between a line

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of black limousines at a Mob funeral in Brooklyn and an identical cavalcade at the opening party

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nginx/1.21.1 of the new Serpentine Gallery annexe in Hyde Park? Well, not as much as you’d think. Although Cosa Nostra are undoubtedly the subtler of the two coteries represented, both have a common interest in protection rackets. […]

In the last issue I considered the case of a single-minded good artist,  David Mulholland

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nginx/1.21.1 from Middlesbrough, whose memory, in the absence of any official recognition or support, has to be kindled for posterity’s sake by friends

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and family. By The Jackdaw’s usual standard of eliciting no comment whatsoever, this caused a considerable mailbag from many mentioning other artists who […]