Advocating life drawing at art school is a deeply conservative and reactionary position. Arguments in favour of life drawing usually fall into one of two camps (or sometimes both). I am utterly unconvinced by both. The first, and weaker, argument contends that it is necessary to learn the rules before you can break them. This… Continue reading Martin Lang: Against life drawing
Author: the editor
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 in the remote Auvergne, although a good deal less winsome. It focused on… Continue reading Art: Cool and Uncool – William Varley Reviews Addicted to Sheep
Charles Thomson: Lies, Damned Lies and Serota at the BBC
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… Continue reading Charles Thomson: Lies, Damned Lies and Serota at the BBC
Essay: What Happened to Art Education?
Introduction Since its beginning, and until very recently, Fine Art education has been evolutionary. Received wisdom that the modus operandi of teaching art were static until being gradually upset in the decades after 1945 is an exaggeration. The objective to produce basic competence in practical skills in painting and sculpture was indeed a constant ambition,… Continue reading Essay: What Happened to Art Education?
Selby Whittingham: Tate Modern or Tate Theatre
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,”… Continue reading Selby Whittingham: Tate Modern or Tate Theatre
Laura Gascoigne: The Art Police – November 2017
If you’re thinking of committing an art crime, now’s your moment. In June budgetary pressures forced the ‘temporary’ closure of the Met’s Art & Antiques Squad and the transfer of expert staff to the Grenfell Tower fire investigation, and there’s no knowing when, if ever, they’ll be back. So it’s bye-bye blue light, hello green… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: The Art Police – November 2017
Laura Gascoigne: Tangled Web – September 2017
“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… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: Tangled Web – September 2017
Laura Gascoigne: It’s Not The Winning, It’s The Making Art – July 2017
Last month a new sort of museum opened in Sweden. The brainchild of psychologist Dr Samuel West, the Museum of Failure in Helsinborg is an unnatural history museum of commercial fossils, a repository of innovative products that flopped. “The majority of all innovation projects fail,” its website announces cheerfully, before expressing the hope that showcasing… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: It’s Not The Winning, It’s The Making Art – July 2017
Laura Gascoigne: Do You Want Ice With That? – May 2017
Ever since Anya Gallaccio made her name by exhibiting an ice block called Intensities and Surfaces in an East London pumping station in 1996, I’ve been monitoring the advance of ice through the contemporary art world, where it seems resistant to climate trends prevailing elsewhere. While the polar ice caps recede, the phenomenon of ice… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: Do You Want Ice With That? – May 2017
Laura Gascoigne: Tainted by Experience – March 2017
When the former controller of BBC Radio 3 John Drummond published an autobiography in 2001, he called it ‘Tainted by Experience’ – an ironic reference to the reason given by a Birtist suit at the Beeb for his being ‘let go’ a decade earlier. I haven’t read the book, but the expression was used by… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: Tainted by Experience – March 2017