Laura Gascoigne July/August 2019 It’s hard to know where to start with Ingres’s definition when nobody knows any more what probity means. And yet drawing is enjoying a resurgence. What is going on? When David Hockney breezed into the Royal College from Bradford in 1959, he announced his arrival not with naïve etchings of naughty… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: Redrawing Drawing – July 2019
Martin Lang: Against life drawing
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
Laura Gascoigne: Is Art (Finally) Toast? – May 2019
Laura Gascoigne May/June 2019 In 2014 the Harvard-based science magazine Annals of Improbable Research presented its Ig Nobel prize for neuroscience to a team of researchers from China and Canada who demonstrated that seeing the face of Christ in a slice of burnt toast is perfectly OK. (That year’s Ig Nobel prize for economics went… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: Is Art (Finally) Toast? – May 2019
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
Laura Gascoigne: Entertainment Value – March 2019
Laura Gascoigne March/April 2019 During a bibulous press trip dinner a few years ago, a travel journalist laid into me about art criticism. How could I set myself up as a judge of contemporary art when it was all a matter of taste and no one could predict the verdict of history? I spluttered something… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: Entertainment Value – March 2019
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
Laura Gascoigne: The Blag Trade – January 2019
Laura Gascoigne January/February 2019 It had to happen: The Apprentice has been let loose on the art market. For episode 8 of the latest series, contestants were corralled in the Centre Hall of Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery to be informed by Alan Sugar from a Big Brother screen: “The global art market is worth a… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: The Blag Trade – January 2019
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?
Laura Gascoigne: We’re on a Gender Bender – November 2018
Laura Gascoigne November/December 2018 It’s official: you can no longer walk into a room and say: “Hi guys!” In July Woman’s Hour host Jane Garvey objected on Twitter that she is not a “guy” and doesn’t wish to be addressed as one, since when that mode of address – friendly, casual, non-committal – has been… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: We’re on a Gender Bender – November 2018
Laura Gascoigne: Only A Matter of Time – September 2018
Laura Gascoigne September/October 2018 “This is an urgent message. Time is running out!” warned an automated voice on my phone one morning. I slammed the phone down assuming it was a sales pitch, but whatever the voice’s motive it wasn’t wrong. According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists the election of Donald Trump in… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: Only A Matter of Time – September 2018