One for the Royal Collection

It’s the headgear that does it. Gives it away completely. Without it you’d be none the wiser. But the miner’s lamp makes it beyond any doubt. This is the Professor of Drawing at work on her most important finished presentation piece yet, a celebration of the Wigan pit girls of the 19th century. Such economy… Continue reading One for the Royal Collection

Tanks on the lawn

The tanks are opening at the Tate on July 18th. These are the very same tanks that stored oil in the days when Bankside served the function of generating electricity by burning Arabia’s finest. And if the ignoramuses in the Tate’s PR department start cooing, and they will – they will – about said tanks… Continue reading Tanks on the lawn

The RA summer show in record time

The Meeting, Royal Academy of Arts by Leonard Rosoman

Out of respect for one of its recently deceased Academicians, Leonard Rosomon (1913– 2012), the Royal Academy skied one of his best works in the corner of an obscure gallery at this year’s Summer Exhibition (until August 12th). His Committee Meeting, Royal Academy (above), 1979-1984, was on loan from the National Portrait Gallery, where it… Continue reading The RA summer show in record time

Supercollector: Charles Saatchi the bad man

Charles Thomson reviews the unexpurgated life story of Charles Saatchi. “Ad man you’re a bad man”, proclaimed the artist collective Bank bluntly about Charles Saatchi in 1997. In 2004, Guardian art critic, Adrian Searle, praised Saatchi’s popularist approach, eye and humour in his New Blood show, but drubbed the curatorial incoherence. Sir Peter Blake has… Continue reading Supercollector: Charles Saatchi the bad man

Chalk and cheese

Happy Dialectics (detail)

From the Hayward and the ICA to the Royal Academy, and from the public to the private sector, Angus Stewart compares and contrasts the qualities of works on show in London. The British Art Show at The Hayward Gallery should be lively – there are 39 artists. It is, according to the Southbank Centre, recognised… Continue reading Chalk and cheese

Beyond criticism, or, Notes from fantasy island (a response to Criticism and the collapse of culture)

Artist Paul Wilks responds to Eric Coombes’s tour de force of an essay (Criticism and the collapse of culture, The Jackdaw Mar-Apr 2011) Matthijs Van Boxsel cites, in The Encyclopaedia of Stupidity, a ‘Fame Machine’ devised by Villiers de l’Isle Adam, (1883) in which fame could be manufactured ‘by organic means’. Simply put, the ‘machine’… Continue reading Beyond criticism, or, Notes from fantasy island (a response to Criticism and the collapse of culture)

Criticism and the collapse of culture

Dr Eric Coombes looks back over the period since 1997 and identifies the collapse in standards of art criticism which has allowed conceptual art to prosper uncritically After the recent change of government, this might be a suitable moment to look back to the year in which the recently ejected gang of liars, buffoons and… Continue reading Criticism and the collapse of culture

Art’s urbane guerillas hit Wakefield: the Hepworth Museum

Brian Lewis, Pontefract’s poet laureate and a painter to boot, bravely exposed the neglect of local artists when the visiting functionaries of State Art arrived for the opening of the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield In the cultural war which challenges the dominance of the London art world we are the first shock troops of a… Continue reading Art’s urbane guerillas hit Wakefield: the Hepworth Museum

Another marvel of the Modern Age: the Hepworth Museum

Brian Lewis, poet and painter of Pontefract and champion of regional arts, reflects upon the Hepworth Museum in Wakefield, home town of the eponymous sculptor “Inside it is beautiful” The PR company who is responsible for naming the new Wakefield Art Gallery which is rising on land between the canal and the River Calder has… Continue reading Another marvel of the Modern Age: the Hepworth Museum