David Lee thinks loans both ways should be considered. We have rehearsed the pros and antis of retaining, loaning, handing back or exchanging the Elgin Marbles in the pages of the Jackdaw many times. The main arguments on both sides, few as they are, remain the same and recent reiteration of these familiar points would suggest nothing new will ever […]
Laura Gascoigne investigates why what was once so very special is now common as muck and comprehensively commandeered by the fat controllers In The Masque of Augurs, Ben Jonson introduces the comic figure of Vangoose, a “rare artist” and producer of masques with a reputation for the wildly fantastical. “Now we would bring in some dainty new thing, dat never […]
Eric Coombes responds to an editorial about the art cash cow Is a celebrity a person ‘famous for being famous’, or merely ‘someone in the media that one had never heard of’. Despite being obscure – in this paradoxical and mysterious mode of obscurity – celebrities, however ill-informed and stupid they might be, are entitled to have their ‘opinions’ widely […]
Edward Lucie-Smith charts the decline of contemporary art from Modernism and the avant garde to being a mere epiphenomenon of the fashion industry Ten days or so ago, before beginning to write this, I was idly browsing a slightly out-of-date copy of the Evening Standard Magazine. Anything to avoid the toil of having to write something myself. Faute de mieux, […]
Edward Lucie-Smith considers the phenomenon of ‘The Late Style’ in relation to Rembrandt and Turner The new Rembrandt show at the National Gallery in London (until January 18th) is clearly meant to challenge the enormous success the same institution enjoyed with its recent exhibition devoted to Leonardo da Vinci. It is a populist homage to one of the undoubted giants […]
Laura Gascoigne examines the paradox of why most artists’ earnings are below the poverty line while the art market is thriving as never before Another month, another book on the contemporary art economy, this time from an overlooked perspective. The New Economy of Art, a joint publication by DACS and Artquest, looks at the art market from the POV of […]
Laura Gascoigne wades through managerial drivel to consider the plight of museums outside London. Searching for quirky museums for a series in The Oldie, I turned up the name of the Astley Cheetham Art Gallery in Stalybridge, Greater Manchester. A recce of the BBC Your Paintings website revealed that its Victorian collection, left to the town in 1932 by mill […]
Laura Gascoigne wonders if the artists who purport to be thinkers are any good at thinking. “I think, therefore I am.” “I think differently, therefore I am an artist.” To traditionalists it may already seem that the entire art world has arrived at destination Hell in a handcart and there is nowhere further to go, but actually the journey isn’t […]
Wisely, Laura Gascoigne is unconvinced by art as investment. Equestrian statues of one sort or another are becoming a regular fixture on the Fourth Plinth. In 2012 we had Elmgreen & Dragset’s paedophile’s delight of the boy on the gilded rocking horse; next up in 2015 will be Hans Haacke’s equine skeleton, inspired by Stubbs, with a live ticker of […]
Artists have re-discovered the cabinet of curiosities, which is to their and our advantage, argues Laura Gascoigne. “There really is no such thing as art. There are only artists.” Easy enough to say at a time of rationing when there are few varieties of artist about. When Gombrich made his famous statement in 1950 there were only painters, sculptors, the […]
