The spin of art

Michael Daley describes how the main players in State Art have taken spin to a new level. Many people remain in awe at the legendary manipulative means by which the political spinmaster, Alastair Campbell, delivered to successive New Labour governments the media coverage they craved. What is not sufficiently appreciated is that compared with art… Continue reading The spin of art

William Orpen reappraised

Painter John Nutt reappraises the forgotten and routinely maligned William Orpen. Largely for historical and religious reasons, the Irish have been persistently marginalised in British society. Orpen was the youngest of five children of a prosperous Irish Protestant solicitor. He was born in 1878 in Oriel House, Grove Avenue, Stilorgan near Dublin, where he enjoyed… Continue reading William Orpen reappraised

Grayson Perry’s 2014 Reith Lectures – a missed opportunity

Patrick Cullen explains why Grayson Perry missed an opportunity by avoiding the important issues he claimed to be addressing. Grayson Perry was a surprising choice to deliver the Reith Lectures given the list of senior academics, elder statesmen and those at the top of their profession preceding him in the job. One wondered why, when… Continue reading Grayson Perry’s 2014 Reith Lectures – a missed opportunity

Performance before content – Eric Coombes is disappointed…

…by the frivolity and lack of ambition and academic rigour in the 2014 Reith Lectures. Immediately after his predictably rapturous greeting at the first performance, Grayson Perry raised the question of why he was asked to give this year’s Reith Lectures. Well, for the first time in their sixty-six years, they were to be given… Continue reading Performance before content – Eric Coombes is disappointed…

Why shit can never be art – painter Patrick Cullen contests the commonly held view that a relic of an idea is a work of art

If any Jackdaw readers were still in doubt about just how rigged the contemporary art market is after numerous articles on the subject, many from the editor, then Phil Redman’s piece “The Crap Art Market” (The Jackdaw, no 108) should have put the matter beyond doubt. So I take all that as read. Less obvious… Continue reading Why shit can never be art – painter Patrick Cullen contests the commonly held view that a relic of an idea is a work of art

The importance of being Erno – Eric Coombes questions the reputation of a Brutalist architect

Sometimes material appears in a “serious” newspaper which—even in our  current cultural condition—is at an astonishingly low intellectual level to come from the prominent “authority” who wrote it. Disagreeable though it is, perhaps one should occasionally draw attention to such material, and subject it to closer inspection. Those who can bear to do so, should… Continue reading The importance of being Erno – Eric Coombes questions the reputation of a Brutalist architect

Lament for a lost, semi-innocent world: Giles Auty remembers St Ives, half a century on from when he first painted there

I paid a first visit to St. Ives in the late 1950s and will never forget my first glimpse of the town from the hill above the railway station. For someone to whom the word ‘sea’ had hitherto largely meant the pebbly beaches and endless mudflats of the coast of East Kent, the turquoise water,… Continue reading Lament for a lost, semi-innocent world: Giles Auty remembers St Ives, half a century on from when he first painted there

Frieze – state art’s closed shop: artist John Keane exposes a cabal

In 1986 I did a large painting which I called The Emperor’s New Pose and was subtitled The Importance of Being Important. It poked fun at art market darlings of the time, such as Julian Schnabel and Georg Baselitz, and included felt that I had stolen from a Joseph Beuys installation at the Anthony d’Offay… Continue reading Frieze – state art’s closed shop: artist John Keane exposes a cabal

Christopher Wool and the art market: selling the soul

American painter Christopher Wool (b. 1955) has been described by the New Yorker as “perhaps the most important painter of his generation”. Christie’s are in less doubt, describing him as “one of the last century’s most influential artists”. Even by the risible standards of bullshit spouted by auction houses and art dealers this is ridiculous.… Continue reading Christopher Wool and the art market: selling the soul