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
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
The case for a more – not less – traditional Royal Academy
First published in The Jackdaw ♯1, September 2000 …All of this is distant from the reason that the Royal Academy was set up in 1768; namely, in order to provide an Academy, a school, for the training of artists, as well as to give members and hopefuls the fixed target of an annual exhibition to… Continue reading The case for a more – not less – traditional Royal Academy
RA summer exhibition: An institution betrayed
First published in The Jackdaw ♯71 September 2007: Figurative painter Gary M James on the 2007 RA Summer Exhibition. Any outsider who entered figurative work which was not small enough to squeeze into the small south room had wasted their time, money and effort I became a Friend of the Royal Academy not long before… Continue reading RA summer exhibition: An institution betrayed
RA summer exhibition: State Art is swallowing the RA
First published in The Jackdaw ♯21, September 2002 As the cost of non-member submission has increased so the chance of inclusion has diminished owing to the reduction in available room. Seemingly unstoppable, the apparently incurable bacterium of State Art continues to spread like a plague into every corner of culture. Like the feared superbug, necrotising… Continue reading RA summer exhibition: State Art is swallowing the RA
RA summer exhibition: Why has that man got no clothes on, Dad?
First published in The Jackdaw ♯12, October 2001 Will Harvey demonstrates how the RA Summer Exhibition performs a useful function for those who can’t get their works easily exhibited elsewhere… Thousands of paintings are entered for the RA Summer Exhibition. A few squeeze through the jury. Fewer still get past the Hanging Committee and onto… Continue reading RA summer exhibition: Why has that man got no clothes on, Dad?