Laura Gascoigne Thank God for books. When shut off from real life, you can see it reflected in novels. But how accurate is the reflection? Does the mirror distort? In month ten of the no-longer-new-abnormal I sat down with a stack of novels about artists. Some I’d read before, others were new, chief among them… Continue reading Laura Gascoigne: The Masterpiece Delusion
2020 Blindness
David Lee March/April 2021 Nothing much happened last year in the visual arts. The usual suspects promoted themselves with yards of trivia, usually about the NHS, but nothing serious was made except by those conventional sorts who go quietly about their business. National galleries tried to fill the gap by selling us ‘virtual’ and ‘digital’… Continue reading 2020 Blindness
Dick French: Art of Jazz, London’s Art Scene
Dick French A curious little book has just come out called The Death of Francis Bacon. The author, Max Porter, won the International Dylan Thomas Prize some time ago. Whenever awards are deployed I always think of Charlotte Rampling who, in her film The Swimming Pool, remarked: “Awards are like haemorrhoids, sooner or later every… Continue reading Dick French: Art of Jazz, London’s Art Scene
The Moping Owl: March 2021
HOME ALONE Well here we still are – or perhaps not by the time you read this: goodness me, let’s hope so – but I do rather worry about how you’re all bearing up in these strange and straitened times. Social distancing is one thing, but this Social Hibernation altogether something else: and, with no… Continue reading The Moping Owl: March 2021
The Philistine – March 2021
Anthony Daniels Some years ago, I published an article in which I alleged that one of the most beautiful old towns in England had been devastated aesthetically by corrupt decisions of the council to permit modernist redevelopment. This created a certain stir in the town, and I was asked to appear on the local radio… Continue reading The Philistine – March 2021
Marlborough: Home to Three Book Designers Over Forty Years
Richard Shirley Smith
Who Signed Mutt’s Urinal?
Glyn Thompson
Alexander Adams: Cancelled Culture
Alexander Adams
A Line in the Sand
State Art is like a virus, it knows no boundaries and spreads like wildfire. In fact, it’s worse than a virus because once it’s arrived you can’t get rid of it because there’s seemingly no cure. And there are plenty of students actually volunteering to contract it. And national boundaries are no protection for it… Continue reading A Line in the Sand
Let’s All Pretend Part 83
David Lee January/February 2021 Despite grovelling worthy of Darius on our part, The Jackdaw no longer qualifies for press view invites to the National Gallery. As a result I didn’t see the Artemisia Gentileschi show in the few weeks it was open before Boris announced the second slam dunk. It was in any case fully… Continue reading Let’s All Pretend Part 83