Gosh, Sounds Fun And Not At All Pretentious!

This year’s Venice Biennale has been tearing itself apart for months: countries not showing up, artists getting fired, exhibitions being cancelled, funding getting pulled. There were petitions and protests months before a painting was on a wall. The jury quit in the days leading up to the opening, then Iran quit, then the European Commission quit. There were protests against Israel and Russia during the preview, artists went on strike and artworks were replaced with installations of Palestinian flags. The whole thing was a massive mess of conflicting politics, personal tragedy and unresolvable ideological differences from the very beginning.

And all this without even mentioning that the curator, Koyo Kouoh, died last year and wasn’t able to see her artistic vision through to completion.

And presumably is now rolling in her grave at what's on offer/ 

Kouoh’s idea for her biennale was to chuck aside the ire and invective of outright political art, and focus on quiet, contemplation and healing.

And how, you may ask Reader, is that expressed? As you would expect, considering the source...

A gathering of glazed creatures by Peruvian artist Celia Vásquez Yui transforms another gallery into a little slice of jungle. Among the endless, anonymous abstractions, there are a bunch of great paintings. Mohammed Z Rahman’s tiny images on matchboxes of shells, flowers, condoms, knobs and skulls are excellent depictions of queer heartbreak. Tammy Nguyen uses her huge, complex canvases to expose links between the cold war and Vietnam. Wardha Shabbir takes the tradition of Pakistani miniature painting and blows it up to maximal scale, resulting in some head-spinningly gorgeous paintings of flowers and foliage.

Well, the glazed animals are cute, looking as they do like garden ornaments from the 'Past Times' catalogue...but it can't last!

The Denmark pavilion is a hi-tech sperm bank, Luxembourg’s features a singing turd, Japan’s forces visitors to look after fake babies. There’s a lifesize chocolate Russell Crowe in the Malta pavilion

And then there's the Austria pavilion...don't ask what's in that, for your sanity's sake

It’s brilliantly obscene and vile.

Ah, art. 

Just Like Any New Invention...

Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok posted on Friday that lapses in safeguards had led it to generate “images depicting minors in minimal clothing” on social media platform X.

...I mean, has there ever been an invention of visual arts in the entire history of the world that wasn't used for porn by someone eventually? When Ug first got out the ground ochre and charcoal to paint mammoths on the cave walls, it won't have been too long before one of his chums was planning to paint Mrs Ug in a compromising position with a cave bear.

  The chatbot, a product of Musk’s company xAI, has been generating a wave of sexualized images throughout the week in response to user prompts.

User prompts. The users of the software. Not the creators of it. So why is Musk getting all the opprobium from the EU and the progressives in the states? As if I didn't know... 

In a reply to a user on X on Thursday, Grok said most cases could be prevented through advanced filters and monitoring although it said “no system is 100% foolproof”, adding that xAI was prioritising improvements and reviewing details shared by users.

If lawmakers and politicians have a beef, it should be with the users who are doing this, not with the creators of the tool that gives them an outlet to do it. 

Now Do All The Other Organisations....

....because they are all at it!

Arts Council England has been accused of abandoning artistic excellence in favour of bureaucratic box-ticking after a damning review found it was attempting to 'change society' rather than support great art.

It's hardly the only institution to have been captured, is it? We know the Left's MO, don't we? 

1. Identify a respected institution.

2. kill it. 

3. gut it. 

4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.;

The watchdog, which hands out more than £450million a year in public funding, came under fire in a report by Baroness Hodge, the former Labour culture minister, who was asked to examine how the quango distributes its money. Baroness Hodge wrote that she felt the initiative led to organisations feeling forced to 'tick all the ACE boxes to secure funding', and suggested the strategy be replaced with 'a new, less prescriptive' model. Her review concluded that the organisation had drifted away from its founding purpose, with evidence suggesting that art itself had been pushed into the background.

That was the point of it, Hodge.  

Oh, Give It A Fucking Rest, For Christ's Sake!

He is widely regarded as England’s greatest painter, but despite his extraordinary output, elements of JMW Turner’s personality have remained a mystery.

 *grinds teeth* Here we go again, a pressure group claiming a famous figure who is no longer around to challenge them...

Now, a groundbreaking BBC documentary delves into Turner’s 37,000 sketches, drawings and watercolours to build an unprecedented psychological portrait, one that raises the possibility that Turner’s singular vision was shaped by childhood trauma and neurodivergence.

And the art historians putting their names and staking their reputations to this hogwash, who are they?  

Among the figures helping to unlock the artist’s life story in Turner: the Secret Sketchbooks, are the actor Timothy Spall, who portrayed him in Mike Leigh’s film Mr Turner, the artists Tracey Emin and John Akomfrah, the Rolling Stones musician Ronnie Wood, the psychotherapist Orna Guralnik and the naturalist Chris Packham.

Oh. 

Packham said: “As with all of the people we suspect of having had neurodivergent traits, from Alan Turing to Isaac Newton, it’s impossible to provide retrospective diagnoses, so we can only offer conjecture about that. But if Turner did have significant neurodiverse traits, I imagine they would have had quite a profound impact on his art and thinking.”

Packham, an ambassador for the National Autistic Society, pointed to Turner’s “exceptional” keenness for detail and his “hyperfocus”, a state of intense, prolonged concentration on a particular task or topic, commonly seen in conditions such as ADHD and autism.

And in great artists. But correlation is not causation. 

If It Bothers You So Much, Perhaps The Sculpture Should Be Removed

The artist Anish Kapoor is considering taking legal action after border patrol agents posed for a photo in front of his Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago, saying the scene represented “fascist America”.

He is a famously fragile little snowflake, buut this nonsense is off the scale!

“Abducting street vendors, breaking doors, pulling people from cars, using teargas on residential streets,” he said about the agents, who were reportedly celebrating after “military style” immigration enforcement raids.

“I mean, this is fascist America and just beyond belief.” There have been reports that more than 1,000 people have been arrested by the federal agents since the crackdown began in September. When asked if he was considering legal options, Kapoor said: “Of course, I’m going to do everything I can.”

And having tried crying and stamping his feet without effect, it's time for the lawyers! Though even in the famously litigious US, they may struggle with this one... 

Kapoor took legal action against the National Rifle Association (NRA) after they used an image of Cloud Gate, which was installed in 2006 and is known locally as “the Bean”, in an advert. He settled out of court with the NRA in 2018. “It’s a bit more complicated with this,” Kapoor said of the more recent incident, “because they’re a full, if you like, national army unit.”

And because they simply took a photo and didn't use it for commercial purposes, you complete spanner!  

Perhapd the answer is to remove the sculpture so people you don't approve of can't take pictures of it? How'd that suit? 

Heatherwick Is Robbed Again

 Sadly, instead of a gorgeous and innovative design for the Queen Elizabeth national memorial, we will end up with this monstosity by Norman Foster instead, which looks like it would be more at home on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise than St James's Park.

His translucent glass “unity bridge”, inspired by Elizabeth’s wedding tiara, is said to symbolise her as a “unifying force”.

It looks more like the plastic cutlery yoi get with a takeaway packed lunch to me! 

I Suppose Watching Your Offspring Like A Hawk Isn’t An Option?

The news that a child damaged a £42m Mark Rothko painting at a museum in Rotterdam last month had me wondering how I’d feel if my toddler was the culprit.

Probably delighted to have material for yet another tedious 'Look, I've reproduced, worship me!' column... 

This story has brought out two categories of people that I’ll admit I struggle with: people who don’t get the work of Mark Rothko, and people who dislike kids.

Oh, give me strength…. 

...it’s the usual calls for children to be banned from public spaces. They shouldn’t be allowed into galleries if they can’t behave, and their parents should be made to pay – that sort of thing.

And you can see why! 

Children respond instinctively to art. They have not built up defences, or preconceptions about it, and the earlier you take them to galleries and expose them to different styles and mediums, the more open and receptive they will be to things that are experimental, unusual or transgressive.

Or maybe children are just unsocialised little animals that shouldn’t be allowed free rein in society? 

Children explore the world through touch. My boy loves to scratch his fingers against woodchip wallpaper, to stand with his palms flat against the rough bark of a tree. Anyone familiar with kids will be able to imagine what went through that child’s mind as they stood in front of Grey, Orange on Maroon, No 8. Something about the unvarnished, slightly chalky surface of the paint made them want to feel it. And so they did. Arguably, in doing so, they connected with the work of Rothko on a deeper level than many adults.

🙄

Either way, I hope that the child wasn’t made to feel too bad. Perhaps it’ll be a funny story that the parents tell someday, and I bet they watch their child a bit more closely in future. I don’t want to add to the shame they are probably already feeling, but I do wonder if it’s time modern parents had a think about rehabilitating the much-maligned toddler reins of the 1980s and 90s, even if just for occasional use.

But wasn’t it your type of progressive mummies who demanded their use be curtailed as they stifled ‘free expression’ in the first place?  

Recycling Old Ideas..?

Well, why not? We were cheated out of what would have been a stunning creation, so why not 'rebadge' it?

Shortlisted ideas for the Queen Elizabeth II national memorial were unveiled today, including a bronze cast of a Windsor oak tree and a giant canopy of stone lily pads. Other ideas include audio installations with the late Queen's voice and a statue of her next to Prince Philip, and a 'graceful and strong' stone bridge with cascading water.

It's the Heatherwick option that I favour out of all of them: 

2. Heatherwick Studio Bridge of Togetherness - A memorial walk inspired by the idea of 'togetherness' with 70 lily pad stepping stones by Heatherwick Studio with sculptor and ceramicist Halima Cassell, MRG Studio, Webb Yates and Arup. At the centre of the bridge is a limestone sculpture of the late Queen, whose childhood nickname was Lilibet, protected by a giant canopy of eight carved sculptural lily pads, with the stone chosen because it will 'age with dignity'.

Please, no more equestrian statues or hideous modern art! Let this win! 

What Took So Long?

The National Gallery has announced a raft of increased security measures after protesters attacked paintings including Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers, John Constable’s The Hay Wain and Diego Velázquez’s The Rokeby Venus. From Friday morning there will be a ban on bringing into the London gallery any liquids except for baby formula, expressed milk or prescription medicines. All doors into the gallery will have walk-through metal detectors, bags and rucksacks will be inspected, and visitors have been asked to bring as few items as possible, and no large bags.

Rather 'shutting the stable door after the horse is well over the horizon' but I guess better late than never.

Also banned from the gallery premises are “displayed or wearable paraphernalia deemed as offensive or affiliated to organisations that pose a physical threat to the collection”, as well as the distribution of any campaign materials.

Should probably add 'multi-hued dyed hair' to that... 

The gallery said it was sorry that visitors were “not going to receive the welcome we would very much like to extend to them, but we hope that they understand why it is necessary for us to do this”.

Anyone who doesn'tmust surely have been living under a rock... 

In response to the letter, a spokesperson for Just Stop Oil told the Art Newspaper: “If the NMDC believes the biggest threat they face is nonviolent protest, they should speak to the staff that are now sleeping in Florida’s Salvador Dalí museum after their houses were destroyed by a supercharged hurricane.”

Just Stop Oil and Youth Demand have since proposed a meeting with the National Gallery’s director, and promised to “leave the soup at home”.

Let me plan the meeting! No tea and coffee, no biscuits, and their chairs poised to drop them into a tank of hungry sharks!  

"And When 'Just Stop Oil' Nutters Target It..."

 "...it's red paint proof!" 

I think it's hideous. You, Reader? 

What Does It Matter?

Surely the only thing to be fixated on is the pass rate?

“Art education offers something special to children and young people, but sadly there is a deficiency in our current provision, meaning that wonderful opportunities for growth and change are missed, and this impacts all students,” the report said.

The lack of standardised guidance in the curriculum means the inclusion of artists from underrepresented backgrounds remains a challenge, with lesson content largely set by teachers and subject leaders, which means students often only have access to a “narrow perspective on the artistic world”, the report says.

Because everything else has only been improved by inclusion policies, right?  

The Runnymede Trust and Freelands Foundation are calling for exam boards to commit to a minimum target of 25% representation for minority ethnic artists in GCSE art exam papers for 2025. Pearson and Eduqas have agreed.

*sighs* 

Perfectly Understandably, Andreas...

Museum director Andreas Beitin said: 'We thought that flies didn’t come under the Animal Welfare Act.'

You'd have to be insane to treat them as anything other than revolting disease-bearing pests, after all. Rather like, say, art directors.

The RSPCA slammed the 'so-called "art exhibition"' and said: 'There would be national outcry if such an exhibition involved any other animal – such as a dog.'

Well, yes. But it didn't.

Somewhere, A Design Company Is Saying 'Oooh, How Did We Miss That?'

The range to celebrate Van Gogh features sunflowers aplenty, on socks, scarfs, and in packs of seeds, as well as jigsaw, postcard and print mementoes of his best-known self-portraits.

Ooh, I do love overpriced museum tat! 

...a £6 eraser in the shape of an ear...

An eraser? Who uses pencils these days?  

Apart from the eraser ear, visitors can buy a £5 bar of soap, marketed as ideal for “the tortured artist who enjoys fluffy bubbles”. An “emotional first aid kit”, priced at £16, is described as “a box of wise emergency advice for 20 key psychological situations”. Some have been left distinctly unimpressed at the attempt at humour.

Oh, of course. Here come the snowflakes! 

Charles Thomson, a co-founder of the Stuckist group of artists, said: “Suicide is not a joke and mental illness is not a joke.”

“This is shallow, nasty and insensitive,” he told the Mail on Sunday. “What next? Van Gogh’s suicide pistol?”

'Tarquin, why didn't you think of this!?'

The Tyranny Of The Aggrieved...

Two items in the 'Mail' this morning show where we're heading...

Dr Erin Pritchard, a lecturer in disability and education, told supermarkets that the term midget was 'a form of hate speech'.

Dr Pritchard acknowledged that some people may think the change is part of 'cancel culture' but argued 'when people scream the name at you in the street, it is only right that it is removed'.

'The change should have happened years ago. It is easy for people not called the word to think its removal is wrong,' Dr Pritchard, who also appeared in Channel 4's Dating with Dwarfism, said.

She added that she had asked Amazon to remove novelty items which use the term but acknowledged it would not be possible to rename items no longer in production such as the MG Midget car or the Daihatsu Midget minivan.

No doubt removal of any mention of them will be the next demand...  

And elsewhere:

The incident comes a week after a jury cleared four people of criminal damage despite the fact they did not deny pulling down the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol.

Earlier tonight, the man said the statue should have been taken down in the past. 'If this happened decades ago, I wouldn't be here would I?' he told the negotiators.

Predictably, like Pritchard, it's 'Me, me, me,,,' all the way through. Emboldened by the verdict, no doubt. 

Owen King, 52, who works in marketing, was cycling past when he saw the man chipping away at the statue. He said: 'I saw all the police and I presumed he was protesting about Eric Gill and his background. Then the fire brigade were here as well. People are just wondering, 'why don't they take him off the sculpture?'

'So I think they're just waiting for him to come down. He's got this tiny little hammer and he's bashing away at the leg there. Not much is coming off and he seems to be resting a lot.'

Well, since the police stood around like they usually do, paralysed by the thought that taking action might rebound on them if the miscreant was injured (which is why neighbours' lives are disrupted for a fourth day in Coventry), he had plenty of time. 

And no, he's not supported by anyone outside the unhinged: 

He added: 'Someone shouted to him, 'get off it, you ugly person, an ugly person desecrating a beautiful thing'. And he shouted 'you paedo'. And then everyone was laughing at him. I think you (should) separate art from the person.'

Responding to the man's comments calling people paedophiles, he added: 'I think it's really reductive.' Moments later one woman, who was walking past the scene, shouted: 'Art should be separated from the person. You should spend your energy and time with something else. Art can be beautiful by itself.'

Why are we allowing people who don't represent the will of the majority to ride roughshod over the rest of us due to the cowardice of the state and the corporations? 

Clearly, 'Unique And Amazing' Mean Different Things To Different People...

Oh, really? Well, let's see wh...

MY EYES!

We can but hope she's not an art teacher.

Fill In The Blank...

Is it 'funding'? Is it 'discipline'?

Well, look who is writing the column for a clue.

...school means choices, and there are competing ideas about what school is for. The position firmly in place now in England, thanks largely to the influence of Michael Gove during his time as education secretary, is that our schools should focus their attention on producing units of sellable labour power (school leavers), and these units should be seen as being more or less able to compete in what ministers call the global labour market; there is an agreed amount of knowledge that needs to be transferred from teachers to pupils so that they can become these competitive units.

Yes, yes, it's all about producing obedient drones for the communist mach... excuse me, for the capitalist machine, isn't it?

Well, what would you have them learn instead..?

I might soon arrive at a school and do a poetry workshop with some younger teenagers. It could well go like this. They make it clear that they don’t like poetry. I tell them poetry comes in hundreds of different shapes, sizes, rhythms and moods; one way we can make poems is in a group and without writing anything down. For example, the people who are in charge of us in life have ways of showing they are fed up with us, angry with us, or through which they try to control us; punish us, even. What do such people say? I suggest they go into pairs and say these kinds of things to each other – in role, as parents, teachers, carers. We select the best lines. Then I say, can we create this into a scene? They suggest that all the lines should be said to just one of them sitting in a chair; the rest stand in a semicircle around him, and as they each say their line they point at the boy in the chair and then step back, while the semicircle repeats a chosen chorus.

We have made a snapshot of one aspect of their lives. It has rhythm, structure, solo and chorus, movement and mimesis. Later they can perform it for others, write a transcript of it and “publish” it on a school blog. We can talk about what we have made: what worked? Was it like any other poems or plays? This is the arts in action.

If so, you can keep it, Michael.

Because what you're doing is not 'art'. What you are doing is focussing young minds on their grievances, with no thought given to why these parents, teachers and carers are saying what they are saying to these children.

But then, how else can you ensure a steady stream of future Labour voters?

Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder...

New planters, lighting columns and benches are being installed in Southend as part of a project to improve access and create a more attractive gateway to the town.

Oh, super! It could really do with some prett...

Oh.

Yeah, well. They do have form, after all.

Andrew Moring, councillor for infrastructure, said: “I’m pleased to see work progressing on the landscaping of this important gateway to the town.

"The clever design allows us to introduce greenery to an area where planting trees into the ground was not an option due to the large number of pipes and cables beneath the road, as well as introducing attractive new lighting and seating.

“I’d like to thank all the local businesses who fed into the final design by sharing their ideas.”

So, you know who to blame..!

Unexpected Fox

In the grey and damp New Year, I took a trip to Romford to do some shopping, and chanced upon this stunning piece of art, no less amazing for being that dreaded scourge of property maintenance people, graffiti:

I can't begin to explain why my spirits rose on happening upon it, but it was, perhaps, the sudden appearance of something beautiful amid the damp, grey temples to conspicuous consumption all around.

Now, I've expressed admiration for graffiti 'artists' before, and there's no doubt that some are immensely talented. It's just rather sad that their outlet for their talent is someone else's property.

No doubt this will soon be removed, it's chance to brighten someone else's day flowing into the drain under the high-pressure house of some minimum wage employee. That will be a sad day.

Art! Is There Nothing It Cannot Do?

More than 50 people viewed photos and artwork contributed by Hackney-ites, short films about the borough and its spaces and invited to add to a graffiti piece called What is Hackney to you?.*

The 'artwork' can be seen at the link. Sadly, it can't be unseen... *shudders*

“I wanted to do this simply because I know people from outside Hackney, and their views can be quite negative about our community,” said 18-year-old Josephine Okunbolade. “Some are even too scared to visit based on things they have heard, so I wanted to participate to educate people and show that Hackney is beautiful. This is why our hashtag is #DontTurnABlindEye”.

Not to be outdone, others are even more ambitious:

I...

I just...

*H/T: wiggia via email

International Prize For....What?

Reproduced without comment....