The CC Land Pierre Bonnard exhibition Tate Modern visited 03/05/2019 I felt a lot of fear visiting here. The over-crowding was evident and disturbing and definitely detracted from an experience that was otherwise worthy of being waited for – to see some of the most intriguing and wonderful paintings of the twentieth-century for yourself. So … More The CC Land ‘Pierre Bonnard’ exhibition Tate Modern visited 03/05/2019

Rosmerholm Duke of York’s Theatre Seen 03/05/2019 This wonderful play shimmers with all the lights and darks of great theatre – wonderfully adapted text, brilliant direction and staging from design to lighting to on-stage-proxemics. You also wonder – how will they do the flood? Answer: here brilliantly! And the acting is tremendous. Tom Burke looks … More Ibsen’s ‘Rosmerholm’ Duke of York’s Theatre Seen 03/05/2019

This was a long-awaited treat that more than met its promise. The show has set out to find the ‘nude’ meaningful and, as a result given food for thought on so much that mattered to the European Renaissance and beyond. Issues of gender, truth, the notion of design as either divine or human or both, … More ‘The Renaissance Nude’ Royal Academy visited 02/05/2019

List of figures referred to below: E Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, AH281 (1958)Oil on hardboard 88.9 x 120.7 cm. Bradford Museums and Galleries. Available at: https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-martyrdom-of-saint-sebastian-23516 (Accessed 27/04/19) F Assembly of Figures, AKA First Assembly of Figures, AH129 (1952)Oil on board 142.2 x 116.8 cm. Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich.  Available at: http://www.thekeithvaughansociety.com/2016/11/24/first-assembly-figures-1952/ (Accessed … More Thinking about a piece of work on Keith Vaughan

This is a beginning book list before I finish writing the 2000 word assignment. It will be the bones of the bibliography for the work – minus annotations. I started by annotating works that were easy to annotate but have read all of them once they were included. Some titles are self-explanatory (*). The real … More Final version of some annotated references for a project on May 1968 in Paris.

The issues raised by the case studies in Block 4 of A844 are said to exemplify “categories of the visual and material that have demystified the role of the artist, and challenged the notion of what is an art object and who can produce art.” Nowhere was the role of the creative individual artist more … More A framework for a question on the artefacts of May 1968.

On Chapter 3 of: Bishop, C. (Ed.) (2012) Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship London & New York, Verso (references to Kindle ed. – uses Loc. Numbers not pages). Bishop rarely engages with the ‘art’ of ’68 itself (outside of a rather nice Lebel quotation), except for the Atelier Populaire’s 1968 Poster … More Art and Arting Around: Bishop’s 1968 in France

Bishop, C. (Ed.) (2012) Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship London & New York, Verso (references to Kindle ed. – uses Loc. Numbers not pages). Introduction & Ch. 1. ARGUMENT Bishop defines ‘participatory art’ to include all artistic phenomena related to an ‘expanded field of post-studio practices’, including those named socially engaged … More Working notes On Bishop (2012) ‘Artificial Hells’

How censorship happens! The reprinted blogs below were attempts to understand why I am so often frustrated by a course in Art-History at the OU that I am doing as Staff Development. They resulted in the OU taking away my right to create blogs on their site or taking part in online fora. Should an … More How censorship happens! Anecdotal!

Johnson, R. (1972) ‘The French Communist Party versus the Students: Revolutionary Politics in May-June 1968’ New Haven & London, Yale University Press. There is real joy in reading an old but a good book on left politics, not least because this book poses its questions in terms of the future choices and prospects for the … More May ’68 Notes on Johnson, R. (1972) ‘The French Communist Party versus the Students’ Yale University Press.

BLOG ON: Ross, Kristin (2002) May ’68 and its Afterlives Chicago & London, University of Chicago Press. Available as ebook at: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/open/detail.action?docID=496636 (Accessed 04/04/19).               This book helps me to reinterpret events in my own memory – for me May 68 in France was the prequel of changes in my experience of the institutions that … More Ross, Kristin (2002) ‘May ’68 and its Afterlives’ University of Chicago Press.