I am still cataloguing books, clearing away rejects as I go and re-reading when I feel the curiosity. I placed the 2826th book for keeping on the catalogue I am making tonight (the rest boxed for various Fates) and then sat down to read that little book through again and reflect. It was a volume … More The art of not being looked at comfortably: Ron Mueck
Celebrating the achievements of women through visibility: the means and the content of our celebration in Bishop Auckland Town Hall. Provincial venues continually stretch themselves as media of radical representation of supposedly silenced and supposedly invisible populations. Visibility is promoted as a political object in all kinds of ‘pride’ celebrations, that insist that the fact … More Celebrating the achievements of women through visibility: the means and the content of our celebration in Bishop Auckland Town Hall.
‘…, and yet there is something in the form that does not make sense to me’.[1] The beautiful new novel by Adrian Duncan The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth (2025) imagines a project in which the ‘history from within’ is sought of ‘selected sculptures’.[2] That history in a novel extends to the people who work … More A blog on the beautiful new novel by Adrian Duncan ‘The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth’ (2025)
Now hubby Geoff is so unexpectedly well so soon, I am off comprehensive culture -seeking in London again on the 26th-27th February. It’s a return that promises to make me feel the Baroque and Roll of the Classical Drama and Leigh Bowery over two days. Hubby Geoff now so well he is finding fault with … More Feeling the Baroque and Roll of the Classical Drama and Leigh Bowery over two days in London.
They say retirement’s a time for leisureBut not necessarily for pleasure. The little iambic couplet I composed, with obligatory soft and feminine rhymes (don’t blame me though for the sexist nomenclature of the discourse of poetic technique where double rhymes are named both feminine and weak), for this sad blog is meant to look at … More “They say retirement’s a time for leisure / But not necessarily for pleasure”.
The queer artist, Charles Ricketts, wrote: ‘There is something Latin in the fibre of Titian, in his sense of reality and sense of control. … he belongs to a patrician people to whom experience is met by the force equal to control it’. [1] Could such a judgement relate to the experience of queer life … More The queer artist, Charles Ricketts, wrote: ‘There is something Latin in the fibre of Titian, in his sense of reality and sense of control. … he belongs to a patrician people to whom experience is met by the force equal to control it’. Could such a judgement relate to the experience of queer life in a Britain certain of its Imperial pretensions?
I first saw this painting painted about 1950 at an Eardley retrospective at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art in a Joan Eardley retrospective called ‘A Sense of Place’ in 2017. Though often reduced to statements of the ‘strong identification with the poor and deprived’ type, these paintings do not seem to me to call … More ‘Street Kids’ Joan Eardley (c. 1950): Townhead in Glasgow
‘Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket’, 1875, which earned Ruskin’s scorn. Oil on panel, by Whistler, James Abbott McNeill (1834-1903); 60.2×46.7 cm; Detroit Institute of Arts, USA; © Detroit Institute of Arts ; Gift of Dexter M. Ferry Jr.; American, out of copyright. Credit: Bridgeman Images One of the strangest aspects of my … More To have ‘flung a pot of paint in the public’s face’ is the dynamic of beauty in painting and proceeds when done properly as if it were done by the painting itself: the case of James McNeill Whistler’s ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket’, 1875.
Geoff and I are confined these days following Geoff’s serious illness, and we don’t think we can visit the great art exhibitions, theatre, or even cinema in the cities we would take pains to go to: Edinburgh, London, Manchester, Liverpool, or even the nearest of the great cities, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Macbeth knowing that his agents have … More Exhibiting the subject of ‘the local’ locally. What is local art? What do its images capture? A subject or a viewer?
A. Le Corbusier’s Tall Building Unité d’Habitation, Marseilles (1945-52) A844 Open Studio Set Exercise First issued in another place Friday, 12 Oct 2018, 10:00 Le Corbusier’s Tall Building Unité d’Habitation, Marseilles (1945-52) A844 Open Studio Set Exercise Photograph below: Roof level pool and children’s play areas at Unité d’Habitation, Marseilles (1945-52) from Jenkins, D. (1999) … More Reissue: A set Of Tall Building blogs from an old course.
Mies Van Der Rohe thought the phrase ‘less is more’ a defence of the refusal of embellishments in architecture that are both non-functional and decorative rather than part of a basic form or formal concept expressed by a building, but the phrase is a kind of pleasing nonsense that the love of binaries makes possible. … More The total absurdity of the phrase ‘less is more’! An example of ‘overthinking’ on that theme.
Leonardo da Vinci (about 1499-1500) The Burlington House Cartoon.Charcoal (and wash?) heightened with white chalk on paper, mounted on canvas, 141.5 x 104.6 cm. Purchased with a special grant and contributions from the Art Fund, The Pilgrim Trust, and through a public appeal organised by the Art Fund, 1962. NG6337. Available at: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG6337 There were … More We called it the Leonardo cartoon. We visited it every week.
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