Tag: history

Thomas Haller’s resurrection is his ‘lilac renaissance, his violet hour’.

April 3, 2025

Fritz Schein lives entirely in, and on as his means of living, ‘the art world’ of ‘spectacularity’ – a world of apparently random images and appearances that eschews the privacy of inner reflection by being in love with the still surface of mirrors. When the ‘great recluse’ Thomas Haller turns up at a show Schein knows … More Thomas Haller’s resurrection is his ‘lilac renaissance, his violet hour’.

‘When I were five, I wore a plastic sword’: my child hero then, not Hugh MacDiarmid’s hero in his ‘Hymn to Lenin’ [but confused with Shakespeare’s ‘Richard III’ in my childish brain].

March 19, 2025

When I were five, I wore a plastic swordTo make my fantasy of Shakie’s ‘DickThe Turd’, heroic tho’ a villain, boredOf bowing to lesser kings, cringing sick-With-fancies sycophants to restrainingRealities. To change the sad bad worldEven then was my aim: rid of feigningWe would, I’d ensure it, red flag unfurledMake level those peaks of  false … More ‘When I were five, I wore a plastic sword’: my child hero then, not Hugh MacDiarmid’s hero in his ‘Hymn to Lenin’ [but confused with Shakespeare’s ‘Richard III’ in my childish brain].

Celebrating the achievements of women through visibility: the means and the content of our celebration in Bishop Auckland Town Hall.

March 5, 2025

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.

The danger of loaded words in questions.

March 3, 2025

Superstition is very often a word that is pre-loaded with value judgments. In mainstream modern usage, with justification in the use of it by the ancients and in the history of Christianity. Rarly and continuing internal disputes in Christian tradition is larded with name-calling (in which being ‘superstitious’ is a claim made against sects being … More The danger of loaded words in questions.

A blog on the beautiful new novel by Adrian Duncan ‘The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth’ (2025)

February 7, 2025

‘…, 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)

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?

January 18, 2025

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?

What are youthful attachments worth? In my ‘salad days’ I knew no ‘meat’. And now I am a pescatarian.

January 1, 2025

Young people are portrayed in literature, as inordinately fond of things they can’t quite digest or understand. In another blog I mentioned the summary given by Mr Venus, the aged taxidermist in Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, seeing off a young man who checks the change too carefully (for old men’s teeth substituted for the … More What are youthful attachments worth? In my ‘salad days’ I knew no ‘meat’. And now I am a pescatarian.

Reissue: ‘Castle Hill: A site from my childhood and its development as an idea about the nature of heritage’.

December 16, 2024

Castle Hill: A site from my childhood and its development as an idea about the nature of heritage. First submitted in another place: Sunday, 1 Apr 2018, 20:50 Castle Hill: A site from my childhood and its development as an idea about the nature of heritage. Submitted on April 1, 2018 Prompt Think about something … More Reissue: ‘Castle Hill: A site from my childhood and its development as an idea about the nature of heritage’.

Exhibiting the subject of ‘the local’ locally. What is local art? What do its images capture? A subject or a viewer?

December 15, 2024

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?