Remembering Ian Wilder

For quite a number of our local councillors, the business of representing a local community boils down to one of two things —  a particularly rotten and unreliable rung on the way up the ladder of their chosen party-political cursus honorum, to be skipped across swiftly, sustaining as little damage as possible in the process [...]

No. 76 Dean Street: a restoration drama

In the wake of the Prince of Wales’ ‘censorship row’, Barendina Smedley calls for the resignation of the secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and asks SPAB members to reconisder their involvement.

Blasting & Blessing: a sunstruck edition

Barendina Smedley finds that it’s too darned hot to write much, but still has something to say about the Arts Council, the Institute of Economic Affairs, Westminster Abbey and the charms of the London heatwave.

‘Sickert in Venice’ at the Dulwich Picture Gallery

It’s hard to know what to make of Walter Sickert (1860-1942), some of whose Venetian paintings and drawings make up Sickert in Venice, on view at the Dulwich Picture Gallery until 7 June 2009.
Britain typically imagines its art historical tradition to be primarily pastoral, decorative or based in formal portraiture. Sickert scarcely registers on any [...]

On accidents of perspective

Bunny Smedley explains what she’s been doing on her Easter holidays.

Salutary truth: ‘War and Medicine’ at the Wellcome Collection

It’s hard to know exactly what to say about the current exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, War and Medicine, except that after worrying about it for several days — worrying about the way in which going around the exhibition reduced me to unfamiliar near-speechlessness — I’ve concluded that this is, in fact, indication less of [...]

Mais ou sont les neiges d’antan?

Heavy snowfalls in London are extraordinarily rare these days — the last one, apparently, took place in the early 1960s — which made last night’s near-blizzard all the more welcome, at least to those of us who didn’t have to be anywhere in particular today.

Waiting for Palladio

Before long, I may even post a review of the Royal Academy’s fascinating if sporadically frustrating Andrea Palladio: His Life and Legacy, celebrating (only one year late) the quincentenary of the birth of the Paduan architect who, however indirectly, did more to shape Britain’s built environment than anyone else.
Until that moment arrives, however, here are [...]

The Emperor’s New Vitrine: Damien Hirst at Sotheby’s

The potency of Damien Hirst’s achievement still, after all these years, retains the capacity to astonish.
For instance, how is it that, a cultural lifetime now separating us from the days of Freeze (1988), the Turner Prize (1995) and Sensation (1997) — relationships with Saatchi, Gagosian and Jopling consumated and compromised apparently at will — BritArt’s [...]

Turmoil and Tranquility

For weeks now — actually, now that I do the sums, the word ‘months’ might be more accurate — I have been trying, and failing, to finish writing something on the subject of the Royal Academy’s current Cranach exhibition.
What keeps putting me off? The draft already runs to thousands of words. I’ve long since read, [...]