Well, I’ve talked before about one my favourite works of art, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. So my obvious choice is out. So let’s talk a little, instead, about my favourite painting, Wright of Derby’s “Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump“. Mostly, what I love about it is the quality he’s given the light. I [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Art'
Taking The Plinth
July 21st, 2009 No Comments
So, I was on the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square as part of One and Other last night. You all know this, because I’ve done nothing but bang on about it for the last week or so. What you may not know is that before people go up on the plinth, they are photographed and [...]
Another One And Other
July 7th, 2009 No Comments
Just a reminder, mostly for the Londoners, (although I will be getting broadcast live on the the elektrical internets by webcam, if anyone is that heart-stoppingly bored) that I will be on the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square as part of One And Other on Monday July the 20th (not quite two weeks away, now) [...]
Body Modification
February 19th, 2009 No Comments
Second topic as part of this here meme thing. I’m tattooed. As time goes on, I will almost certainly become more so. At some point, I may get pierced, but that’s a vague maybe – I think I’d be doing it as much just to do as anything else. Which isn’t to say that’s a [...]
Tags: king ink
The Music That Changed Your Life
February 18th, 2009 No Comments
As part of one of them there internet memes, my friend Hester suggested I talk about (among other things) “The Music That Changed Your Life”. So here goes. There really is nothing like the electric thrill of new music, is there? “The full-head tingle” to steal a marvellous phrase from a man I never met. [...]
Tags: Music
Bleeding For Your Art
April 21st, 2008 No Comments
Topic: Well, let’s be generous, and say I’m using a specific recent example to talk about controversial art. So, where is everybody on Aliza Shvarts, then? In case you’ve missed it, Ms Shvarts is an Art Student at Yale, and her latest piece includes blood from 9 months of self-induced miscarriages. Well, maybe. There was [...]
Museum Copyright
March 10th, 2007 No Comments
I was reading an article by BoingBoing pundit, SF author and copywonk Cory Doctorow in Make magazine the other day (I’m afraid that there’s only tiny snippet of the article available for free on-line.) He’d visited the Greenwich Maritime Museum, full of hundred-year-old sextants, and even older devices that people used to find their way [...]
Tags: copyright · museums · photography
Wall And Piece
February 8th, 2007 No Comments
So. Banksy. For them what have been living under a rock for the last while, Bansky is a graffiti artist who produces stencil works like these. Is he big or clever? Well, as my old mate Paul points out, his work is hardly a sophisticated multilevel examination of complex ideas. But on the other hand [...]
Tags: angry young men · banksy · graffiti
Flat-Pack Art
January 22nd, 2007 1 Comment
The Tate Modern has one of my favourite pieces of Art on display, Marcel DuChamp’s Fountain, which is an ordinary urinal, that Duchamp then turned 90 degrees from it’s natural position and signed it “R. Mutt 1917″. It was part of his series of “readymades” ordinary, everyday objects that had at most, been slightly altered [...]
