Art export bans
Another old hobby horse I'm returning to. I had always assumed that it was only the likes of Turner paintings, Shakespeare First Folios and the like that got 'nationalised', but it also seems to apply to 'felt patchwork and applique coverlets'. Note the succession of modifiers in this sentence, "making it the earliest known surviving example in Britain of an applique figurative coverlet in wool made by a lady". I make it five. Given that David Lammy has signed the blocking order, presumably the reason why he is so abject at the dispatch box is because he whiles away his evenings reading up on patchwork, or possibly patchworking himself.
The gushing press release does not deign to say who, or what, is having its property rights interfered with by the government, but the seller will have to make do with a suspiciously exact £34,450 (excluding VAT) , rather than be allowed to test its value in the global marketplace. For the record, I disapprove of all export bans on works of art and so forth.
The gushing press release does not deign to say who, or what, is having its property rights interfered with by the government, but the seller will have to make do with a suspiciously exact £34,450 (excluding VAT) , rather than be allowed to test its value in the global marketplace. For the record, I disapprove of all export bans on works of art and so forth.
Labels: David Lammy
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on Monday, November 13, 2006 at 11:19 am.
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I agree with banns on export of arts and in general feel that one of the few legitimate areas for the state is to maintain the integrity of the culture , which the market will not.
Why should foreingners have all our good stuff?
I would be happy for the protectionist walls top go up on art all over the world and save us from nastiness from the continent. Perhaps we might have avoided the blight of moderniste buildings.
What about the conserving bit ,C or are really a wild eyed anarchist intent on burning the place down and smearing the blood of your enemies on your chest and genitals ? Mmmmmm?
N - I guess that makes you more big 'C' and small 'c' conservative than me. My argument comes down more to principles of economics and property rights than to cultural issues.
If the same principles had been in place a few centuries back, the National Gallery and The Tate, to name but two galleries, would be rather sparse places if they only housed art created by Britons. And as for the British Museum....
I say sell off the national collections ,if you like art buy your own.And the BBC should be burnt to the groud for (amongst other reasons) pissing my money away on a piece of scaffolding with a sparrow in top cobbled together by that fucking gargoyle tracey emin (nice tits though)
Yes well that was in another country and besides the wench is dead ( or something like that). If anyone conquers us and makes us part of their empire the last thing I will be worrying about is the fate of our art.
..and economic and property rights are cultural issues.
IMHO
The government has no business regulating the art market. Art is international and sales of it are the same as sales of oil or the price of a ticket for a movie made in America: the buyer and seller agree on it and proceed with the transaction.
Croydonian, if I may, I'd like to point out that "he whiles away his evenings reading up..." isn't really correct. "whiles" is not the same as "wiles". People wile away the hours. It comes from the same word as guile and beguile. They charm away (as in magic charm) the hours. I would hate to see this lovely word disappear under a massive grey blanket of misunderstanding.
PH - Indeed, and if the art galleries actually reflected popular taste, there would be rather a lot of posters of baby oiled men holding babies, cat's eyes on black velvet and Beryl Cook....
N - Indeed. Were you aware that there was going to be space in the bunkers for art (along with the politicians) if it got to the stage of thermonuclear war? And another quick sidetrack - a mate's dad was a keyholder for a bunker in Essex, and he was tasked with opening it up for the 'great and good', and then going off to get irradiated himself. Quite the committed employee, eh?
PHITCH - No you are wrong. The national art collections are repositories of the tribal memory. Like Poppy day. This is exactly what must be defended from progressives and modernisers . If I were say to you that Tony Blair would probably be prepared to do exactly that see the depths of wrongness in which you swim.
It’s a tribal thing. Britain “Love it …or leave it “(ahem ..Glad I cant remember whose slogan that is ) and that goes for the Scots to.
Your invitation to tea is hanging perilously in the balance PHITCH the stakes are high .
( and Tracy Emin has nasty scraggy tits )
Indeed, and if the art galleries actually reflected popular taste, there would be rather a lot of posters of baby oiled men holding babies, cat's eyes on black velvet and Beryl Cook.
And what would be so wrong with that?
Who are you or anybody else to be an arbiter of national taste?
Now Brian sewell , a man who is a work of art in himself has good taste , did you know that he was chief art buyer for Boots the Chemist from 1967 until 1972?
Mr Mania
Ms Emin has many faults but her tits arent one(two) of them , they are magnificent , trouble is everytime you looked up from them and saw her face you would, as they say in Croyden "lose wood"
Not sure what the Islingtonian term is.
V - Agreed. Sorry about the slip on wile/while. Corrections are always graciously acepted in these parts.
Gents - I fear there is no agreement on the desirability or otherwise of Ms Emin, although I imagine she would be entertaining company as she lacks the puritanical streak of some in the new Establishment.
As to cultural commissars / arbiters of taste, I would rather the market decided. Although I'm still not keen on Beryl Cook etc etc. I suppose I'm still only recovering from my instinctive teenage defences of modern art, which I suspect were made largely down to a desire to irk Pa C.
Well you faith in the market IMHO is misguided on this occasion .No no national treasures should be kept here, they are a touch stone, they show the high standards to which we might aspire. See how Verity corrects your slip into barbarity; that is exactly what I mean. . ( I am doing the Brian Sewell voice as PHITCH has detected).There are clearly to many civilising influences abroad already. Some with cats called Rupert.
Oh "Love it or leave it" is Le Pen as I `m sure C recognised. Catchy eh? ( You know some stuff PHITCH )
N - but how is national treasure to be defined? All art, down to a child's painting pinned on a fridge door? What if I were Andrew Lloyd Webber and wished to flee the jurisdiction complete with my art collection?
I have a vague memory of some court in the Low Countries that ordered a man flayed alive so that his elaborate body art might be preserved for the nation, although the man concerned had done no wrong. I have failed miserably to find the reference.
re wile/while: the Cambridge dictioary has it as 'while'. I'll leave you to slug it out with them
Brian Sewell? Is this the Brian Sewell who screamed (on TV) that 'art is elitism- - that is the point' (before his frightened foray into Pakistan) and then, recently, claimed that 'there is no-one less elitist that MEEE'.
OK. I could not give a fuck about the orts. I think they are for the Ortistic. But why so much Govt money on 'em? E.g. Radio 3 - for 3% of listeners - acknowledged - & for decades. The shysters. Oh, the BBC, again. I MUST be wrong... 4Bn-per-yr & I must be wrong?... How-much-per-yr goes on executive salaries and I must be wrong???
Pschxtyyshtee!!! Other expletives deleted.
I think there was some kind of Molotov Ribbentrop pact in '45 between the proletarian and the commissar classes in Labour that the qpq for nationalising industry was that 'the arts' would get hosed down by the state too.
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