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A really, really poor point of comparison

Monday, August 11, 2008
Who is this mysterious woman, who painted it, and where does it hang?



I would say answers on a postcard please, but there can be scarcely anyone, worldwide, with any pretence to culture who would not know.


However, a nameless organisation that hangs out in Brussels is worried that folk are insufficiently familiar with the Gioconda. It has come up with a plan to create a European Digitlal Library (which I am not going to condemn out of hand), but check what that woman Vivianne Reding has to say:

"The European Digital Library will be a quick and easy way for people to access European books and art – whether in their home country or abroad. It will, for example, enable a Czech student to browse the British library without going to London, or an Irish art lover to get close to the Mona Lisa without queuing at the Louvre".

Sigh. Our lucky Irish person is unlikely to stumble upon the painting at the EDL and for it to come as a surprise, I would think, and the plastic arts do not lend themselves to being digitised in the same way that the written word does. That said, having seen the painting up close (behind roughly inch thick glass) it is fairly unimpressive - perhaps through gross over familiarity, before everyone shouts 'Philistine!' - and I was far more taken by Le Radeau de la Méduse.

Footnote - given the speculation that Mona is Leonardo, the chorus from Little Milton's 'Grits ain't groceries acquires a twist. Judge for yourselves:

"If I don't love you, baby
Grits ain't grocery
Eggs ain't poultry
And Mona Lisa was a man"

(Sounds better sung, honestly)

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One hour and nine minutes of Parliamentary time

Tuesday, July 22, 2008
What would you want debated if you had the time? Perhaps the economy, or the assaults on our ancient rights? Lefties might prefer the wars as a topic. Doubtless few sentient people would fail to come up with something that exercised them.

And what was debated between 21.21 and 22.30 last night? Brass bands and the lack of subsidies therefor.

While there is an argument that if one form of unpopular culture should be funded from taxation so should all the rest, I take the stance that all state / council arts subsidies should stop now. That,k I think is a debate for another day, but it is worth skimming the debate for the attempts by sundry northern Labour MPs to be prolier than thou. Including, rather hilariously the admittedly non Northern 'Enver' Hodge. And they do find it so hard not to use variations on 'blow your own trumpet'. Laugh, I thought I'd never start.

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Culture - how broadly should it be defined?

Monday, June 23, 2008
And here it is, from Hansard:

Mr. Hollobone: To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what assessment he has made of the future prospects for the bingo industry; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Sutcliffe: I hope to make a statement to the House on this and related matters shortly.


Crikey.

Meanwhile, I have unearthed another bee obsessive in Parliament:

Mr. Amess: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform what the UK's balance of trade in bees and bee products was in each year since 1997 in standard prices; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Thomas: The following table gives HMRC overseas trade statistics for the value of trade in honey and wax. Data for trade in live bees cannot be separated from trade in other animals.

Perhaps they have run out of stingers to inflict on DEFRA and are now droning on at what was the DTI. Lombard Street to a rotten orange it will be Health next - how many people were stung in Lymeswold East last year etc etc.

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Words fail me. Almost

Friday, May 30, 2008
Verity having pointed out the following "Hans Christian Andersen is the spitting image of a 19th Century British writer but I can't think who. Maybe George Elliott ... or one of the Brontes. Or someone else. But he is the spitting image of someone", I have been sniffing around the internet in search of the match. No luck so far, but look what I've found:


Why, yes - it is the Jane Austen action figure, as sold by the Library of Congress thusly:

"Jane Austen was one of the greatest English novelists in history. Despite a rather sheltered life, she was able to capture the subtleties of human interaction so perfectly that her novels continue to be immensely popular to this day. This 5-1/4" tall, hard vinyl action figure comes with a book (Pride & Prejudice) and a writing desk with removable quill pen!"

Yours for $8.50.

Other writers available are Poe - "with a hauntingly pale complexion and a removable plastic raven" and Shakespeare. Nominations for the accoutrements that would suit other writers, should they be immortalised in hard vinyl, are welcome - Solzhenitsyn's foot cloths maybe or De Quincey's laudanum bottle.

However, it would be selfish of me not to point out the star attraction:

"If you just can't get enough of the Dewey decimals or if you go bananas for books, chances are you have a Librarian Action Figure. Nancy Pearl's likeness made history as the best selling Librarian Action Figure of all time".


Looks like Nancy can move her arms but lower body movement would appear to be beyond her.

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Where your money goes

Monday, May 26, 2008
The EU meeja commissariat is rather pleased by how some of its part funded projects have fared at the Cannes film festival. Rather thoughtfully, one line synopses of the winners have been included. And they are beyond parody:

Le silence de Lorna - "An Albanian woman marries a drug addict in order to obtain Belgian residency". This got €202,500 of our money.

Eldorado (aka Léa) - "Yvan grows a strange affection for Elie, an adolescent who breaks into his house, and decides to drive the teenager back to his parents". €51 000

Gomorra - "A Neapolitan mafia drama based on a novel by Roberto Saviano". Doesn't sound too bad, all things considered, and this was the the Culture Commissar (the deeply irritating Viviane Reding) and her entourage chose to watch. €45 000.

Tulpan - "Bulat has done military service in the Russian Navy and returns to the Kazakh step (sic) to become a shepherd. For that, he has to learn the shepherding trade and get married". €40 000.

Entre Les Murs - "The story of a French teacher at a secondary school in a difficult area". €30 000.

Les Bureaux de Dieu - "Day-to-day functioning of the family planning centre where women come to inform themselves about a choice they have or want to make". €16 000.

They put out a similar release this time last year, which also received some mockery here.

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Life imitating art

Friday, May 23, 2008
This unfortunate business in Exeter does rather smack of the plot of Conrad's 'The Secret Agent', doesn't it?

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Take that, John Cage

Thursday, May 15, 2008


Really rather clever. Must have taken the creator quite some time.

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Bulgaria: too much culture or too little?

Friday, March 14, 2008
I pose the question, as the remarkably obscure (at least in these parts) Council of South East European Council Ministers has been meeting in Zagreb today(1), and it groups "ministers and senior officials of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Turkey".

Getting all that lot together in one room is quite an achievement, but there are two culture ministers not there - those of Kosovo and Bulgaria. In the case of Kosovo, one could imagine the government has more pressing priorities, but why no Bulgaria? Bulgaria does have a culture minister, and in contrast to the generally dreadful people who gain that office in this country, would seem to have some experience at the sharp end, Stefan Danailov being a distinguished actor. I will 'fess up to not having seen 'The Taste of Almonds', 'The Queen of Tarnavo' or even 'Three Marias and an Ivan'. His official website is hosted at geocities, which certainly smacks of economy.

Or then again, maybe Hina is not red hot on fact checking.


(1) - Link is not direct and will not last more than a day or so. That's just the way Hina.hr runs its website.

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Never mind the quality, feel the width

Tuesday, March 11, 2008
The wonderful people who brought you 'the meeja is biased against Muslims' report (which just so happened to take as its 'average' week one where the report on the 7/7 bombers was released) have come up with an 'audit' that proves that London is bigger and better, culturally speaking, than gay Paree, Noo Yawk, Tokyo and Shanghai.

I have been reading through it with increasing irritation, and may yet do a full blown demolition of it, but even the most cursory skim shows the fatal flaw in its method - it does not compare like with like. So, for example, the report writers are agog that the Great Wen has more art galleries than Paris at 92 to 59. If an 'auditor' reckoned that something of the size and grandeur of the Louvre could be compared with some odd back street gallery in Hoxton - as these people seem to regard as legitimate - he or she would have the ICA cutting them off at the knees.

And the nonsense goes on. And on. Numbers of major theatres, for example. No indication as to size, and forget that London's theatres seem to show little beyond 'musicals' concocted from the songs of defunct pop groups. Mama Mia and the Comédie-Française are not exactly on all fours with each other, are they? Forget also that the outer borough's theatres would be DOA without the annual injection of cash from the panto season. And 'number of music performances' per year, which groups Wembley stadium with the pub at the end of my road.

Still, Bonnie Greer says it is 'totally forensic', so that's all right....

Note that I have lived in London or its immediate orbit my entire life, and work in the media (after a fashion) and am quite fond of the place, but could do without this nonsense on day-glo orange stilts masquerading as hard fact.

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Be warned

Jeff Ennis (Barnsley, East and Mexborough) (Lab): Does the Secretary of State agree that the British Federation of Brass Bands, which is based in Barnsley...will play a vital role in making a success of the Cultural Olympiad?

Andy Burnham: On brass bands, I am absolutely confident that the rich heritage that my hon. Friend describes...will play a very important part in our Olympic celebrations. Source

I wonder what Fanfare for the Common Man rendered by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band or somesuch would sound like?

Judging from this rendition by the Noo Yawk Phil, possibly quite good.

For those of us of a certain vintage, that piece of music will always be associated with ELP showing off in an empty stadium, so by presumed popular request:







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Ars gratia artis

Tuesday, February 19, 2008


Details of the artists and titles here.

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785 Arthur Rimbauds in Brussels

Tuesday, February 05, 2008
If the EU's press office is to be believed:

"In his famous poem “Voyelles” (Vowels) French poet, Arthur Rimbaud, associated each vowel with a particular colour. MEPs are just as adept at using colour, but don’t be fooled into thinking that they have been inspired by the poetic muse".

It then rambles a bit about the colour coding of parliamentary calendars. Yes, really.

To my lasting shame, I did not know of the existence of that Rimbaud poem, still less could I quote it.

For those intrigued by the vowel colour matches, here they are: "A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu".

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Put not your faith in plinths

Tuesday, January 08, 2008
It would appear to be that time again - Livingstone and his chums choose which horror to inflict on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. And the usual suspects have well and truly been rounded up:

Tracey Emin's proposal has a group of meerkats:

And for why? "She has noticed that ‘whenever Britain is in crisis or, as a nation, is experiencing sadness and loss (for example, after Princess Diana’s funeral), the next programme on television is Meerkats United’. Emin proposes to place a sculpture of a small group of meerkats on the empty plinth as a symbol of unity and safety".

Harmless enough, if a little silly.

Antony Gormley thinks he has found some 8,760 Angels of the South:

"Antony Gormley proposes that the fourth plinth is occupied 24 hours a day by members of the public who have volunteered to stand on it for an hour at a time. Over a period of 12 months, 8,760 people would take part. ‘Through elevation onto the plinth and removal from common ground’, explains Gormley, ‘the subjective living body becomes both representation and representative, encouraging consideration of diversity, vulnerability and the individual in contemporary society’". My thoughts precisely.....

Other proposals include "five concave mirrors [which] cantilever off the plinth treating all its faces as supports. The plinth is thought of as an object which is dematerialised by the mirrors" and "a scale replica of Nelson’s ship, HMS Victory, in a giant glass bottle. The ship’s magnificent sails will be produced in richly coloured and patterned textiles".

Sticking my neck out 1/16th of an inch, none of those will be selected. What will be selected is one of these two:


"‘It is not an artwork, but the remains of a vehicle that has been destroyed in an attack on civilians in Iraq’". Can you not imagine just how much that will épater les bourgeoises? Livingstone et al are probably in a state of ecstasy just thinking about it? Will the 'artist' have the wreck shipped from Baghdad or just haul it away from the nearest dump? And why a Scirocco, I wonder?

If not that, then this:

Faîtes L’Art, pas La Guerre


"This illuminated peace sign – powered by the sun and the wind – questions our ideas about history and monuments on the one hand, and art and war on the other. The work, which is a collaboration between renewable energy specialists, structuralengineers (sic) and an architect, seeks to rebrand Trafalgar Square as a beacon of our cultural future rather than a memorial to England’s military past". I think we have a winner, do we not?


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">"Always give yourself credit for having more than personality"

Thursday, December 20, 2007
Great is the amusement chez Fawkes at the appointment of musician Brian Eno as an adviser to Nick Clegg, but no-one seems to have marked the possibility that Eno (IMVHO, a genius) might choose to employ the Oblique Strategies.

These are a set of 100 cards, "Each...contains a phrase or cryptic remark which can be used to break a deadlock or dilemma situation". And for why? "These cards evolved from our separate observations of the principles underlying what we are doing. Sometimes they were recognized in retrospect (intellect catching up with intuition), sometimes they were identified as they were happening, sometimes they were formulated. They can be used as a pack (a set of possibilities being continuously reviewed in the mind) or by drawing a single card from a shuffled pack when a dilemma occurs in a working situation. In this case the card is trusted even if it appropriateness is quite unclear. They are not final, as new ideas will present themselves, and others will become self-evident."

The headline quote, naturally, is an oblique strategem (#37), and was the first to come up when I randomised at the Oblique Strategy page.

Other possibilities include 'breathe more deeply', 'do we need holes?' and what must have been his campaign strategy: 'Do nothing for as long as possible'. However, I am holding out for this card: 'Look closely at the most embarrassing details & amplify them'.

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What would Jan Sobieski think?

Monday, December 10, 2007
Vienna is in the midst of a bit of a Satanic Verses episode, because of this statue:

It is, obviously enough, a female nude sporting a headscarf. Mind you, it could be a balaclava... So far, so not enormously interesting. However, it is entitled 'Turkish Delight', and the Turks are not happy. At all.

What has happened to it is not entirely clear, as one report refers to it having been removed, and another to it having been knocked over:

"A statue of a nude woman donning a headscarf that was on exhibit at the premises of the Technical University in Karlsplatz in Vienna, Austria was removed by unknown people following adverse reactions. Turkish Ambassador to Vienna Selim Yenel said the sculpture was not damaged but only removed from its place". It might be a flawed translation, but that suggests to me that Yenel knows what happened through direct involvement, which rather oversteps the mark both in terms of practical art criticism and muscular diplomacy.

Meanwhile another paper notes the following: "A statue of a nude woman wearing only a headscarf was knocked down from its place in the garden of the Technical University of Vienna in Karlsplatz yesterday".

The mystery thickens somewhat, and one has to ask whether anyone would have paid any attention if the statue had had another name.

Meanwhile, Johnny Turk does seem exceptionally prickly at the moment, as "Maps showing so-called "Kurdistan" as including certain cities and areas of Turkey have been removed from the Kurdish traffic police cars and other official vehicles in northern Iraq".


(Polish king Jan Sobieski saved Turkish-besieged Vienna in 1683, if anyone did not get the reference, and was viewed at the time as having just saved Western Civilisation).

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Weird. Really weird.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007
I have no idea whether David Miliband has much of a singing voice, but as far as I know, he has not attempted to give foreign policy a nudge via the medium of song. Perhaps, or perhaps not, he could learn from the example of Bernard Kouchner, his French counterpart:


"Bernard Kouchner...and his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, accepted the offer to sing with the Turkish-German R’n’B singer Muhabbet. Aim of the game: to promote Franco-German harmony and the integration of the Turkish minority in Germany".


Those of my readers who also suffer from being older than dirt and/or having an unhealthy interest in political trivia might recall that Neil Kinnock had a go at getting down with the kids by way of appearing in a promotional video for Tracey Ullman's take on the Madness song 'My Girl' back in 1984. And thanks to YouTube, here it is. Those with a taste for neither 80s hairdos nor amateurish synchronised dancing can skip to circa two minutes in where Kinnock appears. He does not sing, so be grateful.


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One for all the conspiracy theorists

Wednesday, November 07, 2007
In late October I was passing through a Trafalgar Square which was being used for a one day Muslim festival, and had the nagging thought that something was amiss with the statuary, in particular that the remarkably unattractive Alison Lapper statue was missing. I have been snooping around on and off for a while trying to track down an image of the Muslim festival where I could clearly see either the statue, or its absence.

Turns out I was right, and the statue was removed in early October, with a new épater les bourgeois artwork having gone up today.

Note that the Greater London Authority and that man Livingstone are in charge of doing things to the Fourth Plinth.

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How to kill a conversation with 55% of Maltese stone dead

Monday, October 29, 2007
Ask if he or she has read any good books lately. Only 45% will admit to having read a book, any book, let alone a good one, in the last year. Source . There's a useful primer on Maltese literature here, but I can't say I have read any Maltese authors. However, 28% of Maltese claim to have been to the ballet or the opera, apparently.

One's chances of progressing a conversation from that gambit would stand a greater chance of success if one's target is a Swede - 87% have read something.

Meanwhile, doubtless to the joy of Dutch equity card holders, 58% of Netherlanders claim to have been to the theatre this year, but only 18% of Poles. Apparently, "One of the most original twentieth-century theatre personalities was Tadeusz Kantor, painter, theoretician of drama, stage designer, and playwright, his ideas finding their culmination in the theatre of death and his most recognised production being "Umarła klasa" (Dead Class)". Sounds like a bundle of laughs...

We British types dominate trade in antiques, accounting for 62% of imports by value and 67% of exports by value. Perhaps the old joke about the four antique dealers on a desert island, who despite having one chair between them nevertheless made a living needs reworking.


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Getting one's ducks in a row....

Sunday, October 21, 2007
The EU's site has publishesd an extended whine / outbreak of special pleading interview with remarkably obscure French film director Cédric Klapisch, in which he rails against "American hegemony and the lack of circulation of European films" in a way that is too predictable and dull to be worthy of repetition. However, the juxtaposition of these two bits is quite amusing:

"It is tragic to see that Eastern Europe, for example, has lost its cinematography because film makers have simply fled to the US where the money is".

"Almodóvar helps me understand Spain, Fellini - Italy, Kusturica – countries of former Yugoslavia and Forman the Czech Republic".

Soo, Miloš Forman. The director who brought us, inter alia, 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' and 'Amadeus'. A quick check of his biography shows the following, "During the invasion of his country by the troops of the Warsaw pact in the summer of 1968 to stop the Prague spring, he left Europe for the United States". Source. Not quite the same as following the money, is it?

Forman has not made a film in Czech since 1968, so I am quite intrigued as to how Klapisch is aided in his understanding by Forman's work. As a point of gratuitous pedantry, it could also be noted that Forman has never directed anything about the Czech Republic, only its predecessor in title, Czechoslovakia.

As a footnote, prior to the Versailles settlement, the good people of Bohemia and Moravia were referred to in English as 'Checks', rather than 'Czechs', and it is rather odd that we have used the Polish rendering for the thick end of a century

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Great excuses for not serving one's country

Saturday, October 13, 2007
Actor Shah Rukh Khan is not tempted to enter Indian politics because he reckons he is "too selfish, too materialistic and capitalistic kind of a person to join politics. Second, I am too good looking". Source

Good job our pols rarely allow the latter consideration to get in the way.

(Cue obligatory recitation of 'Politics is show business for ugly people')

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