So… here we are. It is Sunday evening. The rains are on the way again and the wind is picking up. My day has been improved by the knowledge that H M The Queen Mother was a “Ghastly bigot” according to Edward Stourton in an article in The Sunday Times. Stourton… ‘the urbane presenter of the BBCs flagship radio programme Today’ has admitted thinking that. I have done a quick pic in Photoshop to add an element of theatre to H M The Queen Mother’s reply to Stourton upon hearing that he had just returned from Europe some years ago.
In another form of racism…. the media, with the election of Barack Obama, is currently obsessed with black-white stories. Hopefully they will soon tire of it. Frankly… I couldn’t give a damn about religion, race, colour or any other irrational reason for despising other people…. although, I have to say, not too keen on Bankers at the moment – but that, I hope, is an acceptable lapse in taste in these difficult times…. and, if I did have a daughter l, I’d certainly approve of her marrying one. Oh… hang on… perhaps I can even squeeze in…. “some of my best friends are Bankers… but you’d never know.”
Apparently, according to the News of The World, Peaches Geldof has tired of drummer boy after 96 days and wants a divorce. (Story) However, the BBC has stepped in with a bit of late spin to suggest that this story is not true and that, ‘like any other couple… they have had their differences… but are not getting divorced.’ I do hope that Gordon Brown does not feel the need to step away from the problems of saving the world to wade in and ask for an *investigation*.
Let’s get down and dirty with a bit of wonderful British Pseudery… The Tate Gallery Rothko story
The Sunday Times aroused the pleasure zones in what is left of my cerebral cortex with a wonderful story about The Tate Gallery hanging pictures the wrong way up in the recent Rothko exhibition. I have been told by quite a few friends recently… “you must go and see the Rothko exhibition, Charon… you simply must.”
Before I quote from the story – I’d just like to draw your attention to a review of the recent Rothko exhibition from The Sunday Times but a few weeks ago. It is buy When news emerged that a Mark Rothko exhibition was planned for Tate Modern this autumn, my heart soared. Rothko is one of the Brobdignagians of modern art, a gripping painter of big moments of transcendental abstraction. When it turned out that the Rothko show was going to concentrate on his late work, my heart slumped. The late work is so notoriously sombre and depressing that a show consisting of nothing else would surely make a perfect venue for a suicide convention. When I finally visited the exhibition, however, my heart soared again. What an intelligent and important attempt to see and understand Rothko differently. We really have been getting him wrong…. etc etc etc….” The article goes on an on…
It may be that recent art lovers seeing Rothko at the Tate have got him wrong because it would appear that The Tate hung the bloody paintings the wrong way up – vertically instead of horizontally as Rothko, apparently, decreed some years ago. There was a bit of guff in the article about The Tate having a degree of discretion in the hanging of pictures for various reasons…. BUT… as I drank my coffee and ate two fried eggs, beans, bacon and two slices of toast at the caff… I’m afraid it just seemed to my jaundiced eye that the Tate got it wrong and the pseuds have been shown up again…. Bravo! Unfortunately, I couldn’t seem to find the article by Art Editor, Richard Brooks, in the online version of The Sunday Times today. The Emperor shall have some new clothes tomorrow.
The more perspicacious among you will, of course, have noted that I have hung the famous painting pictured above in the perfectly correct and approved modern manner. You will also have noted that I have used an inappropriate word… for if you are perspicacious you do not, of course, need to have something pointed out. perhaps, in such a case, ‘perceptive’ would have been a better word ? 🙂
Ah… the joys of pseudery… See? It is easy. Have a go yourself… everyone’s at it… become a pundit… an expert….. we can all wear new clothes now and be Emperors of Bollocks.
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Dan Hull of What About Clients writes about Dr Johnson….
Dr. Johnson on drinking
“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”
I thought it appropriate to quote from one of the great American drinkers….
I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.
W. C. Fields
No, I’m sure that’s how Gainsborough intended it. The symbolic juxtaposition of the inverted subjects is steeped in deep meaning etc… etc….
& to think I nearly went to the Tate on Saturday and didn’t quite make it…