Incoming!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Five-and-a-bit Dials

Numero huit-b.

Ici.

Meanwhile, in the Times Education Supplement....

"The pressure is on the author to deliver as enriching an experience as video games do."

- Jeff Kinney

'Harry Potter student found hanged in room'

It was only a matter of time.

Old joke

What's the difference between an arts critic and a yoghurt?

The broad church of academia

... with the ever-dwindling congregation.

Cussed are the peace-makers

Letter from the Colombo's first Art Biennale [sic.].

Coetzee on Emants on Turgenev

In 1880 [Marcellus] Emants published an essay on Turgenev which describes his own philosophy rather better than it does Turgenev's.

- JM Coetzee, Stranger Shores: essays 1986-1999

Ain't that always the way?

Jane Austen couldn't spell

It's true.

I found a reference to 'Jane Austen's Love and Freindship' in With Chatwin by Susannah Clapp and - my apologies to Ms Clapp - looked it up.

Despairing Adolescent

Two important notas you should bene about Rodin's Despairing Adolescent, no date, terracotta:

1) He has no date (see above).

2) He has no dick (see below).

Aesthetics 101

To make a thing deliberately beautiful is a dastardly act.

- Louis I Kahn, high-flying architect.

To make a thing deliberately ugly is a bastardly act.

- ASH Smyth, low-flying critic.

Literarily

The British Library is asking for sponsors to help cover the cost of restoring some 200 selected titles in their collection.

One of the books on offer is Things Fall Apart.

Glass of water on a shelf half empty

This approach – passionate about the work, doubtful of economic reward – has always been the best attitude for an artist to have throughout history. It costs money to be a student and they expect it to cost money to be an artist: making films, printing photographs, buying canvases. But it's something they have to do. They are what you might call hardheaded dreamers. Art, says Underhill, "is a strange relationship that you have with yourself".

From here.

(Thanks to RN MA)

The ultimate eulogy

"His death has shocked anyone who had any contact with him or knew his work. The drugs were all there in the artwork (and the rumours), but so was a sense of real beauty and honesty. It wasn't necessarily the aesthetic of his work, but its independence that made it so influential. He simply didn't give a shit."

Francesca Gavin on Dash Snow.

(Thanks to RN MA.)

Criticising critics

Important, frank note on arts criticism from Jonathan Jones. Shame he works for The Guardian, but still...

"The post-photographic age"

Apparently, it's what we're livin' in.

Suits me, I think. Especially on this form: