Get cultured
This Friday has been booked off to absorb some high culture and fine art type ting, in order to give me something to talk about when I meet people at parties. Other than "do you have any more wine?", "where's your toilet?" and "if I said you had a beautiful body, would you give me some more wine?"
Front-runners are The Design Museum with its Design of Information exhibition. Frankly, any show on the history of information design that includes a bit on the great Harry Beck, will get me going.
Having missed the Encounters exhibition at Vic & Al's Place owing to brutalising hangovers on most weekends, I'm determined to get to The Turks Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts (lovely website, that). Not only does it cover the Seljuks and Ottomans, it also covers the Uighurs (geographically Chinese, ethnically Turk) and Turco-Mongol society, too. Ace.
For background, check out Anahita's Know Your Turks! article at her excellent website.
The final contender is Turner Whistler Monet at Tate Britain - a sort of Three Tenors for Impressionism. Aside from the obvious merits of the artwork on display, some interest has been revived in the Whistler versus Ruskin 1878 libel case.
In brief: The Grosvenor Gallery, at its first exhibition, showed Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. The critic John Ruskin wrote of it: "I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face".
The furious Whistler sued him for libel. Paintbrushes at dawn.
Sir John Holker, the Attorney-General for England & Wales, appeared as counsel for Ruskin, Edward Burne-Jones was called as a witness and the case assumed massive public interest, with the protagonists actually debating the subjective worth of the painting and the nature of abstract art in court.
The verdict was fairly damning both ways, judge and jury making it clear what they thought of the whole business.
Ruskin lost the case - but Whistler was awarded only one farthing in damages and no costs. Gutted.
Jonathan Jones has a very good Guardian article on it.
(Buy an 1878 farthing on eBay, here - one day left for bidding)
I wonder if I can do all three exhibitions in one day...?
Front-runners are The Design Museum with its Design of Information exhibition. Frankly, any show on the history of information design that includes a bit on the great Harry Beck, will get me going.
Having missed the Encounters exhibition at Vic & Al's Place owing to brutalising hangovers on most weekends, I'm determined to get to The Turks Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts (lovely website, that). Not only does it cover the Seljuks and Ottomans, it also covers the Uighurs (geographically Chinese, ethnically Turk) and Turco-Mongol society, too. Ace.
For background, check out Anahita's Know Your Turks! article at her excellent website.
The final contender is Turner Whistler Monet at Tate Britain - a sort of Three Tenors for Impressionism. Aside from the obvious merits of the artwork on display, some interest has been revived in the Whistler versus Ruskin 1878 libel case.
In brief: The Grosvenor Gallery, at its first exhibition, showed Whistler's Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket. The critic John Ruskin wrote of it: "I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face".
The furious Whistler sued him for libel. Paintbrushes at dawn.
Sir John Holker, the Attorney-General for England & Wales, appeared as counsel for Ruskin, Edward Burne-Jones was called as a witness and the case assumed massive public interest, with the protagonists actually debating the subjective worth of the painting and the nature of abstract art in court.
The verdict was fairly damning both ways, judge and jury making it clear what they thought of the whole business.
Ruskin lost the case - but Whistler was awarded only one farthing in damages and no costs. Gutted.
Jonathan Jones has a very good Guardian article on it.
(Buy an 1878 farthing on eBay, here - one day left for bidding)
I wonder if I can do all three exhibitions in one day...?
posted by Scattergun @ 3:30 pm
1 Comments:
At 4:41 pm,
Inane said…
If going to three exhibitions wasn't enough of a challenge, why don't we get drunk the night before, just to make it more interesting??
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