. Following our books for Christmas recommendations, The Dabbler's very own style columnist Susan Muncey selects some ideal festive gifts from her Shopcurious collection.... Online shopping is perfect if you’d rather not venture out in the cold, or mingle with the multitude on the streets at Christmas. Described by the FT How ... Read More...
Month: December 2010
In our occasional feature we invite guests to select the six cultural links that might sustain them if, by some mischance, they were forced to spend eternity in a succession of airport departure lounges with only an iPad or similar device for company. Today’s voyager is Barendina Smedley, a friend ... Read More...
Concluding our Germany/Beeb Wednesday, these alarming, life-size bronzes have featured in two BBC Four programmes recently: Laura Cumming’s Ego: The Strange and Wonderful World of Self-Portraits; and the first episode of Andrew Graham-Dixon’s The Art of Germany series. Franz Xaver Messerschmidt was a successful court sculptor, who created over 50 of ... Read More...
The Dabbler continues its Teutonic theme today with the inimitable Malty's response to Andrew Graham-Dixon's major new BBC Four series The Art of Germany... Recently launched was Andrew hyphen Dixon's new series on German art, many of the usual suspects of the period were included, many not. As an educator he is less ... Read More...
Do you find Hollywood films which portray English people as evil upper class tyrants mildly annoying? Well, imagine how it must feel to be German. At any given moment on earth, 98% of all satellite television is made up entirely of evil Nazis (the other 2% is formed from bits ... Read More...
I have in my possession a little book, subtly entitled: FOUR CONFUSING TALES each illustrated by six UP-TURNABLE PICTURES from the incredible TOPSY-TURVY world of GUSTAVE VERBEEK. It has to be seen to be believed. This Gustave Verbeck was born in 1867 in Nagasaki, the child of Dutch-American parents. Educated in Japan ... Read More...
Further to my post last week concerning Russian drinking habits, I thought readers might be interested to read a handful of impressionistic sketches of the country and its people. They're drawn from my experiences studying, traveling and working in Russia during the 1990s. Whilst I found the place fascinating, I always ... Read More...
Earlier today we posed the third Round Blogworld Quiz question, namely: What links a black bird with what sounds like some Moody Blues material, an immaterial George, a footballing Republican called Steve, and a dark period in Thailand? And the solution is…Chess! Congratulations to Jonathan Law, who got the link and four of ... Read More...
We like to mix it up on The Dabbler, as Nige looks at a National treasure, and Brit sets the third fiendish Round Blogworld Quiz question (see the previous two and their solutions here). Ripped off from Based on Radio 4's long-running Round Britain Quiz, the idea is to find the link ... Read More...
Nige continues our series looking at great paintings housed in London's National Gallery... The National Gallery is not short of fine Venetian paintings, having a clutch of great Titians (including the ruinously over-restored Bacchus and Ariadne), and glorious Veroneses and Tiepolos, all full of sumptuous colour, painterly verve and joie de ... Read More...
