The Poster King, the marvellous Edward McKnight Kauffer exhibition at The Estorick Collection, provokes some thoughts on the advertising of today. The idea that advertising can be art became entirely uncontroversial, or at least it seemed to me, around about the time of the Guinness Surfer ad. But one wonders whether you could make ... Read More...
Month: September 2011
'The future of classical music is more in Asia than anywhere else' claimed a famous Maestro a decade ago. So does the Western music canon now belong to the East? Mahlerman considers the evidence... Ah good, I have your full attention. Let us consider the East. By the middle of this century ... Read More...
Postmodernism became enmeshed in the commercial culture it originally set out to critique. Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970-1990 opens at the V&A today – and money is a major theme. The exhibition includes one of Warhol’s famous pop art dollar signs, from 1981, as a testament to this. And a ... Read More...
Today's 1p (or in this case, 1 cent) book is recommended by guest reviewer Michael Schauerte... Tomorrow I must begin a new life. How could I do it, with nothing but death behind me? Wladyslaw Szpilman’s new life began in January 1945. More than five years of death were behind him, stretching ... Read More...
Many years ago I wrote a piece with the above title, in which I invented some, er, lesser-known editions of the Bible. It was reasonably amusing, and one of these days I might resurrect it. But I was young then, and had not done my research. Now I have, and ... Read More...
Jonathon Green continues his remarkable slang tour of London with a stroll down the Dilly, taking care to avoid a dose of the Piccadilly cramp... I’m Gilbert the Filbert, the knut with a k, The pride of Piccadilly, the blasé roué. Oh Hades! the Ladies who leave their wooden huts, For Gilbert the Filbert, ... Read More...
As a cheery prelude to Jonathon Green's column on slang this afternoon, Nige introduces a playwright who had no grasp of it at all - a lady for whom it was "second nature" to use "correctly, in a literary sense," the words 'erection', 'tool' and 'spunk'... Clemence Dane (born Winifred Ashton), ... Read More...
Using the cutting edge random selection powers of our patented Dabblebot, we’ve conducted our latest round of Dabbler Book Club prize draws. We've had an unprecedented level of interest in this month's prize, so congratulations to John Groves of Ripon, who wins a signed copy of Peter Ackroyd’s Foundation. Congrats also ... Read More...
After a well-deserved break from reading the works of maniacal dictators, Daniel Kalder continues his popular series. Today we meet an authoritarian despot who in his writings manages to do a passable imitation of a human being. Islam Karimov (b.1938) was appointed General Secretary of Uzbekistan's Communist party by Mikhail Gorbachev ... Read More...
When Malty discovers that his be-mulleted German businessman pal Willi bears a startling resemblance to the conceptual artist Hans-Jürgen Schult, it leads him on a meandering philosophical journey that finishes up with Richter's nude wife... This is not about Willi except that were it not for him, I may have ignored ... Read More...