Why I Let My Art Newspaper Subscription Lapse

Dear Editor,

My subscription to Art News ran out recently and I am not renewing.

I thought I would tell you why.

I made a mistake subscribing in the first place.

I thought Art News would be to the art-world what, for instance, the FT is to business.

Sure you have a certain amount of insider favour-trading and re-cycling of press releases in the FT, as in any newspaper.

Along with articles about how Western Civilisation will crumble if the Government gives one penny less to the Arts than it did last year.

That goes with the territory.

It's the delicate souls a-flutter at a two-hundred year old transgression of this year's taboo.

The use of -isms to splash `political' meaning onto empty work.

When a museum `apologises' for its `implication in slavery', its PR department counts the column-inches it generates.

I am not interested in the moral character or beliefs of artists / curators / gallerists / researchers / restorers / dealers / whatever else.

I want to read about the work they are doing.

Not what they are saying to demonstrate their candidacy for in-group membership.

So I didn't renew my subscription.

Regards

A Former Subscriber

The National Windrush Memorial, Waterloo Station

The SS Windrush docked at Tilbury on 22 June 1948 with 802 people from the Caribbean. The BBC says so. Tilbury is on the Fenchurch Steet line, which does not pass Waterloo at any time. Maybe the monument is going on tour or maybe the artist insisted that it was somewhere people actually passed through. Waterloo is still the busiest passenger terminus in the UK by long stretch.

That's not why I like this photograph. I like it because of the people around the monument. I don't usually do people in my photographs, and it's something I want to change.

 

Smile Please, Camden Lock

 There's always one guy, and it is usually a man, who looks straight at the camera lens when I'm taking a picture of a crowd some of whom are facing me. And he's smiling. Maybe he's an actor, or a politician, or destined for senior management.

(In other news, a man resigned from his job the other day. He was the first man ever to do so in the history of mankind, so there was a lot of press coverage about it.)

Liberal Totalitarianism

What on earth is a liberal totalitarian?

You know those people who said we should re-run the Brexit referendum?

Because it produced the wrong answer?

That's the attitude I mean, and those are the people.

Democracy is okay, as long as the people vote for the "right thing", which is, of course, what liberals want.

They don't understand what Democracy is.

It's a system in which, at regular intervals, the government has to pitch for its jobs. It does so by promising to do roughly what the majority of people want . When it is in power, it still keeps an eye on popular sentiment, in case it does something that will so displease the populace that they vote it out, by voting the other lot in.

Liberal totalitarians want a system in which Government does the "right thing", which is whatever fashionable opinion liberals have at the time, and the rest of the population shuts up and pays for it through taxes.

In other words, it doesn't matter who wins the election, the liberal policies are always passed.

People who have the wrong opinions - the Deplorables - should be at best ignored and at worst re-educated.

Opinions which differ from the liberal mainstream must be banned from any form of publication. Because it must be hate speech. Or stupid. Or deplorable.

Right-wing.

Populist.

Eeeuuugh.

I'm always surprised when obviously smart people turn out to be liberal totalitarians.

I don't mind the 'liberal'. I mind the 'totalitarian'.

Totalitarianism is the system of the petty bureaucrat. The one who made rules about how only six people may gather together, or you can't see your grandmother in her dying days, or a supermarket can sell cheese, but not Easter eggs. The ones who said that a bidding process was more important than getting vaccines out to the people. The ones who say that the `rights' of illegal immigrants trump those of the taxpaying locals.

Totalitarians are the people who want to make laws and regulations to deal with everything.

Their rules, about their issues.

And to hell with everyone else.

Walking the Dogs, Regents Park

 

He's walking them into Regent's Park. Those aren't his dogs, he's a pro. The back-pack tells you that, and the short leads. People walking their own dogs use those variable-length leads, or even none at all. How much do they make? In that postcode, according to Google, it could be £22 per dog per hour. That's £110 he's got on those leashes. Nice work if you can put in the probably substantial effort to get a steady stream of clients lined up.

Caffe Nero, Covent Garden

I'm a big Caffe Nero fan. It was founded by two Australians (because Australians are really modest about their coffee-making abilities) and the got three things right: the coffee; the branding / decor; and before 2020, hiring and training staff. I suspect that Pret kept its stores open for longer in the Great Madness and held onto a core of its staff - the outlet on London Wall was open in mid-Mat 2020 when almost no-one was in the City. But even so, I prefer the vibe of a Nero to the other chains. And anything is better than the pram-Mummy magnet that is Starbucks. 

The Head Office is on a side-street in Covent Garden. 

The blur on the bike turns out to make the shot, I think.

American Kandy, Covent Garden

This location used to be a Swatch shop. A long time ago. It was empty for a while and then a clothes shop took the site. Whatever the brand was, it clearly made no impression on me. The lockdowns put an end to it. Then this appeared. They are all over the place: the cheap end of Oxford Street, there's even one near the British Museum. There are a few YT videos on them, like this....



The clue is in the ridiculous prices of the candy bars. You can clean a lot of cash at £10 a bar of some junk that costs nothing at a bankruptcy sale, or is time-expired stock bought from a manufacturer. They won't be paying the rent, because they got a deal to occupy the premises from a landlord, and only mugs pay business rates, amirite? Go out of business when the bailiffs come, right?

None of it would work if whichever bank it is did proper KYC (Know Your Customer) checks on these businesses. But I'll bet they don't bank with one of the UK clearers.

Anyway, what you should be looking at are the sparkling colours, the way the camera handles the range of sunlight and shade effortlessly, and the depth of detail (though I haven't posted the full version). This is the kind of photograph I always knew the X-E4 could take. I'm getting there.