Meanwhile: on perhaps same old, same old themes:
Okay, I dissent a little from the 'forgotten' in the title here when one discovers in the text that there are several biographies of her and she was involved with a number of famous names and presumably figures in theirs, but 'erased' in the history of this particular tarot desk, yeah: Meet the ( Read more... )

I'm trying to think if writers ever have/had this problem: What’s in a surname? The female artists lost to history because they got married. Because in the case of writers, they just kept on publishing under the (male/gender neutral or just generally not identifiable to her daytime persona) name whatever their matrimonial or non-matrimonal ups and ( Read more... )

From cut-out confessions to cheese pages: browse the world's strangest books: Edward Brooke-Hitching set out to curate the ultimate collection of bizarre books down the ages. He leads us around the Madman’s Library
Speaking as someone who has worked in at least one of the collections which holds one of the items cited, several of those books are ( Read more... )

Partner and I excursed to Tate Modern today to visit the Olafur Eliasson In real life - we were somewhat less than whelmed by the exhibition itself - not as good as the one I visited in San Francisco some while since - but we were actually quite impressed by the associated lunch event, Studio Olafur Eliasson Kitchen at the Terrace Bar, rather ( Read more... )

I am very much 'you GO, girl' to Celia Paul: Much of the narrative in this book circles around her turbulent relationship with Lucian Freud. After his death, she noticed mentions of herself in his obituaries, as well as articles and books, and became determined to tell her own story. No longer wanting to remain simply a part of Freud’s story, she ( Read more... )

Would recommend.
Okay, a few points deducted for mozzies and the public transport trauma on Saturday, but on the whole the transport situation was okay - cheap flat fare, and the buses connecting with the Gozo ferry terminal seemed to run expeditiously scheduled.
Not perhaps one for the art-lover - the Knights of Malta were not great, or at least, ( Read more... )

Study Finds Artists Become Famous through Their Friends, Not the Originality of Their Work.
Though I would have thought the process of time might winnow out a few artists who just happened to be mates with Kandinsky or whoever... but at least they got that start, which some other person didn't.
I also felt that perhaps the dimension of gender was a ( Read more... )

Passed today in the bus: shopfront for 'Renaissance Personnel':
'Hi, I am looking for somebody who:
combines the highest levels of attainment in sculpture, painting, architecture and poetry/
or
will build me startling new engines of war, also design pageants, make maps, do the occasional painting and sculpture (though if he did not faff about ( Read more... )

Born on this day, 1757.
How to celebrate?
The weather is perhaps not quite what one would wish for playing Adam and Eve in the garden, as is reputed he did with his wife.
We could wander through the chartered streets, to where the chartered Thames doth flow, and see in every face we meet, marks of weakness, marks of woe.
We could visit Peckham Rye, ( Read more... )

Today partner and I went over to Tate Britain to see the Queer British Art 1861-1967 exhibition, which was actually rather good, even if there was some fuzziness about who was in and who was out, and some things that were portraits of relevant people, and a certain amount of contextual things, like the door of Wilde's cell at Reading Gaol. But I ( Read more... )