We lost David Savage this week to a heart attack at the age of 48, leaving a wife Deborah and many colleagues around the world. He was a Queensland boy who got educated in Brisbane and then quickly made it to Associate Professor in behavioural economics, teaching students in N...
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I here want to salute the brave artists who used their talents to capture the inhumanity and essential insanity of lockdowns. My favourite is the "guerilla mask force", an artistic idea that apparently started in Switzerland but spread all over Europe. what this guerilla mask...
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[spoiler alert!] As a fan of the “Hunger Games”, a dystopian trilogy where teenagers are thrown into gladiatorial games to fight till the last survivor in a world that is a blend of ancient Rome and modern America, I eagerly awaited its prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Sna...
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People shuffling in the street, afraid to look others in the eye, get close, and be accused. Fear as a silent ghost hovering above the city, watching us, like drones. The panic in the eye of the mother as her little toddler cycles by an older woman on the street, too close. Th...
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For those of you in Melbourne, I thought I'd let you know of a public lecture I'm giving on Thursday night this coming week details below. If you'd like to come, make your free reservation on this page . Thought Leadership Series Lecture | The Public Goods of the 21st Century...
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Looking at the newspapers you’d think Catholicism is having a hard time with philandering priests and cover-ups of their doings being found out on a weekly basis. In Australia, the royal commission has uncovered a lot of systematically covered-up child abuse in the Catholic Ch...
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Posted in Politics - international, History, Miscellaneous, Humour, Society, Religion, Art and Architecture, Libertarian Musings, Geeky Musings, Dance, WOW! - Amazing, Ethics, Cultural Critique, Death and taxes, Bullshit
Let me indulge, purely for entertainment value, in some fan-speculation on what we will see on-screen after the Long Night is over and the final 6 episodes Of Game of Thrones are run in 2019. Let me first talk about the end-game aspects I think the books and the tv-series seem...
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Posted in Uncategorized, Uncategorised, Politics - international, Life, Philosophy, Print media, Environment, History, Miscellaneous, Humour, Education, Literature, Society, Religion, Films and TV, Sport-general, Theatre, Music, IT and Internet, Economics and public policy, Food, Terror, Science, Art and Architecture, regulation, Gender, Journalism, Media, Libertarian Musings, Geeky Musings, Health, Climate Change, Political theory, Metablogging, Law, Dance, Space, Review, Startup, Products, Travel, Immigration and refugees, Information, bubble, WOW! - Amazing, Social, Parenting, Race and indigenous, Ethics, Cultural Critique, Medical, Public and Private Goods, Death and taxes, Inequality, Personal, Social Policy, Democracy, Bullshit, Indigenous, Employment
I've weighed in previously on the relentless emphasis on symbolism in the political prosecution of aboriginal issues in Australia. This isn't necessarily a criticism of aboriginal activists because, as I argued, they're working within the rules of memefication . I can add that...
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Travesties of the proverbial is a very occasional series one post of which began with these words. Keen readers of this blog will know that occasionally, just occasionally I identify a saying or concept which has somehow come to signify something close to the opposite of what...
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Cross posted from the Mandarin It is six years since Australia’s Artist Resale Royalty scheme (ARR) commenced and three years since submissions to its Post Implementation Review (PIR) closed, though the review itself has never been published. However, in the absence of a healt...
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I went to this opening because I know the artist's sister from The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI). Like sister like brother, some pretty interesting, reflective and classy stuff. If you're in Melbourne go check them out for yourself. More here .
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Apropos of my general theory of bullshit - outlined here - here are a few more straws in the wind. Consistent with the theory, the the signal to ideological noise ratio in political speeches has been falling precipitously lately - at least in the US. This has been interpreted...
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Last night I attended the launch of Creative State which was the culmination of over a year of engagement between the Victorian Government and the arts community. It involved a taskforce or some such and an Expert Reference Group - on which I sat. Anyway the Minister was very...
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What is the meaning of the relief sculpture above? I recall when I was last on the Athenian Acropolis just over a year ago marvelling at the Parthenon, not just its emphatic and sublime beauty but also its strangeness . It's so big and so magnificent. What the hell did this ci...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyfUu_fNQfM Well folks after a gruelling (if largely imaginary) 24 hour period haggling with other Troppmeisters, I'm pleased to announce Troppo's unanimous support for The Donald for President of the Greatest Country on Earth. We were locked in...
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Surely the most spectacular and inspiring building of our lifetimes - and some others' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcDmloG3tXU
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As I've argued elsewhere, most public debates on policy - and I suspect on pretty much everything else - tend to take place as culture wars. In a culture war the 'sides' are well defined - usually mapping pretty well onto 'left' and 'right' terrain. The identities of the vario...
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Postscript photo of the event Yes folks you read that right. Erwin Fabian who came to Australia on the same prison ship as my Dad is having another exhibition and it's a special one. He's turning 100 and the sculptures are a revelation. The most expansive and expressive I've s...
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[caption id="attachment_27634" align="aligncenter" width="865"] Tips: The two most important things about a play - seriously really the most most important - are the quality of the play itself - the script - and the acting. Direction is also important. Lighting, sets, costumes...
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Someone sent me this article by Keynes celebrating the Arts Council in the Listener shortly after World War II had been won in Europe. A world away, and worth a read. JMKeynes_Listener1945
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Fellow Troppodilians, especially those resident in Canberra, may I commend this production of Black Diggers to you. I saw it last year in Sydney at a packed out matinee (only tickets available) at the Opera House on Australia Day! It was electrifying: great script drawing on e...
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Oh well I guess snark can be justified as necessary to keeping standards above some rock bottom. Anyway, I did wonder whether this article on the Renaissance and innovation was the silliest thing written on either. Even ignoring the fact that he is about half a millennium out...
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The NIMBY Brigade is a blight on urban civil society. These people have never seen a new development that they don't oppose, unless it's a community vegetable garden or possibly a Montessori preschool built from mud bricks (although only if they're very quiet middle class kidd...
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[video width="480" height="360" mp4="http://clubtroppo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/yt1s.com-Christopher-Hitchens-Why-Women-Still-Arent-Funny_360p.mp4"][/video] I have a strange habit of looking for bargain books. Why is this a strange habit? Because it looks awfully like...
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The ARR scheme so far has cost taxpayers just over $2.2 million and as of December 2013 has delivered a total of 7,800 royalty payments, to 800 artists (or estates) with a median value of about $105 per payment. The scheme has, in three and a half years, only generated a total...
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Australia's Artists Resale Royalty (ARR ) scheme has so far cost taxpayers $2.2 million in direct support. And over many years the publicly funded lobbyists for this scheme, headed up by the National Association for the Visual Arts Ltd, have additionally spent a lot of public...
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Campaigners seem to be having some success in raising the profile of writers and others giving away the product of their labour for free. The first time I ran into this issue in any big way was in launching the Government 2.0 Taskforce with a design competition. The prize? The...
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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="557"] This image came up on a Google search for "What's On". It's from The Central Tavern at Springfield Lakes , wherever that is. Seems nice enough, the cocktails can be very red by the looks of things, though there does seem to be qu...
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The following quote is from an article published in London's Financial Times on October 4. The article is further confirmation that the previous Labor government's gratuitous interference in the art market has had a devastating effect on sales and its legacy is continuing to p...
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http://vimeo.com/75482401 Here's a presentation I gave to a conference called - unhelpfully - Art for Art's Sake. It was actually about new approaches to participation in the arts, about finding ways of connecting people to the arts - and the arts to people - which go beyond t...
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I am taking this opportunity to launch me own website : johnrwalker.com.au. Hope you enjoy. I would like to thank Andrew Hunter of KeyChange Solutions for his patience and terrific design input.
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On Friday 9th August Nicolas Rothwell published this article in The Australian on the state of indigenous art in Australia. Nicolas's article details how, over the past 6 years, the old free market indigenous art sector has largely been replaced by a state backed official Indi...
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On Thursday 8th august the Australian ran this article by Nicolas Rothwell about the toxic debacle that is the reality of the governments Artists Resale Royalty scheme. The article concluded with an examination of the circular nature of the government funded lobbyists for ARR:...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kFTtNKUivKk Well there I was, minding my own business - which as you know all too well is my wont, nay my metier, when what should I happen upon on the wires but the Flinders St Railway Station Redevelopment Competition si...
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Jon Altman is a Professor at the ANU Center for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. His submission to the review is long and deeply grounded in long-term, first-hand knowledge of the indigenous art sector and remote area indigenous affairs more generally. It is a must read ....
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That Government bureaucracies at times create 'phantom employees' to publicly argue the 'public' interest-need for.... more bureaucrats, is a well known historical truth. What follows is what Paul Frijters called: A classic case of what Niskanen spoke about. The review has fin...
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Parts I & II our review of the Review. As of Monday 15 July the web page for Office Of The Arts review of its Artists Resale Royalty scheme lists 40 submissions. All but a few of these submissions are unfavorable to the scheme. In his submission , Ben Quilty, Australian War ar...
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This is just some expanded and consolidated musing from Twitter. A few days ago I was thinking about The Fall of Icarus, the 16th century Dutch painting after Bruegel. It's probably most popular for near absence of the ostensible subject, Icarus, who is barely shown in the bac...
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The adoption of ARR as policy for governments (in about 2002) was driven by a small cluster of publicly funded, 'arts societies' management representatives, that were/are closely linked to a global network of copyright collection societies managements. The real aim of these lo...
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I heard that the South Australian Government had released a new logo on the radio. It was a bit of a talking point. So I wondered about it. Wondered if I wouldn't like it much and get to like it - like the Commonwealth Bank's one, or would just think it was a silly waste of ti...
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These two images dominate a marketing email that's just arrived in my in tray from Olsen Irwin Galleries. Guy Maestri Ball's Pyramid No.10 oil on linen 183 x 152cm 2013 Click to view details Emma Van Leest Ingenue archival paper, foamcore and glue 51 x 31.5cm 2013 Click to vie...
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You're invited to view more works here . Alas, there are no more works - at least on the page where they say you can "view all works". But I like this one.
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I had the good fortune to see this remarkable thing recently. And I thought as I was in the Sistine Chapel something I've thought before and have probably pontificated about here at pontification central. (Checking I find this post for instance). Why are there not more facsimi...
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I've never heard of EDwin Tanner, but he does a cute line in pictures if this is anything to go by. It went under the hammer at 45K (I think plus 20 odd per cent buyer's premium) last Dec. Details here .
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http://youtu.be/CrczSkNSQR4 http://youtu.be/vo3pY_jmn2w
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More here if you're interested.
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We've spent a long time talking about Australia's relation ship with our near North. The recent Asian Century White Paper succeeds the interminable early 90s debates about whether Australia was part of Asia, which succeeded the end of the White Australia interregnum, which suc...
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Winter in the Fire Forest 20 October - 17 November 2012 Troppos are very welcome to join us at the opening Saturday 20 October 3pm-5 pm Utopia Art Sydney 2 Danks St Waterloo 02 9699 2900 exhibition catalogue Winter in the Fire Forest , 2005, archival oil on board, 60 x 80cm. C...
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I just discovered Tom Keating, an art forger. I was reading a junky $5 book in a book remainders store on famous criminals (as you do) and as I read his story I'm afraid I liked the guy for the way in which his great skills seemed 'genuine' as it were - driven by the love of a...
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Here's a nice painting - which will be auctioned at Southerby's in Melbourne on the 14th Aug. More nice things to look at are here .
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"In 2008-09, DEWHA was assessed as non-compliant for the Resale Royalty Right for Visual Artists Act 2009 and a post-implementation review is required to commence within one to two years of implementation."¹ The reason why the Artist Resale Royalty Act was assessed as non-comp...
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[caption id="attachment_20699" align="alignright" width="300"] Ceci n'est pas un Duchamp[/caption] I once overheard a serious conversation between two curators as to whether the urinal they were looking at was a genuine Duchamp or an unauthorised urinal. Strange loops involve...
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My previous post - ' With friends like this’: Labor policies and the commercial, independent visual arts sector - was kindly posted by Ken Parish, 6 June. In many ways, artist resale royalties are intrinsically a throwback to the pre-reform days of the 1970s and '80s. The roya...
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[caption id="attachment_20019" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Australian Aboriginal Art is much sought after internationally, but Australians overall and Aborigines themselves benefit little from it (and even less since Labor's Resale Royalty Scheme which is the subje...
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This lovely painting goes on sale this Thursday night at Menzies Auctioneers . An artist friend of mine isn't too impressed with Lin Onus, but then I think his work is lovely. So there. This painting will go for an estimated $150-200,000 plus buyers' fee plus GST, which is one...
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A friend of mine, and a great contributor to Australian public policy, Mike Waller, a man who sketched out Australian competition policy on a single page and fed it up the line as an FAS in PM&C in the late 80s (or perhaps it was 1990), has wrenched himself from the policy sce...
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The Lodge in Canberra, the official residence of the Prime Minister will be closed for repairs for the next 18 months . Several figures, including Jeff Kennett , former NCDC head Tony Powell and Andrew Carr of the Lowy Institute deem this an exercise in turd polishing. A new,...
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From the General Achievement Test for the Victorian Certificate of Education sat today. The image of the Australian outback on the next page was painted by Russell Drysdale. Pamela Bell described the painting in the following terms. Man reading a Paper is one of the most surre...
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Dunera Boy Erwin Fabian , about whom I've written at least twice before is at it again - which is to say he has another exhibition on. He's in his mid-nineties now and still working away every day in his North Melbourne studio (which is an old tin shed). I went to the opening...
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HT Three Quarks, I enjoyed this wander around the James Bond genre. How can we take such pleasure from such bad movies. It's a mystery. I liked the essay and don't dismiss the author's principal explanation which is Freudian fantasy for boys. But I'm in the demographic he's wr...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OLP4nbAVA4&feature=player_embedded
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Yesterday in the post I received a copy of CAB: Collaborative Auto Biography , a series of short anecdotes and stories from residents of Cabramatta rendered as comics by Matt Huynh - a project intended in a large part to show stories about the area that don't involve heroin. I...
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I have just returned from a two week holiday in Vietnam expectedly with a wide range of observations with which to tire friends and relatives. There are a few though that relate heavily to economics and the sociology of markets and capitalism which are probably more of interes...
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They don't get much better than this. HT Three Quarks Well for the umpteeth time, WordPress has spat out the 'embedding' code I put into it. But this link is fabulous. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFabjc6mFk4&feature=player_embedded PS - I find on reviewing the site that it...
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The Sydney Morning Herald has been trumpeting a study they supported by on the future of Sydney's public transport and urban structure. Beneath the being overly pleased with themselves, with we're above petty politics harrumphing there is a genuine effort to talk about the pol...
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William Hardy Wilson is a fairly well regarded Australian architect of the 20th century and is such usually afforded a few paragraphs in biographical dictionaries and encyclopaedias. These will mention in passing a few well regarded buildings and pay brief mention to an unreal...
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Today Artworks is replaying a program from May on Erwin Fabian - possibly the oldest surviving Dunera boy who continues to sculpt every day in his studio in North Melbourne. I have posted on him a few times before . I teed up an oral history project to record Erwin's recollect...
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My local council, Port Phillip is holding a competition for young people to name this dragon which has just been built in a playground. If you're any of the 0-17 kids reading this site you probably have some 'issues' but perhaps you can show it to your kids. If you get your en...
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My family is staunchly lower class English on my dad's side (his mother emigrated from England as a lady's maid and then started a chicken farm in Greenacre in Sydney's western suburbs) and bog Irish/Scottish Catholic on my mum's side. However, not much is known about my mater...
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Grollo's Amazing Melbourne Tower was lambasted by the soft left as phallic. Perhaps it was. Perhaps it's because I'm a boy, but I just lerve things that are so big it makes me go 'Wow!'. (Unless they're unusually ugly, which they usually aren't). And we seem to get towards fin...
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I've just been to see the film, and I'm afraid I wasn't impressed. It is of a piece with 'Doubt' which is very well acted but has a slick and ultimately superficial script. I had no idea what the film was about but somehow by osmosis I took in that it was a Good Film and I wan...
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I sometimes like to try to get the feel of the prosperity of a US era from films and TV shows made at the time and about that time. Not the fantasy stuff, or things for kids generally or horror, but the consciously era-based ones that set out to create a feel. This is not a sc...
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Architecture of the Heart No's 1, 2 and 3. For more follow this link.
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In a world rapidly sinking into a grand funk, with nothing going right for overpaid CEOs, for US Auto workers, for the climate, for climate scientists, for denialists, for the US (apart from Obama), for the sales of SUVs and large cars, for the US, UK and Europe, for Afghanist...
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I find it incredible that Bletchley Park, the birthplace of modern computing, the place that won the Battle of the Atlantic without which the Allies may not have won World War II is finding the going tough to survive and thrive as a museum . I guess it's unthinkable that it wo...
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Jacques Barzun is arguably the leading commentator on education and cultural studies in the 20th century but he has a low profile since his kind of deep but ideologically disinterested scholarship went out of fashion. Born in 1907, he turns 101 in November. His reputation achi...
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The Myer Foundation's 'Cranlana' Program is named after Sidney Myer's magnificent Toorak home where the program holds a range of functions. I attended one of these when I was working at the BCA. I remember doing the reading for it before hand and thinking it was going to be aw...
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This is an invite to an exhibition at the Jewish Museum by someone who is pondering his roots as a descendant of those who experienced the holocaust. I was sent it as someone on the Dunera News mailing list. I think about this myself, not so much in relation to myself, but rat...
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From the Universe Today website. The Cassini mission has released some of the most detailed images of Saturn's poles yet, revealing vast cyclones churning up the gas giant's atmosphere in the north and south. These observations show very similar storms to the south pole observ...
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Though it's late the day, I want to recommend Opera Australia's production of Billy Budd . There are only two performances left -- tonight (Monday 13 October) and Thursday. This is indeed short notice for tonight but, for the spontaneous among you, tickets are only $60 if you...
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The Henson episode has raised some questions about the role of art and artists that Jacques Barzun addressed in his book The Use and Abuse of A rt. Barzun (1907 - ) turned 100 last year and deserves to be better known as arguably the premier scholar in cultural studies in the...
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The recent post on architectural delights reminded me that during the Beaconsfield mining disaster I googled Beaconsfield and turned up some pictures of the Batman Bridge nearby. That led to some more pictures of Tasmanian bridges and one of them led to some other bridges in V...
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A few weeks ago I spent an afternoon in the Victorian Parliament building discussing regulation and, though I think I've looked in it quickly before, I was completely blown away by how magnificent the Legislative Council is. I mean just take a look at those pictures. And it re...
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From the Fin Column of 19th August. There were so many issues in the last election that you might not have noticed Labors promise to introduce a resale royalty scheme - to provide artists with a share of profits when their art is resold. This is a promise that will soon haunt...
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Here's a nice looking painting what I got sent in my email - having once subscribed to the email list of the Rex Irwin Gallery which is holding an exhition of this guy from the 12th August. I'll be in the wrong city, but they look like nice paintings. Check out details here .
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Would you find lots of oval shaped stations popping up all over the place in your city an eyesore? And they have advertising on them. Still, I reckon you wouldn't. You see they're bike exchange stations and in Paris they've got them every 300 metres or so. And I just know that...
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From this site , via Kathy G , regarding Charlie Chaplin. They were dreadfully poor. Charlie's parents were third-string strolling players. His father died early of alcoholism; his mother was often in asylums, whether through drink or because of periodic mental illness. Whenev...
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Here's a column I've just written published today in the AFR. The Gruen Transfer Those with an unusual surname have to get used to spelling it. No its not Gluner. Not Glueball or Grewbie its Gruen G-R-U-E-N. The compensation is, your name identifies you or a family member pret...
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I read on that other (more illustrious) CT that Tom Lehrer turned 80 recently (on the 9th April). I guess most Troppo readers know him. I can't think of a greater talent for satirical music ever. Prodigious in quality rather than quantity - he performed 109 shows, and wrote 37...
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Paradox one Over the very time we were clearing away the detritus of the various collectivist institutions we cobbled together under the name of the Australian Settlement, or 'protection all round', while we proceeded with economic reform by deregulating markets to try to opti...
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Here's an example, but there's a whole gallery of pretty amazing landscape's here . Not bad for an (excellent) economic journalist.
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Meanwhile, an avalanche on Mars, the first extra-terrestrial avalanche observed by humangoes. And just to remind you of your place in the world, here's a bit of a galaxy - which appropriately enough is part of one of your standard galaxy clusters. It's 50,000 light years acros...
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I went to the Archibald when in Sydney yesterday. I didn't think much of the winner - though I don't think I really 'got' it. But I was amazed at how many good portraits there were - I'd say at least ten really good ones. I looked around and thought - "well maybe that's what a...
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The architect Victor Gruen 'invented' the shopping mall. He was the first person to come up with and execute the idea of a hermetically sealed shopping area - something that dovetailed with the imperatives of property development, retailing, as well as ideas of femininity and...
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Henry Ergas is in my pantheon of 'most' Australian economists. Of the Australian economists I've known, Glenn Withers knows most about Australian (and other countries') public policy, John Quiggin is probably the cleverest and most academically and polemically productive, and...
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I've always wondered. I don't much like his stuff, while acknowledging that the early work was interesting. And I guess you get marks for creating an icon - Ned Kelly. The Kelly series is very compelling. But, though I wouldn't rate my views on the subject as particularly wort...
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Sullivan+Strumpf has a lot of groovy artists on its lists. Their website has some groovy pictures and objects they've run up. I've put them over the fold for those who are interested - and so that those who aren't don't chew up bandwidth.
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Christopher Hitchens has some strange views. But it's not hard to see why he gets published. Triffic writing - as for example in this post on Robert Hughes.
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Yea verily. Just click through to Phylotaxis and have a look around. Remember to move your mouse through the logo when you first arrive at the site and then have a play around inside.
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I went to Richmond last weekend to look at what I thought was an exhibition of paintings by Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack - sometime of the Bauhaus and subsequently art master at Geelong Grammar with transport to Australia being supplied by HMT Dunera in 1940. The exhibition turned o...
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Review of Tao: On the Road and On the Run in Outlaw China by Aya Goda. Translated from the Japanese by Alison Watts. Published by Portobello Books. The painting reflects the artist, Young Number Four Son. If you want to paint, you must start by building your character. Paintin...
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A terrific lecture by Robert Manne on 'Reconciliation' is to be heard and/or downloaded from the Hindsight program on the ABC website. I've heard it previously, so it's not that new, but it's a good listen if you have the time.
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I taped last Wednesday night's LNL and only listened to it last night. Download the mp3 file and be amazed. Do it NOW! The file will disappear tomorrow night.
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Here are a couple of monuments , the first recently errected in Dublin, the second on the drawing boards. They're by the same architect. Where Melbourne got the angular yellow beams of Denton Corker Marshall, Dublin and soon Wales will have the gleaming spires of Ian Richie Ar...
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I mentioned when reviewing Opera Australia's Barber that there was another production of the same work in the pipeline. By now it's actually too late to see Pacific Opera's season of The Barber of Seville , which finished last weekend. But it's still worth a comment for the be...
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I always liked Frank Lloyd Wright. I have a theory that lots of ideas somehow get converted into their opposite as they propagate through the community. Thus for instance the theory of the second best in economics was a theory which showed that if you were in a second best sit...
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Deutscher-Menzies have a great auction coming up. I love, totally love, this Arthur Boyd. But do not alas have a spare 200K. If you are a Troppodillian who does you should high-tail it down there. While you're there, I reckon you should buy this Charles Blackman - a steal at a...
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Hat tip to new blogger Leslie Katz. For some reason the You Tube screen is not making it's way through our software - but check this out . Dead simple really!
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I vividly remember wandering round the town of Nimes in the south of France about fifteen years ago and being completely blown away by the amphitheatre there (pictured above). What blew me away was the way in which this magnificent object had gone on a two millennium journey o...
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I just went to see the film Becoming Jane . Having read a couple of reviews, I didn't want to see it but I arrived at nine p.m. at the cinema determined to see a movie and it was the least bad of my options. On returning and doing a quick Google I can't find a good review of i...
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My Sweet Lord ... This story is disappointing if unsurprising: A MANHATTAN art gallery has cancelled its Easter-season exhibit of a life-size chocolate sculpture depicting a naked Jesus, after an outcry by Roman Catholics. The sculpture My Sweet Lord by Cosimo Cavallaro was to...
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I think there is a tradition on blogs in which visitors are invited to click on links to Amazon books and if they buy a book some credit is given to the blog for the purchase of books on the wish list. Well, loosely based on this tradition I suggest someone go visit Eva Breuer...
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I reckon this is a bloody good picture. It took my eye in the National Gallery Magazine. It's by Tobias Koster and most of the background is missing - which is a long strip to the right and left of the market in which one presumes the subject of the painting works. Tobias is f...
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It's not just western cartoons causing protests abroad. In India Hindu activists are protesting against Valentine's Day. According to Asian News International Valentine's Day has become increasingly popular in India in recent years with retailers doing a brisk trade in heart-s...
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I have the right to fart in a crowded lift, or cultivate halitosis by failing to brush my teeth regularly. And, even if my neighbour is a Hindu, I would be entitled (health regulations permitting) to slaughter and barbecue a cow down by her back fence just to give her the shit...
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Like a good humanist and liberal I have always been opposed to censorship, however in the 1980s I stirred up a debate in the Humanist literature, pointing out that there was a newer wave of pornography about and it was very different from the kind of harmless stuff that prompt...
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It's fun having a few people read what you write because you can get a few irritations off your chest from time to time. Here is an article about criminal Mark Chopper Reid's forthcoming art exhibition. He's gone naive. I'm not a fan of Chopper's past or present deeds, and wou...
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Joshua Smith (1905-1995) achieved fame as the subject of the painting by William Dobell that won the Archibald Prize in 1943. Smith and another party jointly challenged the award in court on the ground that the painting was a caricature. Correction , 7 Oct 06, Smith was not a...
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I have just been to see the German film 'Downfall'. If you're concerned about it 'humanising' Hitler, it does. It presents him as a three dimensional character with charisma, and gravitas. He's even courteous a lot of the time at least when he's not apoplectic with rage partic...
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