April 26, 2008
Ben Hoyle, Arts Reporter


Britain needs to show more gratitude to wealthy philanthropists who give money to the arts, leaders of major cultural institutions said yesterday.

Mark Jones, the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and chairman of the National Museum Directors’ Conference (NMDC), said that Britain’s cultural heritage depended on a fundamental shift towards a culture of private giving.

Potential donors were said to be held back by offputting tax laws, by ignorance of how to get involved and by an often “curmudgeonly” and suspicious attitude towards people who give to the arts. Rather than celebrating the gift, he said, people often think: “What’s in it for them?”

The Government should reward prominent philanthropists with more honours and less tax, he argued. “We are less generous to donors than the Irish system, the French system or the Americans.” Mr Jones was speaking at the start of a campaign to encourage greater giving, backed by a report that lays bare the poor state of charitable contributions. The campaign is led by the NMDC, the Museums, Libraries and Archive Council and Arts Council England.

According to the report, Private Giving for the Public Good, there are 68 billionaires in Britain, and 100 new millionaires are created every day, yet charitable giving has fallen 25 per cent since 1992 as a proportion of gross domestic product.

Of the £9.5 billion donated last year, only a tiny fraction went to the arts.

Nearly 70 per cent of money given to culture goes to London and the South East.

Philanthropy UK, which advises aspiring donors, believes that the wealthiest 10 per cent of the population could double their giving. At present the poorest 10 per cent of the population give about 3 per cent of their income while the richest 10 per cent give barely 1 per cent.

The consequences for the arts, where public spending is throttling back after a decade of investment and the cost of acquiring art for public collections is rising rapidly, are potentially dire.

Private contributions have increased – subsidised performing arts groups now receive on average 36 per cent of their funding from the public purse as opposed to 51 per cent in 1980 – but more is needed, Mr Jones said.

“All the people in our sector realise we’re going to have to try harder than ever to attract private donations if we are going to compete effectively on the international stage. Government support has been very good but we can’t expect a great deal more of taxpayers’ money in the current economic climate.”

The report highlights the leading role played by private donors in creating the fabric of modern British cultural life. Philanthropy was integral to the founding of the British Museum, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, English National Opera and the Royal Ballet. Mr Jones said: “It would be good to recognise that we need to treat donors well. And there are some straightforward and practical things that government could do.”

He suggested handing out more honours to reward donors, expanding the Gift Aid scheme and treating donations as gifts for tax purposes even if they come with associated benefits such as invitations to private views.

The campaign’s top target is a change to the tax rules surrounding a donation of art to the nation.

“At the moment it is more efficient to give cash or shares than a work of art. If I have a Jeff Koons worth £10 million and I want to give it to the Tate, I get no tax relief. If I sell it and give the £10 million to the Tate I get tax relief at 40 per cent, so it only costs me £6 million.”

Mr Jones also said that he wanted to see the tax benefits associated with gifts of art to the nation made after death extended.

The acceptance-in-lieu scheme, which enables taxpayers to transfer works of art and heritage objects into public ownership and set their value against inheritance tax, has brought more than £250 million of works into the public domain in the past ten years. However, it excludes the most attractive donors: living ones.

“The gift of that first work of art is often the beginning of a lifetime’s engagement,” Mr Jones said.

“This is not about banging people over the head. Giving is a secret, misunderstood pleasure. If you want to be rich and happy, you need to give.”

Digging deep

— More than 1,500 people helped the refurbishment of the Royal Festival Hall, above, by paying at least £300 to name a seat

— The wealthiest 10 per cent of the population give less than 1 per cent of their income to charity

— The poorest 10 per cent of the population give around 3 per cent Individuals gave £9.5 billion to charity in 2006-07

— Global art prices have doubled in the past ten years

— Heritage Lottery Fund awardsfor acquiring works of art have fallen from £25 million to under £5 million in the same period

— In February the “extraordinarily generous” art dealer Anthony d’Offay sold his £125 million art collection to the nation for £26.5 million

Source: National Museum Directors’ Conference





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英国の現代アートを代表するデミアン・ハーストの有名な「牛の輪切りのホルマリン漬け」が税関?で英国産牛肉への輸入規制（輸入不可）に引っかかり、危うく森美術館で開催される展示会『英国美術の現在史：ターナー賞の歩み展』に出品ができなくなるところだったそうです。というか、食べないだろう。これ、どうみても、食用牛肉じゃないだろう。だって、朽ち果てていくのを展示する「アート作品」です。大体、税関通告書見ればわかるでしょうに…。よっぽど検査官は驚いたろうなと思います。でも、ホームでひたすら爆笑でございました。

で、この朽ち果てていく美しさを求められるウシくんたちは他の現代作品とともに，六本木の森美術館で７月13日まで展示されます。

---

Damien Hirst's cow art in a pickle


Telegraph
By Johanna Leggatt
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 09/04/2008


Damien Hirst's controversial artwork of a cow preserved in formaldehyde has caused a headache for staff at a Tokyo museum


A pickled cow by British artist Damien Hirst ran into trouble on its way to a Tokyo museum because of Japan's strict import ban on British beef.



A vistor inspects Damien Hirst's Mother and Child, Divided
A Tate Modern staff member inspects Hirst's Mother and Child, Divided when it was first installed


Hirst's Mother and Child, Divided, consisting of a cow and a calf each sliced in half, is part of a retrospective of Britain's controversial Turner Prize at The Mori Arts Museum.

Due to Japan's ban on British beef after the mad cow disease outbreak, the museums' representatives had to convince customs officials that the cow was indeed art, and not dinner.

"I think my staff explained that it's not for eating," Fumio Nanjo, Director of the Mori Art Museum, said.

However, once the cow had cleared customs, the problems didn't end there. The orginal cow and calf - which won the 1995 Turner prize - had started to rot, so the museum has had to replace them with a new and improved version that is usually displayed at the Astrup Fearnly Museum in Oslo.
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"The original cow was decaying very fast. This is the second version," Nanjo said.

Furthermore, for their trip to Japan, the carcasses had to be taken out of their original formaldehyde solution, and will be re-pickled for the Tokyo exhibition.

Fearing that formaldehyde fumes could poison staff as the liquid is poured into the cow's glass case, the museum has pledged to install a ventilation system.

This will involve major construction work, including drilling a new shaft through the ceiling.

It isn't the first time Hirst's penchant for picked animals have caused a stir.

In 2006, Hirst had to replace his pickled shark, titled "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living", with a new one after the original had begun to rot.

Nanjo however, seemed unperturbed by the bureaucratic hic-cups. "This is a major work for the show. So we cannot give up," he said.


History in the Making: A Retrospective of the Turner Prize, at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo's Roppongi neighbourhood, will run from April 25 to July 13.




Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright

As classical music is piped into 40 Tube stations to reduce antisocial behaviour, Jessica Duchen asks if we really want rush hour symphonies

Independent
Wednesday, 26 March 2008



Trundling through the packed ticket hall at Vauxhall Tube station, I and several hundred other travellers recently found our ears filled with the strains of Mahler – to be precise, the slow movement of his Symphony No 1, a spoof funeral march based on "Frère Jacques". Whoever chose to pipe this through the station loudspeakers at 8.30 on a Monday morning must have a slightly twisted sense of humour.

Classical music has been part of Vauxhall station's way of life for some time now, but now it has been announced that Transport for London's scheme to reduce crime and antisocial behaviour by piping such music through stations has been so effective that it has been extended to 40 locations across the network, with more likely to follow.

The notion originally came from Canada – in Montreal, in the mid-1990s, an experiment was carried out to see whether classical music could clear away crowds of yobs who didn't happen to like it. The idea was first tested here outside supermarkets troubled by assembled hoodies, and on the Metro system in Tyne and Wear in 1997. Signs were that it did the trick, and Elm Park on the District Line became the first Tube station to try it in 2003 – a place where there was such a gang problem that train drivers were afraid to stop there. Within 18 months, robberies were cut by 33 per cent, assaults on staff by 25 per cent, and vandalism by 37 per cent as the voice of Pavarotti made troublemakers scarper.

Amadeus on the underground - Mozart's Sonata K448
これは特に有名ですね。
『のだめカンタービレ』で千秋とのだめの演奏バージョンでどうぞ。笑

Theories vary as to why it works. One is that it doesn't fit with antisocial youths' perception of cool; another that teenagers can hear high-frequency overtones that adults can't detect, which upset them (though music students of a similar age are evidently immune). As for the rest of us, when TfL did a survey of 700 commuters, "they overwhelmingly agreed that hearing classical music made them feel happy, less stressed and relaxed". It's also part of the current conviction amid the powers that be that people need protection not from crime – which may have been reduced by the scheme but certainly hasn't been wiped out – but from the fear of it. Play them a little Beethoven and they may feel braver.

The Tube's 40-hour playlist, chosen by a subcontractor named Broadchart, consists of music mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries, some well known, some obscure, all of it tonal and tuneful. Most people seem to like it (disproving the common fallacy that classical music isn't popular). No doubt there's a piece to suit every situation: you could enjoy Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony when delayed due to overrunning engineering works; prepare for the marathon of walking up a broken escalator via Strauss's Alpine Symphony; or be comforted by any number of wintery pieces – Vivaldi's from The Four Seasons, Prokofiev's "Winter Fairy" from Cinderella, or Tchaikovsky's "Snowflake Waltz" from The Nutcracker, say – when faced with frozen points.

Of course, there have been groans, and justifiable ones, over the notion of reducing the great artistry of composers such as Handel, Brahms and Rachmaninov to mere ambient mood-music. On the one hand, it beats hearing the tinny thump-thump of other peoples' iPods, or their half of a mobile-phone conversation. But on the other, if the scheme is too successful, it might be extended to the point where everyone will encounter Bach and Beethoven almost every time they step out of their front doors – and if excessive repetition inures us to the sentiments of Schumann or the power of Puccini, how will they ever stir us again? They're supposed to move our souls, not our feet.

Whether or not familiarity does breed contempt, music can't help but alter mood, and that recognition is nothing new – rather, the use of music as public crime deterrent represents the rediscovery of an ancient wisdom and its appliance to a 21st-century situation. The Greeks, for example, recognised very well the degree to which music could affect human passions. "Music is a moral law," wrote Plato, around 300BC. "It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything."

In fact, in most eras of history – with the remarkable exception of the 20th century – the inherent properties of the vibrations set up by different musical intervals to inspire calm and stability or chaos and aggression have been acknowledged.

Thus, if calm and stability are alien to you, you probably won't be able to stand Mozart; and your average commuter will probably run a mile if assailed by gangsta rap or Stockhausen en route to the office. Not that hoodies are particularly likely to take to Stockhausen either.



Music to travel by

Mind the Gap: Haydn, "Surprise" Symphony
Change here: Steve Reich, Different Trains
Track repairs: Beethoven, "Hammerklavier" Sonata
Signal failure: Schumann, Blumenstück
Leaves on the line: Arnold Bax, November Woods
The wrong kind of snow: Liszt, Transcendental Study No 12, "Chasse-neige" ("Snow Plough")
Lines suspended: Palestrina, Missa Papae Marcelli
Seasonal breakdown: Mendelssohn, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Heading for a champagne party? Mozart, The Magic Flute
Braving Harrods sale? Eric Coates, the "Knightsbridge" march from the London Suite
Using the Heathrow Express? John Adams, Short Ride in a Fast Machine

The Times
April 8, 2008
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent



David Hockney called on Britain’s most celebrated artists yesterday to donate works to the Tate, as it emerged that fewer than half had fulfilled a promise to do so.

Speaking while he unveiled a spectacular painting that he is giving to the Tate, Hockney said that it was the duty of artists to give something back to an institution whose support had ensured that they did not struggle in their early careers.

Bigger Trees near Warter, which is to be shown at Tate Britain, is an enormous depiction of a grove of sycamore and beech trees in East Yorkshire, painted outdoors and capturing the way light dances in the branches.

At 15ft by 40ft (4.5m by 12m), with 50 separate canvases, it is his largest work. If it had come on to the open market, collectors would have been excited into parting with millions.

In 2004 the Tate announced that 23 artists, all household names, had agreed to donate at least one work.

It said yesterday that only nine of them - including Damien Hirst and Antony Gormley – had kept their promise so far. Some of the nation’s most successful artists – notably Lucian Freud, Richard Hamilton and Gilbert & George – have yet to deliver. Hamilton said yesterday: “Nick [Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate] has talked about it. He hasn’t pursued it. He will come back when the time is right.” Gilbert & George could not be contacted yesterday.

Hockney said he had not forgotten that the Tate saw his potential as long ago as 1963 – a year after he graduated from the Royal College of Art – and bought a painting by him.

The artist, 70, said: “The Tate asked me two years ago about giving things. I thought, ‘If I’m going to give something to the Tate I want to give them something really good. It’s going to be here for a while. I don’t want to give things I’m not too proud of’.”

Hockney, who is planning a couple of further donations, said: “I thought this was a good painting because it’s of England. It seems like a good thing to do. I feel loyal to the Tate. More artists should donate. They should think about it. You can’t quite trust collectors who say they’ll give to the Tate and often don’t.”

With its meagre funds – an annual acquisition budget of only £1.5 million – the Tate could never have afforded to buy such a work. Hockney acknowledged as much by saying that prices for contemporary art had “gone a bit mad”.

Two years ago Sotheby’s sold his The Splash for £2.92 million. Thirty years earlier it had changed hands for just £25,000.

The Tate played down any frustration with artists who had yet to donate, saying that it was continuing its discussions with them.

Sir Nicholas dismissed the suggestion that the gallery was disappointed, pointing out that artists would give when the right work was available: “To do this over five or ten years is no problem.”

He paid tribute to Hockney’s generosity, saying: “It is an astonishing gift. Notwithstanding its size, this painting could have been sold to many buyers around the world. Simply to give with no tax benefit to himself is a remarkable gesture.”

Bigger Trees will be shown at Tate Britain next year. Hockney has also presented Tate with two digital photographic copies in the same size, suggesting that they could be hung on adjacent walls to suggest a cloister.




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The Times
April 3, 2008



LOS ANGELES A sorcerer in a hoody conjures a spray can in a mural, above, on a man-made riverbank in Los Angeles.

It is part of 10,000sq ft (930sq m) of graffiti art that the county wants removed after politicians complained that parts of it were obscene and attracted gang-related tags.

The project was approved by the city and last September Alex Poli, a graffiti specialist and gallery owner, organised a day for hundreds of muralists to work on the vast canvas as families brought their children to watch. Images such as an angel cradling a man, a besuited pig smoking marijuana and scantily clad women went up but Los Angeles County said that some were inappropriate and that Mr Poli had not kept his promise to keep the riverbank free of gang tags.

Last October the county told Friends of the Los Angeles River, which arranged permission for the murals, that it had 90 days to paint them over or pay $70,000 (£35,000) for their removal. Mr Moli is seeking legal help to fight off the county.

“It would be beautiful if the river went back to its natural state and was actually a river and a park,” said Mr Poli, “but right now we have concrete walls, so the next best thing is to beautify it with art.” (AP)

The Times
April 2, 2008
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent



Theatreland will have to give up its bedroom secrets in the quest for funding, under new Arts Council requirements. Organisations applying for grants are being asked to state how many board members are bisexual, homosexual, heterosexual, lesbian or whose inclinations are “not known”.

Audrey Roy, the director of grants, said that the council needed to understand who its audience was and to whom its funding was going. “We see diversity as broader than race, ethnicity, faith and disability,” she said. Question 22 of the Grants for the Arts forms, relating to sexual orientation, was not compulsory, she added, although the form states that it must be answered.

The question caused anger and bemusement among leading figures of the arts world yesterday. The Oscar-nominated actor Sir Ian McKellen, who is openly gay, said: “It sounds extraordinary. It shouldn’t be on a form. It’s quite inappropriate.”

Vanessa Redgrave, the actress and human rights campaigner, said: “Everyone should put down ‘trisexual’, whoever you are. Britain has become the world’s leading population of trisexuals.”

Michael Frayn, the author of the farce Noises Off, suggested boxes to “specify how many members are longsighted or shortsighted, how many wear black socks or brown socks”.

Christopher Hampton, whose adaptation of God of Carnage is showing in the West End, said: “It’s bureaucracy and political correctness gone mad.”

The application form notes that the question is for government purposes only and will not enter into the grant decision, but that claim was contradicted by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Its spokesman said: “We appreciate that, as a responsible public body they need to monitor their overall grant-making programmes. But it is absolutely not the case that sexual orientation monitoring is a government requirement.”

Condemnation of the question spanned the arts. Julian Spalding, the former director of galleries and museums in Sheffield, Manchester and Glasgow, said: “I can’t see what relevance it’s got. It’s a horrible invasion into one’s personal and private life.” He added: “What they like to do in bed is not the Arts Council’s business.”

Maggi Hambling, the painter who describes herself as “queer”, said: “It’s insidious, insulting and quite outrageous for the Arts Council to consider anyone’s sexual orientation of any kind to be their business. It appears to be somewhat Hitlerian in its suggestion that grants will be given if, among the applicants, there is a nice smattering of dykes and queers.”

Nicolas Kent, the artistic director of the Tricycle Theatre in London, said: “This is ridiculous. It has no relevance. The Arts Council is prone to huge overregulation, as seems to be the case with the whole of society. But the Arts Council has caught it very badly. They should advance the arts instead of ticking every box they invent.”

Referring to the recent protest over the council’s decision to cut the grants to prominent companies, Simon Callow, the gay actor, said: “The Arts Council comedy continues. What is difficult is to divine to what conceivable use they could put this information. I love the presence of a category for the Not Known — a despicable heresy, surely, in 2008?”

Almost a year ago James Purnell, then the Culture Secretary, vowed to relieve arts organisations of the burden of meeting “crude targets” as a condition of funding. Yet the Arts Council’s application form also asks about ethnic backgrounds.

The council said that the answers were confidential and exempt from release under the Freedom of Information Act. It said that it does not issue guidelines on how to persuade board members to reveal details of their sex lives.




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英国の大手新聞は、この日を忘れることはありません。
今日こそはとこぞって、どの新聞もあの手この手で攻めてきます。



Calling Carla: Brown enlists first lady to give Britain style
Continental good taste and sophistication should be a birthright for all, says PM

Avril de Poisson
The Guardian, Tuesday April 1 2008

About this article
This article appeared in the Guardian on Tuesday April 01 2008 on p5 of the UK news section. It was last updated at 11:52 on April 01 2008.
Carla Bruni april fools day montage




Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the first lady of France, has been appointed by Gordon Brown to spearhead a government initiative aimed at injecting more style and glamour into British national life, the Guardian has learned.

Moving rapidly to capitalise on the national explosion of Carlamania, which saw Bruni-Sarkozy heralded as a new Princess Diana during the French state visit to the UK last week, Brown will formally announce the latest addition to his "government of all the talents" in a speech tomorrow at the Institut Français in South Kensington, London.

For too long, he will say, Britain has suffered an inferiority complex with regard to mainland European countries such as France and Italy, whose citizens are seen as effortlessly stylish and sophisticated.

"I want a Britain, now and in the future, where good taste and sophistication are the birthright of the many, not the privilege of an elite, whether in fashion, in food and drink, or in cultural pursuits," Brown will say. To launch the scheme, the Italian-born Bruni-Sarkozy, 40, will relocate to London for three months, starting in June, according to one Brown aide. She is expected to commute back to Paris via Eurostar for French state engagements involving her husband, President Nicolas Sarkozy.

"At first, when it became clear she was going to upstage [Sarkozy] during the state visit, we got a bit worried about it all looking a bit frivolous," the aide said. "But it was during the banquet at the Guildhall that the prime minister had his eureka moment. Yes, she charmed him. But the key point is that he is committed to putting that charm in the service of a better Britain."

Bruni-Sarkozy will focus initially on improving the UK's dress sense and cuisine. The aide joked that she would steer clear, for the moment, of the other popular British assumption about the French and Italians - that they have more exciting sex lives.

She is understood already to have spoken to the chief executive of Marks & Spencer, Stuart Rose, to discuss the launch of an affordable range of high-street designs inspired by the demure tailored grey suits that won her so much acclaim during last week's visit. They were created for Dior by the British designer John Galliano, who has signed up as a supporter of Brown's plan. The M&S versions will be roomier, and may incorporate several more practical features, such as zip-up pockets and mobile phone holders.

Bruni-Sarkozy has also expressed an interest in meeting Jamie Oliver to develop plans to introduce a more "continental" approach to eating and drinking, which could see British parents encouraged to serve small volumes of red wine with meals to children as young as seven or eight.

To coincide with the prime minister's announcement, the thinktank Demos will release a report this week arguing that the answer to a wide swath of social and economic problems facing Britain may lie in adopting a more French approach.

"The missing ingredient in the UK's approach to a range of pressing policy challenges is straightforward: it is savoir-faire," the report's authors said in a press release.

The study concludes that numerous national problems - including the decline of Britain's railway infrastructure, the collapse of Northern Rock, and the scourge of binge drinking - could all have been more successfully addressed had politicians and bureaucrats demonstrated "a certain je ne sais quoi".

The elation that greeted Bruni-Sarkozy in the UK last week, including rapturous newspaper and television coverage, frequently threatened to sideline the president, who unleased a tirade against one French journalist who asked him if she was stealing his limelight. But Bruni-Sarkozy herself enjoyed the state visit enormously, an Elysee spokesman said yesterday.

"The riotous scenes that greeted her wherever she went made her feel right at home, just as if she were in France," he said.

French diplomats in London expressed delight at the apparent rekindling of the often chilly relationship between the two nations. "This week has been so wonderful - such a change from the usual British media coverage of France and the French, which is based on a handful of ill-founded stereotypes," said Jean-Claude Forestier, assistant attache for cultural affairs at the French embassy in London. "It has been crazy here, with all the international media enquiries about Carla.

We have been working absolutely round the clock, from 9am to 3pm, just to
keep up."

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The Top 10 Historical Hoaxers
If the pranksters among you need some inspiration for April Fools' day, look no further than this list of the most successful hoaxers from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Michael Moran, The Times

最近、英国では「Banksy（バンクシー）」によるアートのような落書き、落書きのようなアートが注目を集めています。通常、落書きが建物にあると不動産価値も下がり、すぐに消されたり、落書きを行ったものはvandalism（公共物汚損や破壊）などで厳しく罰せられます。

が、Banksyはその逆で、今や「落書き」を超えた扱いを受けています。オークションに出れば、とんでもない額で落札され、新しい「作品」がみつかればメディアがここぞと押し掛け、観光客もいく。「作品」は時にコミカルで、時にシニカル。政治風刺のような一面もあります。でも、そのartistsが一体誰なのか…、yet still in shadows!!



最近のニュース面より

Underground art: how Banksy gave Swiss embassy an image makeover
Mark Brown, arts correspondent
Guardian, Friday February 29 2008
Switzerland's ambassador knew his country had an image problem. It was in the headlines for the wrong reasons, with the banks being accused of hanging on to Nazi gold, and he wanted to do something positive. So Bruno Spinner invited some young graffiti artists into the embassy's underground car park and let them do what they wanted.


‘Banksy’s ideas have the value of a joke’
Matthew Collings
28 January 2008 The Times
The respect given to ‘street art’ is a measure of how puerile and idiotic contemporary art has become. The auction? You can be the owner of Banksy’s Laugh Now, in stencil paint. A work by Banksy sold at auction for 288,000 last April.



Banksy wall art could top 200k on eBay internet auction
Simon Crerar
14 January 2008 Times Online
A wall adorned with a painting by elusive graffiti artist Banksy looks set to fetch more than £200,000 on eBay.


Let us spray: Banksy hits Bethlehem
Claire Frenkel
03 December 2007 The Times
The “guerrilla artist” Banksy has helped to transform the security barrier that surrounds the town with more than a dozen satirical images painted, plastered and sprayed on to the 8m-high (26ft) concrete. The work winds a trail to the heart of the city at Manger Square, where more than a dozen pieces are housed directly across from the Church of the Nativity.



Banksy brings graffiti art into auction room
Richard Brooks
25 November 2007 The Sunday Times
Graffiti is to complete its journey from urban eyesore to saleroom respectability with the world’s first auction devoted entirely to “street” art. Although no single work in the sale is expected to reach these prices, one Banksy, a stencil spray painting on canvas, is estimated at £60,000 and a screen print of Kate Moss is priced at up to £30,000.

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How Banksy turned the wry wit of his home town into million-dollar art.
By Lindsay Baker
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 28/03/2008



There's one Banksy mural that stands out when you visit Bristol, home town of the guerrilla artist who has become an art-world phenomenon. The title of the piece is The Mild Mild West and it depicts a huge, smiling teddy bear with a Molotov cocktail in his paw, facing three policemen holding up riot shields.


"People here are fond of that particular piece," says Steve Wright, author of a new illustrated book, Banksy's Bristol: Home Sweet Home. "Maybe because it's a kind of comment on an aspect of the Bristolian character - a laid-back cider-drinking hippy who can nevertheless be roused into action. Fluffy but defiant."

It's not just Banksy who is getting Bristol noticed at the moment. This year sees the release of new albums by a number of Bristol bands who first came to prominence in the mid-Nineties - Portishead, Tricky and Tricky's former collaborator Martina Topley Bird. It also looks like being an unusually busy year for Massive Attack, who will also release an album as well as curating the Meltdown festival on London's Southbank and playing at Glastonbury. Much of the music made in the Nineties by these bands has lasted particularly well. The Bristol creative scene, it would seem, was more than just a passing moment.

At a Sotheby's New York charity auction in February, a record $1.9 million was achieved for a Banksy image of a cleaning lady spray-painted on top of a Damien Hirst spot painting. The previous record for a Banksy piece was £330,000. His art is collected by pop stars, actors (among them Angelina Jolie) and hedge funders. For someone who cultivates anonymity (he is famously elusive), Banksy has quite a profile.

Although clearly an original talent, he is also very much a product of the environment he grew up in, as Wright explores in his book. "Fluffy but defiant" seems as good a description as any of the typical Bristol mindset.
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Undeniably, there's something about the city of Bristol. Geographically cut off from the North/South power-and-money axis, the only city for miles in the rugged West Country, Bristol sits in splendid isolation, with its own distinctive view of the world and a peculiarly strong sense of its own humour and identity. Many who study there don't ever leave - the city has unusually high graduate retention.

Although I did eventually leave the city, I was a student there in the mid-to-late Eighties. Then we frequented clubs such as the Dug Out and the Tropic, and attended countless impromptu parties in unlikely venues thrown by the Wild Bunch sound system who later became Massive Attack.

It always felt a very relaxed place to be - sometimes too relaxed (it has even been referred to as the "graveyard of ambition": it is easy to while away days, weeks, even months there achieving very little). But it also seemed a harmonious place, not only a city where locals and students mixed well, but also a racially integrated one.

Racial matters have always carried a historical resonance in Bristol, a city made affluent on the profits of tobacco and slave-trading. Street names such as Blackboy Hill and Whiteladies Road remain as reminders.

"It's a past that we feel equivocal about," says Steve Wright. "It's a double-edged thing. There are the beautiful Georgian terraces that we love, but they were built on the profits of slavery. It's our shady past, and Bristolians are a bit self-effacing, a bit ashamed of it and are quite keen to layer new associations on top of it. There's always been a defiant, subversive streak in Bristol, and Banksy's work is very much in that tradition."

His works showing two kissing policemen, for instance, or his rioter poised to throw a bunch of flowers as if it were a bomb, are typical of his style - subversive, yet always with a touch of humanity and wry humour. As the artist himself has put it: "I want to show that money hasn't crushed the humanity out of everything."

In the 1950s and '60s immigrants from the West Indies were encouraged to come to Bristol to live and work, and many settled around the areas of St Paul's and Montpelier. Nightlife there took off in the Seventies, with blues clubs and all-night shebeens soon popping up (St Paul's festival is still an annual summer event, mellow and relaxed, like a smaller, less frenetic Notting Hill carnival). In 1980, following a police raid on the popular Black and White Café, the St Paul's riots erupted, the first of the decade's civil disturbances.

Around this time, the Bristol underground scene was steeped in punk and reggae influences, and soon embraced hip-hop - and with it the colourful New York-style lettering at the most creative end of the graffiti art spectrum.


Continued
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Telegraph
Andrew Pierce
Last Updated: 2:15am GMT 26/03/2008


The Royal Opera House has been accused of dumbing down by using Tesco's favourite market research company to try to generate younger audiences.

A performance of the popular opera, Carmen, at the Royal Opera House
A performance of the popular opera, Carmen, at the Royal Opera House

Opera magazine, the bible of the industry, has accused Tony Hall, the venue's chief executive, of "having a mid-life crisis" in his attempt to reach out to a new "cool crowd".

The magazine said the decision to devise a programme of events based on market research by Dunnhumby, a consultancy best known for its demographic analysis of Tesco Clubcard customers, was misguided.

In a thundering editorial, the magazine said: "The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, turns 150 this year. It is ageing well, thanks not least to refurbishment a decade ago. That's more than can be said of some of its policy-makers, currently showing classic signs of mid-life crisis and going to unseemly lengths to get younger flesh on its seats."

The editorial, written by John Allison, the magazine's editor and an opera critic for The Sunday Telegraph, mocked Mr Hall, 62, for stating in his marketing material: "We want to get that buzzy, cool crowd to come in."

"Quite apart from the sad spectacle of a 50-something deciding that 30 is the height of cool, Hall is demonstrating a more fundamental crisis of confidence and a lack of belief in the art forms his institution should be serving" it added.


Tony Hall, the chief executive of the Royal Opera House
Tony Hall, the chief executive
of the Royal Opera House


The magazine said Dunnhumby had reached the conclusion that the opera house appealed to opera and ballet lovers but not to professionals in their 20s and 30s.

"There - the secret you'd never have guessed is out!" gushed the editorial. "In direct response to these supermarket whizzes, the opera house is putting on a three-day festival featuring 'the coolest names in town'."

These "names" include Julian Opie, who illustrated a Blur album cover; Scanner, a conceptual artist and musician who will be putting on a club night at the venue; and the performance group, Blast Theory, who will be organising digital games.

Max Loppert, a former opera critic of the Financial Times, also attacked the marketing strategy, particularly the venue's schedule booklets: "Adorning a picture of Antonio Pappano [the conductor] I read in disbelief: 'ELEMENTAL FORCE. Meet Tony. One Of The Most Electric Men In Opera. Only Silver Conducts Better. But It Can't Give A Performance Of Pure Gold. This cover seems to me a threefold affront: to a serious artistic institution, to those of us who have admired and supported its work … and to the image of the conductor as a serious artist."


The Royal Opera House was unavailable for comment.



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# Martin Hodgson
# The Guardian,
# Friday March 7 2008



Ken Livingstone's campaign for re-election as mayor of London received a shot in the arm last night, when an art auction raised £230,000 in support of his candidacy in just over an hour.

The sale featured 38 works by artists including Anthony Gormley, Marc Quinn, Banksy, Mona Hatoum and Ralph Steadman, and in all it brought in nearly a quarter of the total amount each candidate is permitted to spend on campaigning.


All rights : Guardian.co.uk


Speaking after the auction at the Aquarium gallery in Islington, Livingstone said the event had yielded more than any fund-raising event so far, enabling him to match the sums already raised by his Conservative rival, Boris Johnson.

"We are allowed to spend up to £1m on campaigning. We know that Boris has got a quarter of a million or more, and now we've caught up with him. It's going to be a much fairer fight now."

Most of the money came from a single canvas by the graffiti artist Banksy, which sold to an anonymous bidder for £195,000. The painting shows two children pledging allegiance to a Tesco shopping bag, and is a preliminary sketch for a life-size graffito which appeared on Wednesday on the wall of an Islington pharmacy.

Livingstone himself bought a print of a Steadman cartoon for a £140. He said: "The art world is very in touch with what happens in London. They recognise that if Boris gets in, society would collapse back into barbarism."

A spokeswoman for Rootball, which organised the event, said: "The artists here do not consider themselves political artists, but they do want to affect the political process and support progressive policies for the capital."