The Arts...

Hands up all those who think that the picture above is too dark ?
No thats not too many then.
It, and its twin painted in winter conditions just been rejected from the web site that sells my stuff with a recomendation that I photograph it again "in better lighting conditions"

I photographed it outside in the frikkin sunlight for gods sake, maybe god could send me some better lighting, after all the sun has probably seen better days.

In other arty news the sculptor Anthony Gormley, he of "Angel of the North" fame is having problems replacing the arms on one of his 1984 "standing man" statues in Peterborough after it had its arms nicked at christmas, eight months later the artist has appealed for knowledge as to who has the arms or where they have dumped them as he states that the only way to repair it is to have the originals back - the originals that were cast from moulds made from his own arms, forgive me for stating the obvious for I know nothing of sculpture, but surely he still has the originals from which to mould some more ?

Earlier this year Mr Gormley made the news as he erected 31 life sized sculptures of his own naked body all around London atop buildings and public walkways with a random arty excuse and synopsis that man is taking over the world and assorted other crap whereas in fact he just gets a kick out of erecting mannequins of his own naked body in conspicuous places, so would I given half the chance and it weren't for the fact that the farmers around here petitioned for my mannequins to be kept under lock and key during lambing time in order to prevent mass spontaneous sheep abortions.

And finally, the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh is reporting the loss of £8 income from its Andy Warhol exhibition last week when it is believed that one visitor sneaked into its galleries without paying - disgraceful behaviour I say.

It happened like this - The Scottish National Gallery consists of two pseudo Greco-Roman temple stylee buildings on Princes Street seperated only by a 50 yard open courtyard which last week was turned over to the performing arts. I was strolling around said courtyard last Wednesday when I noticed that the rear of the two pseudo Greco-Roman buildings was advertising a William Blake exhibition and better still it was free entry - being the art buff that I am I took advantage of their tax-funded generosity and had a wander.

The front half of the building was fairly boring stuff, portraits of long dead strangers and whole gallery devoted to religious iconary (incredibly tedious stuff) but the rear upstairs had a most passable collection of Impressionist and Pointillist Post-Impressionist paintings (how pretentious does that sound), several lesser known Monet's, a Van Gogh, some Seurats, and some of Gauguin's polynesian stuff - very nice.

I discovered a flight of stairs which seemed to descend into the very bowels of the earth and indeed thats where they went for the gallery also has a series of basement rooms in which were housed some fine Dutch Renaissance paintings and the William Blake etchings as well as, finally, some Scottish painters.

I wandered, lonely as a cloud, from basement gallery to basement gallery until I eventually found myself in a room where the walls were covered in what was obviously a series of Andy Warhol prints, I'd forgotten about the Warhol exhibition although I'd noticed it advertised, and realised that I'd obviously wandered underground, right underneath the courtyard, and was now in the basement of what I now know to be "The Academy", the front one of the two pseudo Greco-Roman buildings.

Warhol is ok, but boring, being that most of his work is based on repetition and whole gallery rooms clad in multiple dayglo photos of Marilyn Monroe do nothing for me, I wandered a bit more, had a smooch in the gallery shop and then headed out thorugh the front door of The Academy building where to my suprise I noticed two officials restricting entry to the huge queue of people waiting outside.

I never knew art was so popular thought I as I exited past the huge banner that stated "Adults £8, Concessions £6".

Pay to get in ?
Fook off.

I laughed out loud, the Warhol galleries had been rather full and here were at least another 100 fools willing to pay £8 each to view the crappy wallpaper prints and as I walked down the queue I looked for some poor people to enlighten with the fact that if you walked across the courtyard to the far less popular National Gallery you could not only get in for free, view some nice Impressionist stuff, but also sneak in to the £8 exhibition for free - but everyone looked wealthy and foreign so I heeded my tongue and The Academy only lost my £8 and not a whole bunch of others.

It did my careful Yorkshire wallet no end of joy and I'm still chuckling about the day I screwed £8 out of the Scots.