Maggie May
(Photo by Helge Øverås)
Songs in Our Heart # 24 Maggie Mae (Rod Stewart) (Written by Rod Stewart and Martin Quittenton; released August 1971) [Rod gets some points for this one, every schoolboy’s dream. We like the Greensleeves-style start, too.]
Continue Reading →Robert Hannaford
Art Gallery of South Australia, June – September 2016 Born 1944 in Riverton, a charming little town in South Australia’s mid north, Hannaford has built a quietly solid reputation for his realist, unflashy works of portraiture. (We except the statue of Sir Donald Bradman outside the Adelaide Oval, which work is an atrocity on myriad levels). This retrospective of his many and varied portraits (including a surfeit of self-portraits – see main image and the 5th picture below – a tad narcissistic Alfie?) shows clear and consistent talent in capturing the essence of his subjects. Apart from the numerous ‘sleb’ portraits,…
Continue Reading →Common People
Peasants in a Tavern (by Adriaen van Ostade) c. 1635
Songs in Our Heart # 23 Common People (William Shatner version)(Written by Nick Banks, Jarvis Cocker, Candida Doyle, Steve Mackey and Russell Senior; released October 2004) [Somehow, the witty, literal value of this song is accentuated by Shatner’s spoken, over-the-top, staccato delivery. They go to supermarkets…]
Continue Reading →Not so nice in Nice
Constantin Meunier, "The Removal of the Cracked Melting Pot"
Bastille Day on the Côte d’Azur, and some truck-driving, rancorous loon has deliberately ploughed through the revelling crowd, killing 80 or more people and spreading terror. Driving through my town on a sunny day, listening to “Melting Pot” by Blue Mink, I can’t help feeling dazed and confused. We at The Varnished Culture prefer love to war, art to violence, culture to confusion, but it seems we can’t have column ‘A’ without column ‘B’. How about Voici à Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité! Anyway, while there is no credible evidence as to motivation yet, we can take a wild guess, we guess: see…
Continue Reading →Both Sides, Now
Songs in Our Heart # 22 Both Sides, Now (Joni Mitchell) (Written by Joni Mitchell; released May 1969) [“It’s life’s illusions I recall, I really don’t know life at all…]
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