Ulalume
“If” They Could Only Think – the Ban on Kipling
True Art is Art, and true idiocy is idiocy, and idiots insist that the twain shall meet.
Our venerable Hodder and Stoughton hard-cover ‘inclusive edition’ of Rudyard Kipling’s verse (1885-1918) sits proudly in our poetry bookcase. We understand that his fatherly riff, “If – ” written 4 years before a war that would devastate two generations, and lose Kipling his only son, has been scrawled-out at Manchester University (yes, Manchester – home of the Enlightenment). The Student’s Union has taken a stand. “We, as an exec team, believe that Kipling stands for the opposite of liberation, empowerment, and human rights – the things that we, as an SU, stand for,” Miss Sara Khan, the union’s liberation and access…
Continue Reading →Gawd Help Us
Their night of nights
The Helpmann Awards (Australia’s answer to the ‘Tony’) are named for choreographer, dancer, theatre director and ham-actor (think 55 Days at Peking (1963), and Patrick (1978)) Sir Robert Helpmann. Awards are a concept well past the use-by date, now rapidly putrefying. Even so, it is stunning how they can go so wrong. We suppose that the readiness is all… Recently, 4 Helpmanns went to that giant piece of dreck, Hamlet – The Opera. The Varnished Culture is on record about this faux-est of all faux operas, so we’ll just list the winners, without much further comment: Best male performer in an opera –…
Continue Reading →The Worst Sculptor in the World
We celebrate Robert Jacobsen (4 June 1912 – 26 January 1993), Danish creator in the realm of the plastic arts. Robert inhabited the artistic niche of great sculptors such as Alexandros of Antioch and the ancient Greek masters, and moderns such as Auguste Rodin. Jacobsen’s claim to fame is as the Worst Sculptor in the World. A modernist (naturally) who enthusiastically embraced the avant-garde through the toxic COBRA movement of northern Europe, working with welder, mask and subsidized iron, he and his ilk dispensed with hard work and consideration of structure, theme and aesthetics, preferring to hide their laziness and…
Continue Reading →More Gems
Further samples of Art’s decline…or, “Political and social activism as a mediating tool in a cultural context…”
Continue Reading →Dollars for Dali
The Varnished Culture’s offices have its share of Dalí fans, certainly. Yet we doubt that Trilogy of the desert: Mirage (1946) is one of his best pieces. Still, Dalí is Dalí. In the wake of the artist’s 114th birthday on 11 May, the NGV has launched a crowd-funding campaign to acquire the piece, which might be a first for a major Australian gallery (we suppose that the Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, has, like all socialists, finally run out of other peoples’ money). Here’s their pitch: “The National Gallery of Victoria has an extraordinary opportunity to become the first public collection in Australia…
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