"On my left I have our newly-elected extraordinary member of the Academy, Mr Winston Churchill. And I remember him saying to me, "Alfred, if you met Picasso coming down the street, would you join with me in kicking his ... something... something !" 

I said, "Yes sir ! I would !"

 

Sir Alfred Mannings (1878-1959)

 

Brandis' arse needs to be kicked to the effing moon...

The former chair of the Australia Council says changes to arts funding revealed in the federal budget are "disastrous".

A total of $105 million, around 15 per cent of the Council's budget, will be diverted to a new fund called the National Program of Excellence in Arts (NPEA) where grants are decided by the federal Arts Ministry.

Rodney Hall said he was concerned the Australia Council would lose its discretionary powers to make informed decisions in the interests of the public.

"From the artist's point of view, and the public point of view, it's a disaster," he said.

"The Australia Council was set up with great care by Nugget Coombs in 1968.

"Central to his concern was to bypass the possibility that the public money could get into the hands of a very few people dishing it out to their friends."

Mr Hall said the point of the Australia Council was to enrich Australian society, give the public resources they would not otherwise have and allow artists to make a living in Australia.

"Throughout the existence of the Australia Council its proudest achievement has been to make it possible for artists of all kinds to pursue their profession at home," he said.

The Arts Minister, Senator George Brandis, said the purpose of the new NPEA was to expand funding to artists and arts organisations who were unable to secure funding through the Australia Council.

"As a result of this program, more Australian arts practitioners and organisations will be able to pursue their creative endeavours," he said.

Mr Hall disagreed, saying the Coalition's decision had "made absolute ruins of something that took 35, 40 years to build up".

"How we're going to recover from it I don't know," he said.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-14/changes-to-arts-funding-disastrous/6471338

 

There is a wonderful family called Stein

There's Gert and there's Epp and there's Ein;
Gert's poems are bunk,
Epp's statues are junk,
And no one can understand Ein.

Of course this anonymous poem, probably graffitied in American public toilets, refers to Gertrude Stein, the poet, Jacob Epstein, the sculptor and Albert Einstein... The father of creativity. These three were not related, but Leo Stein, Gertrude and Michael were siblings.
------------------------------
Meanwhile in political fiefdoms: 
So-called modern or contemporary art in our modern beloved country contains all the isms of depravity, decadence and destruction. Cubism aims to destroy by designed disorder. Futurism aims to destroy by a machine myth. Dadaism aims to destroy by ridicule. Expressionism aims to destroy by aping the primitive and the insane. Klee, one of its three founders, went to the insane asylums for his inspiration. Abstractionism aims to destroy by the creation of brainstorms. Surrealism aims to destroy by the denial of reason. Salvador Dali ... Spanish surrealist, is now in the United States. He is reported to carry with him at all times a picture of Lenin. Abstractionism, or non-objectivity in so-called modern art, was spawned as a simon pure, Russian communist product ... Who has brought down this curse upon us; Who has let into our homeland this horde of germ-carrying art vermin?

George D. Dondero, Representative of Michigan, Speech to Congress, 1949.

This speech was to point out that the Commie menace was not just done by social ideal that were soon banned in the US. Communism was getting a foothold "via the arts" and the fear was that the commies wanted to control the arts in the USA and eventually the USA.... Communism is still illegal in the USA.


Note that Picasso was a communist, eagerly criticised in the Soviet Union, Europe and the USA.

A painting by picasso reached record price.

A Picasso masterpiece has sold for $US160 million ($203 million) in New York, smashing the world record for the most expensive art sold at auction.

The 1955 cubist oil Les femmes d'Alger (Version 0), which depicts a colourful scene from a harem, went under the hammer at Christie's.

The auction house had estimated the painting, also known at The Women of Algiers, would sell for about $140 million, but several bidders competing via telephone drove the winning bid to $US160 million, for a final price of $US179,365,000 including Christie's commission of just over 12 per cent.

-----------------
Ah.... What is art but a fart in our imagination?

Is our Brandism on the same page as a Donderoism? Note that both are called George... Is this an uncanny coincidence?...

 

 

See also:  of art and full frontal...

Boris Johnson's first frontbench job for the Conservative Party came 15 years ago, when leader Michael Howard appointed him shadow arts minister on May 7, in the spring of 2004.

Somehow, there was a mixup. News of the promotion was broken to Johnson not by his leader, but by the Daily Telegraph's political correspondent, Toby Helm.

"After recovering from the surprise," Helm wrote of Johnson's characteristically dishevelled reaction, "he described it as 'a great honour', adding: 'Look the point is … Er, what is the point? It is a tough job but somebody has got to do it'." 

Johnson also mentioned that he knew an "awful lot" about the arts, having studied painting and drawing at his prep school — a claim on which the newspaper tested him the following day by asking him to complete a 20-question quiz.

....

By question 10, a surly mood had ensnarled the subject.

DT: Who designed the sun at Tate Modern?

BJ: Who designed the what? You mean that glowing thing? Well, the original design was by God. This was an imitation. It was wholly derivative. Who's it by? I don't know. Jay Jopling. I don't give a monkey's.

So began Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson's executive career in the Conservative Party. This first stint wasn't to last long. By Christmas 2004, he'd been sacked by Howard for shagging one of his columnists at The Spectator — a political magazine of which, consistent with the baffling British practice of not minding even the most egregious conflicts of interest, he had remained editor throughout his term — and then denying to his leader that he'd done any such thing.

(Of the interference between the two roles, he would later acknowledge: "I have successfully ridden two horses for quite a long time. But I have to admit there have been moments when the distance between the two horses has grown terrifyingly wide, and I did momentarily come off.")

But in that first interview as the alternative British minister for the arts, Boris Johnson pioneered something: creative incompetence as a political device.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-25/boris-johnson-prime-minister-firs...

 

 

We had a similar clown here in Australia. He had more to do with bookshelves and allocation of special funds rather than understanding what art was about (apart from classical violin blancmange)... all while cutting the arts budgets. Read from top.

It’s in the very nature of the visual arts that they are visible. Visible works. Visible artists. Visible arts workers. Visible galleries. Visible ecologies.

Visible not merely as something that sighted people can perceive, but visible as a presence, an experience and a force for cultural development. Visible as a powerful industry. Visible as a set of policy priorities that transform a nation’s confidence, resilience and ambition.

Thursday’s ministerial restructure creates a situation where, for the first time since the existence of a cultural portfolio, there is no government department with the word “arts” in its title.

Scott Morrison has said these changes are not about cutting costs but about improving decision-making...

 

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/dec/06/lumping-the-arts-portfol...

 

Read from top.

 

 

Scumdunny has no idea about "improving decision making" about the arts or about anything else for that matter. He is there to flush anything he does not like into the toilet of his office, while praying to little Jesus about to be born (again) in a manger because "he believes" in fairy tales, meerakles and Noah's Ark. He has NO IDEA, and I mean NO IDEA, always hoarding a bagful of hubris and masticating a loud mouth that has no other mantra than "in the national interest..." "in the national interest..." bullshit bullshit, spray with gold paint and repeat "in the national interest"... Once more again... Have a merry Shit-mas !