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She's also no Frida Kahlo .... though she may have seen the film?

I'll certainly give your first item on tonight's NN Review a miss.

Giving further publicity to that charlatan, re-inforced by the post by Neil Robertson, was enough to spoil my entire evening. I'll go in my garden and converse with my roses and marvel at the real artistry of nature, before rejoining the programme to catch the more worthy items under review later.

Scotland was represented at the 2007 Venice Biennale by these 6 fine artists:

Charles Avery; Henry Coombes; Louise
Hopkins; Rosalind Nashashibi; Lucy Skaer; and Tony Swain.



Wales and Norther Ireland also had their own representatives in Venice as well ....:



Willie Doherty represented Northern Ireland.

Katie Mitchell, on the other hand, would be very welcome in Scotland as we appreciate
exciting and innovative theatre .................

Rigged juries seem to be the leitmotiv on Newsnight tonight ..... (see above) - and
consider who's on the panel: Ekow votes
for Tracey Emin's 'meercats' for a short-
list for a plinth in Trafalgar Square; and
Germaine is a patchwork afficionado ....

Let's just hope Emma Gladstone has taste.
Presumable Rachel Campbell-Johnson will also be out in her garden looking at roses.

ps Kirsty: your Saab Convertible is STILL parked on the top of The Museum of
Scotland with its 'emergency lights'
flashing and the meter has run out!

With Emin occupying the Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh your vehicle is now at the
centre of what's left of 'visual art' at this year's Festival ...........! A related set of
prints at Dundee's DCA by Denise Hawrysio nicely complements your artistic effort - as it features the markings made by Saabs as they cross speed-bumps as I understand:

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The Chinese army ballet have nothing on this:

I'm glad scotland has got Tracey emins "Art" up there, and would appreciate it if they'd keep it up there. alternatively; i suggest holding on to taht for the winter months. when i believe most smart scots will find a way of using it to warm up scotland until the spring.

Most smart Scots don't need Tracey Emin
to keep us warm in winter. 30 years ago
Richard Demarco introduced us to Beuys
so we know how to wrap up well in felt:

As well as being a Marxist, Beuys could also draw ......... NB Frida Kahlo screwed Trotsky.

in a different class from Emin I suggest?

Tracy Emin's 'homage' to Frida Kahlo

" consummate draughtswoman"? Do me a favour!

Is the Gallery of Modern Art to only feature work with a direct connection with Scotland? I find it hard to believe that contemporary Scottish artists of any repute would subscribe to such a parochial view. What do want, endless views of Sunset Over Loch Lomond? Give us a break.

i enjoyed the Chinese frogs but Colbert Ballet in Sweden started the trend with
men in tutus as cygnets 20 years ago ?

I cannot blame Tracey and her ilk milking their 'talent'. What I do not understand is why our art critics have allowed these deluded souls to imagine they have talent; being a supreme opportunist self publicist does not an artist make. I do baulk at being told she has a fine graphic ability. The woman can so evidently not control what she draws and hence what she wants to convey. Having lost her initial infant naivity, but having not developed an adult skill, she produces awkward ugly doodles totally devoid of charm or wit. The notion that, 'I am an artist and hence everything I produce is Art' has grown very old and lazy.

#14 I am certainly not arguing for that
Seonaidh. I love the Malevich exhibits
they have upstairs - to take just one
example .... The whole problem with
the Tracey Emin support club is that
anyone who criticises tends to stand
accused of being anti-English or agin
her just because she is a woman etc
It's the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Britart is parochial - and derivative.
My local contemporary art gallery
in Dundee at DCA is international.
It is in a different class from Emin.

As for 'sunsets over Loch Lomond':
the National Gallery of Scotland
has watercolours of that kind of
scene by Turner which are put on
display for one month in the year.
They also had an Edwin Landseer
exhibition not so long ago that was spectacular and they served whisky.

But such delights are best taken in moderation. What is very unusual
about the Emin show is that - as
Kirsty pointed out - Scotland will
be stuck with this till NOVEMBER!

Give us a break indeed ..............!

This is the kind of standard we Scots now
demand:



NB i've selected this because it was at DCA last month having transferred from sweden

.... and this is of course the other show on in Edinburgh Newsnight forgot to mention!

Scotland and The Impressionists at National Gallery of Scotland

The wife moves in the art word- works in a gallery (not in chester but a Man in front of it) so i get to hear the opinions of many lay art critics for and against the works of modern art when i am out and about with her friends and colleagues. One evening i am listening to the standard issue comments about modern art verses traditional when i am suddenly asked my opinion on Tracy Emin. I quickly remembered Emin many years ago in a TV studio steaming drunk and how impressed i was with her and with this memory recall i trotted out this ..." SHES GOT GOOD CLEAVAGE!"...did'nt go down too well that...and quickly dug a hole with blaming testosterone levels in the average man. Suffice to say i don't do art gallery chats much as i find many will come out with stuff like " i think what the artist is really trying to convey"...most of the time they are way of the mark. I have learnt to say little at the galleries now- other than a couple of lines such as "sister wendy was a great influence in awakening my interest in art when i was young".. thats always good for a feed-line as you will nearly always get 5 mins of chat-back.
I am in the traditionalist camp myself but can still appreciate the art that the likes of Emin produces. Never fully understood the near hysterical snobbery that follows exhibitions such as Emins retrospective but a certain amount of controversy is what gives life to modern art i suppose and without doubt Tracy Emin has been controversial to some degree; rubbing the art establishment up the wrong way. Whether you like her work or not... she will at least give you all something to say.

P:S haven't watched NN or review as i've just got in. Will get it watched over the weekend...promise.

The problem is that she is monopolising the whole ground floor of Scotland's national gallery of modern of art from Aug-Nov -
that kills art appreciation in this country
for the duration (not least as there are
notices up excluding young people from
the exhibition because of its "explicit"
content). This is not about 'rubbing the art establishment up the wrong way' - quite
the contrary. Tracey Emin is the London Establishment. She is part of the White
Cube gallery circus run by Old Etonian
Jay Jopling - whose father was a Tory:



The Trustees should have pulled the plug on this venture - and called in Rolf Harris!
At least his paintings are worth seeing ...

I sniff another Great British conspiracy too -
British Airways has just axed 1000 flights
from Scotland to London so as to force-feed us Tracey Emin's pastiche attempts to ape
Cy Twombly [the scribbles she showed to
Kirsty describing this as new, fresh work]
thus stopping Scotland voting with its feet and getting down to the Tate Modern for
the Cy Twombly retrospective which she
seems to have tried to rip off as well ....?

People like Tracy Emin simply encourage the cynicism about "modern art" by people like Marc Kermode! This is not good for Britain.

The other very strange aspect of this is of course that the gallery that is kow-towing
to Tracey Emin still refuses to show any of
the works by Scotland's most popular (ist)
artist Jack Vettriano - is that because he's
Scottish or because he is a man ..............?

Vettriano's drawing helps bale out Wales

Germain Greer had it right, discussing Tracey Emin's latest exhibition. Emin’s ‘art’ is so ‘equal opportunities’; in a similar way of another so-called ‘art form’, Hip-Hop. This is ‘equal opportunities’ pop, mostly by men, who can’t sing; Emin’s junk being by some one who can’t do art.

Fawning Tracey, like Damien Hirst, has taken the idea behind Duchamp’s Urinal, to its final, dreary, destination; the emperor truly does have no clothes.

Chinese performance artists Yuan Chair and Jian Jun Xi pushed both Duchamp and Emin
beyond their 'final, dreary, destination' by
jumping naked into Tracey Emin's bed in
an attempt to add to the work and to make it more interesting - before they were led away by staff at the Tate Gallery. They
then tried to put Duchamp's 'Fountain'
to its proper use when they 'found' it!

And of course - as Newsnight points out -Tracey Emin DID NOT WIN THE TURNER
PRIZE ........ it went to Steve McQueen!

Spoonerise Rolf Harris's name. Hey Presto! You're saying it in a dog's voice.

With thanks to 'Mr C' , Viz Top Tip #35/239.

The National Galleries of Scotland "media partner" for the Emin show is apparently
"Scotland on Sunday". Today they have
a competion to give away free tickets -
and an NGS insert of Tracey curled up
as a foetus to pin above all our beds.

This is about the third week Scotland
has been bombarded by the Emin PR
machine even before the show opens.

She is also on the front page of SoS's
rival 'The Sunday Herald' but then so
is Orlando Bloom who is pictured next
to Tracey outside our National Gallery.

Apparently the pre-show party was
'a low key affair' but 'star-studded':
guests included .... wait for .... 'Jay
Jopling' (see above) and his wife !!

Elton John and his partner did not
turn up after all ......... despite this
having been 'hyped up' for weeks;
and scarcely any 'members of the
public' seem to have turned up too
(according to "The Sunday Herald").

This is what the art critic of the NGS
'media partner' Scotland on Sunday
then had to say about the artwork:

" Tracey Emin: 20 Years confirms
that Emin is not a great artist.
She is, however, a great British
character, and a compelling storyteller. The registers that she works best in :the autobiographical, the conversational, the bleakly poetic belong to the world of literature not visual art."

And of 'My Bed' Moira Jeffrey writes:

"Emin's most notorious work just feels grim. It's not the stained sheets so much as the collection of ordinary detritus. It's the fag packets and nails scissors as well as the condoms, the horrible smell. It's not that it isn't art, so much, as the fact that there is so little art to it. When it was shown at the Tate in 1999, in the full glare of Turner Prize publicity, it did at least seem to have a kind of ferocity to it. Now, in a small gallery made gloomy by the adjacent oppressive black wall, it just seems a sad, imprisoned little object, a kind of dead-end in art-making, and a horrible, emotional dead-end for an artist who definitely needed to grow and move on."

She liked the 'rickety wooden rollercoaster' but on the fabled draughtsmanship etc she writes: 'Much is often made of Emin's skills and experience as a printmaker, but the jagged line of her monoprints becomes tiresome when you see them all together. While the subject matter once seemed fresh, her prints, drawing and painting don't move on so much as relentlessly transcribe the same events again and again."

"I still think her best work is in video, the two short films CV and Why I Never Became A Dancer setting out her life story vividly, with poetic precision. It's a classic tale of triumph over adversity, the small-town girl who escapes her past. In the latter, the seedy glamour of Margate, the apparent hopelessness and dreams of escape are beautifully evoked. When the film ends with a joyful Tracey dancing to a disco classic, triumphant and free, you can't help but egg her on." (Moira Jeffrey's Review - in "SoS")

Especially if your editor is reading this and you are writing for the 'media sponsor'??!

this is Moira Jeffrey's verdict in 'Scotland on Sunday' who are 'media partners' for NGS:

... and from 'The Sunday Herald':

Glasgow has just paid £45,000 for these wonderfully evocative sheets - by Alison Watt ......... Now that's what I call "art"!!

Oh dear Mr Robertson.

'Tracey Emin did not 'represent Britain at the Venice Biennale' -

Hello Mr Robertson, she did and I visited the pavillion.

'She was selected by one person
- Andrea Rose of The British Council'
'Emin is then invited to curate the Royal
Academy Show by the same gang .......'

Now how many does it take to form a gang? I would suggest more than one! A little contradiction.

'She then bombs in Venice ........ but the FCO-subsidised British Satellite News
fed footage of the exhibition and their
pre-prepared scripts to unsuspecting
overseas broadcasters to hype this
up with taxpayer funded propoganda.'

But the show sold out... Oh.. apart from the pictures Tracey didn't want to sell. Does Andrea Rose work for MoMA as well?


'This current exhibition has no particular connection with us in Scotland - so why our 'beautiful' Scottish Gallery of Modern Art
is to be filled with 170 items by Emin until November remains a total mystery to me.'

Imagine if every country only showed home grown talent.

I would guess 100 years ago you would be the man that told Vincent van Gogh he couldn't paint.

I am terribly sorry to disappoint Carneiros but while Tracey Emin was indeed in the British Council-managed Pavilion across town in the Arsenale six Scottish artists
represented Scotland and the Welsh and Northern Irish contingent were also there.

The British Pavilion is of course next to the French Pavilion - where Sophie Calle was installed having put the management and
curation of her exhibition out to tender via a small ad in the newspapers after she was properly chosen by a jury. She was flooded with applications - and eventually chose a very famous French artist Daniel Buren (who was incidentally one of those on the shortlist chosed by Ekow Eshun and others for the plinth in Trafalgar Square).

If you click on to the websites for Arts Council Wales; Arts Council Scotland; and Arts Council Northern Ireland you too can
if you are so inclined stick in an application to represent these parts of "Britain" and be assured that the selection procedures will be completely above board.

The selection scandal involving Andrea Rose of British Council overturning the British C's jury advice was exposed by The Telegraph and is well documented. There are photos too of Rose and Emin on a sofa judging a competition in Liverpool shortly before the selection for Venice was made.

The 'gang' referred to includes names on Emin's petition to reinstall Rose after the
British Council New Broom tried to clear out the BC Augean Stables in Spring Gardens.

The show did not 'sell out' - Emin sold the drawings she scribbled for a fortune off the back of all this state sponsorship which is rather different ..........

And a lot of the stuff was taken off the shelf instead of being done afresh as originators of the Venice Biennale intended.

I love Van Gogh - having lived in The Netherlands for many years and am
a great fan of Millet too whose work
he reinterpreted with an originality
that is completely absent from Emin.

I also used to have a poster by Munch on my office wall ....... of a corn cutter after The Scream was stolen (a fate unlikely to ever be suffered by that installation called The Bed). But if anyone is tempted, remember to put the bottles in a separate container as we take recycling as seriously in Scotland as we take international art.

What strikes me more of this edition is the pretentious way in which Germaine Greer laughs at the chinese ballet-circus. In the case of Emma Gladstone, her rejection comes from a not open enough approach to art. Both jugde the Chinese interpretation of Swan Lake from the point of view of the Western taste, and anything outside is worthless or just ridicule, as Germaine Greer says. The British and the Europeans should do more than looking at their belly bottoms. They are loosing the opportunity of enjoying and learning from the non-completely westernised cultures that have survived outside the borders of Europe.

The 'Impressionism and Scotland' exhibition at National Gallery of Scotland on Princes St
is wonderful ..........



Degas's 'Absinthe' for example ...........?