All posts filed under: Arts

On Propaganda and Bias: An open-letter to the Royal Academy

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Mr Christopher LeBrun, President Mr Charles Saumarez Smith, Secretary and Chief Executive Mr Tim Marlow, Director of Artistic Programmes Royal Academy of Arts, London 28 March 2017 Dear Sirs, I am writing to you to express my disappointment at the curatorial handling of the exhibition Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 currently on display at the RA. Whilst I am not an art historian or an expert in Russian art of the period, it is well known (and apparent just looking at the pieces on display at the RA) that the years covered by the exhibition represent a decisive and hugely fruitful moment in the development of Russian and European Modernism in which artists who came from a figurative tradition coexisted with avant-garde currents like the Russian Futurists or, later, the Constructivists, along with visionary figures like Kasimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, El Lissitzky and others (whom you reference in the exhibition), besides, of course, developments in photography, theatre, dance, music and cinema. For this reason, I was incredibly excited to visit the RA exhibition, anticipating a serious, …

Being There (1979): a discussion of film, literature & the NWO

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from the Corbett Report Julian Charles of TheMindRenewed.com joins James Corbett to discuss Being There, the 1979 film by director Hal Ashby that follows the story of Chance the Gardener, a simple man with no experience of the outside world who is suddenly thrust onto the national political stage. Despite his complete lack of knowledge and experience (or precisely because of it) the powers behind the scenes float him as a potential candidate for next president of the United States. So is this a reflection of political reality, or broad satire? What does the movie tell us about the way modern media shapes the political landscape?

Ukraine’s SBU, neonazis accused of trading stolen Dutch paintings

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A detail from Jacob Waben’s “Women’s World” (1622), one of the paintings stolen from the Westfries Museum. Holland’s Times reports: Members of the Ukrainian secret service SBU played a role in trying to trade the paintings stolen from the Westfries Museum in 2005, stolen art expert Arthur Brand revealed in the press conference about the stolen paintings in the museum on Monday, NOS reports. On Monday morning the museum announced that the 24 stolen paintings were traced to a Ukrainian militia, which is trying to sell them for a large amount of money. The museum called in Brand to help negotiate for the return of the paintings after attempts through the international police organization Interpol failed. Brand traveled to Ukraine and spoke with representatives of the militia. According to the museum, the militia has “completely unrealistic ideas” about what the paintings are worth. They want 50 million euros, while the paintings are actually worth between 250 thousand and 1.3 million euros, if they are in a good condition. As this does not seem to be …

Has 2015 become a Brave New World?

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Theatre director James Dacre has just opened a new adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World, and the Guardian gave him space in the Theatre section to explain why he believes this book has so much to say to us today. We think his article is good, and thought-provoking, so for once we are republishing a Guardian piece as endorsement not critique… Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931 in the shadow of the first world war, the Wall Street Crash and a devastating flu virus that had claimed millions of lives. The Treaty of Versailles had carved out a new Europe, while electricity, the automobile, production lines, new mass media and aeroplanes were changing the world. England was in the grip of a depression, but science and technology promised a better future: a world where disease, drudgery and poverty might no longer exist. Very few writers were bold enough to challenge this naive optimism but in Brave New World, Huxley certainly did; now his work, adapted by Dawn King for the …