All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

 

This is one of the best films about the power of art.

Art as protest!

 

She went to war for the people she loved and who loved her back – the bowery junkies, the late-night queens, and the forgotten. Nan Godlin spent three decades photographing the low life – the jagged, raw, scary company. And she nearly died herself from an over dose of opioids. 

 

Artist Nan Goldin set up an art activist group called PAIN - 

She campaigned to force the Sackler name removed from art galleries –

 “Hear us Roar!”

 

At the Guggenheim museum New York – with blood red banners they all chanted …

.”400,000 dead/ 200 dead each day / shame on Sadler / take down their names." 

 

They roar to blow the roof off! As white papers fall like snow…with the words

“if only Oxy-Contin is controlled how substantially would it improve sales?”

In the Sunday Times 15^th January 2023 and the art critic Wlldemar Januszczak says this art film is the best art film he’s seen. “For her art is a friend, a refuge, a family. When she and her buddies stormed the Guggenheim - they weren’t looking for easy publicity. They were hoping to rescue art from the Sacklers.”  

 

ART as protest

Picasso - Guernica

Goya – Third of May 1808

John & Yoko – Bed ins for Peace

Suffragette Mary Richardson – Slashed a Velazquez at the National galleries

 

 

Worth watching 

 

PHOTOS V & A Dundee

Kengo Kuma's V & A Dundee

There was a young busker singing in the warm acoustic setting – rich with the river light and wood beams. 

V & A Dundee's Japanese architect Kengo Kuma brings nature’s environment into his buildings, outside the stone cliffs reverberate with movement and water runs underneath. The senses renewal for Dundee – and a new space of confidence and belief. 

And just like a great ship - the outside is cold and grey while inside a golden glow welcomes us. 

Design and Identity 

 Scottish visual identity –

There is a display of the Jacobite allegiance, with tartan, plaid, Celtic design, romance

Centre of skilled craftsmanship, design and of ideas between Scotland and Europe.

From the historic 1480 Book of Hours, The Poetry of Ossian, by James Macpherson.

….Paisley, shawls, Harris tweed, Clyde built ships, distinctive Glasgow style. 

Great Ocean Liners

FRINGE posters

There were interesting posters on display - the Beano, Fringe; Theatre, Slab boys, 

Dundee is the home of Scotland’s vibrant games centre - Lemmings, Mike Daily. Apps, and a hands on creative section.

There is an impressive exhibition of the great age of the Ocean Liners.

Scotland and Asia 1786, where fortunes were made East India trading company.

From1300 – 1707 there were strong links to France, the Baltic and the North Seas. 

There were Churchmen, scholars, merchants, mercenaries, who travelled or settled. https://www.vam.ac.uk/dundee

I felt there could have been more focus on Dundee itself and its hugely diverse history. 

Rennie Mackintosh Oak Room

Ossian Poems by James Macpherson