On Thursday 16th November a group of local government dignitaries, representatives of the Canary Wharf Group PLC and arts professionals from the Henry Moore Foundation assembled in in a well-known cigar and jazz venue in Canary Wharf to celebrate the return of Old Flo.
Jane McChrystal
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Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was the consummate commercial artist. He devised a formula for making lots of money out of his work long before Andy Warhol proclaimed “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art”.
Sands Film Club recently screened Alessandro Blasetti’s 1860 as part of its 1934 cinema season. Blasetti’s pioneering film has been credited with introducing a number of cinematic techniques which would become calling cards of Italy’s Neo-Realist directors, such as De Sica, Visconti and Rossellini, during the 1940’s and 1950’s.
When Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939, the country he led was by no means united in its opposition to Hitler. The English aristocracy numbered many Nazi sympathisers in its ranks, who would have welcomed the introduction of a regime modelled on the Third Reich into their country during the 1930’s.
Dunkirk has emerged as 2017’s summer blockbuster movie. The director Christopher Nolan has been widely praised for his ability to immerse film-goers in the terrifying experience of soldiers, sailors and airmen involved in the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) by land, sea and air between 26th May and 4th June, 1940.
On the whole, the curators have given the works the space they need and brought a coherent approach to displaying them in relation to each other, which provides the viewer with a largely satisfying experience.
Londongrip’s readers are invited to take a cruise on the Thames Estuary on Sunday, 27th August. The cruise offers an unusual opportunity to get a closer look at some of the Estuary’s less accessible attractions: the Red Sands Forts, built to protect London during the Second World War; the sunken cargo ship, SS Richard Montgomery and the Thames Sailing barges racing in their annual match.
Vulgarity so self-confident, so unrepentant wins a kind of horrified respect. Ken Russell stands on his own, a mixture, at once frightening and preposterous, of Benjamin Robert Haydon, Hieronymus Bosch and the propaganda-poster artists of the Third Reich. Dilys Powell reviewing Mahler, Sunday Times, 1974.
Now best-known for writing the novel A Clockwork Orange, which Stanley Kubrick turned into the ultra-violent film of 1971, Anthony Burgess died on 22nd November 1993.
Overlooked for centuries, her paintings were often wrongly attributed to her father, Orazio Gentileschi. In the same period her work sank to a level of obscurity equal to that one of her greatest influences, Caravaggio. His reputation was restored in the 1920’s. Artemisia Gentileschi had to wait a little longer.
I usually find middle-brow fiction quite consoling. So, I turned to my bookshelves in search of something not too literary in the hope of distraction from these troubled times. Colin, a supernatural tale, published in two parts by E.F. Benson in 1923, seemed to fit the bill.
It was the second Sunday in January and people were emerging from the cocoon of the long holiday to take a walk along the Thames Path. The grey skies and a chill in the damp air seemed to signal the right conditions for me to head north from the Isle of Dogs and explore Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park.
By Jane McChrystal • history, society, travel, year 2018 • Tags: history, Jane McChrystal, society