The Poor Mouth

A young dancer

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 11:44:00 +0000

Boris

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 09:17:00 +0000

Tasteless painting fetches nearly £1m

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 09:02:00 +0000

The original painting of the Chinese Girl, thought to be the most reproduced print in the world, was sold for nearly £1 million yesterday. The work by Russian-born artist Vladimir Tretchikoff raised £982,050 - nearly double its expected price - as part of a sale of South African art at Bonhams auction house.

Millions of reproductions of the picture, also known as the Green Lady because of the unusual blue-green skin tone of the subject, have been sold since it was painted in the 1950s.

A Bonhams spokesman said: "It's very exciting. Suddenly the market has decided they like what they can see with Tretchikoff."

The Bonhams spokesman added: "It's almost triple the £380,000 we sold his painting Lenka for last year. It shows he's beginning to close in on the other major figures on the South African art landscape, Irma Stern - whose picture Arab Priest we previously sold for £3 million - and Pierneef."

The identity of the Chinese Girl buyer was not known, but the painting will remain within Europe, the spokesman said.

No accounting for taste I suppose

Ahmadinejad and the discharged shotgun...

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:55:00 +0000

The Atlantic has a short item, an extract from a forthcoming book, the consequences of which I shudder to think

One morning in September 2006, during the United Nations General Assembly, President George W. Bush’s daily intelligence brief contained a particularly chilling item. It was three sentences long, and it scared the hell out of the dozen or so White House officials cleared to read it. According to one official, it began, “A U.S. Secret Service agent, in an apparent accident, discharged his shotgun as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was loading his motorcade at the InterContinental Hotel yesterday.”

At the time, the Bush administration was weighing how to deal with the Iranian nuclear-weapons program. And here a Secret Service agent had just given Iran a potentially devastating public-relations coup. Ahmadinejad was certain to reveal the accident in some grand form before the whole of the United Nations. He might allege that the United States had tried to assassinate him, and thus upend the entire conference. “When I read that, I remember closing my eyes,” recalls the official.
The agent was adjusting the side-mounted shotgun on one of the motorcade’s armored follow-up Suburbans when it discharged. “Everyone just stopped. The Iranians looked at us and we looked at the Iranians. The agent began to apologize. Ahmadinejad just turned his head and got into his car.” And that was it.

The Iranians told no one. Their silence led several White House aides to begin to see Ahmadinejad in a new light. Here was evidence that maybe Iran was acting strategically, and therefore cautiously.

—Adapted from Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry, by Marc Ambinder and D. B. Grady (to be published this month by Wiley)

An accident for sure rather than some hare brained plan to off Ahmadinejad (not that I would be sorry to see him out of the picture). I shudder to think of the consequences of him eing shot or even illed in such an accident....

And why the V&A is concerned!

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 10:42:00 +0000

Napalm Death Cancel a concert at the Victoria and Albert

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 10:41:00 +0000

The Independent reports that leading death metal band have been forced to cancel a one-off performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum amid concerns for the historic fabric of the building.

Napalm Death, who formed in Birmingham in 1981 and count songs such as “Scum”, “Greed Killing” and “Mentally Murdered” among their musical repertoire, were due to play a ground-breaking concert in collaboration with the V&A’s resident ceramicist, Keith Harrison.

Mr Harrison had planned to construct a speaker system that was filled with liquid clay, which would have cracked and fragmented as the sound reverberated inside it, creating a unique live installation.
Napalm Death were chosen to play the special set as it was hoped their deep bass sound would have created the perfect frequency to shatter the tiles and create the artwork.

The one-off gig was due to take place this Friday in a disused gallery currently undergoing renovation.

But the museum announced today that it had been forced to cancel the event after a safety inspection raised concerns over the potentially damaging effect such loud music could have on the both building and artwork, the organisers reluctantly cancelled the concert.

Concern about the preservation and safety of the Victorian structure has been heightened in recent years with the advent of the ‘FuturePlan’, a multi-million pound modernisation scheme designed to bring the museum into the 21st century whilst retaining its original splendour.

Now Napalm Death are not my cup of tea but I never thought to hear the and mentioned in the same sentence as the Victoria and Alert Museum!

Grape Hyacinths

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:56:00 +0000

Jack at rest

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:55:00 +0000

Hiatus

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 20:18:00 +0000

I keep on saying it but right now I just a not in the mod to blog.I will try to visit my favourite blogs but Black Dog is visiting

Bebe

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 09:24:00 +0000

More crocuses

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 14:09:00 +0000

First sighting of Beelzebob this year

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 13:35:00 +0000

Celandine

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 13:35:00 +0000

Crocuses

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 21:38:00 +0000

Crocus

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 00:02:00 +0000

Snowdrop

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 00:01:00 +0000

Three favourite Robyn songs

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 18:37:00 +0000

Robyn Hitchcock is 60 today!

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 18:25:00 +0000

Happy Birthday Robyn!

Quiet Days in Clichy

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 18:49:00 +0000

From the soundtrack of the film of the same name. Gloriously crude!

We Are All Made of Stars

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 18:44:00 +0000

At rest

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 13:01:00 +0000

Dermot Morgan 15 years on

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:12:00 +0000

Is it really 15 years since Dermot Morgan died. Here's a couleof non Father Ted clips. I wish I saw his standup routine

And y choice for the Contact page

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:36:00 +0000

My favourite photograph of a supremely talented artist

New Website

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:07:00 +0000

This is the cover photo for a new website I've setup for my photographs. Its only a Wix site.When I have oney I will create something better again. If you've seen my portfolio log or my Facebook photogrphy page then there's not a lot of new. content but I have created separate pages for Tim and for Li.

Nominations for 2013 Diagram Prize!

noreply@blogger.com (jams o donnell) — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 21:18:00 +0000

The Diagram Prize surely ranks with the Razzies and the IgNobels as one of the most coveted awards availale in this world today A few days ago the nominations for the 2013 prize were announcedandquite a fine line up there is as ever!

How Tea Cosies Changed the World – the 160-page follow-up to Really Wild Tea Cosies – is up against How to Sharpen Pencils and God's Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis to win the little sought-after accolade of the oddest book title of the year.

Loani Prior's tea cosy extravaganza, containing "24 vibrant new designs that transform the conventional tea cosy into a knitted piece of art", is one of six books shortlisted for the Diagram prize, alongside David Rees's "manifesto and a fully illustrated walk-through of the many, many, many ways to sharpen a pencil" and Tom Hickman's look at man's relationship with his penis.
A niche guide to pigeon housing, Lofts of North America: Pigeon Lofts, fairy hunter Reginald Bakeley's Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop and Was Hitler Ill?, an examination from a historian and a professor of medicine of whether Adolf Hitler was fully responsible for his crimes, complete the lineup for this year's Diagram prize

The Bookseller's Philip Stone said he was "particularly fond" this year of How to Sharpen Pencils, "not only because of its oddity, but because I find something beautiful in the fact a publisher has been brave enough to publish a book concerning a centuries-old implement in hardback in the digital age. Upon my next trip to my local independent bookshop, I hope to see it alongside all the pornographic literature that appears to be keeping the entire book industry in rude health."

According to Stone, the prize "draws welcome attention to an undervalued art".

"Publishers and booksellers know only too well that a title can make all the difference to the sales of a book," he continued. "A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian has sold almost 1m copies to date, while books such as Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared perhaps all owe some of their success to their unusual monikers."

The winner will be chosen by a public vote at thebookseller.com and welovethisbook.com and announced on 22 March. The Bookseller's diarist and the prize's custodian Horace Bent said: "It remains a great honour of mine to represent a prize that draws attention to authors not called Hilary Mantel that may need a little help in gaining column inches and subsequently entering public consciousness and bookshop bestseller bays."

The shortlist

Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop by Reginald Bakeley (Conari, £9.99)
God's Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis by Tom Hickman (Square Peg, £12.99)
How Tea Cosies Changed the World by Loani Prior (Murdoch, £12.99)
How to Sharpen Pencils by David Rees (Melville House, £12.99)
Lofts of North America: Pigeon Lofts by Jerry Gagne (Foy's Pet Supplies, £51.50)
Was Hitler Ill? by Hans-Joachim Neumann and Henrik Eberle (Polity Press, £20)

I cant wait to see who wins!