BADGERS: LATEST NEWS

STOP THE CULL video from the Badger Trust

OCTOBER 25TH

Thanks to the the e-gov petition posted by the coalition Team Badger there will be a six-hour debate in Parliament on the badger cull on this date. Currently more than 157,000 people have signed it. Please add your name and support

 http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/38257

See: 'Badger cull opponents granted first Commons debate' by Damian Carrington [The Guardian 10th Oct 2012

 

'Badger's: Splitting public opinion for more than 200 years' by Rober Harrabin

This is one of the most important single articles on the badger issue and deserves to be widely read.

 It centres on the work of Dr Angela Cassidy from Imperial College London, who has written a paper entitled: 'Vermin, Victims and Disease: UK Framings of badgers in and beyond the bovine TB controversy'. You have to pay to read the whole article but the abstract reads:

 'The question of whether to cull wild badgers in order to control the spread of bovine TB (bTB) in UK cattle herds has been deeply contentious for nearly 40 years, and still shows no sign of resolution. This paper will examine the strategic framing of badgers in recent debates over bTB in the UK media, which take two opposing forms: the ‘good badger’ as epitomised in Kenneth Grahame's children's novel ‘The Wind in the Willows’; and the less familiar ‘bad badger’: carnivore, digger, and carrier of disease. It will then uncover the deeper historical and cultural roots of these representations, to argue that underlying the contemporary ‘badger/bTB’ controversy is an older ‘badger debate’ about the proper relationship between these wild animals and humans. Finally, the implications of this finding for current debates over bTB policy will be explored.'

 
Dr Cassidy told BBC News that [badgers] have 'consistently divided opinion, with farmers wanting rid of them and animal lovers seeking to protect them. She said that bombarding people with science about TB in the animals would fail, as the debate was really about emotions and values.

"The sides have a very different understanding of what the countryside is for and how we should treat animals," she said. 

"That's why I think one of the reasons why the focus on the evidence isn't getting us that far is because it can be interpreted in different ways and what we have to acknowledge is that there are different values going on, and this is a very political debate."

  

BADGERS 1: STOP THE CULL

Queen guitarist Brian May, fronting a ‘Stop the Cull’ demo in Bristol. Source: thisisbristol

THE GENERALIST urges you to sign the e-petition calling for the government to stop the planned badger cull (which may have begun today). The petition has already received 150,000 signatures which means it now stands a good chance of being debated in the House. The more signatures on this petition the better.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/38257

 

The government’s own Chief Scientist has refused to endorse the cull and more than 30 eminent UK animal disease experts, in a letter to The Observer, describe the cull as a "costly distraction" that risks making the problem of tuberculosis in cattle worse and that will cost far more than it saves.

See: www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/13/badger-cull-mindless

Successive governments have carried out various culling operations since the 1970s, none of which have solved the problem.

In 1997, after an independent review by government advisor and eminent scientist Sir John Krebs, a £50 million, ten-year Randomised Badger Culling Trial began  - under the direction of the Independent Scientific Group (ISG) on Cattle TB, chaired by Professor John Bourne.  During the trial, government operatives trapped and killed around 11,000 badgers. .

In 2007 the (ISG) published its findings on the results of the cull, Professor Bourne wrote to David Miliband, who was  then Environment Secretary:

‘The ISG’s work … has reached two key conclusions. First, while badgers are clearly a source of cattle TB, careful evaluation of our own and others’ data indicates that badger culling can make no meaningful contribution to cattle TB control in Britain….

Second, weaknesses in cattle testing regimes mean that cattle themselves contribute significantly to the persistence and spread of disease in all areas where TB occurs…. Scientific findings indicate that the rising incidence of disease can be reversed, and geographical spread contained, by the rigid application of cattle-based control measures alone.’

Lord Krebs, told the BBC in September that the government should choose vaccination and control of cattle movements rather than what he termed the ‘crazy’ culling scheme ‘that may deliver very small advantage, may deliver none’.

Steve Jones, a dairy farmer in the Forest of Dean, writes on The Guardian website:

‘The government justifies a badger cull by claiming it's to help farmers. I have 35 years' livestock management experience, and I live in the heart of the Forest of Dean – the cull area – and I disagree. Killing badgers isn't the long-term or sustainable solution to bovine TB control that farmers so desperately need. Shooting badgers is politically motivated, not scientifically driven, and farmers need to realise they're being sold a lame duck… Meticulous biosecurity and sympathetic animal husbandry are the key to stamping out TB in cattle, not shooting British wildlife.’

Sir David Attenborough has added his voice to the many protesting about the government’s plans.

VACCINES

The bovine TB issue is a complex one which requires a mixture of solutions. Certainly much tighter biosecurity measures and ‘sympathetic animal husbandry’. Stress is a big factor in triggering the disease.

The longer-term solution is vaccines for both cattle and badgers.

Briefly, a new TB vaccine for cattle is in development in the UK at and a new diagnostic test has been discovered, says The Independent

Currently, vaccinating cattle against bovine tuberculosis is banned throughout Europe, because there is no way of distinguishing in current diagnostic tests between an animal that has merely been vaccinated, and an animal that has actually contracted the disease.

Vaccinated but healthy cattle would thus appear contaminated and could not be sold or traded abroad – and TB vaccination of cattle has been prohibited across the EU since 1978.

However, researchers led by Professor Glyn Hewinson, of Animal Health and the Veterinary Laboratories Agency in Weybridge, Surrey, have developed a so-called "diva" test – meaning differentiation of infected from vaccinated animals – which makes the distinction between the two clear.

Clearing both vaccine and test through the regulatory agencies in the UK will take years. The bigger hurdle is then to persuade all the EU nations to agree to overturn the ban  and allow a vaccination programme to take place.

On the badger front, an injectable TB vaccine was licensed in 2010. Badgers are individually cage-trapped for the injection. This is the route taken by the Welsh Assembly who are funding a mass vaccination programme rather than a cull. Development of an oral vaccine is a priority. This would be easier and less costly to administer.

*

REFORM FARMING PRACTICES: THE REAL SOLUTION

A catalogue of failures in how England's farmers prevent their cattle spreading TB between herds was uncovered by an official European Commission inspection, the Guardian has learned, undermining the case for the imminent cull of badgers.

But the EC report, based on inspections made in September 2011, found numerous "shortcomings", including missed targets on both the rapid removal of cattle with TB and the follow-up of missed tests, and "weaknesses in cleaning and disinfection at farm, vehicle, market and slaughterhouse levels, exacerbated by lack of adequate supervision". All these problems increase the risk of TB spreading between cattle.

‘Farming ‘shortcomings’ undermine case for badger culls’ by Damian Carrington. The Guardian 4th Oct 2012

 

USEFUL LINKS

The Badger Trust

Team Badger

Bovine TB

BADGERS 2: BADGER FACTS

‘I cannot help but admire the combination of flexibility and robustness that has enabled badgers to withstand millennia of environmental change and deliberate persecution while remaining true to themselves. Badgers are survivors, not just in the sense that the species is still with us but also in the more specific sense that in many places, hidden away through the land, individual social groups still cling to the sites that their ancestors have occupied for decades or even, perhaps, for centuries. Uniquely among mammals , badgers attach themselves to the very landscape. They remind us it is possible to survive change without surrendering to it.’ – Tim Roper

The badger is a fascinating creature about which most of us know very little. In fact, most of us have never seen one, although this may change as badgers become more common in our urban landscapes.

This book by Tim Roper [Collins. 2010] looks to be the best around if you’re interested, covering as it does all aspects of the natural history of Britain’s largest carnivore. There is also a chapter on bovine TB.

We have a complex relationship with badgers as Roper makes clear. One of our best-loved and symbolic animals, a creature of myth, fairy tale and fable as Brock - a gruff, strong but benign creature of the night - it inspires a sizeable national network of badger-watchers and enthusiasts and is a widespread icon. Badgers are also one of the most highly protected animals in our country due to legislation brought in to try and stop the actions of another sizeable minority – the badger baiters. (see next post). Such persecution has deep roots, as does the current furore over bovine tb.

Amazon has an extensive preview of this book from which I learnt the following.

HISTORY

Badgers originated in Southeast Asia and spread to western Europe about 3 million years ago when Britain was part of the European landmass. The earliest remains so far found, at Boxgrove, date from much later (750,000-500,000 years ago). Badgers retreated during the last ice age and re-colonised Britain (still not an island) about 10,000 years ago, living in the temperate forest alongside wolves, foxes and bears. There are very scant remains from the last 5,000 years but the badger must have been a familiar part of the landscape during Anglo-Saxon times (AD 500-1000) as ‘an estimated 140 Anglo-Saxon place names have their origin in the term broc (badger)’.

Badgers have been hunted for food since the Bronze Age and provided not only meat but also leather, pelts, bristles and fats. Roper says he once ate badger meat himself and ‘found it tasted of the forest from which it came, with flavours reminiscent of earth, leaf mould, pine needles and fungi, In any case it was not very palatable.’

Badgers were designated ‘vermin’ in Tudor times. Badger digging and baiting for ‘sport’ also originated in medieval times. In the 18th and 19th century, with the enclosure act and the growth of sporting estates, badgers were trapped, shot and poisoned by gamekeepers and also persecuted by fox-hunters.

The badger population was at its lowest in 1900 but was widely distributed and locally numerous by the 1940s.

*

HOW MANY BADGERS ARE THERE?

Roper writes that badger surveys in 1963 and 1985 recorded an estimated 36,000 and 43,000 badger groups (setts?) respectively.

[Slightly confused by this. According to DEFRA, the original survey was carried out in the 1985-1987 and the last one was conducted in 1994-1997. No figures are given as to the results. [Looking for these] DEFRA told Farmer’s Guardian:

“The 1990s survey revealed that badger numbers had increased substantially in the intervening decade. There is a commonly held perception that the badger population has continued to increase since then,”

Surveys of badger population in Northern Ireland and Scotland were conducted in 2008.

DEFRA has commissioned a new survey, which began in 2011 and will run until 2013, with a budget of £870,000.

This will resurvey the 1700 1km-square sites used in the previous surveys, which were selected to provide a representative sample of the landscape types in England and Wales. The number of setts on each site will be mapped. From this, extrapolations will be made to estimate the total badger population. The survey is being conducted by the Food and Environment Research Agency (FERA)]

 

*

Have discovered this 1995 report -       ‘A review of British mammals: population estimates and conservation status of British mammals other than cetaceans’ by Stephen Harris, Pat Morris, Stephanie Wray and Derek Yalden.

Whilst somewhat dated, it provides a good overview of some baseline data I was looking for:

‘Based on a stratified survey of 2455 1 x 1 km squares from November 1985 to February 1988, in which setts were classified into one of four types, the number of social groups was estimated to be 41,894 + 4404 (95% confidence limits) (Reason, Harris & Cresswell 1993).

‘Assuming a mean group size of six adults, the total British badger population is approximately 250,000 adult badgers, and 172,000 cubs are born each spring (Harris et al. 1992).

‘Of the total British badger population, 24.9% is in south-west England and 21 9% in south-east England, with overall 76.1% in England, 9.9% in Scotland and 14.0% in Wales (Cresswell et al. 1989).

‘Population estimates: A total pre-breeding population of about 250,000; 190,000 in England, 25,000 in Scotland and 35,000 in Wales. In addition there are about 72,000 cubs born each year. ‘

Approximately 61,000 adults and 41,000 cubs die annually.

‘Road deaths are probably the next major cause of death with approx. 50,000 badgers killed per annum.’

[See 2006 story in The Independent. Confirms 50,000 figure]

‘In addition, an estimated 10,000 badgers are killed illegally by diggers and a further 1000 killed each year in an attempt to control bovine tuberculosis in cattle in the south-west (Harris et al. 1992). ‘

‘However, sett losses, rather than mortality of individual badgers, probably pose the most significant population threat. Sett destruction often involves the death of the resident badgers,and where this is the main sett, can lead to the loss of an entire social group. Landscape changes, particularly those associated with agricultural activities, were the major cause of sett losses in Essex in the 20 years up to the mid-1980s (Skinner, Skinner & Harris 1991), ‘

[SEE FULL REPORT HERE]

 

‘

 

BADGERS 3: BADGER BAITING 1980 TO 2012

‘Drawing the Badger’, A scene from a series of colour prints entitled ‘Badger Baiting’ produced c.1823 by Henry Thomas Alken. Courtesy: RSPCA

This feature on Badger Baiting was published in the Scene section of the Sunday Times on 9th November 1980. It was the result of a detailed investigation I made into the subject at a time, when there were very few badger protection groups and no internet.

 

Digging a grave for the badger

THIS HAS been a bad year for the badger. Ten days ago the Zuckerman Report called for a resumption of badger-gassing -control the spread of bovine TB in the West Country. Now SCENE reveals a new and more insidious threat—a widespread revival of the ancient, but entirely illegal, sport of badger-baiting.

Earlier this year Rochdale, in a wood near Rochdale, police and RSPCA officials caught three men in possession of some fox cubs, two badgers and five Lakeland terriers. One of the clogs was fighting a badger in a cage; two others were badly scarred.

At the subsequent trial, the prosecution called it "a hideous training ground for hunting dogs. All three defendants, average age 23, admitted cruelly terrifying a badger and were fined a total of £800.

This was by no means an isolated case.Badger-baiting and badger digging are flourishing,despite the fact that the badger is supposedly protected by law. It has always been an irresistible quarry for the hunter. Its tough hide, mantrap jaws and half-inch claws make it a formidable opponent for a dog.

A badger-dig usually begins with terriers, most often Jack Russells, being sent down into a maze of tunnels. They are trained to corner the badger in a blind alley, and to indicate its position by barking. The diggers then hack into the sett until the badger is exposed. Long, pincer-like tongs are used to drag the animal clear, and it is then either killed on the spot, by having its spine chopped with a spade, or baited with terriers. To, improve the dogs' chances, it is usual for the badger to be disabled— either by having its jaw smashed or its legs shackled. Sometimes the badgers are taken to be used at organised baiting sessions, where they provide sport for gamblers.

Michelle Harrison, of the Wirral and Chester Badger Group, says that Liverpool terrier owners have been taking badgers for baiting at artificial setts in the city. The hundred or so members of her group patrol the natural setts in their local countryside, even rigging baby alarms in an attempt to detect the intruders. But still the plundering goes on.

Jack Martin, at Croydon, is other ardent protectionist. “These people have been getting away ay with it," he says, " because very few people knew the badger was a protected animal." After all the badgers in a nearby public woodland had been either gassed or dug up, he held a public meeting and formed a protection society.

It was the efforts of this group which led to the first prosecution under the Badger Act to be heard in the Metropolitan area. On Sep­tember 25 this year, four men and a woman were fined £50 each for digging in the woods near Purley, Surrey. One of them had been armed with a four-foot spiked iron bar.

Barrie Lewis, co-founder of the Gwent Badger Group, is currently trying to persuade his MP to campaign for higher fines. The maximum at the moment is £100 per offence, but magistrates have seemed in many cases reluctant to impose the full penalty. In the last couple of years in Lewis's area, men have been caught at a sett with dogs fighting a badger. Others were found with a live animal in a sack, and a farmer recently dis­covered a flayed carcass.

One of the badger’s most active defendants is Mrs Ruth Murray who runs an animal sanctuary at Bridestowe in Devon, and whose dossier containing the names and addresses of more than 500 dig­gers throughout Britain was partly instrumental in bringing about the 1974 Badger Act.

" There is definitely an increase in the illegal killing of badgers," she says. "During the last few weeks I have had ten brought in dead, dying or seriously injured—all due to dig­ging. One was this year's cub three parts grown, which had had its jaw torn off arid was covered with dog bites."

The Badger Act, which came into force on January 25, 1974, makes it illegal to "wilfully kill, injure or maim any badger”. But there is a major loophole. Any "authorised person" — i,e. the owner, occupier, or anyone authorised by the landowner— can still dig for badgers if it can be shown that the animals are damaging property. In the first, four years of the Act, there were only 69 prosecutions, pro­ducing 53 convictions.

A possible solution to the problem has been demonstrated by West Yorkshire which, by an amendment to the Act, has been made a Special Protection Area. Landowners here must now go to court to prove that badgers are causing damage or spreading disease. Paul Patchett, of the Mammal Society, says the result has been a drastic reduction in the amount of digging.

Badger-baiting is covered by the 1911 Protection of Animals Act, which also applies to cock-fighting and dog fighting, and carries stiffer penalties—maxi­mum £500 and/or three months imprisonment. The problem here is actually catching offenders in the act. Commander Leonard Flint, of the RSPCA's Uniformed Inspectorate, advocates a speci­ally trained agency of " strong-arm boys like the SPG,” a kind of Wildlife Police.

Perhaps the most significant factor in the badger's current parlous state is the upsurge of interest in working terriers, co­ordinated through a national net­work of clubs. Stark proof of this is provided in a recently published book by D. Brian Plummer, The Complete Jack Russell Terrier. This contains a whole section on badger dig­ging, complete with photographs which show little concern for the badger's status in law. As Plummer puts it: "The whole badger problem must seem like a medieval riddle. When is a protected creature not a pro­tected creature ? Answer: when it is a badger."

He describes the Badger Act as a "lunatic law," and writes: "I have always suspected that this Act was drawn up to satisfy the anti-field sports contingent who, unknowing of the ways of badgers and badger diggers^ did not realise that a badger dig can last for hours, and sometimes days, the dig itself often grow­ing to resemble an excavation job done' by a major contractor."

He reveals that one club, the Fell & Moorland Working Terrier Club, even offers a rescue service to free terriers trapped underground which often involves the hire of heavy machinery.

*

‘The 21st century badger baiters. They plot their sick fight on the internet, film them on mobiles and have bred a lethal new superdog to rip their prey to pieces’

This article by Danny Penman, published in the Daily Mail on the 12th Jan 2012 brings the story up to date.

 

In recent years, badger baiters have bred a new type of dog known as a bull lurcher. This fearsome beast has the enormous jaws of a pit bull and the size and agility of a lurcher

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2089607/Badger-baiters-plot-sick-fights-internet-film-mobiles.html#ixzz29IZLEfbn

 

HEAR RSPCA PODCAST: Increase in crimes against badgers

THE NEW BATTLE OF HASTINGS

THE GENERALIST has been alerted by Nick Austin, author of ‘Secrets of the Norman Invasion’, to the New Battle of Hastings. Nick and many others are of the view that in 1066 the Normans did not land at Pevensey and fight Harold at Battle Abbey. Instead they believe the site of the Norman encampments and the battle itself are located in different but nearby location which remains in a pristine state at present. Despite compelling evidence, this new site has never been properly excavated. What makes the situation more imperative is that East Sussex County Council want to build a new ring road that will run right through this landscape, destroying forever what may prove to be one of the most important battlefield sites in Europe. To read more, get Nick’s book and sign the online petition click here: http://secretsofthenormaninvasion.wordpress.com/

UPDATE: Story picked up by The Telegraph

ART NEWS

 

I love this paper. A broadsheet sharply printed on great paper, beautifully designed and packed with interesting stories, what’s not to like? The price of a subscription – beyond my means. You can read some material from the latest issue for free on their website. Happily Elizabeth got me a freebie sample issue and these are some of the things I learnt from it.

 

BFEORE PHOTOSHOP: For some time I’ve been thinking that a book of this title was needed to get people to understand that photo manipulation has a history as long as the medium itself. So was interested to read about ‘Faking It’ a current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, open until 27th May next. It contains 200 photographs from 1940 to the 1990s. Its curator Mia Fineman told Art News: ‘Photographs have never represented the unadulterated truth. Photographic manipulation is part of a long tradition that has never been examined closely because there has always been a desire to believe photographs represent the truth.’ Interestingly the exhibition is sponsored by Adobe. There is also an ancillary exhibition: ‘After Photoshop: Manipulated Photography In The Digital Age.’

 

THE END OF KUNSTHAUS TACHELES: This giant derelict artist’s squat in Berlin, occupied since the fall of the Berlin Wall, was finally shut down in September. Art News writes: ‘Its the end of an era, as Berlin loses loved alternative cultural spaces to property speculators and the well-heeled.’ More on this story can be found here on mutualart.com and freedomspark

 

 

STEVE POWERS/A LOVE LETTER FOR YOU: This documentary is about street artist Steve Powers and his huge mural project In Philadelphia. See details at ghostrobot.com

 

You can view a trailer and buy a download at their Facebook site.

 

 

 

Background according to freenewsprojects.com

In 1984 Steve Powers started climbing rooftops in his neighbourhood and painting his alias ESPO as a dues paying member of the ICY graffiti club. 25 years later he returned home to Philadelphia in the summer of 2009 to write a love letter across the same rooftops facing the Market-Frankford line. The letter, meant for one, with meaning for all, encompasses 50 walls on a 20 block stretch of market street. Drawing input, inspiration, and work from the community Powers created a letter to and from west Philly. This unprecedented public art project was a collaboration of Powers, The Mural Arts Program, and the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. It required 1200 cans of spray paint, 800 gallons of bucket paint, and the skilled hands of 20 of the finest spray painters in America, who Powers put into the legendary ICY club.

EXPERIMENTAL FILM: Pip Chodorov was a new name to me but have discovered he is not only an experimental film maker in his own right but has also directed the documentary ‘Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Cinema’ (due out on DVD shortly), established the first art gallery (in Paris) devoted to experimental film [see: http://www.re-voir.com/) and is  curating a show of Jonas Mekas work at the Serpentine Gallery. [There is a section called Experimenta as part of this year’s London Film Festival which opens this month.

 

KLIMT’S 150TH BIRTHDAY: Klimt’s original studio has been restored and is now open to the public, says Art News. Take a virtual tour here: www.klimt.at

My interest in Klimt was revived recently when I discovered this remarkable book  - The Age of Insight: The Quest To Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brai8n, from 1900 to the Present’ by Eric R. Kandel.The book is huge and expensive but there are substantial extracts which can be read for free on Amazon.

Particularly interesting is the section  on the painters Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka and the effect that science had on their work. thanks to the salon culture of Vienna of that period which provided a ready interchange between art and science.  Klimt in particular was fascinated by Darwin’s ideas and arranged a slide show for fellow artists of the latest scientific images showing for the first time how a human embryo developed. He attended autopsies and incorporated scientific imagery into his paintings.

SILVER SCREEN/ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA

This is a truly great film. I have watched it three times over the last 10 days and each viewing reveals more subtlety. Set largely in the steppes of Turkey over one long night, as a group of men search for a dead body, its based on real story known to one of he screenplay’s co-writers, who was a doctor in the area where the film is set.

Why is it so good. The landscape is a major player and the cinematography is brilliant and original, both the colours and the framing. It is shot in Cinemascope which gives it a really widescreen feel.

The story itself is as rich as a good novel. The main storyline is accompanied by at least four others that interweave. The director pulls off this trick in several occasions of showing you something whilst the actual dialogue is happening somewhere else.

Like the long opening segment of ‘No Country for Old Men’ - the Coen Brothers best film to date -  there is virtually no music which means that the film has incredible intensity and focus. The actors are superb and believable with no false notes.

At more than 2 1/2 hours, this is a gripping ride with real depth. A truly great film -  a tribute to its director Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

Official film site: www.nbcfilm.com/anatolia/anatolia.php?mid=1

CURIOUS FACTS: Military Camouflage & Deception 1

A mobile tank dummy created by magician and illusionist Jasper Maskelyne. Source: warandgame.com

THE GENERALIST has long been fascinated by this topic, This post was triggered by a feature by Allan Mallison in The Times concerning a new book - ‘The Phantom Army of Alamein: How the Camouflage Unit and Operation Bertram Hoodwinked Rommel’ by John Stroud [Bloomsbury].

The Camouflage Unit, Mallison writes, was ‘ a small army of painters and carpenters, many of them straight from the West End Theatre, Ealing and Elstree, photographers and draftsmen “kidnapped from every part of the Army”. Also the flamboyant stage magician Jasper Maskeleyne ‘whose imagination, inventiveness and technical skill was matched only by his ability at self-publicity.’

Operation Bertram’s main role was to convince Rommel that the British were going to attack from the wrong direction. To this end, they needed to disguise 600 tanks to look like lorries and create ‘the illusion of 600 tanks in an entirely different area. Thy had ‘exactly 25 days to complete their work and pull off an unprecedented military coupe de theatre.’

This picture shows how they disguised the real tanks; picture of dummy tank at top. They also succeeded in ‘conjuring up two divisions, field guns and supporting vehicles with wood, string and straw.’ The deception worked perfectly and made a major contribution to the British victory at El Alamein.

Many of these techniques were subsequently used in the run-up to D-Day.

According to Wikipedia, the Americans had their own thing going – The Ghost Army:

The Ghost Army was a United States Army tactical deception unit during World War II officially known as the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. The 1,100-man unit was given a unique mission within the Army to impersonate other U.S. Army units to deceive the enemy. From a few weeks after D-Day, when they landed in France, until the end of the war, they put on a travelling road show, using inflatable tanks, sound trucks, phony radio transmissions and playacting. They staged more than 20 battlefield deceptions, often operating very close to the front lines. Their mission was kept secret until 1996, and elements of it remain classified.

A documentary ‘The Ghost Army’ by Rick Beyer, due for screening on the US network PBS in 2013 makes the story sound even more fascinating.

‘In June 1944, a secret U.S. Army unit went into action in Normandy. The weapons they deployed were decidedly unusual: hundreds of inflatable tanks and a one-of-a-kind collection of sound effects records. Their mission was to use bluff, deception, and trickery to save lives. Many were artists, including some who would become famous, including a budding fashion designer named Bill Blass.  They painted and sketched their way across Europe, creating a unique visual record of their journey. The story of what these men accomplished was hushed up by the Pentagon for more than forty years.’

CHECK OUT THE AMAZING TRAILER

 

LNKS:

Military Hoax Collection

CURIOUS FACTS: Military Camouflage & Deception 2

‘Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool’ By Edward Wadsworth [National Gallery of Canada] Source: Wikipedia.

My original interest in this topic stems from the paintings of Edward Wadsworth. The concept of ‘Dazzle painting’ was invented by the artist Norman Wilkinson in 1917 as a way ‘of using stripes and disrupted lines to confuse the enemy about the speed and dimensions of a ship.’ According to Wikipedia:

All British patterns were different, first tested on small wooden models viewed through a periscope in a studio. Most of the model designs were painted by women from London's Royal Academy of Arts. A foreman then scaled up their designs for the real thing. Painters, however, were not alone in the project. Creative people including sculptors, artists, and set designers designed camouflage.The Vorticist artist Edward Wadsworth supervised the camouflage of over two thousand warships, and his post-war canvases celebrated his dazzling ships.

Wikipedia also claims that ‘Dazzle attracted the notice of artists, with Picasso notably claiming that cubists had invented it.’

One of the British Dazzle design. Source: Razzle Dazzle

One from a recently rediscovered set of 455 plans for ‘dazzle’ camouflage for US merchant ships in World War 1, first exhibited in 2009 at the Rhode Island School of Design in the US. Browse a big selection of them here: http://dazzle.risd.edu/

If you’re interested in exploring further, check out the fantastic BEDAZZLED blog. Its a great source.

(image credit: Jim and Jamie Richter. This picture is just one extraordinary image from this fantastic post - ‘Modernist Art in Camouflage’  - on the excellent www.darkroastblend.com

ADDITIONAL LINKS

Aircraft Camouflage

CUROUS FACTS: Military Camouflage & Deception 3

 

Full-color reproduction in The Sphere magazine (3rd August 1918) of a World War I painting (by an artist named S. Ugo of British soldiers applying disruptive camouflage to the surface of a cannon. Source: camoupedia blog

This third post draws on material from the CURIOUS FACTS ARCHIVE - ‘Camouflage: A History of Concealment and Deception in War’ by Guy Hartcup [David & Charles 1979] and an article tucked inside it - ‘General Pattern Army’ by John Windsor [The Independent on Sunday [4th August 1996].The latter was partly based on the first comprehensive history of camouflage uniforms – ‘Brassey’s Book of Camouflage’ by Tim and Quentin Newark, published that month. The following year, the Imperial War Museum staged an exhibition entitled ‘Camouflage’. Read the BBC News account and listen to audio interview with the curator here. Tim Newark’s pictorial history ‘Camouflage’ was published by Thames & Hudson the same year.

Beginning in the First World War, British, French and Germans employed artists as camouflage designers. Windsor writes:

‘The German Expressionist Franz Marc…. was released from the German frontline cavalry and let loose on nine tarpaulins intended to hide artillery from spot­ter planes. He wrote ecstatically to his wife that he had painted them with pointillist designs and that they represented his artistic develop­ment "from Manet to Kandinsky!" Neither Marc nor the Kandinskys survived the war.

The leader of the first military camouflage section, the fashionable Parisian portraitist Guirand de Sceuola, was always seen in white kid gloves as he supervised the work of 20,000 painters in French camouflage workshops.

CAMOUFLAGE AND CUBISM

‘In order to deform totally the aspect of an object, I had to employ the means that cubists use to represent it.’ —Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola

‘I well remember at the beginning of the war,’ Gertrude Stein wrote in 1938, ‘being with Picasso on the Boulevard Raspail when the first camouflaged truck passed. It was at night, we had heard of camouflage but we had not seen it and Picasso, amazed, looked at it and then cried out, yes it is we who made it, that is Cubism.’ Stein went on to suggest that the entire First World War had been an exercise in Cubism.’

- Patrick Wright [London Review of Books/23rd June 2005]

 

Detail from "The 40 Camofleurs", a 1916 French cartoon on camouflage artists attributed to Drevill (Imperial War Museum)

A different account of the French camofluers in Wikipedia:

Lucien-Victor Scévola is considered one of the inventors of military camouflage during World War I, together with sub-officer Eugène Corbin and painter Louis Guingot. At the start of the war, in September 1914, de Scévola, serving as a second-class gunner, experimentally camouflaged a gun emplacement with a painted canvas screen. On February 12, 1915, General Joffre established the "Section de Camouflage"  at Amiens.  By the end of 1915, de Scévola became commander of the French Camouflage Corps, employing cubist artists such as André Mare, a specialist in camouflaging lookout posts. By 1917, de Scévola's team had grown to 3000, taking in artists including Jacques Villon, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, Charles Camoin and Charles Dufresne.

More interesting information from the French Wikipedia on Camouflage [amended translation via Google Translate].

* The French Camouflage Corps had a chameleon badge as their official symbol. One of these creatures – a master of natural camouflage -  lived freely in the workshop of Louis Guignot.

* It claims that Guirand’s camouflage factory employed 1,200 men and 8,000 women.

* The Guinness Book of World Records dates the first use of modern camouflage as February 12th 1915

* It was during the First World War that foreign armies began using the French word ‘camouflage’ – which didn’t exist in their native languages.

Source: Imperial War Museum

* In 1916, German soldiers adopted a new steel helmet – the Stahihelm – which they painted with geometric shapes and bright colours in order to hide their silhouettes ‘when looking over the parapet’.

 

OBSERVATION POST TREES

Plan for constructing an observation post tree. Source: Imperial War Museum.

According to Hartcup’s book, de Sceola was the first to disguise observation posts as trees.

‘Trees stripped of their branches by bombardment were cut down at night and dummy trees substituted in which men could sit protected by steel plate and connected to base by telephone. The first dummy tree was set up near Lihors in May 1915 during the Artois battle.’

The English artist Solomon J Solomon, a Royal Academician and portrait painter led Britain’s camouflage section. He was instructed to follow the French example and make an observation post on the Yver Canal. Hartcup writes:

‘The banks were lined with poplars, willow and birches and Solomon made some drawings, at the same time as undergoing his baptism of fire, eventually selecting a willow.

‘He then returned to England to supervise the construction of the OP. The steel core, made of sections bolted together, was just large enough to hold and observer who mounted a ladder to his perch from where he could observe the enemy. Solomon design it so that the part facing the enemy would appear too small for a man to ascend the tree…The outside of the core was now covered with bark from a  decayed willow in Windsor Great Park, after permission had been obtained from the King to cut down the tree. When ready for final assembly the trunk was screwed into a steel collar which would be embedded in the ground. The whole equipment weighed about 7cwt [355.6kg] and required twelve men to lift it.’

Solomon J. Solomon’s own painting of his first observation post tree which was erected on 22nd March 1916 [Imperial War Museum]

 

CURIOUS FACTS: Military Camouflage & Deception 4

Left: Elaborate camouflage smocks created for snipers in World War 1 [Imperial War Museum]

‘Camouflage for personnel was not intro­duced until the Second World War,’ writes John Windsor.’ The "brushstroke" patterns of Second World War personnel camouflage show artist-designers still to the fore. Brushstrokes were standard issue in Britain, France and Thailand until the 1980s. It is modern collectors who have given patterns nicknames, not the army. There are probably 100 serious camouflage uniform collectors in the world, mostly in the US and Canada.’ Mass produced infantry camouflage had to wait until advances in textile printing,

"In Britain the army quite likes to see camouflage being used in fashion because at the end of the day it doesn't want to be different from the people it is fighting for and likes to be understood and appreciated by them. At one stage, the British Army thought of making their own street wear which they could sell and which would encourage interest in the military."

-Tim Newark

The crossover from military camouflage wear to street fashion is one that Tim explores in his book but the man who has done to most to not only investigate the subject but also manufacture and design camouflage fashion through his label maharishi is Hardy Blechman.

 

According to his website: Hardy Blechman is head designer of maharishi, the company he founded in 1994. Blechman, whose former experience lay in the international military and industrial clothing surplus trade, started maharishi by producing hemp and other natural fibre clothing as well as recycling workwear and military surplus.

In 2000, Blechman was named Streetwear Designer of the Year by the British Fashion Council. A second line, MHI,was launched by Blechman in 2001. In 2003, Blechman also set up a company producing non-violent toys. His flagship MHI store, DPMHI, opened in 2004.

In his first book published the same year, Blechman explored the subject of camouflage in great depth. ‘DPM: Disruptive Pattern Material’

An extensive review of the book  - ‘Cubist Slugs’ by Patrick Wright  - appeared in the London Review of Books/23rd June 2005.  If you have enjoyed reading these posts there is a great deal more historical information to be found here, particularly about Solomon J. Solomon and the American pioneer Abbott Thayer.

Here is some extracts:

‘It was only after 1945 that camouflage leaked into civilian society in the form of printed fabrics and army surplus garments. Far from being dissolved back into its ‘natural’ or ‘artistic’ constituents, camouflage carried military symbolism into civilian life. It was favoured by the hunter, the code-scrambling hippy, the survivalist, the anti-federalist fantasist. It became the unofficial uniform of diverse malcontents who went off to build shelters, real or symbolic, in the woods of the late 20th century.’

As the founder and ‘creative director’ of a company called Maharishi, he associates wearing ‘camo’ with conscientious objection and looks forward to ‘nullifying’ the military associations of the many camouflage designs illustrated in his book. Encouraged by the extent to which other items of clothing – he mentions the tie, the T-shirt and the cardigan – have made the journey from military to civilian use, he would like to convert the beauty of camouflage patterns by ‘taking them out of their practical context of concealment in battle’. Across many cultures, as he explains, green is felt to be ‘an inherently “good” colour’. It can reduce stress and ‘engender calm’ among psychiatric patients, and it comes with a long history dating ‘back to mythical figures such as the Green Man’.

Blechman, who started trading from a friend’s floor in Chelsea Harbour but soon moved east to establish his headquarters on Hackney’s Kingsland Road, acquired stocks of surplus utility clothing from the military and British Telecom. To begin with he bought and adjusted stuff he liked – changing the cut, adding screenprints or computerised embroidery – but soon he started to design his own clothes, using synthetic microfibre fabrics to create the ‘combat chic’ on which his success as a seller of streetwear is based. He feels, most ardently, that the military should not be allowed to ‘maintain its dominion over these patterns that were originally influenced by artists’ interpretations of the natural world’. He argues that the more camouflage is used outside the military, the less likely it is that camo-clad civilians like himself will continue to attract abuse.

See the website for ‘DPM: Disruptive Pattern Material: An Encyclopedia of Camouflage’ here.

Hardy Blechman continues his researches and writing on this subject on his excellent blog Camoupedia

MUSIC BOOKS: BUDDY BOLDEN, ALEXIS KORNER, CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & FRANK ZAPPA

Books arrive at The Generalist HQ from all quarters and sometimes they arrive in groups. Hence a quarter of music books, all of which are worth investigating. 

    The Buddy Bolden Band. Buddy is second from left in the back row. Source: www.mikeballantyne.ca

‘Coming Through Slaughter’ by Michael Ondaatje, most famously known as the author of ‘The English Patient’ is a stand-out experimental fiction (a first novel, first published in 1979) which imaginatively extrapolates from the scraps of knowledge known about the life of Buddy Bolden – a legendary cornet-playing pioneer of jazz. Ondaatje’s prose tries to mimic Bolden’s playing and the patchwork of different texts gives the whole work a musical feel. No recordings of Bolden exist and few photographs. This book has an incredible raw intensity to it matching Bolden’s raw life; he suffered from schizophrenia, was put in a mental hospital after an episode of ‘acute alcohol psychosis and died one year later in 1931 and at the age of 54. It stands in my mind alongside Geoff Dyer’s ‘But Beautiful’ as one of the greatest imaginative books on jazz.

in the book we meet the real life photographer  E.J. Bellocq, a strange distorted figure who haunted the brothels of New Orleans, almost a parallel figure to Toulouse Lautrec. He may have photographed Bolden. Bellocq destroyed most of his work and the only surviving glass slides were uncovered and rescued by Lee Frielander in the 1960s. See: iconic photos

*

Source: www.serdanoite.blogspot.co.uk

Alexis Korner was without doubt one of they key figures in the evolution of British music in the ‘50s and ‘60s as I now understand after reading Harry Shapiro’s thorough and absorbing biography.

His background was a mix of cultures and languages, his youth troubled, his appearance never less than striking, his voice distinctive. Along with Chris Barber and the short-lived pugnacious Cyril Davis, he certainly introduced blues to Britain through his clubs in Ealing and Soho. He was also a pioneer of rhythm and blues and his band Blues incorporated was a training ground and showcase for some of the great musicians of his time – including Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, Phil Seamen, Zoot Money, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Long John Baldry et al.

[Keef acknowledges his importance on p88 of ’Life’. Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts and Ian Stewart had all played with Alexis and he also became great friends with Brian Jones.]

Alexis played with a bewildering number of line-ups, often assembled on the same day as the gig, and extended his musical repertoire to include jazz, gospel and many other forms. He may not have been good at managing money but virtually no-one has a bad word to say about him. He had a natural talent for bringing people together and bringing out the best in them. His London flat where he lived with his wife and partner Bobbie and kids was Number One crash pad and social meeting place for a galaxy of great musicians from Charlie Mingus to Bob Dylan.

Source: www.bluesstammtisch.de/memorie.php

Alexis had a huge career also in broadcasting, hosting numerous radio and tv series on the music he loved. Later he toured restlessly all over Europe, triggering a blues boom on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Yet he never fully achieved either the celebrity or the financial rewards he deserved. This book celebrates a very special man, who died too young (at 55 on Jan 1st 1984). He deserves greater recognition. [There are lots of CDs available, videos on You Tube, online discographies and further info. Get surfing]

[I once had breakfast at the same hotel table with Alexis Korner, in Amsterdam at the first international Legalise Cannabis Conference, which I was covering for the NME and I also had the privilege of sharing a coach from London to Brighton and back with Captain Beefheart and he Magic Band in the early 70s.]

Source: louderthanwar

The Captain Beefheart bio is a stonker. Mike Barnes is not only intensely meticulous but his prose has a real zing in its step which brings Beefheart’s ‘out there’ music to life. A frenzied mixture of deep blues, rock, old Weird Americana  and free jazz, exemplified and crystallised in the acknowledged masterpiece of Beefheart’s ouevre ‘Trout Mask Replica’, Barnes relishes in its fury, complexity and intricate word play. He writes;

‘On the opening song, 'Frownland', the new universe of Trout Mask Replica is glimpsed in a one-and-a-half-minute microcosm. For the listener, at least, the tortuous rehearsals, hardship and deprivation had all been worth it. The standard role of the two guitars, bass and drums rock line-up is subverted to the point where nothing ever settles or is repeated to any extent. Stuttering drums vie for space with an angular bass and atonal guitar motif in a different metre, and soon a keening lead guitar line rips its way out of the tangled undergrowth. Less than fifteen seconds in, it dissolves into a torrent, the instruments thrashing around each other in complex contrapuntal patterns. But the music carries an inexorable forward motion - it rocks, in other words. The last piece in the puzzle is Van Vliet's vocal roar. He bellows out a yearning, soulful blues which further warps the already warped structure, pleading, 'I want my own land', realizing that his wish is becoming fulfilled as he sings the words.’

Barnes’ book provides a valuable key to understanding Beefheart the man and his often seemingly impenetrable music. As you will imagine, Don van Vliet’s life was a strange one. As a precocious child, he locked himself in his bedroom for three weeks whilst he modelled all the known mammals of the Northern hemisphere. Once hooked into music via his connection with Frank Zappa (they both lived in the same desert town), he proceeded to follow his unique musical path. He drilled his Magic Band obsessively, giving them alternative identities (Zoot Horn Rollo, The Mascara Snake etc) and browbeating them into learning complex musical pieces which he whistled but never wrote down. Kept in a permanent state of penury and hunger, the musicians stuck with his radical methods and produced music that has had a huge influence on a wide range of subsequent musical genres, analagous  to the effect William Burrough’s work has had on modern culture.

Source: http://home.gwi.net/~drrknrl/fzappa.html

Barry Miles bio on Zappa makes an idea companion piece. Zappa and Beefheart had the proverbial love/hate relationship for all of their lives yet each stimulated the other to produce landmark recordings.

By Miles’ account, the key event in Zappa’s life was when he was set –up by a cop who, in the guise of a used-car salesman, offered Zappa and his girlfriend to make an ‘exciting’ tape for a party, including ‘oral copulation’. Zappa spoofed the whole thing but when it came time to make the deal, he was busted on suspicion of conspiracy to manufacture pornographic materials and sex perversion – both felonies. Most of his six-month sentence was suspended but he did spend a hellish 10 days cramped together with 44 men in Tank C of the San Bernadino County Jail. Miles writes:

‘By the time he got out, he no longer believed anything the authorities had ever told him. Everything he had been taught at school about the American Way of Life was a lie. He would not be fooled again. He made sure that his pornographic tape was heard by everyone – he remade it time and time again…rubbing it in the face of respectable society, making America see itself as it really was: phoney mendacious, shallow and ugly.’

Zappa was blessed with a musical genius which he used to blend the ideas of the avant-garde composers Edgar Varese and Igor Stravinsky with 50s doo-wop to produce a vast catalogue of music that remains a unique body of work. His seeming lyrical obsession with sex and the underbelly of US society provided an odd counterpoint to the complex musical backgrounds, further pushing the boundaries at a time when busts for obscenity were common.

He doesn’t come across as a likeable characters. He treated his musicians with cold disdain and spend a large part of his life sequestered away in his own recording and film editing studios, living on a diet of hot dogs, coffee and cigarettes. His jail time put him off drug use completely but his sexual obsessions were given free reign. A control freak, he built intricate business empires and held court in ever-expanding homes where anything went.

Miles doggedly follows in detail the complexity of Zappa’s multivarious enterprises and brings to life most vividly the 60s musical scene in Los Angeles, both on Sunset Strip and Laurel Canyon, where a stellar cast of seminal musicians snorted, puffed, partied and played their way to stardom.

‘Coming Through Slaughter’ by Michael Ondaatje [Picador.1984] ; ‘Alexis Korner: The Biography’ by Harry Shapiro [ Bloomsbury 1996]; ‘Captain Beefheart’ by Mike Barnes [Quarto 2000]; ‘Frank Zappa’ by Barry Miles [Atlantic Books. 2004]

SOME PREVIOUS POSTS ON MUSIC BOOKS:

LED ZEPPELIN: TRAMPLED UNDER FOOT

KEEF LIFE

ELECTRIC EDEN: BRITAIN’S VISIONARY MUSIC

ROLLING STONES: PAST AND PRESENT

PHIL SPECTOR: TEARING DOWN THE WALL OF SOUND

SILVER SCREEN: JAPAN/AKIRA KUROSAWA & HIROKAZU KOREEDA

Akira Kurosawa is considered one of the world’s great film directors, best known for his samurai epics – Rashomon, Seven Samurai and Throne of Blood. He made 53 films including these three, my current favourites.

Dersu Uzala (1975) is the only film he produced and financed outside Japan. After his early success, Kurosawa was involved in a failed Hollywood project and his subsequent Japanese productions failed to ignite the box office. In a fit of depression, he tried to commit suicide in Dec 1971 and it was unsure whether he would work again. But in 1973 he was approached by the Russian Mosfilm studios and he proposed to them an idea he had been thinking about for thirty years – to make a film of the memoirs of the Russian explorer Vladimir Arseniev, who surveyed huge areas of uncharted wilderness in Ussuriland in the Far East of Russia in the 19th century. During this expedition he met a nomadic tribesman Dersu Uzala who became the group’s guide and Arseniev’s personal friend. Shot in colour over the course of a year in  challenging conditions, it is a moving and beautiful film which has become a personal favourite.

 My other two favourites are amongst the earliest and best detective and police procedural films in Japanese cinema.

‘Stray Dog’ (1949) stars a young Toshiro Mifune – who was to appear in 16 Kurosawa films – as a rookie detective whose pistol is stolen. Trying to track it down leads him into the illegal weapons market and the hunt for a young gangster. Kurosawa brings alive the streets of a sweltering Tokyo and both acting and cinematography are brilliant.

Also great is ‘High and Low’ (1963), in which the son of wealthy industrialist (again played by Mifune), is kidnapped for ransom. The film’s interesting twist in the story should stay as a surprise. What I find fascinating is the way he documents the police investigation (reminds me of Fritz Lang’s ‘M’), again beautifully filmed with great characters. Based on an Ed McBain novel, it bears comparison with the great Hollywood film noir.

 

 

 A Japanese director you may not have heard of, from a younger generation than Kurosawa, is  Hirokazu Koreeda. ‘After Life’ (1988) was his first feature film after making a string of documentaries and its a great one.

Set in and and around a dilapidated institution, this it seems is where the dead go before passing on to the other side. Here in less than a week, a trained team helps then isolate their one defining memory of their lives. This is then re-enacted and filmed; once screened the person disappears carrying that single memory only into an eternal future. From this unusual premise Koreeda builds a fascinating and truly original film, drawing on his documentary background and including real-life people alongside professional actors. Its genuinely moving and thought-provoking.

HISTORY OF ART: WILL GOMPERTZ/ROBERT HUGHES

  Let me begin by saying I am not the average reader of this book. I have been reasonably obsessed by the history of art since I was at school (a long time ago when, on school trips I first saw Ucello Brueghel, Pollock and Dali – all of which blew my mind).

In recent years I have spent an inordinate amount of time on three projects – one to find a diagrammatic way of representing individual artistic groups, second to find a way of mapping the history of art and three, collecting together pictures and paintings of artistic groups for a proposed book project. Thus when this new book appeared I devoured it in a couple of days.

John William Godward, RBA (British 1861-1922) Violets, sweet violets tondo, 92 cm. (36 1/4 in.). Source: Bonhams

Gompertz was a former director of Tate Modern, responsible for their website and the Tate Magazine and is now head of BBC Arts. A thin voluble character with large specs and  flyaway hair, judging by a promo video on YouTube, he did a stand-up whiz through on modern art at the Edinburgh Festival which led to the commission for this book.

The book is, as you would expect, a chronological journey through the main artistic -isms of the last 150 years prefaced by one of his main treatises – that much modern art stems mainly from one man – Marcel Duchamp and his infamous urinal (signed R. Mutt and titled ‘Fountain’), a ready-made everyday object that by being exhibited in an art gallery became art. Thus art was no longer about painting on canvas or making sculptures but could be anything you could think of in any medium.

This is certainly the most accessible and unintimidating popular history of art available and is a great starting point as an introductory text to this fascinating subject. Its very readable, packed with interesting stuff and I learnt a lot by reading it.

I suspect his audience may be divided between those who would consider this work a dumbing down of art history and others, probably a younger readership, who would find his approach excellent and invigorating – and funny. They will, I think appreciate his contemporary references and jokey analogies and his determined attempt to blow the dust of art history and try and bring it to life for a contemporary audience. He writes: ‘There are times when those of us involved in the arts talk and write pretentious nonsense. Its a fact of life: rock stars trash hotels, sportsmen and women get injured, arts folk talk bollocks.’ His attempt to demistify the impenetrable and communicate his undoubted enthusiasm for his subject are to be applauded.

Now here come some caveats as the book is not without its problems which are worth examining, the most important being the relative shortage of illustration – limited to two 8pp colour sections, 39 black and white illustrations peppering the text and some very weak cartoons. This means that Gompertz has to describe in words a great many of the artworks he talks about which can get tedious and are difficult to visualise particularly if you haven’t seen the original before. There is also not a single picture of any of the artists themselves. Presumably the publisher would argue this is to keep the price down to make it affordable. The hardback edition as it stands is £20.

The book contains a fold-out which uses the London tube network graphic as the basis for mapping the art history the book contains  This time-honoured informational graphic has been used so many times to chart other subjects as well that it has become a bit of a cliché. But it works well with book to underline its strengths and weaknesses.

To follow the analogy, this is a main-line view of art history. The bid to create a strong narrative arc inevitably leads to simplification in the service of creating a tidier story – dominated by great men (Gompertz devotes one chapter to women artists), key moments, art groups and the –isms.

In actuality, a better model for the history of art would be a biological one – perhaps an unruly unpruned irradiated bush with thousands of interconnections growing from numerous root stocks which as it grows, mutates into unexpected formations and cross-pollinates with other plants to produce strange new fruit. (the intertwined nature of art and photography is still waiting to be properly evaluated and communicated).

The book ends with BritArt,  discussed in a fairly non-critical fashion, and the rise of street art (and, inevitably Banksy). Gompertz believes now that modern art is very market orientated and is dominated by a new –ism: Entrepeneurialism (a term he has personally coined) with its new emperors being  artists like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons and  the ‘Big Daddy’ of contemporary art dealing Larry Gagosian, who now has galleries in New York, Beverley Hills, Paris, London, Hong Kong, Rome and Geneva.

In a significant paragraph Gompertz writes:

‘For the most part, contemporary art has been devoid of a hard political edge, save for the odd intervention that has generally had the look of a bandwagon hastily being jumped upon. On the whole, even when the avant garde artists of our age have been at their most aggressive and challenging, they have tended to present their work with a cheeky grin rather than an angry scowl. The inclination has been to entertain not campaign. The big shifts in society that have taken place over the last twenty five years have been largely overlooked by high-profile artists.’

 

Source: ‘Art in the Middle East’  Prospero

This may be true at high-end of art but it certainly is not true in general terms. What the book lacks is a real understanding of the impact of digital technologies on art making practices, forms and styles. It also ignores the flood of work now emerging from Brazil, India and Egypt to name but three. Increasingly multimedia in form, totally global, permanently connected and fully engaged with the problems of our time – both aesthetic, cultural and political – the new art defies easy classification as its struggles to find ways of describing our post 9/11 world. Rauschenberg famously said something about that apocalyptic moment, that it was the greatest work of art created by the Devil. Time to bring on the angels.

*

Having given Gompertz his due, you’ll be thirsty for the deeper insights, wise judgment and sonorous language of what I and many others consider the greatest art writer and critic of our time – the recently departed Robert Hughes who died in August this year.

Fortunately all the episodes of his classic tv series ‘The Shock of The New’ are now available on YouTube. As is the remarkable ‘The New Shock of The New’ made in 2004. Everything that is good about Hughes is in this programme which starts with 9/11. Enjoy.