I’m reading Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz. It’s the first in his Cairo trilogy, and contributed to his winning the Nobel Prize. I read it a few years back, and didn’t get around to the rest of the trilogy, but I think this is a good time to restart. The book is set during WWI, and the Australian occupying forces are presented very unfavorably, but I suspect accurately. If you remember the scene in Gallipoli where one of the Aussies smashes up the shop of a merchant he accuses of cheating him, then sheepishly realises he’s in the wrong shop, you’ll have the general picture. This book was first published in 1956, so it gives a very minor indication of the length of cultural memory in this part of the world. Of course, the Australians play only a minor and mainly offstage role – the book is basically about the life of a purdah-bound woman and her family.
I also went to see the Albert Namatjira exhibition at the National Gallery. I didn’t make it to the concurrent Blue Poles and Big Americans exhibitions – I’ve seen much more of the latter than of Namatjira, which says something. Namatjira and Jackson Pollock were almost exact contemporaries in both birth and death, and both were brought undone by alcohol, but there the similarities end. Pollock was the last gasp of modernism in art – he not only talked the talk of the tortured Romantic genius, but walked the walk as well. Of course, there are still ‘shocking’ and ‘confronting’ works like those in the Sensation exhibition that didn’t make it here, but this is just going through the motions. Most of the works were presold to the Saatchi and Saatchi advertising agency who then set about stirring up the obligatory furore in order to boost the sale prices for their clients/contract employees.
Namatjira is another story. He brought the 19th century obsession with light and form to Central Australia, and produced some startling insights, but by the 1950s no serious art critic wanted to know about applying old-style representational art to a new landscape. Now that modernism is finally past a joke, he may get some of the recognition he deserves. The same applies to botanical illustrator Ellis Rowan, on at the National Library.
Finally, on Friday, I went to the Merry Muse folk club to hear Tyneside singer Bob Fox with a mixture of modern and traditional folk – a great night with some excellent support acts. It’s one of the best clubs I’ve been to at a time when folk music is increasingly focused on mega-festivals like Woodford. Canberra readers who are interested can contact the organiser, Bill Arnett at bandb@effect.net.au.

Update Idly following the links on Jason’s blog, I came to 2blowhards.com which I imagined would be a particularly ranting warblog. Instead, it’s a feast of cultural comment, leading me to this story of British culture minister, Kim Howells, denouncing the entrants for the Turner Prize. He posted a note on the comments board “If this is the best British artists can produce then British art is lost,” the note read. “It is cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit.” Three cheers for Kim!
Revealingly as regards the current status of art, Reuters posted this story under the category “Oddly Enough – Weird, Funny and Strange News Stories”