Well this is beginning to look like a rant or a crusade, it might be but I'm passing it off as serendipity. When I bumped into the Professor as it were, it was a racing certainty that I would tumble into her bed, or not! It is truly a celebrity piece, it made Tracy a celebrity overnight, it lived with Charles Saatchi for a while and it is now owned by a Count, that's not a euphemism, the Count paid 2.5 million for it! To really make the A-list it now needs Lenny Henry to sleep in it! To be honest I can usually cope with this kind of tosh, there is a lot of it swilling about and I have a good sense of humour. It's harmless, completely vacuous and really lazy art but it's good for the bankers, the trustees, the auctioneers, the arts editors, the late night review presenters, the tourists, the tabloids, sometimes it keeps a tattooed sportsman off the front page. But then the boat gets rocked, a 'curator' needy for attention has a bright idea! As a general rule I think that when most curatorial staff have these eureka moments they should be packed off for an enema before discussion takes place. Last year the Professor of Drawing managed to give Egon Schiele's reputation a boost by exhibiting her 'drawings' next to his 'tracings' so this year she is going to add a little lustre to the work of that much unsung master Francis Bacon. That's good then. Quote,'People will look at the Bacons around it and they will understand the connection with the bed and my other drawings. They will see the bed is Art and that with these incredible artworks around it it is in good company ' That's good then.
Goodness, the Prof's bed is a bit 'naughty' too, it's those dirty pants, isn't she a one! Now real sleaze takes some talent, I don't know if sleaze can be classy, yes it can, Walter Richard Sickert says so. True his beds have bodies in them, dead or alive, but the bodies have to compete for our attention. No one has done rumpled, crumbled, used and soiled like Sickert. You can smell those sheets and counterpanes, they bear witness. Brilliant.
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BOB WESTLEY
AGED AND AWKWARD
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September 2023
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