I'm just back from Morocco and I thought you might like to see the mural paintings in Asilah, a small fortified town on the Atlantic coast. I had no idea that this old town was an arts venue but apparently Asilah hosts a festival every summer. The mural painting is one of the main events.

 

Huffington Post has published my latest recommended book list:

Ten Novels on Art, Artists and Art World Shenanigans

Here’s a summary:

Judging by the number of people visiting public art galleries – the figures are increasing year-on-year according to government stats – I reckon there must be an appetite for novels delving into the art business. I’ve compiled a list of 10 novels ranging from historical fiction and thrillers through to more philosophical writings. Some are successful in their authentic portrayal of artists-at-work while others deal with the murky world of art dealing and forgery.

In no particular order:

1.  Headlong   by  Michael Frayn (1999)

2. Men in Space by Tom McCarthy (2007)

3. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927)

4. Point Omega by Don DeLillo (2010)

5. The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant (2004)

6. Glover’s Mistake by Nick Laird (2009)

7. Girl with a Pearl Earring Tracy Chevalier (1999)

8. Life – A User’s Manual by Georges Perec (1978), translated (1987) by David Bellos

9. The Man in the Picture by Susan Hill (2007)

10. Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey (2006)

Any I've missed out that you'd like recommend?

First, apologies to Rob for quoting only the last paragraph of his blog:

Despite the brilliance of Streep's portrayal, the Iron Lady's best scenes are the flashback scenes with a young Margaret in early 1940s Grantham. She drinks in her father's expectations with a kind of eye-popping intensity, braves the Lutftwaffe to save the butter from destruction during an air-raid, and carries on with a kind of piety and self-belief that would soon impinge on lives beyond the flat plains of Lincolnshire.

Full blog here.

Well I couldn't agree more. I'm no film critic but . . .  I felt the film tried to cover too much and it felt more like a tv drama doc with big budget stars chucked in. Setting the film in Thatcher's retirement worked well. And I, too, thought the Grantham scenes were the film's most successful. I would have liked the film to focus on one major issue in office - the miners' strikes or the sinking of the Belgrano - rather than dipping into so many political battles. I think more detail was needed to get an understanding of the belligerance at the core of her character.

 

There's no need to feel glum if you can't make the trek to St Ives for the Tate's abstraction exhibition "The Indiscipline of Painting." Somewhat under-publicised, the show is moving to the University of Warwick's Mead Gallery (14 January - 10 March).

I've reviewed this excellent exhibition for The Huffington Post.

Peter Davies

Small Touching Squares Painting

1998. Acrylic and pencil on canvas. Displayed: 254.2 x 457.2 cm Tate

© 2011 Peter Davies. All Rights Reserved

Waiting for ink to dry – the end of an 8-day process to make Green Gravity No.1. It's the latest in a new body of abstract work that I've been developing over the past year.

Hmmm, I'm pretty excited about this latest development. I pipette ink onto cartridge paper and lift one edge of the paper until one of the drops runs. Then I keep the paper in that position (as in the photo above) until the ink dries. Then I repeat this process several times, lifting each edge in turn. See the close-up:

I like Ian Davenport's description of his own painting as:

"big drips . . . absurd, quite stupid really . . . a journey from a dumb thing to somewhere else."

 

 

If you missed the major survey show of Atsuko Tanaka at Icon Gallery, Birmingham the show can still be seen at Espai D'Art Contemporani de Castelló, Spain until 31 December 2011 and it then travels  to the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Japan (4 February - 6 May 2012).

But if you're unlikely to be passing either location, you can catch my review of the Icon show on The Huffington Post: "Time Travelling With Atsuko Tanaka"

 

I’ve compiled a list of my favourite novels that have fractured narratives. This list has been published with a description of each novel on The Huffington Post and Flashlight Worthy.

Novels with fractured narratives were once considered experimental and edgy but today they have become mainstream. Our complicated and increasingly uncertain lives seem to be mirrored by the fragmented stucture of these often challenging novels. We’re obliged to work a little harder but the rewards can be greater.

Life – A User’s Manual by Georges Perec translated (1987) by David Bellos

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (2004)

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka (2005)

The Hours by Michael Cunningham (1999)

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer (2009)

The Unfortunates by B S Johnson (1969)

If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller by Italo Calvino translated (1981) by William Weaver

The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner (1931)

A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2010)