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Would you guys recommend Robin D.G. Kelley's writing?

See halfway down the page on this link, a post from the Blindman that helps with viewing BBC content abroad...Blindman's Blues Forum

I enjoyed the programme too - some great footage (it looked flippin' windy (and cold) on that station platform in Manchester!). Was nice to see a very brief snippet of Rev Louis Overstreet amongst the clips, a fuller version on youtube - Working On The Building Her friend playing the piano and singing was great, I wished they had shown more!

One of the few that I can recognise as Motherwell was into Dada and edited that great anthology of the movement - something of Arp in him It's interesting - the difference in seeing the work in the flesh. The artist that surprised me most was Dali I think, due to the small scale... sometimes it can be disappointing - I know it sounds ridiculous, but even when I visited the Great Pyramid it was a bit of an anti-climax, I couldn't really grasp the scale or something - due to over-familiarity

Definitely agree, and I think I prefer his cockerels to his doves - more spikes! A still life from the show I really love, and which would look nice in my living room: re. American Expressionism, I really need to learn more about it, and it definitely appeals to my tastes Remembered another interesting show from last year - a small one on Mexican prints at the British Museum - JG Posada etc. I like woodcuts.

I tried to see the big Van Gogh show in London last year but had the same experience as BillF with Gauguin - enormous queues (and not enough time to wait). But instead of the Van Gogh I went to 'Theo Van Doesburg and the International Avant Garde' at Tate Modern which was v interesting. One of those shows where much of the theory is so monumental next to the actual results - the straight lines of De Stijl and constructivism etc actually looking surprisingly hand-made. Van Doesburg's double life as a Dadaist was featured along with some Kurt Schwitters collages (who is amongst my faves) Across the hall there was an Arshile Gorky show which I kick myself I didn't look at afterwards, but ran out of time In August I went to see 'Peace and Freedom' in Liverpool, a Picasso exhibition I'm waiting for the major new gallery - the Hepworth, to open in Wakefield where I live

Who seems to have been a bit of a stirrer... in regard to his later courtship of Picasso, John Richardson finds him guilty of "abject toadying"

That book of his writings sounds interesting. I suppose Sickert's change of heart about Matisse might just be due to the variety in Matisse's painting? - the motor car picture mentioned in the quote above, and the Nice window paintings from the same period, look to be based on sound observation and disciplined drawing, observation of light etc.. that is, in a slightly more 'Sickertian' manner than the Matisses where the subject is subordinate to some artificial or abstract device. I get the feeling reading Sickert's review of a Futurist exhibit that he was suspicious about new fads and styles that might be based on theories rather than observation - "no amount of explanatory doctrine and militant defence will make a bad draughtsman into a good one"... but he applauds the principle of rebellion, and the refusal to be hypnotised by the past. Whatever their differences, Fry rated Sickert highly enough as a painter to have his 'Queens Road Station' hanging above his fireplace at home. Also, just to put his views on Fry's post-impressionist show into context, the English papers had lesser critics calling the artists lunatics, or like a plague of rats, or else demanding that the paintings on show should be destroyed!

I tried to see the Gauguin - I was passing through London a few weeks back and made a detour especially (thus missing a train and costing me ££), and the Tate was shut! - Though it was 6pm on a Monday, I just assumed it would be open, 24 hour city and all that.

The Revenant Albert Ayler box and, at the last minute, the fabulous Bear Family calypso box - West Indian Rhythm - which I've had my eye on for ages and was halved in price at Jumbo Records in Leeds! Thanks Jumbo.

I was reading some stuff about Roger Fry recently - the painter/critic and contemporary of Sickert's. He said of Sickert that he was "whimsical, capricious, wilfully subjective in his opinions and humorously unreasonable in his upholding of them" - He and Fry were split on the art of the early 20thC and Sickert criticized Fry for casting Cezanne as the first of the moderns in his big post-impressionist exhibition. Sickert said Cezanne "was made to cover the impudent theories of Matisse and Picasso, who, talented themselves, have invented an academic formula which is the salvation of all arrivistes"... it's easy to read Sickert as a 'mouldy fig' but it must have been a hell of a time to be an art critic!

'Help' - I like it - and I never thought a tuba could fit the bill! All this stuff broadens the original thing I had in mind, which was kind of panoramic, like a view of the city at night. The prowling bass notes on some of these suggestions kind of brings it right down into the street, personal (to my ears)... another one I remembered - 'Think Deep' on Coleman Hawkins 'The Hawk Flies High' (any recommendations of similar Hawkins stuff greatly appreciated!). Listening to this kind of stuff really changes the mood, and the scene - makes me feel on my drive to work that I'm more like Travis Bickle than the usual Chevy Chase

Huddersfield -8 degrees. Been wearing my coat all day in the office today and yesterday - even when I got too warm, I couldn't bring myself to take it off, I felt like I was still partly at home and kept in on. Very cosy. But I didn't then feel the benefit of it when I went out. And I was warned about this when I was a child.

Started slowly working my way through all these suggestions - loads of great stuff thus far, thanks everyone. 'I Want to Live' is great - as is the Miles Davis and the 'Crime Jazz' things... Just listening to 'Fly in a Bottle' and like it very much too...

No real preference on era, or anything else other than 'noir-ish' etc - I don't know enough to rule stuff out! thanks - will give things a listen later, at work at the mo...

This might already have been asked but I couldn't find it.... I would be grateful for some recommendations of jazz that is kind of noir-ish, sleazy, cinematic, urban, minor key (maybe) - the only example of what I mean that I can name is Raymond Scott's Naked City (and I only know this track )... or possibly the Bernard Hermann Taxi Driver music. The Raymond Scott one is perfect, kind of dark but neon-lit. Music that might be illustrated with pics like these:

Well this kind of joke is bound to have its knockers - but you just have to take these things on the chest. Also to be fair, there are many other threads on here that could be used to repel women if they fell into the wrong hands

Missed that programme - hopefully they'll repeat it... Here's one for today's weather, hopefully... Cezanne - MELTING snow at Lestaque On Wednesday I tried to abandon my car in a vast empty pub car park in Wakefield and walk, but was told I risked getting clamped - even though the traffic was immobile and there was a blizzard!

Keith Vaughan - Village Under Snow

Me too - reminds me of something like 'Raise Four'

Edward Bawden - Brick House, Great Bardfield

M62 rush hour

Snowed in yesterday, made it in this morning The Calder Valley as I arrived: