A Personal Miscellany

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I stumbled upon this Jacob Nielsen blog usability article the other week. I’m finally getting round to beginning to respond to parts of it. Number 1 in the mistakes top 10 is “No Author Biography”. Of course, it’s not gospel, but this does seem good advice. So the following will be linked from the ‘About’ link on the right from now on.

This is how my first post to this blog started:

A beginning of sorts… an accretion of personal miscellanies… What will I write here? Snippets, shavings, offcuts; no time for full carpentry - save that perhaps for paid works. This will be a place for the untidy, the disordered: nicknacks and ticket stubs, scribbles and nail clippings, long pauses and short bursts. A little place of no ambition exception the slow aggregation of details. If you are not I, then I make no apology to you, dear reader, for this is an entirely personal affair.

(Sounds slightly defensive a couple of years down the line and I have the mildest of hopes for feedback via comments, but I’m not working too hard on that one…)

This is a bio I wrote for All About Jazz:

From traveller to kitchen porter to secretary to fine artist to web designer to university lecturer to partner of Is to one-man web team to dad of Amy and then Gabriel to manager/creative director to project leader to music journalist. Where next?

Dear person who wrote about David Bomberg’s Hear O Israel…

You’ll think me very naive as I don’t really understand about blogs, but I can help you about this great painting.

It’s in the Jewish Museum in New York. Reproductions are in several books including Richard Cork’s monograph David Bomberg, Yale University Press, 1987, as well as in the Royal Academy catalogue from its exhibition of modern British art, held in 1987 or 1988 - also in the catalogue for the Bomberg retrospective at the Tate in 1988.

It was owned until not many year’s ago by the artist’s niece, Cecily Bomberg, who lives in London. She loaned it to the Tate for many years. When she needed to raise money, she gave first option to the Tate to buy it. The director, Sir Nicholas Serota, pleaded poverty and made no effort to raise money from potential donors, who could very easily have been assembled. When the work was being taken down, he rung his hands. It was a disgraceful ideological decision, in line with the entire venal establishment ethos that Bomberg loathed and which drove him to death effectively by starvation two years after finishing this painting. This was despite Serota having exhibited the painting at the Whitechapel in London in 1979, when he was director there prior to his appointment to the Tate.

The loss to London was a gain to New York.

There was an exhibition of work by Bomberg of Ronda in Andalucia, where Hear O Israel was painted, in the town in October 2004. In June 2006 there will be an exhibition in Ronda of work by Bomberg’s friend and student, Miles Peter Richmond, who painted with him in Ronda from 1954 until Bomberg’s death in 1957, and who was living very close to him when Hear O Israel was painted. You can see Richmond’s work on http://www.milesrichmond.co.uk .

With very good wishes,

Paul Trewhela
paultrewhela@yahoo.co.uk

About

I’ve been writing this blog for quite a lot longer than three years and now I’m finally getting round to writing something in the About page. But what to write? Oh well, if you check the category listings you’ll see what I cover. It’s a ragtag assortment of bits and bobs, anything that catches my fancy really. Unsurprisingly, much of that is music. I much appreciate comments, but whether you feel like making them or not, I hope you find something of interest.

Feel free to get in touch at enquiries + the at sign + eleventhvolume + full stop + com

My other activities can be found at www.eleventhvolume.com

Paul Trewhela 31.12.05 / 9am

11V 01.01.06 / 8pm

Thank you Paul for that brief history. It does seem that Bomberg is still not accorded the respect he’s due. I was in fact lucky enough to see Hear O Israel at the Royal Academy’s British Art of the 20th Century overview. That must have been something like 15 years ago. It’s an incredibly moving work and I recall spending a lot of time with it. Sometime not that long after the RA show, I also saw an exhibition of Bomberg’s work in Spain, either Seville or Barcelona. I’m a fan of the painting of his students Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossof, but ultimately prefer their teacher’s late work I think. Thanks once again.

tihopilik 08.07.07 / 4pm

Hello

I can’t be bothered with anything these days, but shrug. I just don’t have anything to say recently.

Bye

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