Taking pot shots at Van Gogh at the National Gallery

Earlier this year two young women each threw a can of tomato soup at Van Gogh's painting of sunflowers at the National Gallery

Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland

throwing two cans of tomato soup at

Van Gogh's Sunflowers in the National Gallery

The video below shows what they did. They apparently caused criminal damage exceeding £10k

They pleaded 'not guilty' when their case was tried at London's Southwark Crown Court.

During the hearing, the defendants said they “couldn’t have cared less” if the painting had been damaged.

On Friday, they both received significant prison sentences.

• Phoebe Plummer, 23, was sentenced to two years in prison for causing an estimated £10,000 of damage to the frame of Sunflowers 1888. Wikipedia now describes as a British climate change activist and convicted criminal
• Anna Holland, 22, received 20 months for the same offence.

Prior to this, it seems very likely the two women charged had been told there was a good chance they'd go to prison for causing criminal damage. Hence they had others pleading their case and why they should not go to jail. 

Artists plead for activists who threw soup on a Van Gogh to be spared jail
More than 100 artists, curators and academics said Just Stop Oil action was in keeping with ethos of the arts

These are the Sentencing Guidelines for Criminal Damage

Note that if damage is valued at over £10,000, the case is tried at a Crown Court and a prison sentence is more than likely. Which is what happened. So those pleading on their behalf were effectively "performance art".

Of which there was more in the trial. Why do you plead” not guilty” when the whole thing is on video - unless you want to pursue further political protest eg the 20 minute statement in court by one of the protestors as to why it should be regarded as protest.

The Judge said

“You two simply had no right to do what you did to Sunflowers, and your arrogance in thinking otherwise deserves the strongest condemnation.

“The pair of you came within the thickness of a pane of glass of irreparably damaging or even destroying this priceless treasure, and that must be reflected in the sentences I pass.”

and

“Section 63 of the sentencing code requires me, in assessing the seriousness of your offending, to consider not only the harm your offence caused, but also the harm it might foreseeably have caused. For the reasons I have explained, that foreseeable harm is incalculable. Your offending is so serious that only custodial sentences are appropriate.”

Other protestors from the same organisation had obviously anticipated a prison sentence was likely and had planned ahead.

Which is why a little time after the sentence was announced, three more protestors were involved in the same painting being the target of their protest yet again. This time, they threw tomato soup again at TWO paintings of sunflowers by Van Gogh.

Review: Royal Society of Marine Artists Annual Exhibition 2024

This is a review of the Annual Exhibition 2024 of the Royal Society of Marine Artists - currently exhibiting at the Mall Galleries in London - until 28th September.

The exhibition is has lots of high quality artwork which is well hung and includes paintings (in various media), drawings, prints and sculpture and other 3D media.

Below this post covers

• different ways in which you can see the artwork
• a commentary on some of the aspects of the exhibition - given my commentary on a number of the artworks is contained in my Facebook albums
• an analysis of the sales to date - and a chart which shows these are spread across different price ranges and between members and open artists.

Marine scenes - water, skies and boats!
(East Gallery)

My artist to keep an eye on for the future in this year's exhibition produced the paintings top left and top right - and I was entirely unsurprised that top right sold - given it's a very contemporary painting of expensive yachts in a race at a prestigious event (racing around the Needles - in the Round the Island Race?) AND it's part of an edition of 5 and has been priced just under the £2k hurdle price! This very astute as well as accomplished artist is Alex Poyner and I fully expect her to become an Associate of the RSMA very soon - if she applies......

How to see the artwork online

I took a number of photographs when I visited the exhibition last Friday. This week I've spent a long time eliminating perspective distortions for those too high or too low for my current state of agility - and then uploading them to new Facebook Albums.  

These are the links to my photos of the:

• Artwork in the West Gallery
• Artwork in the North Gallery
• Artwork in the East Gallery

This is the only place - other than actually visiting the exhibition - where you can see the relative sizes of the artwork, which a lot of people find difficult to fathom when seeing artwork without a context and only numbers to guide them.

All my comments about artwork I liked can be found in commentary on artwork in the albums. 

You can also see 

• all the members artwork - in alphabetical order - on the RSMA website. I thought the idea of splitting the alphabet up into four separate pages and then providing clear signposts to different sections was excellent! A very fast solution to getting to see the artwork by the member whose artwork you really like!
• ALL the artwork  - by members and selected from the open entry - on the Mall Galleries website (see Annual Exhibition 2024 )
• if there was one criticism I'd make, it's that this image (below) is VERY BUSY.  The different text - in different fonts, sizes and colours - overlaying artwork makes it quite a challenge to understand quickly. I think it could be done a lot more simply - and that's the challenge I'm issuing for next year!

My comments on a number of matters

Exhibition Commentary 

To be honest, I've not got a lot to say which I didn't say last year (see Review: 78th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Marine Artists) so, 

• given the context of my new priorities (see I'm back - but slowing down and walking more!) and 
• less time for writing blog posts, 

I'm going to try and be less long-winded and a bit more succinct!

Diversity

This is a very masculine art society. Hence it's always pleasing to see more and more female artists submitting artwork and getting selected. 

Norman Ackroyd CBE RA (1938-2024)

I was very sad to hear that the eminent master printmaker Norman Ackroyd passed away last week - in the  afternoon of a fine warm day (Monday 16th September) at his home in Bermondsey. He was 86

Norman Ackroyd (1938-2024)

Such a contrast to his lithographs and prints of the windswept, rainy isles and vaporous clouds in the North of Scotland and other rugged Atlantic seascapes and landscapes in the UK and Ireland. He was a complete master of portraying the coasts on the Atlantic seaboard.

His capacity for creating vaporous clouds filled with sea birds - with amorphous giant shapes representing the coastline which has stood up the beating of winds and rain from west was simply amazing - and his prints had very many fans.

Norman Ackroyd's map of all the locations (with a pin) where he been
to create etchings of that landscape in his studio in Bermondsey

There's a couple of excellent Videos of him talking about his artwork and his processes on YouTube based on the BBC series "What do Artists do all day?" which reviewed him and his work. These are they....

I remember him very well from when he led the tour on the Press Preview for the RA Summer Exhibition in 2013 - which was the best I'd ever been to. It's always stayed in my memory. He struck me then as a complete "one-off" and a really interesting man who could speak about art in plain English. Probably something to do with the northerner in me responding positively to the fact he was born in Leeds in Yorkshire!

Norman Ackroyd CBE RA
talking about hanging Gallery III at Burlington House (RA Summer Exhibition 2013)
which included works hung in honour of the late Mary Fedden RA
who had recently passed away.

This is a video of Norman Ackroyd talking about the process of selecting and then hanging a Summer Exhibition.

Life and career of Norman Ackroyd

His website summarises his life, art education and the career of Norman Ackroyd. He graduated from the Royal College of Art 60 years ago this summer.

• 1938: Born Leeds
• 1956-61: Leeds College of Art
• 1961-64: Royal College of Art, London
• 1988: Elected Royal Academician
• 1994: Appointed Professor of Etching, University of the Arts
• 1999 - 2000: Professor of Printmaking
• 2000: Elected Senior Fellow, Royal College of Art
• 2007: Awarded a C.B.E. for Services to Engraving and printing
• 2013: Elected Senior RA: 1 October 2013

He has produced work for many significant commissions and has work in prestigious collections all over the world. It also sells pretty fast at the RA Summer Exhibition

He called his medium “painting with acid”, and he was on friendly terms with a vast array of the chemicals, from the violent hydrochloric to the lively nitric, which “bites in all directions”. Daily Telegraph obituary

His work in Art Collections

His work is in the collections of very many prominent art galleries and organisations.

Selected Public Collections

Albertina Museum, Vienna

• Art Institute of Chicago
• Arts Council of Great Britain
• British Council
• British Museum, London 
• Cleveland Museum of Art
• Fogg Art Museum, Harvard
• Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva
• Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• Museum of Modern Art, New York
• National Gallery of Art, Washington DC
• National Gallery of Canada
• National Gallery of Norway
• National Gallery of Scotland
• National Gallery of South Africa
• Queensland Art Gallery
• Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
• The Royal Collection, Windsor Castle
• Stedelijk, Amsterdam
• Tate Gallery, London Norman Ackroyd born 1938 - Tate". Tate Britain. 
• Utah Museum of Fine Art

and numerous museums and art galleries in the United Kingdom

Ackroyd also received several public mural commissions, produced in etched stainless steel or bronze. Recent commissions included Lloyds Bank, London; British Airways, Birmingham Airport; Freshfields, London; Tetrapack, Stockley Park, Heathrow; a bronze mural for the Main Hall of the British Embassy, Moscow; and Lazards Bank, Stratton Street, London W1. RA Obituary

 

Obituaries

Other posts about his life include:

I'm back - but slowing down and walking more!

Summer break is over, health matters are in hand and moving and I'm about to resume blogging again - and I'm very nearly 70!

Study of bodily proportions by Albrecht Durer
British Library Treasures Exhibition

I've made a lot of progress with my health issues which were causing concern....

• I've had my hips x-rayed and endless blood tests
• I've had my pre-treatment chat with the physio and start early October
• Plus I've also got an appointment in early October to see the Orthopeadic people at the Surgery Centre about the hip - and then we'll work out whether it's going to shoulder replacement and then hip replacement or hip and then shoulder. (The shoulder replacement got 'bumped' in 2020 when I chose to do the ankle fusion first!)
• plus a couple of lengthy chats with my GP about the results of various tests and we're getting other issues sorted as well
• and I'm on new medication!

So steady progress and fewer worries on the health front. (see I need to take a break - before my hip does!)

I'm also very, very committed to my long walk every day - as it's the only time I feel normal (as per NICE recommendations for those with osteoarthritis).This might sound very odd for somebody with severe osteoarthritis. However, exercise helps enormously with both functionality and mobility and keeps my musculature etc in good nick for the next time I'll be relearning how to walk. No matter how much your skeleton falls apart, the bits that actually keep you walking are the tendons and ligaments!

I'm now averaging over 6,000 steps a day - which can take a long time depending on the route I take and what I stop to see en route

Average steps from my daily walk

One day this week my walk comprised walking 

• from the David Hockney Auction Exhibition at Phillips in Berkeley Square (the auction was held yesterday) 
• down to the Green and Stone Gallery on the Fulham Road in Chelsea for a PV for the Amicus Botanicus Exhibition (which is on until Saturday) 
• through Mayfair, Hyde Park, along and through Knightsbridge and into Chelsea.

The key thing is to keep finding places to walk to with interesting things to look at!

However I'm still as STIFF as a board in the evening and extremely unsteady on my feet after about 8pm - which continues to be very worrying. I'm thinking about installing grab rails at key points....

So, in terms of going forward....

• #1 priority is getting health matters sorted - so I can continue to enjoy life. 
• #2 priority is a steady unrelenting focus on keeping mobile - to keep me safe and avoid becoming even more decrepit
• #3 priority is I'm 70 next month - and I've decided I'm going to become more choosy as to how I spend my time
• #4 priority is writing about art - but more selectively.  Some posts might become more picture oriented which can be quicker to do.... I'll certainly still be writing about
• annual exhibitions of national art societies
• major art competitions - including those on television!
• #5 priority - is to mine what I've written in the past and make it available one way or another. This blog heas nearly 20 years of archives!! I'm thinking about 
• resurrecting past posts via Facebook - as I've been doing recently (and maybe Instagram) and 
• maybe writing ebooks - based on past projects and talks.
• maybe doing more Zoom talks.

How about you - how are you prioritising matters as your life progresses?

I need to take a break - before my hip does!

I'm currently trying to deal with and sort out some health issues which have cropped up recently and which I need to understand better and also get addressed.

So I'm having a bit of a break - while you're all on your summer holidays and/or watching the Olympics! :)

It's essentially a progression of my Osteoarthritis - which to date has been defined as:

• severe OA: bone on bone in ankle - sorted via the Ankle Fusion Surgery
• severe OA: bone on bone in shoulder - I need a shoulder replacement
• pain in right hip - back at the end of 2021, both hips were x-rayed before the ankle surgery and it was determined I had osteoarthritis in my hips too. Essentially this meant "do nothing but keep under review"

bilateral degenerative changes in the hip joints with lateral osteophyte formation and reduction in joint space.

Image courtesy of OrthoInfo

However, something changed radically and very suddenly recently.  Maybe a big chunk of cartilage has broken off? My right hip is now making me very stiff at night, tries really hard to collapse and generally inhibits/prevents me from walking at night or early morning. I sometimes cannot move. It's rather like walking on glass. I'm now very concerned about falling at night.

I think maybe the amount of time I was on my feet standing during a couple of exhibitions / private views in June and July has maybe triggered it - so I now need to be VERY careful.

The odd thing is I'm more or less OK if I'm walking during the day - which I do every day for my ankle and hip (as per NICE recommendations for those with osteoarthritis). In fact, the fact I'm mobilising during the day is entirely due to NOT sitting down and mobilising during the day. 

• doing regular and consistent exercise, even though this may initially cause pain or discomfort, will be beneficial for their joints
• long-term adherence to an exercise plan increases its benefits by reducing pain and increasing functioning and quality of life

However the walking  and getting up and down and doing things (e.g. housework) on an hourly basis takes up a LOT of time and makes finding time for writing a tad more difficult!

BUT I'm now finding it very, very difficult to walk at night or early morning after sitting or lying down - as in I'm incredibly stiff, can barely move at times and can only walk with difficulty, hanging on to stuff! The prospect of falling and maybe fracturing my hip is a very real concern. 

I'm slapping on the Voltarol, have started taking painkillers again and am also doing specific exercises. Plus we're thinking about installing proper rails and me using a frame at night.

Bottom line I need to get my hip scanned again - I suspect I've moved to bone on bone - and work out with the doctors what's the best way forward. Which I very much suspect will probably be injections while I wait for a hip replacement.

Plus I've got some other issues which need sorting which are also complicating matters.

I'll be back by September - maybe sooner.