sandr020

Over the past 150 years, The Republican Party/Grand Old Party moved from a racially prog­res­s­ive, Northern party.. to one that that domin­ates the South and gets almost no support from non-white vot­ers. These changes are totally counter-intuitive to a non-American historian, so I have examined three historians: Annabelle Quince , Natalie Wolchover  and Tim Stanley . The Whigs formed in opposition to the policies of Democratic Pres­id­ent, Andrew Jack­son (1829–37). The Whigs supported the suprem­acy of the US Congress over the Presidency, and favoured a programme of mod­ernisation, banking and pro­tectionism for manufacturing. It appealed to entrepreneurs, planters, reformers and the growing urban middle class, but not to labourers and farmers. Slavery was only one of many issues in the country’s politics then, usually rel­atively minor. The American South based its econ­omy on the en­slavement of non-whites, and the two major parties, Democrats and Whigs, were willing to let...

I have two important reasons for focusing on Neil Simon. Firstly my family life seemed to replicate his: Russian parents, Jewish, Yiddish-speaking, impoverished in the Great Depression and very keen on tertiary education. Secondly I saw every American play and musical in the 1950s and early 60s, but didn’t enjoy the experience until Neil Simon’s works started arriving in Australia. Neil Simon (1927–2018) was born and grew up in Manhattan, where he lived with his Russian parents and his older brother Danny . His parents were not happy together, made worse by financial hardship caused by the Great Depression. The two boys were sometimes forced to live with various aunts and uncles, instead of in the family home. Needless to say, Danny and Neil took refuge at the cinema as children, finding particular delight in comedies. Neil studied for a short time before signing up for the Army Air Force Reserve, then served as a sports editor for the Lowry Field Base newspaper. He studied at th...

I can recognise and love every one of William Hogarth 's (1697-1764) works of art. What I did NOT realise that one of his dogs, Trump (c1730–1745), appeared in a number of his engavings and paintings. Apart from looking ugly, it has been suggested by Hogarth's biographer Ronald Paulson that this dog appeared as an emblem of the artist's own pug-nacious and dog-matic character. Hogarth was clever and famous for blasting whatever he con­sid­ered to be politically corrupt, vulgar, criminal, charitable and patriotic. The artist was disparagingly nicknamed the Painter Pugg.   But Hogarth continued to use the dog as his trademark in a sat­ir­ic­al 1763 engraving The Bruiser . The image was   based on his 1745 self-portrait with Trump, replacing art critic Charles Churchill who was lampooned as a drunken bear. Note the rude dog, urinating on a copy of the “Epistle to William Hogarth”, published by Charles Churchill, archenemy of the painter. How prescient William Hogarth was!! ...

The Tartan Weaving Mill on The Royal Mile in Edinburgh covers 5 storeys inside, with an exhibition that shows the whole process involved in tartan production: shearing sheep, working looms, making a kilt and being photographed kitted out. So I already knew that tartan   was not described in Scotland until the C16th . In 1538, James V ordered a tartan hunting out­fit for himself and his men: they wore trews/close-fitting trousers and stockings of a warm stuff of divers colours call­ed tartan. A plaid about their shoulders, which is a mantle of divers colours, of much finer and lighter stuff than their hose, with blue flat caps on their heads. Thus the belted plaid appears to have become a loose garment made up of 5 metres of double tartan. Highland looms could only weave a maximum width of 75 cms so lengths had to be sewn together down their long edge to make the plaid. Such outfits were practical for riding and led to the aristocratic fashion for tartan trews. The trews wer...

Victoria   Spanning 200 ks across rural  Wimmera-Mallee  in Victoria, the fed­er­al and state-funded  Silo Art Trail  was designed to stimulate soc­ial, cultural and economic benefits to the region through art and tourism. Famous Brisbane street artist  Guido van Helten ’s works adorn public walls in UK and Ireland, France, Ukraine, Bel­arus and Est­on­ia. He was invit­ed to  Brim  (pop 260 in the Wimmera) during 2015, and was asked to come up with a design inclusive of the locals. The project organ­is­er of  a Melbourne art management business said the project would cost $10,000, made possible with grants from Yarriambiack Shire, Regional Arts Victoria and the Brim Active Community Group, plus donations. Luckily Guido always believed that silos had perfect sur­faces for painting street art. In Brim he painted a 30m x 30m scene dep­icting the Farmer Quartet across the four GrainCorp’s decom­mis­s­ioned grain silos. Created in van Helten’s fam...

Harold Freedman (1915–99) was born in Melbourne and educated at Melbourne Technical Col­lege. Starting his long career in 1936, he worked in all public arts: port­raits, war propaganda, polit­ic­al car­toons, graphic design, ad­vertising, illust­ration, children’s books and large-scale murals. Harold Freedman: Artist for the People was at the Art Gallery of Ballarat in 2017. Freed­­man’s designation as a people’s artist was seen in his democr­atic teaching style, his well-known murals, and his serv­ice as an Official War Artist in WW2. But whereas Christopher Allen (The Australian, May 2017) and blogger Black Mark thought the work was insensitive to modern art styles, Ballarat curator Julie McLaren believed the work was access­ible, democratic and full of honour for the WW2 soldiers. In WW2, Freedman enlisted and became a war artist attached to the Royal Austral­ian Air Force Histor­ical War Records Sec­tion. He worked during 1944-5, in Bor­neo, Noemfoor and around Australia. F...

For the 2017 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces, the National Gallery of Victoria/NGV put on a fine exhibition called Van Gogh and the Seas­ons . This exhibition featured works lent by intern­ational museums, and attracted a huge number of Australian visitors. This year the NGV, in partnership with The Museum of Modern Art New York , is presenting MoMA at NGV: 130 Years of Modern and Contemp­or­ary Art as the 2018 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces ex­hib­it­ion. From 9th June–7th Oct 2018, the exhibition is providing a unique survey of the Mus­eum’s iconic collection. The key works are arranged ch­ronol­ogically into 8 them­atic sections, tracing the development of art and design from late-C19th urban and industrial transformation, until the global present. MoMA is dedicated to championing innovative modern and contemporary art. The Museum opened in Manhattan in 1929, with the plan to be­come the greatest modern art museum in the world. This is seen in its inter-disciplinary collection of c20...

During the Third Reich, of the five complexes planned for the bene­fit of the German working classes under the auspices of the Streng­th Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude or KdF ) leisure movement, only one was ever started. Stretching for 4.8 ks along the north coast of Rügen, an East Ger­man is­land along the Baltic Sea, Prora was built between 1936-9 as part of Adolf Hitler’s KdF. Robert Ley, the lead­­er of the German Labour Front, was responsible for this huge resort project, creating Hit­ler’s dream for a seaside dest­in­ation for working families. Some historians have reported that the building work was done by military con­scripts, prisoners of war, forced labourers and refugees. The com­p­arison with Butlins was apt; the resort was designed to be af­fordable for the average worker, with each of the rooms present­ing a sea view. Prora’s eight identical, stark buildings had identical rooms. Each had attractive waterfront views, two beds, wardrobe and a sink, with com­munal bathro...

I had enjoyed Australian holiday camps every summer throughout high school and university. Wonderful memories and activities!! But 1971 was my first year in Europe and Britain, so I was very keen to visit Butlins for the first time. In the 1920s, young Billy Butlin (1899-1990) was staying at a Bed & Breakfast in Barry Island, Wales. Everyone knew that guests would be locked out of their accommodation after breakfast and only let back in when the prop­rietor opened the door for tea. But But­lin hated the boredom, and decided to create a new kind of holiday de­st­ination, one where residents wouldn’t be subject to the relentless rain outside.  Butlin, the son of fairground owners, decided to develop a holiday facility where on-site entertainment would be provided for the guests during the day. Having arrived in Skegness at the height of the foreshore development with his hoopla stall, Butlin went on to build and operate a new amusement park. In fact he opened a perm­an­­ent fai...

I have happily read the book Acland Street: The Grand Lady of St Kilda , written by Dr Judith Buck­rich (Nov 2017). It ex­plores the history of architecture on Acland St, starting from the 1850s and early settlement, through swamps, race courses, development of the Acland St village, Vict­orian prosperity and boarding house poverty. Buckrich searched the archives and inter­viewed famous peop­le from the Melbourne Jewish community who had a connection to Acland St. She recognised that the street was one of Melbourne's most important because it mirrored so much of the social change that occurred in Australian cities over 175 years. It encapsulated the social and cultural history of the city in a unique way, having been part of Melbourne’s entertainment scene for decades, as well as home to the wealthiest and poorest of its citizens. The Melbourne suburb of St Kilda was named after Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, 10th Baronet (1787–1871) of Killerton Manor in Devon, a British politician and ...