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Ian Cox

Listed below are comments made by Ian Cox between Wednesday, 19th November 2008 and Sunday, 15th February 2009.

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Arts and the economy - uncomfortable bedfellows? 01:57am on 15 Feb 2009 Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock ("Jack the Dribbler" to his chums) are extremely poor examples of the benefit of subsidizing the arts. Their work should have been strangled at the design stage.

Why is it that subsidizing other branches of the arts - theatre, movies, opera, ballet - often produces fine quality works, while subsidizing artists usually produces tripe?

Is art so impenetrable to those who control the purse strings?
A generous gesture 11:05am on 22 Nov 2008 BBC News has publicized the fact that this work has been on loan to a Scottish museum for years (it must save the duke a bomb in insurance premiums). So it's unfair to accuse previous comments of being "ill informed".

Just because this painting has been in the duke's family for generations doesn't make it important to British heritage. It would be more appropriate to have it displayed in an Italian museum. Spain also has a claim on this work, because it was commissioned by the King of Spain. Plus it is vastly overpriced. The duke might well get £60m to £70m on the open market.

Christie's and Sotheby's are both having sales of Victorian art this December. There are many British treasures on offer, including "Flora" by Waterhouse, which has been in an American collection for years. It's worth a fraction of the Titian's cost, £200,000 to £300,000. There are a total of 7 Grimshaw's on offer, from £40,000 to £600,000. Visit my blog for details:
http://coxsoft.blogspot.com/

Any of these treasures has a far better claim on British art heritage funding than the Titian, and look how cheap they are in comparison. But nobody is raising funds to buy them!

The Titian appeal has nothing to do with the quality of the art or with British heritage and everything to do with upper-crust elitism. I've no doubt some of its sponsers are hoping to be in the Queen's Birthday Honours List if they keep the Titian here. Dame Tracey Emin maybe? How on earth can she honestly claim to have been "inspired" by the Titian? To leave her bed unmade?
A generous gesture 4:08pm on 19 Nov 2008 Why doesn't the BBC support the British pound sign? Has it been taken over by Microsoft?
A generous gesture 4:06pm on 19 Nov 2008 Where is the British heritage in a Venetian master's painting of a Greek myth? It isn't a particularly good painting. Diana was supposed to be incredibly beautiful. In Titian's hands she is a chubby frump. And where is the black slave in Greek mythology? That's an addition for a time when European aristocrats owned slaves and they assumed Greek goddesses owned them too.

Let the Duke sell it on the open market. Maybe an Italian gallery will be daft enough to pay £50m for it. I don't see why Brits should pay a penny toward it, and I think this latest contribution of £10m by the National Heritage Memorial Fund raises serious questions about its inappropriate use of funds.

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