[worldwidereview]Vermeer is rubbish and Dando Killer innocent on worldwidereview

[Ben Taylor]

Caro sir/ Liebe Madame,

How are you? Sunnily we continue to ramble, but noone listens. Two reviews
for you just below.

www.worldwidereview.com says it first. We saw the Vermeer exhibition first,
the Venice Biennale first, and they're not so good. Actually they're quite
rubbish.

Did you watch the special tv shows last night in England reassuring everyone
about Barry George's guilt and, notice there was no evidence? Why didn't he
hire Jonny Cochran?

Are we mad or just right?

Love
Jasper and Ben

www.worldwidereview.com -review your world



Vermeer and the Delft School Metropolitan  Museum  New York Until May 27
2001

Vermeer was quite rubbish. His paintings look like paint by numbers, which
they probably were. I imagine he outlined the images using some kind of
optical device, and then coloured them in. The oohaahing crowd ,7 deep in
front of the few Vermeers and largely ignoring the large number of other
boring Dutch paintings and drawings, seemed to be satisfied by bourgeois
furnishings poorly painted. Are all the Vermeers real Vermeers? Some are
really crude, perhaps he got bored by all that tiny brushing. Sometimes he
got it right and one is intrigued by the frozen narrative and dazzled by
surface verisimilitude. Perhaps painting invented photography. Once artists
could record reality perfectly they were replaced by cameras whose pictures
they had already produced.
The Met is good because it is big and you can pay what you want for entry. I
recommend $1 because $0 is not accepted. 25 cents looks stingy. They have
really good French C19th paintings and lots of Rembrandts and some ok
Tiepolos and a nice Ingres downstairs. The Frick has a more perfect and more
stunning collection and it is not far away. It will make you happier with
its Fragonards, but the Met is still good.


Barry George's conviction

QC:
But what is worse? 10 to one. No eyewitnesses, contamination of evidence. No
picture of Dando, no gun. No gun. No evidence. An attention seeker, a sad
case, never sick enough to attract the attention of the authorities -
attention being the last thing he really needed. The Crown Prosecution
Service heralds the brave new world of securing a conviction on the basis of
purely circumstantial evidence. Your honour, he's a bit weird, he looks a
bit shifty. The skill of the Daily Mail/Evening Standard sub-editors; the
slyly constructed placard. Dando 'killer' 'as guilty as hell'. What defence
can there be in single quotes? Barristers contorting for the media - the
defence pulls out dramatic theories (in between conducting the Good Friday
inquiry), the prosecution just plods away, insinuating, insinuating. And now
wall-to-wall coverage, a one-hour dramatisation with Trevor MacDonald adding
whatever gravitas he has remaining, and Nick Ross hinting gravely at what he
knows, but the jury doesn't. Couldn't. The power of the suggestive media.
How can the friends and family bow to the corruption and dilution of their
grief? An entertainer died, suddenly and violently. The best argument for
the death penalty yet?
Junior QC adds:
This is the OJ Simpson case, but in reverse - no evidence. Now he's a
rapist, a stalker, a killer, he tried to kill Princess Di! What a bastard,
deserves all he gets.