While I am on the subject of twitter, I happened to come across a request from Historic England North West for responses to what is described as a ‘Tailored Review of Historic England’, which they describe as ‘easy to complete’.

Since I have reservations about the requirement of Historic England to increase its revenue by providing planning advice to developers, thereby diminishing its ability to act as an independent arbiter when it comes to providing historical and other advice to local planning authorities – an obvious conflict of interest – I thought I would fill up the form.

Far from being easy to complete, it requires a great deal of technical knowledge of Historic England’s statutory responsibilities and, instead of encouraging lay response, it is phrased in a way which reduces independent comment and, through a system of multiple choice questions, encourages the devolution of statutory responsibilities.

I would provide a link to the form, but it is not easy to do this and comments have to submitted by May 9th. Instead, you can respond directly to albteam@culture.gov.uk.

I am attaching the reference to Apollo’s tweet not for purposes of self-advertisement (I hope), but in case anyone is interested in the article it promotes, a short digest of a long, scholarly biography of an important figure in early twentieth-century taste and art politics, not to mention the establishment of the oil industry:-

@Apollo_magazine’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/Apollo_magazine/status/1123972916796887049?s=09

I went to see The New Craftsmen’s new exhibition Processing Lichen & Other Matter, in which Charlotte Kingsnorth, a graduate of Toord Boontje at the RCA, shows her metalwork inspired by the patination of lichen:-

I admired the work of Lucie Gledhill, who works with Romilly:-

And a case of work by Romilly herself:-

I had thought it was a revival of the work that Stephen Calloway celebrated in Baroque Baroque, fin-de-siècle neo-naturalism. Perhaps it is:-

I went to the opening of the Anthony Caro exhibition at Annely Juda last night and was particularly interested to see his early work, undertaken when he was studio assistant to Henry Moore at Perry Green, including Warrior I, influenced by Moore’s collection of African art:-

Also, one of a set of sculptures he did in 1957 of the Cigarette Smoker, done when he was still hovering between figuration and abstraction and before he had discovered his own style:-

In walking through the RA last night, I was impressed to see a commemorative floral artwork celebrating the life of Mary Moser, who died 200 years ago tomorrow aged 68 and has become of increasing interest as one of only two artists elected as Royal Academicians (the other was Angelica Kaufman) at the time of its foundation in 1768 – Moser for her skill as a young flower painter, winning prizes at the Society of Arts from the age of fourteen and exhibiting not just flower paintings at the RA until her eyesight began to fail in her late fifties.