LEFT WING ART CRITIC SNEERS AT TOWER OF LONDON POPPY TRIBUTE

'Prettified'? I hardly think so; from above, the moat looks as if it is filled with blood, and is actually quite horrifying.

One would have expected an 'art critic' to notice that......I find it a very powerful image.

That isn't 'pretty', it looks as if the walls themselves are bleeding. I cannot stand these poncy lefty idiots.

I found it horrifying too but also incredibly moving. "Lest we forget' is the motto of most war memorials. The number of visitors to see it has been enormous and a;ll the ceramic poppies have been sold. I hate creatures like that so-called critic. Those men died so that people like him exist. LL

He can't be much of an art critic if he didn't notice what it looks like from a distance, LL. He should stick to unmade beds and faux-art.

bb1 wrote:He can't be much of an art critic if he didn't notice what it looks like from a distance, LL. He should stick to unmade beds and faux-art.

Anyone who likens a slob like Tracy Emmen to Michaelangelo must definitely very short of two salads. LL

I really cannot stand pretentious, tw@tty champagne socialists, LL, they're no use to man nor beast. Milliband the millionaire Marxist is one of the finest examples of the species.

The public doesn't seem to agree with the pretentious tw@t:

http://news.sky.com/story/1364782/tower-poppy-memorial-proves-too-popular

People have been asked to delay visiting a First World War memorial at the Tower of London because it has proved so popular.

Tens of thousands of people made the trip to view the sea of red ceramic poppies in the former moat of the landmark on Friday, leading to problems of overcrowding as the country basked in unseasonably warm temperatures.

London Underground was forced to temporarily close nearby Tower Hill Tube station due to the number of visitors.

The public is being advised to postpone visits, or to go earlier or later in the day.



I genuinely do not know how a supposed art critic can think it is 'pretty' - it is an immensely powerful image.

Does that critic have any idea what war entails?  Maybe he would find the poems of some WWI poets, suitably pretty for him too.

People like that critic are spoiled wretches who have never done anything worthwhile for society but think that they do.

Just realized, isn't that art installation to benefit disabled veterans?

Yes, the poppy is the symbol of the Royal British Legion, Lily, and the display at the Tower is to commemorate - NOT celebrate - the start of WW1.

https://poppies.hrp.org.uk/buy-a-poppy/

Charities which will benefit from the Tower display at the bottom. Each poppy represents a British death in WW1.

How very DARE that POS so called art critic say what he did.  

He didn't even seem to notice what it is called, Lily - Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red. It's anything but 'pretty'.

What a total ....as J-P said.....W.

They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old.  At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.

Not sure that I prescribe to that.

I have another one, but I am going to have to find it.

Was it this one, Sabot?

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

I like that one Bonny.  My aunt was given a poppy from a field in Flanders by a soldier friend who had been there.  She pressed it in an old bible which I have and it is still so red. 

Have found his article in the Guardian.  I rather like this comment. 


Dude, Germany -- to be more precise, about 8 Germans, generals and politicians -- decided to start World War One. Every European nation had a mobilization plan; except Germany. Germany had a -war- plan, which involved attacking -before- its mobilization was complete. (Special units were kept at full strength to start an offensive towards Liege, in neutral Belgium.)

Once Germany started the war, there were exactly two alternatives: fight it through to a victorious conclusion, which was going to be hideously bloody, or surrender.

What surrender meant can be appreciated by reading the texts of the Treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest, which Germany imposed on Russia and Rumania after their collapse, and the September Program drawn up to list Germany's war aims in the west by Chancellor Bethman-Hollweg. They make Versailles look like a love-note. The Kaiser's Germany has gotten an undeserved good press because it wasn't quite as bad as Hitler's, but it was very bad indeed. They had no conception of how to deal with a defeated enemy except to grab them by the throat and squeeze until their eyes popped out.

Incidentally, you seem furiously indignant that British people are on their own side...why is that?

My grandfather was gassed at Passchendaele in 1917, by the way.


ETA:  http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/oct/28/tower-of-london-poppies-ukip-remembrance-day

bb1 wrote:Was it this one, Sabot?

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Not quite.  But good enough.

Probably something to do with some foreign field that is forever England.  I ever was a pretentious little prat.  But I have rather grown out of that of late.

Probably best to stick with Shakespear.  At least I understand that.

Someone in the comments picked up on something important, IMO - it's ordinary people who 'own' the display, and they didn't need poncy 'art critics' to tell them what it means.

My maternal grandfather fought in the trenches, and had a piece of shrapnel in his head to his dying day. My paternal great-uncle was one of the first tank drivers. Both lived to ripe old ages, I hasten to add.

I NEVER heard either of them 'glorifying' war, quite the opposite. Only a complete fool thinks honouring the sacrifices of others glorifies war. The only people that think war is wonderful are politicians, whose lives are never in danger and have never heard a shot fired in anger.

That guy was totally irrelevant to the whole display but he wanted to make himself important.  Don't think he knows anything about art, to be honest after his Michelangelo remark.  

Bless your relatives, Bonny.

lily wrote:I like that one Bonny.  My aunt was given a poppy from a field in Flanders by a soldier friend who had been there.  She pressed it in an old bible which I have and it is still so red. 

Have found his article in the Guardian.  I rather like this comment. 


Dude, Germany -- to be more precise, about 8 Germans, generals and politicians -- decided to start World War One. Every European nation had a mobilization plan; except Germany. Germany had a -war- plan, which involved attacking -before- its mobilization was complete. (Special units were kept at full strength to start an offensive towards Liege, in neutral Belgium.)

Once Germany started the war, there were exactly two alternatives: fight it through to a victorious conclusion, which was going to be hideously bloody, or surrender.

What surrender meant can be appreciated by reading the texts of the Treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest, which Germany imposed on Russia and Rumania after their collapse, and the September Program drawn up to list Germany's war aims in the west by Chancellor Bethman-Hollweg. They make Versailles look like a love-note. The Kaiser's Germany has gotten an undeserved good press because it wasn't quite as bad as Hitler's, but it was very bad indeed. They had no conception of how to deal with a defeated enemy except to grab them by the throat and squeeze until their eyes popped out.

Incidentally, you seem furiously indignant that British people are on their own side...why is that?

My grandfather was gassed at Passchendaele in 1917, by the way.


ETA:  http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/oct/28/tower-of-london-poppies-ukip-remembrance-day

My father was a Chindit.  Oh my God.  Bunch of bloody lunatics who accomplished nothing.  But you can blame Orde Wingate for that.  No bloody chance in your average Burmese Jungle.
My father came home a complete mess, but then I suspect that he was always going to be a complete mess anyway.
Cause and effect.  He didn't want to know that my mother was dying of tuberculosis.  But then nor did I, as it happens.  Who would?

I must have told you all about when my Daddy arrested Ghandi.  "Get in the truck, Mate."  "Allah be with you, My son."  "Allah be with you too, Mate, get in the truck."  That's what my Daddy told me.  Sheesh, it was years before I realised that Ghandi wasn't a Muslim.  So what a rotten fibber my Daddy was.

Not that I care.  My Daddy was whoever he thought he was.  But I can't say that I loved him because I didn't know who he was.

I did hope that my step mother would die before he did, so that I could have him to myself for a minute, but that did not come to pass.  That is my only real regret.

The Rupert Brooke one, Sabot?

The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Such is life, Sabot.  Best laid plans and all that.....

PS  That is lovely too.

bb1 wrote:The Rupert Brooke one, Sabot?

The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

That's the one, Bonny.  Bugger.  How trite.  How bloody sad.