Helloooo, here comes the simulacrum... and the spurious

[oursin]

Starbucks pretends to be boho coffee-house

And in further news today: Fakes, forgeries and classification blunders to go on display in exhibition at the National Gallery.

Kathryn Hughes ponders on the desire to believe in groups and movements in a column on the Pre-Raph soap-opera Desperate Romantics:

The irony is that in real life a group is only identifiable from the outside. When you're inside it, you can't see it and, what's more, you really don't care. The Bloomsberries and the pre-Raphaelites may have gone in for a lot of self-mythologising, but they remained essentially a set of individuals, each with their own distinct tastes, beliefs and allegiances. When Rossetti woke up in the morning, he was Rossetti, singular. As the day wore on he might have experienced himself fleetingly as Lizzie Siddal's husband or Christina Rossetti's brother or William Morris's friend but, even as his head fell on the pillow at midnight, it's unlikely that the thought "I am a founding member of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood" trotted through his head. It was only to jealous outsiders and fascinated posterity that he became fixed in aspic at the centre of a golden gang of clever, beautiful people, forever gathered in a shabby-chic studio somewhere off Chelsea.

It is to assuage these panicky feelings of anomic individualism that we continue to need stories about coherent cohorts.

And further on those desperate romantics, the TV critic, Sam Wollaston, considers it to be Carry On Up the Studio

And the culture section blog post Desperate Romantics, the BBC's new Victorian romp with the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, combines alpha-fop revelry with brazen historical liberty-taking. What did you make of the easel lovers? has garnered woefully few comments.

More on the spurious: Hadley Jackson is initiating a sporadic series dubbed "Phrases that should be banned from newspapers" (scroll down) -

1 Flamboyant", which some newspapers seem to think is French for "gay"....
2 "You"/"We", which, when employed by a columnist or reviewer, invariably means "me", unless the writer is possessed of psychic abilities and can predict how the reader feels or will react....
3 "?", aka the Daily Mail Question Mark, and most commonly seen in headlines in that "news" paper to ensure that gems such as "Can Grapefruit Put a Squeeze on Obesity?" aren't, strictly speaking, total cobblers.

Possibly the concept of cakes made with stealth vegetables for lower calorie counts belongs here?: I still think the best way not to be fat, if that's what you're after, is to get a hobby that doesn't involve cake. (Alice Beatitude is drifting around to the music in her head, doing the boggling cake-walk as she bakes a boggle cake.)

Comments

[ankaret]

I agree with Hadley Jackson about 'squeeze', particularly 'main squeeze' which makes me think that I'm going to be called upon to keep the details of any number of lesser squeezes straight in my head.

believe in them, darling?

[benet.livejournal.com]

I'm just deeply happy that the first comment on the pre-Raphaelites column is from 'hermionegingold'.

[ms_danson]

I would love to see the Fakes exhibit. I hope our National Gallery (Canada) puts one on sometime. I've seen Portrait of an Unidentified Man (one-man play based on the life of Elmyr de Hory) and read The Art Forger's Handbook (by Eric Hebborn) already. Forgeries are quite interesting.

[oursin]

Robertson Davies wrote a wonderful novel, What's Bred in the Bone, about an art faker, except, was he a forger or was he someone who just found his natural artistic home in a particular set of artistic idioms? It's the middle book of the 'Rebel Angels' trilogy but these all can pretty much stand alone.

[ms_danson]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll look it up.

[green_knight]

I'm unconvinced that 'a group is only identifiable from the outside.' Some of them might be. Some of them might not have a formal name for themselves, but the Scribblies, to name but one current group, exist, self-identify, and are identifiable. [and the Wikipedia entry is, to the best of my knowledge, missing one member.]

[clanwilliam]

I adore Hadley Freeman. I read out half her banned words to G, who also giggled. I just live in dread that someday she will screw up.

m31andy put Lost in Showbiz on a RSS feed for me. But for me, the week is not complete without "Ask Hadley".

Yeah, I'm shallow. But I'm shallow with perceptive taste, damnit!

[(Anonymous)]

Oh dear. I was hoping Desperate Romantics would be good, because I taught a girl who is in it - Jennie Jacques. No doubt she is baring all.

Oh well, we've recorded it for when we get home. Currently Provence is way more interesting.

[gillo]

Oh dear. I was hoping Desperate Romantics would be good, because I taught a girl who is in it - Jennie Jacques. No doubt she is baring all.

Oh well, we've recorded it for when we get home. Currently Provence is way more interesting.

Yes, that was me above. ::sigh::

[ironed_orchid]

I couldn't agree more about "you/we" meaning "me". Damn journalists.

[oursin]

Everybody = me, and 5 people I met down the pub the other day