Francis Bacon and the masters

Is the title of an exhibition at the Sainsbury centre for visual arts in Norwich. I know this because my mother, in her great generosity, passes over her copy of The Week magazine, which summarises the news by drawing from a  wide variety of both British and international sources without significant political or obvious cultural bias.

To illustrate the article on this exhibition they had, side by side, The Crucifixion as depicted by Bacon, and the picture that inspired him by Alonso Cano. Granted both pictures were small in print, but one of them appeared to be a finely crafted image with expressive use of light and shade, carefully detailed and and with emotions poured into form, while the other looks like the bored doodling of a teenager who is depressed after listening to heavy metal. I'll leave you to guess which is by whom.

To quote a quote from the article "But there is in some cases 'not obvious relationship' between the exhibits" (the inspiration and Bacon's work). And "Many of these connections are 'tenuous' and among all the masterpieces it is 'easy to forget about Bacon altogether'". I feel quite guilty for finding this so pleasing.

The magazine is often drily humorous with the comments it extracts for an article. The obituary for Keith Harris (he had a ventriloquist act with a green 'bird' called Orville) was completed with a quote from Harris made to Louis Theroux, who had asked him how he felt about Orville and their 25 year relationship. "I created a monster, in a funny way" Harris replied. "He made me into a household name, but he put me into a pigeonhole".

And finally.

In an article regarding the performance of Twitter as a listed company, Lucy Kellaway of the FT was quoted as saying that CEO Dick Costolo spouted nonsense: "As we iterate on the logged-out experience and curate topics, events, moments that unfold on the platform, you should absolutely expect us to deliver those experiences to the total audience." The observation was made "What better way to undermine a brand dedicated to 'saying things snappily' - it's like discovering the Burberry chief Christopher Bailey secretly buys his clothes from Primark."

That was the week that was. ;-)