In which we revisit imaginary evils, ludicrous solutions and various lamentations from the pages of the Guardian.

In January, Kevin McKenna inadvertently revealed the loveliness behind his lofty socialist principles:

Ponder the big, generous heart behind those sentiments. It offends Mr McKenna that private education should be allowed to exist. By McKenna’s reckoning, parents who view the comprehensive system as inadequate – perhaps because of their own first-hand experiences – are by implication wicked. And so they should be stopped.

February brought us the deep, deep thinking of the New Economics Foundation and their blueprint for a socialist utopia:

The NEF are convinced that, once implemented, their recommendations would “heal the rifts in a divided Britain” and leave the population “satisfied.” That’s satisfied with less of course, and the authors make clear their disdain for the “dispensable accoutrements of middle-class life,” including “cars, holidays, electronic equipment and multiple items of clothing.”

February also brought us urban oil painting, delusional playwrights and communist art reviews.

In March, we got a taste of, if not for, the cosmetic surgery aesthetic. And an advocate of “direct action” got a taste of her own medicine and didn’t like it one bit.

April saw Jonathan Kay recounting his visit to a Thinking About Whiteness workshop, where he was told “racism is an outgrowth of capitalism” and that “to ignore race is to be more racist than to acknowledge race.”

Ah, very clever. Guilt in all directions. It almost sounds like a trap. And the way to get past small differences in physiology is to continually fixate on small differences in physiology.

And Eyjafjallajökull did some rumbling.

In May, Professor Sharra Vostral exposed the humble tampon as an “artefact of control.”

At this point, readers may also wonder how it can be that an estimated 98% of humanities scholarship goes uncited or unread.

And a mighty hail fell on Oklahoma City.

Adam Harper is “currently doing a PhD in Musicology at Oxford. He writes for Wire magazine and blogs at Rouge’s Foam.” He also finds time to write for the Guardian: 

Aware that reality itself is the territory on which they’re fighting the government, many student protesters have been challenging the government-sponsored realism they now find so dubious with playful surrealism.

Ah, “government-sponsored realism.” Not economic reality, as discussed here, which might lead those protesting to a larger, more troublesome understanding of the world. It’s just a cruel and dubious fabrication to be swapped for something more flattering and congenial. Students Make Protest an Art Form, reads the headline. And how could mere reality withstand the fearsome repertoire of the contemporary artist?

Few things summed up this battle for reality better than the statue stood in the main quadrangle of University College London, greeting visitors to the student occupation there. Placed in front of banners reading “Art Against Cuts” was a post-cubist humanoid figure assembled from found objects and painted silver.

By Muhammad’s beard. Empires will topple.

In front of it was a sign announcing that “THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING.”

I trust readers are all stocked up on canned goods and ammunition.

Upon entering the occupied Jeremy Bentham Room, one noticed strange details among the hundreds of posters covering the walls: references to Harry Potter characters (“Albus Dumbledore Was a GREAT MAN”), a neo-classical statue made to carry a mock-up Pokéball (which, as anyone born between 1985 and 1995 knows, is where Pokémon are kept when not in battle), puns so terrible and esoteric they become hilarious (“They say cut back, we say Feuerbach,” in homage to the 19th-century philosopher) and complete non sequiturs (“HUMBUGS ARE ZEBRA EGGS”).

It’s dangerous, dizzying stuff. Now hand me your wallet. You’ll soon be feeling an urge to bankroll more of this.

Someone else spent several hours in the Parliament Square kettle dressed as a bright pink Star Wars stormtrooper, the Bansky-esque gesture beautifully counteracting the lines of armour-clad riot police.

See? You’re warming to their demands already.

Sound-systems enabled spontaneous raves amid the cops and burning benches, with crowds bobbing in time to the wacky syncopated beats and pitch-shifted vocals of Major Lazer’s Pon De Floor.

Oh no, they’re fighting back with abstract disco.

Such displays could easily be dismissed as infantile and hedonistic, but they play an important role in outwardly showing confidence and boosting internal morale. In some cases they also serve a practical purpose.

I know, you can’t wait.

A Van Der Decken’s Sifaka, a lemur, photographed by Stephen Alvarez in the limestone forests of Madagascar.

Photographed by Andrew Zuckerman. One of these. Via.

Anna steers us to this.

The Guardian’s caption reads, “A demonstrator holds her arms up during a protest at the Tate Britain.” Though readers may wish to devise captions of their own. For those who missed yesterday’s, um, spectacle, art students “invaded” Tate Britain and organised a series of life drawing classes to protest against proposed cuts to arts budgets:

Supporters of the protest handed out leaflets outside the building warning that higher fees could lead to empty art schools.

A Guardian reader adds,

A brilliant, well executed and peaceful protest from students who are angry at the blatant betrayal and abandonment of the arts.

Yes, trembling readers, artists are angry.

As angry as they were five months ago when protesting against BP’s sponsorship of the arts, estimated at around half a million pounds:  

BP’s money is tainted and it is hard to see how the company’s reputation won’t have a long-term impact on those who accept it.

That was dirty money, see? Given voluntarily, unlike taxpayer subsidy, but still, dirty, dirty, dirty. Among those protesting at this insult to moral hygiene was John Jordan, an “artist and activist” and co-editor of We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anticapitalism, an anarchist guidebook to “direct action” and a “collision of subjectivities… charged with inspiration.”

In his Guardian column, Mr Jordan wrote,

Art acts as a great detergent, and being involved with a gallery enables the company to host glitzy events at which it can foster vital relationships with ministers, journalists and foreign dignitaries…

The fiends. Just as being involved with a gallery enables anti-capitalist poseurs a chance to sound important and foster vital relationships with taxpayers’ money.

And worse,

Corporate sponsorship creates an insidious climate of self-censorship that keeps art trapped in the disease of representation: a tool for preserving the status quo rather than showing us how to live differently.

Clearly, recidivist anti-capitalists showing us how to live deserve better than this. They deserve more public subsidy. It’s vital work. Art institutions must not take donations from companies of which some artists may disapprove. That would be wicked, insidious and a cause of artistic disease. Instead, those institutions should encourage the state to take money from the taxpayer, forcibly, and give it to artists and projects of which the taxpayer may disapprove. That would be virtuous and clean, apparently.