Hockney’s Potshot At Hirst – Maybe He’s Got A Point

“He’s saying that students used to be taught how to draw perfectly at the expense of their individuality. Now scores of students graduate from art colleges believing that everything they do or touch or say can be labelled a work of art but they couldn’t draw a rabbit if you held a gun to their heads. There you have it: the difficulty of teaching art in a nutshell.”

Why Audiences Love Farce (It’s Not Just The Jokes)

“The very structure of farce, with its preposterous scenarios and incomprehensible plots, echoes our own lives with uncanny exactness. The old rule may be that farce punctures respectability, but in today’s world it seems to be mirroring it, as the real-life people in power endlessly slip on banana skins, from MPs’ expenses to the pratfalls of the eurozone.”

UK Music Sales Down For Seventh Straight Year

“According to the latest figures from the BPI, combined sales of digital and physical albums fell overall by 5.6% to 113.2m last year. At the industry peak in 2004, 163.4m albums were sold. Although digital album sales rose 26.6% to 26.6m, the growth failed to offset the sharp drop in sales of albums on compact disc, which fell by 12.6% year on year to 86.2m. A further 389,000 albums were sold on vinyl and other formats.”