euro|topics - Joan Bakewell

20/11/2008

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Bakewell, Joan

3 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.

The Independent - United Kingdom | 07/03/2008

Death soldiers on British stamps?

In 2003 the Imperial War Museum commissioned Steve McQueen as an official war artist. He went to Iraq for 10 days. Columnist Joan Bakewell explains that he returned to the UK and created "a cabinet of display panels – each one holding a sheet of stamps bearing the face of a soldier killed in the Iraq war. ... The display, called 'Queen and Country', has been on display at the Imperial War Museum in London, since last November. ... Steve McQueen is urging the Royal Mail to issue them as actual postage stamps. But the Royal Mail is hesitating. ... This is a tricky matter. Would such a move be seen as aggressively militaristic, supporting the war and British presence in Iraq, an issue that divides the country? The role of the war artist is always ambiguous."

The Independent - United Kingdom | 30/03/2007

Tate Gallery policy favours women artists

Joan Bakewell, commentator for the daily, analyses the Tate's public declaration of "their intent to spend the meagre funds they have for purchasing new acquisitions, deliberately buying work by women artists. ... The Tate seems to be making up for lost time. It holds the work of some 3,000 artists, of whom 348 are women. Just 12 per cent. The tally falls if you count the actual works. Women contribute only 7 per cent. So it is a worthy aim to want to redress the balance. However, given that the vast majority of paintings by women coming up in sales and auctions will be by living women, it poses the dilemma of having to discriminate, in favouring them as women, over their contemporaries. It will only cast a shadow to suggest their work is being bought because of their gender. … There remains, however, one area where equality can be honoured: the price that is paid."

The Independent - United Kingdom | 18/08/2006

Joan Bakewell on the call to arms

Broadcaster and writer Joan Bakewell draws a parallel between the tardy confessions of German writer Günter Grass and this week's rehabilitation in the United Kingdom of 306 British volunteer soldiers who were shot for cowardice in the First World War. "The two stories are so dissimilar and yet both spring from the extraordinary pressures put on young men when they respond to the call to arms. They can have no idea what they are in for, no concept of what being called on to kill does to the human mind and identity ... But wars draw men to them. It drew the young 15-year-old German boy, Günter Grass, who volunteered [for the submarine service and was turned down as too young] ... Had he had the courage to tell his own truth in earlier years he would not now be the subject of such vilification. Wars carry their strange consequences down the years."

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