First Black President of America

By Charlotte Hayward

Email me at c.hayward@my.westminster.ac.uk

To find out more about the issue of race within the American Election 2008 and its history click here.

Barack Hussein Obama has become the 44th President of America as of November 4th 2008.

Nearly two years of campaigning have led to a moment which brought tears to Jesse Jackson’s eyes. A campaign which was “not hatched in the halls of Washington” but in the “backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston” has resulted on the steps of Washington.

A man from a remote African village will now rule the free world on 20th January 2008.

It seems that Martin Luther King’s dream may have come true. With a black president in the highest office in the land, the doors of segregation are truly shut. Now, anyone can make it. “Yes, we can.”

Obama’s story is America’s story

In the year of Barack Obama’s birth, 1961, black people were born in segregated hospitals, educated in segregated school systems and buried in segregated graveyards.

Fifty years ago Rosa Parks refused to give up her sit on a bus, and forty years since Martin Luther King and others risked their lives in the march for civil rights and the right to vote.

Without them, there would be no Barack Obama.

Obama cited Ann Dixon Cooper in his victory speech. At aged 106 she remembers when women or black people were not allowed to vote.

Talking to the BBC she said, ‘I feel nothing but relief that things have changed as much as they have, so I can’t look for anything better right now…after a while we will be all one.’

A message which echoes Obama’s own ethos, ‘we have never just been a collection of red states and blue states. We are and always will be the United States of America.’

Maya Angelou, American author and poet said she was ’so proud’ of Obama’s victory and America. ‘Look at our hearts, look at our souls, we have elected a black man to speak for us…I am an American.’

Find out more! Click here.

What credit crunch?

by Charlotte Hayward

Email me at c.hayward@my.westminster.ac.uk

For more information on The Arcadia Group plc, Kate Moss and Philip Green, click here.

Philip Green, owner of Arcadia has said that ‘spending by younger customers was at a record level while elsewhere spending was in decline.’ Topshop and Miss Selfridge have reported record turnover and profit, with Topman boasting a ‘double digit growth.’

Younger shoppers’ disposable income has been largely unaffected by the ‘credit crunch.’

Free from mortgages and rising living costs, free spending students and fashion conscious twenty somethings have contributed to record profits for Philip Green, owner of Arcadia, the group behind Topshop, Topman and Miss Selfridge.

Philip Green explained these figures in The Times newspaper in London, ‘in the mass-market, you buy something because you need something. If you’re a fashionista, you buy something because its in fashion.’

Kate Moss who has produced four clothing lines for Topshop has created ‘fashionista credibitlity’ for the brand. Philip Green commented that she wanted to do a male range for Topman, but he wasn’t keen due to the current financial climate.

Customers of Topshop and Topman are able to afford their fashion purchases because they are largely living off a disposable income, from parents, loans or Saturday jobs, a figure which has remained stable.

The staff at Topshop, Oxford Circus confessed to me that they don’t save any of the money Topshop pays them, choosing instead to use their discount up to buy more clothes. Chantelle, 19, a fashion student at Central London St Martins said, ‘I don’t get paid in cash, I get paid in cloth!’

So not all doom and gloom on the high street then?

Well despite the army of care free students holding the fort at Topshop’s end, the Arcadia Group reported a 5 percent fall in pre-tax profit for the year to August 30th, with like for like sales down 2.8 percent. Debenhams’ profits have also fallen by 16 percent to £110.1 million this year.

Both Philip Green and Rob Templeman, chief executive of Debenhams are praying for a cold winter so as to push the sales of warm coats and knitwear. Philip Green remarked, ‘if there’s somebody out there who could create it, I would be eternally grateful for a cold snap.’

For more information on what you have read here, click onto my background article.

The writing is on the wall for Banksy

by Charlotte Hayward.

c.hayward@my.westminster.ac.uk

For more background information on Banksy, click here.

Courtesty of http://www.flickr.com/photos/artofthestate/2505929575/in/set-72157604348374839/

London’s Westminster Council have decided to white wash over a mural by the enigmatic artist Banksy.

The mural pictured here was said to be a ’stinging criticism of Big Brother society.’ It therefore seems fitting that a higher authority should wish it removed.

The mural depicts a hooded figure, presumably of a child painting the words, ‘ONE NATION UNDER CCTV’ while a US style police officer look on.

The mural is 23ft high and painted just below a CCTV camera.

Westminster council have struggled with this decision as many other councils have chosen to turn a blind eye to Banky’s murals which have appeared all over the world, from New Orleans to the Gaza Strip.

However, Robert Davis, the chairman of Westminster’s planning committee told the Times Newspaper in London;

“If we condone this then we might as well say that any kid with a spray can is producing art,” he said. “To go and deface other people’s property is graffiti. Just because he’s famous doesn’t give him that right.”

Westminster council are also concerned that in condoning Banky’s mural as ‘art’ is to open the floodgates for graffiti all over London.

Is Banky’s work art?

Art critic Rupert Maas has defended Banky’s work in talking to the BBC;

“Here he is making a point that we are increasingly governed by CCTV cameras. I think it’s great – good for him”

“Of course he is not going to fill in a form and apply for permission. Notoriety is what makes Banksy exist.”

Not Westminster’s Problem

However, the Crunch magazine can divilge that the mural, painted on Newman street, central London does not come under Westminster council’s domain. The building infact belongs to Royal Mail.

Councillor Robert David (Conservative) has issued a statement on behalf of Westminster council saying;

“Westminster council will then write to the person responsible and ask for the graffiti to be removed. Westminster council will not be removing the graffiti, that will be for the person who owns the wall.”

For more background information on Banksy, click here.

“If they want to remove it and sell it, they can. If they just want to paint over it, they can.”

Con-Artists at the Tate?

by Charlotte Hayward

Email me at c.hayward@my.westminster.ac.uk

For more information on the Turner Prize, click here.

Each year the nominees for the Turner Prize leave ridicule and controversy in their wake. Unable to connect with the majority of the British population, the post -modern installations invoke sarcasm and despair from the public at the state of modern art.

Some comments left on the TimesOnline read, ‘Picasso weeps,’ ‘Just ignore it, and it will all go away’ and ‘I suggest the Times rent a space in London and institutes the “Turn Up” prize where anyone can bring in any old tat from their homes and display it as art.’

Is the Tate conning us all into thinking this art is great? Is it worthy of such an accolade? Figurative art is struggling, and the Stuckists art group protested outside the Tate Britain condemning at the Tate’s promotion of conceptual art and its marginalising of figurative painting.

The photograph below is of a comment board where members of the public can write down their thoughts regarding the nominees this year.

Courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/monkeynutt/2915524237/

Listen here to hear Stephen Deucahr, the Chair of the Turner Prize Jury discuss the nominations.

This season the four nominations lie with Cathy Wilkes’ shop installations lie with shop window mannequins and supermarket check out tills.

Mark Leckley’s work, ‘Industrial Light and Magic’ features cartoon characters such as Felix the Cat.

Goshka Macuga’s glass, steel and fabric installation, entitled Haus der Frau 2 (2008), was featured at the fifth Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art.

Runa Islam’s Be The First To See What You See As You See It (2004) is described as “an absorbing drama of deliberation”.

Not everyone is feeling the “credit crunch”

In the fragile economic climate, it seems that everyone is feeling the pinch? Not so. Despite the mockery surrounding the Turner Prize, it continues to get an enormous amount of media attention each year. In expressing this idea I am aided by Monday 15th September when Lehman Brothers fell rendering thousands of bankers immediately jobless and Damien Hirst wealthier than ever before as Sothebys broke their previous record for takings from a single artist’s sale by a factor of 10. The art world has continued to flourish as a welcome distraction from the drudgery of the impending financial storm.

Want to find out more about The Turner Prize? Click here.