Christmas greetings from the Imperial War Museum

My favorite museum in London comes up with my favorite piece of holiday marketing material.

Had a lot of fun in London over the past week. Didn’t get to the Museum of Brands, though. Next time. Stayed in a flat 150 feet  from the Israeli Embassy so got to see the very peaceful demonstrations up close and was impressed by both the protestors and the London PD crowd control/riot squad. Biggest danger was risk of tripping  on a policeman. Hope to get back to London but still prefer Paris!

The Mrs. has a very good post on the real issues raised by visiting the War Museum and seeing the protests — go read it.

Advertisement

Can you find my article on camouflage?

It’s cleverly disguised as art criticism over at DarkRoastedBlend.

Here’s the lead:

War has inspired many great artistic moments but how often have artists returned the favor? Once, as far as I can tell. During World War I Modernism descended on Allied naval planners with a bang (sorry about that), turning fleets into the largest painting canvases in the world.

The HMS Mauritania — prepared to disappear into a crowd of Pagliacci imitators.
The idea of painting ships this way was the idea of Norman Wilkinson, a British naval officer and painter. Oddly, this was Wilkinson’s only stab at non-representational art. After the war he went on to a successful painting career, including many wonderful posters for British railway lines.
For all of my UK readers (maybe that’s reader singular, maybe that’s wishful thinking), there’s what looks to be a great show about camouflage at the Imperial War Museum through Sunday. Wish I could go.