The furore over Jonathan Jones’s criticism of ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’ (or the Tower of London poppies, as they’re more familiarly known) has been both understandable and unsurprising, an early foray in what promises to be a four-year-long argument over how best to commemorate the dead of the First World War. Jones’s article caused outrage by condemning the memorial as ‘prettified and toothless’, symptomatic of ‘the inward-looking mood that lets Ukip thrive’.
It didn’t help that the original article (Jones has since published a further defence of his position) gave a supercilious and rather unpleasant account of the people who had come to see the installation: loftily, Jones declares that they have ‘become a kind of artwork in themselves’, having ‘more in common with a crowd gathered for a royal wedding than an art event’. By this reckoning, the poppies are pabulum for those too unadventurous to sit down and enjoy their Anselm
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