There is much talk about Sarah Palin the chosen one for US Vice-Presidency. Babies, Unmarried Mothers to be, Guns and God. HD has looked at some interesting information regarding the website of the Church that Sarah was once a member. This is all the website states now:
'…Governor Sarah Palin did attend Wasilla Assembly of God since the time she was a teenager. She and her family were a part of the church up until 2002. Since that time she has maintained a friendship with Wasilla Assembly of God and has attended various conferences and special meetings here. This June [2008], the Governor spoke at the graduation service of our School of Ministry, Master’s Commission Wasilla Alaska…'.
The site was taken down when inquisitive hacks started to probe the church, its message and Palin's beliefs. The former pages have all been removed on the pretext of technical difficulties. That is plausible of course. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of hits per hour in search of the word so to speak. It can get costly as very successful bloggers will tell you. Nothing is free, ever!
Not content to be passed off by such statements, HD decided to dig a little deeper to see what was there in the ether. There is always an echo somewhere and HD knows how to find it. Low and behold HD's innate ability to find something from nothing came up trumps, frightening trumps as they appear now to be. Nothing the Governor said mind, not on record anyway here. That has been wiped along with much evidence of the church's second site : www.wasillaag.net and its contents.
HD publishes then some extracts from these former pages for your inspection and evaluation. I am no theologian but some of the wording is quite frightening to a mere mortal as I.
Here for instance is a series of sermons that Pastor Ed Kalnins gave between September 19th 2004 and October 31st 2004.
Series Title: Possessing Your Destiny In The Land
The “Possessing Your Destiny In The Land” Series looks at the strongholds of the mind that are identified in Deuteronomy 7.1. Those nations are, in reality, mindsets that would try to keep you from walking in your God-given inheritance. Pastor Ed Kalnins ministered these messages, believing that they are the key to unlocking what God has for you in the Lord.
September 19 2004 Pastor Ed Kalnins Maintaining the Coming Revival (part 1)
September 26 2004 Pastor Ed Kalnins Maintaining the Coming Revival (part 2) The Canaanite Spirit
October 3 2004 Pastor Ed Kalnins Dealing With The Ammorite Spirit
October 10 2004 Pastor Ed Kalnins Tearing Down The Nations: Hittites & Hivites
October 24 2004 Pastor Ed Kalnins Overcoming The Gergashites
October 31 2004 Pastor Ed Kalnins Overcoming Perizzites and Jebusites
For each session there was a recording that could be listened to from the website.
Deuteronomy 7.1 basically states that '… the Lord your God brings you into the land which you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you…' and continues '…you must utterly destroy them…'.
I repeat that I am no theologian and leave it to others to interpret why the Wasilla Assembly of God would want to produce sermons on this Deuteronomy but it cannot be rocket science that takes me from this to Guns and God talk.
I have no idea what was said but it is up to the Wasilla Assembly of God church to now produce those recordings as evidence of their benign intentions. Anything else is open to judgment along with its implications with respect to Governor Palin who maintains '…a friendship with Wasilla Assembly of God and has attended various conferences and special meetings here…' [Wasilla.org website September 3rd 2008].
During the same year the Evangelist John Bevere attended the church. His book 'Drawing Near' 2004 and it is likely his visit was in connection with promotion. However Bevere runs Messenger Media a provider of audio/visual recording equipment to ministries in the USA. Maybe Bevere has a copy of the above audio tapes?
Wasilla also has a youth movement which at one time had a website: namelessyouth.com. That does not work either but HD has seen the ghosts…and if they can put some names to faces maybe Palin's daughter figures here somewhere. Certainly she should have discussed her problems if the youth Pastor Lopez and his wife Mindy are concerned. They invite all Wasilla citizens to come and talk about their relationships. My best guess is that she did not do so and got pregnant anyway.
Here is the video re: God and Leaders.
HD
Quids In!
I'm so glad I kept my nerve on my huge pot of euros (pronounced ewrrrrrro's).
The quid is at an all time low I hear. Now my maths is not that good so I have to get the calculator out and find if I gain or lose.
I gain!!! Last time tempted to sell, sell, sell! it was 80p an euro. Now, today, this very minute its 85p a euro!!!
My 30 euros are now worth 25.64 GBP.
Thank you Mr Darling, why not have my babies? Gobber Brrooon gets my vote!
HD
Yam Boy’s ‘Great Identity Swindle’ (motiroti’s 60×60)
UPDATE: The Vibe Gallery space show is now finished. Apologies for wrongly stating 18th July. See comments for other shows and finding 60×60 films.
motiroti is a long-established British-based organisation that currently works in collaboration with artists from Britain, India and Pakistan. It’s most recent major project is entitled 360 degrees which forms the first part of a three year programme of events (2007 – 2010) and 60×60 is currently showing in East London at the Vibe Gallery, 91-95 Brick Lane London till 18th July 2008.
An early aim of motiroti was spelled out by the feminist theorist Dorothy Rowe in her text Cultural Crossings thus: ‘…to make art projects that transform space, and the meaning of space…’. Little has changed by way of ideology and leadership at motiroti since those words were lifted by Rowe from their ‘Mission Statement’ in 2002.
Where identity politics may have worked for Griselda Pollock and the cultural formations of the ‘other’, even the performative aspects of motiroti’s Wigs (1995) is problematical to us today as being a straight derivative of cultural identity politics.
Rowe’s unwinding of a stable identity whereby she suggests that fixed identity has given way to a fluidity and open-endedness approach to stating identities by playing the performance or performative card on cultural identity, an evaluation of 60×60 films may not be any better for taking the same path of contemporary feminist evoked interplay. An ‘open-endedness’ may not be an option in today’s fragmenting society unless by ‘open-endedness’ we mean globalisation which of course is motiroti’s primary concern.
It would imply the continuous breakdown of our culture in national boundary terms which some would say is not an option post 9/11. Art has to both reflect and condition current cultural norms. Here the emphasis would be on the conditioning.
The first few of the 60×60 films are currently on show and are also available through the motiroti.com website. All the films are on the subject of identity as we may interpret it today and the current contributions are both thought provoking and in some instances beautifully filmed. One such film, The Great Identity Swindle (Directed and Edited by VideoWallah) by the British rap-artist Yam Boy, is a performance cross-media installation on Asian identity in Britain. Yam Boy, primarily a vocal artist, has produced a comic strip version of his poetical mix of dual country (Britain and India) inheritance. Politically charged but internally perfected, Yam Boy has produced a performative response concerning his mixed cultural and possibly historically marginalised existence.
Identity on racial terms is clearly not so easy to define in the twenty-first century in as much as his reference to ‘Pale Ale’ and courting ‘…white girls that disappoint their mother…’ held within the temporal frames of a Roy Lichtenstein comic strip more than double for both the acceptance and the denial of the ‘dominant’ culture. Yam Boy’s critique of cultural existence shows that today’s performance artists are both bright and come individually wrapped in their own ideas of identity.
The approach, although appearing to match the essentialist approach of early feminist theory (I am British [man] you are Asian [woman and therefore other]) to paraphrase, is non-essentialist and meaning can be neither predefined or fixed. The audience is encouraged to participate in striking the right harmony or disharmony along the way depending entirely on their point of view.
In this way it becomes anti-feminist in approach depending for its persuasion the audience’s perspective. From within the barrier of the comic strip form , the poetry performance comes alive and the rigid comic strip gives way to a filmic existence as it transgresses each frame in turn. Still to movie, silence to performance and back again all in the space of a line or so of poetry.
If we are to understand our own identity today through the medium of art, we have to understand not just the cultural differences and sameness on display or being acted out, but we must also be able to produce an ordered purpose for understanding the same. There are as yet no ready-made and lasting rules of engagement in identity matters that work to everyone’s satisfaction.
The motiroti work on display this July can be considered both as performance and art installation. The installation is motiroti’s use of the multiple screens arranged within the pre-defined gallery space. The performances are the films themselves. Overall motiroti’s influence is assured with such an arrangement, but rarely detracts from the performances on display.
What then would Yam Boy acting like an indigenous Englishman, pale ale and all, say? Well surely he would say little above what we already know just by drinking ‘pale ale’, one of the essentialist signifiers in his film for the term ‘English’. He might become intoxicated but that would not affect the normative experience whether that be a subversive or unsubversive manifestation of his Englishness. ‘Such judgements cannot be made out of context…’ stated Judith Butler, once relating her own gendered experiences to a captive audience. It is in Yam Boy’s audience to know the reality and make the judgements on racial terms if they must. Drinking pale ale either constitutes the real or it doesn’t.
It is quite easy to curve fit Yam Boy into Butler’s contemporary feminist arguments, although Butler is such a dense read it facilitates the interpretations or rather the mis-interpretations to perfectly fit the curve of the scholarship. Playing to the gallery was never easier than with feminist theory it would seem. Meanwhile, I expect Yam Boy will keep rapping his poetical critique on this broken culture.
60×60 is at The Truman Brewery, 91-95 Brick Lane London till 18th July 2008 and films are available with iTunes from the 360 degrees website
http://www.motiroti.com/work/projects/current.php?data_id=65
Other artists on show:
Britain:
Said Adrus, Khaldoon Ahmed, Abdullah Chhadeh & Nico Piazza & Aliya Salahuddin, Nirmal Singh Dhiman, Monika Dutta, Atif Ghani, Sheila Ghelani, Harjinder Grewal, Seema Gill, Seemab Gul, Shobna Gulati, Shanaz Gulzar, Sanchita Islam, Simon Kallow, Rizwan Mirza, Rummana Naqvi, Hetain Patel, Rajyashree Ramamurthi, Daniel Saul, Sashwati Mira Sengupta & Semonara Chowdhury, Rajni Shah, Yam Boy, Ali Zaidi.
India:
Khadeeja Arif, Natasha Badhwar, Pawas Bisht, Neel Chaudhuri & Samar Grewal & Kartikey Shiva, Baptist Coelho, Nitin Das, Ritu Datta, Elvis D'Silva, Tascha Eipe, Sukanya Ghosh, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, Bidhu Bhushan Panda, Nila Madhab Panda, Gautam Pandey, Pranav Sahi, Surya Shankar Dash, Avinash & Geeta Singh, Santosh K Singh, Hemanth Subramaniam, Abhilash V.
Pakistan:
David Alesworth, Unum Babar, Nida Bangash, Joshinder Chaggar, Shazieh Gorji, Mazhar Hussain, Ferwa Ibrahim, Juhi Jaferii & Taimoor Tariq & Komail Naqvi, Shalalae Jamil, Roshaan Khattak, Adnan Malik, Kohi Marri, Asma Mundrawala, Mehreen Murtaza, Syed Ali Nasir, Muzzumil Ruheel, Zarmeene Shah, Vasiem Siddiq, Sehban Zaidi, Maheen Zia.
Bibliography
Judith Butler, Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Routledge, Abingdon 1999)
Gill Perry (ed.), Difference and Excess in Contemporary Art: The Visibility of Women’s Practice (Blackwell Publishing, Oxford 2004) for Dorothy Rowe
Griselda Pollock Vision and Difference (Routledge, Abingdon 2003)
Himmler forgeries set me thinking….
I have been reading the newspaper reports that the National Archives (Kew, UK) have forged documents. This is about Himmler being murdered on the orders of Churchill and the books by Martin Allen about the very same subject. Forgeries I'm sure [first exposed in 2005] but it means you cannot be sure of any document you uncover in the National Archives (NA). I have been through thousands of pages over several years and now wonder whether some of them were in fact forgeries. No reason to believe any were of course but that sort of thing makes one wonder about motives and who’s motives? Cannot discuss this particular case further due to legal reasons.
However, it is not a well known fact but a mere 25-30% of documents ever reach the NA. It's not that the other 70% are just too secret although some obviously are, it is more that they 1) cannot cope with the huge amount of potential paperwork for filing and 2) a civil servant (or 2..3…4) make the choice of what is sent to the NA for eventual public access. You may think that these civil servants are chosen for their innate historical or scholarly acumen. Think again! They are just nominated representatives of Government departments that collectively decide (after secrecy screening) what is ‘valued’ for release as a document for public inspection and what is not.
That which is not is then incinerated I believe. All that extra history up in smoke after 'censoring' by civil servants. I trust that all electronic records (email, etc.) will not go the same way.
Has undisclosed history been covered up by otherwise enthusiastic civil servants with hidden agendas?
“Yes Minister' I hear you say!
HD
Teenage Oath of Allegiance: Yeah But No But
Good idea provided the political class in the whole of the UK take an allegiance to
Not act on self interest
Not spend public money for their own advancement
Not cynically state that their aim is to eradicate poverty and then charge the cost of their mortgages to the taxpayers
Not say how green we should all be then jet of on some freebie to the Carribean in the interests of basically themselves
Not make moral statements about the people of this country then go off shag their secretary behind their wife's/husband's backs
And as for former Attorney Generals not support war that is clearly illegal in international law
And not stand in the way of the legal process on behalf of a bunch of self-interested Arab businessmen
Only then I might consider it a good idea
HD
Smallest distance between objects
Question posed today elsewhere:
'…What's the smallest distance between two objects before they touch?…'
HD's proposition:
It's a really good question Jim!
If you assume that the smallest distance between two objects is a straight line and the line is made up of infinitesimal 'bits' and where these 'bits' are the smallest particles that can exist in the universe it might be stated that they are not touching when the line's bits=2 between the objects. Therefore if you measure each bit in terms of length and multiply by 2 that is the smallest measurable length between the objects. It cannot be reduced to 1 bit only, since one bit cannot be a line, it can only be the smallest bit of a line.
Theoretically, it might be stated as the width of the smallest particle that makes up the atomic structure since atoms are in fact transparent to some particles. I.e radiation. Measuring that may be difficult unless you place two objects that do not appear transparent to these particles next to each other and wait till the particles cannot transmit across the gap.
Practically not possible. Read about Schrödinger's Cat where it is either alive or dead, but is only one or the other when one can actually measure it. At all other times it is either alive or dead but remains hidden.
The assumption that the smallest distance between two points, however, is also not provable outside of mathematics. It might be that the smallest distance is in fact measured by some other entity which may not be straight in the ordinary sense of the word. Lines are assumed to be straight but it may not be the case. If they are made up of 'bits' as stated above, there is a reliance on the 'bits' being adjacent to each other at all times and that there is no 'gap' between bit ends.
The question that could be asked is are there distinct objects or are all objects just transient, transferable and fusible with other objects?
It may also be that the distance between two objects may be different in space than as measured on earth!
HD
White Boys, Geno Washington and the Class of ’66
This week we heard '…White British boys from poorer backgrounds are more likely than other social groups to perform badly at school…' That was according to a report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. A disturbing announcement I feel but something I knew already. In fact I have been anticipating this for nearly 40 years.
The only reason why more than 40 years ago the subject would not have hit the headlines is because there would have been no discrimination between the colour of skin in an educational report of the time. There would be no need, the predominant skin colour of our schoolchildren in the 1950s and early 1960s would have been white anyway.
In 2007, the fact that 'White Boys' as they put it, are falling behind in the educational stakes is a overt sign of the truisms of our society; a British society that has not been able to cope with itself as it has tended towards the formation of multi-cultural roots. Our lives have been enriched by this move, but many among us seem not to be able to either see that or indeed accept the fact that Britain has changed forever.
This development has been exacerbated by the metropolitan/provincial differences within society. The fact that most cities have developed their social mix across different cultural roots has left behind the provincial towns and especially the villages, to come to terms with multiculturalism all by themselves. Or, in most cases, to ignore it and to even defend against it. Racial tension never starts in the villages, but it is their inhabitants that become the cheer leaders for their white majority populations
So what has all this to do with Geno Washington and the Class of '66?
As I stated above, I have anticipated this divide within our educational system for many years now and have been pondering my own experiences and the experiences of some of my old class mates that left our school in 1966. The proof as they say is in the eating
The first problem I faced was finding some of my class mates to compare notes! Having travelled widely within the UK for the last forty years I have not kept in touch with many other than two girls I have remained very good friends.
'Friends United' was the obvious choice and it proved fruitful once you got beyond the obvious lies some people put against their names as their status. The high proportion of my contacts of '66 that claim to be IT Managers is wildly beyond any reasonable statistic for IT managers in the UK. After all, 50% of the population are not IT managers are they? To even the score, I insisted on putting myself down as 'a dosser living on handouts and discarded M&S sandwiches'. Having completed my social levelling act I was then taken by one boy that I was quite close to at the time. If his 'cv' was to be believed he actually rose to the dizzy heights of the music business and I was both sceptical and impressed at the same time.
So I set out to trace this friend of old and to catch up on the truth as we both saw it. If what I had read was true, it confirmed my suspicion the 'white boy' of old was more than able and willing to succeed in the world. Now it may not seem out of the ordinary to you, the reader, but what I have not told you so far is that the school we both attended was a secondary modern for 11+ failures and we were not supposed to achieve great heights having been discarded onto the scrap heap of the UK's educational system.
I eventually made contact through the email system and it turned out to be true. My friend had made good and had lived his dream. You see, we had when we were both about 15 or so, got the bug of black music and by our later teens we were both attending Geno Washington and other black music gigs in our hometown and in the murky atmosphere of the Soho all-nighter. The difference between us was that my friend went on to become a highly regarded DJ of black music and a record producer to boot. For myself, blues & soul remained within my heart and serves me to this day in a more metaphorical sort of way.
We conversed on email for several days, being several hundred miles apart, and it served to uncover yet another one of our '66 days, and yet another highly recognised DJ, though with tendencies towards heavy rock and currently working for an off-shoot of Virgin Radio. It takes all sorts I suppose.
Now I had the notion that if 50% of the class of '66 were IT mangers and the other half all became DJ's and it was I that was the odd one out. After all, all I had achieved was follow a career in science and introduce a prize-winning range of environmental monitors, becoming managing director of two companies and, in a later incarnation, rose to what I thought were the dizzy heights of the IT industry in the city of London. (hence the dosser story to complete the balancing act and to avoid the accusation of being a liar!!).
Some of class '66 'white boys' had bulked the system then. They had made good and achieved their dreams. Against all odds it seems, and as 'white boys' we did it with more than a little assistance from our black cousins, cousins that worked with us directly in the recording studios, provided the music that held us together it times of need and informed our music for generations to come. Now those 'cousins' live amongst us and it appears achieve better educational results than some 'white boys'.
Well good luck to them I say and may they too achieve their dreams and look back in forty years time and consider their roots as so important and inspirational as I do mine.
If the report in forty years time states '..some boys..' have failed, leaving out colour of skin, then I, looking down from one of heaven's 'all-nighter' dance floors, will be able to say, we eventually got it right and integrated. After all, blue and yellow make green
Everyone has their Itchycoo Park…
It's been building up in me this year. First it was the sight of that great wrinkly old twit sniffing the monarch’s arse for favours and complaining how poor he might get if they didn't extend performing rights royalties from 50 to 75 years in Europe. One 'Rift Pilchard', sorry Sir Cliff Richards no less. That 'Bermondsey boy' of old. Yeah right! Richards has as much in common with south London as does Tony Blair. I.e. Jack shit!
I said it was building up!
Secondly it was all those so-called new TV series like 'New Tricks' where equally old and wrinkly has beens like Denis Waterman and yes sorry, as much as I adore her, Amanda Redman, pretend they are not beyond redemption and can still hack a 20 hour day in the office or in their cases a two hour stint in makeup before solving the unsolvable crimes of TV drama.
…and did you see George Cole in that one-off 'Diamond Geezer'? and David Attenborough in that global warming thingy on the BBC? I don’t know which of them looks most walking dead! Tooth decay and old age do not flatter let me tell you! Try radio boys, where 'it don't matter no more'.
Building, building….
And now when I thought it could not get any worse, I'm going round humming the tune to the M&S TV advert and bloggy types are asking each other 'who's that tune by old boy? It's super what!'.
So now Marks and Sparks have their 'Itchycoo Park' advert playing incessantly it seems appealing for customers to 'come buy me' their rags. It's even made YouTube no less! It's a highly successful format following on from the Cockney Rebel one they did last year 'Make Me Smile'.
I don’t mind success, I love success! I don’t really mind out of work actors making a buck or two. I wish I was one and more importantly, making a bob or two. What I have to object to is not knowing the reality behind these ads or this one in particular.
I ask the question therefore of who's making the bucks from this tune 'Itchycoo Park'? (Small Faces, Immedite 1967). It's definitely not Stevie Marriot or Ronnie Lane the two former members of the band that died young and are undoubtedly sadly missed by many. They are also the writers of ' Itchycoo Park' and their estates according to Rift the Pilchard above, should be filling the coffers to overflow on this advert's TV minute mileage. We ain't no dead poet society though. What's worse we ain't no live poet society either!
I bet my next benefit cheque that none of the Small Faces alive or dead are making dosh from this ad. They never made any when they were alive and kicking so why should I believe they are making anything now. The reality of the Small Faces is they were well screwed, along with countless other good bands in the 60's, by the management and the record companies they were foolish enough to sign away their lives with in those heady pre-Itchycoo days.
Now Stuart Rose (CEO) and his band of rag trade strutters have put together a lineup of clothes (Per Una) and market them with what can only be described as typical music industry tactics of ripping off the band and banking the proceeds no questions asked guv! Small Faces, who are they anyway? Some grubby bunch of oiks from the East End I'll be bound I can hear the M&S bean counters say, as they count the profit from every dress sold under the aegis of this TV advertising campaign.
Well let me tell you Mr Rose, you and your advertising agency are still ripping off the likes of Lane and Marriot. Think hard about your dress sales. Would you be prepared to lose money on every one you sell just because you got it wrong on the contract or you didn't understand legal ease and all you ever wanted was to write songs and make good music. Get yourself high on that fact Mr Rose. For every dress you sell you get fatter and somewhere in the rag trade someone stays poor. For every record the Small Faces sold some Arden-like management and DECCA-like record co's. got obese and the rest stayed poor. 'Itchycoo Park' of course was an Immediate records release but I still wager that cheque the band or the estates get nothing from M&S's success.
Where has that happened before you may ask? It equates to the same thing that happens every day in the rag trade. Indian and other Asian suppliers of these rags for M&S. A double whammy then. Both music and rag trade bosses get rich and for that to happen others stay poor. The way of the world.
So maybe Cliff Richards has a point after all. Extending performing rights to 75 years is a good thing. Not to protect the rich and famous like Richards of course, although I do suspect his motives here. Owning an island in the Carribbean must be expensive for the poor lad! What better way to keep the status quo of 'them n us' going than relying on the law to keep us 'East End Herbert' types out of their lives forever.
After all, oiks don’t get knighthoods do they?
Was Thatcher’s Cabinet Anti-semetic?
On the eve of the Holocaust Memorial Day, Italy calls for Holocaust denial to be treated as a crime. Almost at the very same moment the United Nations adopts a resolution against denial. Read down the current news lists a little further and German prosecutors call for a five year sentence against Ernst Zundel, the alleged high profile Holocaust denier. In a statement to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has said that the day should be marked for future generations.
Where though is the stance of the British Government in all this debate? Could we see Holocaust denial outlawed here? The UN adoption was achieved without a vote. What would Britain have done if it had been put to a vote? Hypothetical questions maybe, but much of our apathy to the Holocaust lies in some of our history since World War II. The attached essay is based on records held at the National Archives, Kew and elsewhere and tells the story of two events that highlight the anxiety that the British state has in dealing with Holocaust events.
Sometimes comical sometimes 'jaw-dropping', the events that unfold in this story of Britain's 'National Holocaust Memorial' are a telling revelation of inter-departmental stalling and downright interference by the state. Papers released at Kew indicate the possibility of overt prejudice by some cabinet ministers determined to see this memorial 'buried' at arms length to Whitehall and the state.
The essay is a lengthy text, fully referenced and is released in full without changes from its original form. It was an attempt at a Foucauldian analysis of events since WWII relating to the idea of Holocaust.
Other side of Hogarth
As I look forward to the William Hogarth (1697-1764) temporary exhibition at Tate Britain this spring, I also reflect on the side of Hogarth that has been little applauded.
Hogarth, best known for his prolific output on London life, sexuality and even patriotism, had a more serious side to his nature which unfolded in some of his artistic creations. In fact Hogarth aspired to being a serious history painter. That is nothing out of the ordinary of course, since all artists followed an established pattern of training and execution on the well-established hierarchy of painting genres with history painting at the very pinnacle. Hogarth would want, especially in the early years of production, to eventually reach this summit. It is considered by many to be a summit that he never conquered, but nevertheless his output of history paintings is a body of works that is worthy of discussion.
Probably the most famous of these are the works that Hogarth donated to his friend Thomas Coram for The Thomas Coram Foundation for Children, originally in a building in Lamb's Conduit Street, Bloomsbury. 'Moses brought before Pharaoh's Daughter', and other history subjects painted for the Foundling Hospital (1747) now adorns the walls of The Foundling Museum adjacent to the old hospital near Brunswick Square.
There are two other sets of Hogarth paintings though, that tend to get only a cursory glance
in discussions of Hogarth's work. One set of works can be found at St. Bartholomew Hospital in West Smithfield, London. Generally locked away from public gaze can be found on the original hospital entrance stairway, two stunning murals by Hogarth. 'Pool of Bethesda' and 'The Good Samaritan' (1736-37). In fact Hogarth provided these murals free of charge on the basis that it was British art, thus preventing the hospital from commissioning an Italian artist to fulfil their wishes.
The murals can be seen by arrangement on Friday afternoons only I believe, and I recommend a visit to see these elaborate murals.
Much lesser known that even these is the triptych (not a true triptych since the central painting was positioned high over the alter) that Hogarth completed for St Marys Redcliffe, Bristol in 1756. In fact if you ask an art historian about these paintings ('Ascension' flanked by 'The Sealing of the Sepulchre' and the 'Three Marys at the Tomb') you will generally get some head scratching and looks of disbelief! Try it out on your favourite historian and tell me I am wrong here.
It is nigh impossible to even find an image on the world wide web on any of these paintings! The closest one gets to it is a 'missing image' announcement on the St Nicholas Church Museum referenced site at artfund.org. Bristol Museums and Galleries have the paintings in their charge and also hold the copyright to photographs. I am indebted to Michael Liversidge, Bristol University History of Art Department, for sending me a copy of his 1980 paper (reference supplied on application) which provides some information about the history of the altarpiece.
What strikes me greatest after seeing the images is a certain resonance with the 'Italian Baroque' painters Claude and especially Poussin. Both were masters at painting in pairs (Pendant). Since the main altarpiece is positioned high above the other two, I surmise that Hogarth was treating the other two as a Pendant.
Whatever the case, it is well worth the visit to Bristol to see these paintings. Not great masterpieces as such but nevertheless a valuable asset to the history of art in Britain. Hogarth enthusiasts should make the effort during the exhibition in London.