Manira Mirza has an article in the Guardian today, in which she announces the relaunching of the Lates Festival. After perplexingly describing Boris as the “cultural night mayor” she proudly proclaims that:
“Lates, which launched last night, is one of the few examples of London’s major cultural institutions coming together under one banner to programme special events relating to their major exhibitions. With even more leading institutions taking part than ever before – National Portrait Gallery, the Hayward, ICA, Royal Academy, National Gallery and British Museum, to name but a few – Lates will once again look to tempt busy young professionals away from an after-work drink in a pub, and into these galleries and museums.”
Elsewhere, Boris has been defending his decision fulfil his promise to create permanent statue of Sir Keith Park on the fourth plinth.
“I can go for a dead white male war hero, gloved, goggled, moustached, forged in traditional bronze and thereby – so I am warned – earn the odium of the entire liberal funkapolitan art world, or else I can continue to support the rotation of strange and wonderful works of contemporary art and enrage those who think these conversation pieces are out of keeping with Nelson’s square and that a failure to install Sir Keith Park is a disservice to the memory of those who saved our country from tyranny in 1940.”
He has, it seems, joined the Young British Artists:
“I love Chinese art and I admire those Aztec skulls and I like Damien Hirst’s flagrant rip-off of Aztec skulls and I nod with pleasure and agreement at Richard Dorment’s elucidations of the YBAs.”
How long, we wonder, before Boris jettisons representational politics and becomes an all-out conceptual mayor? The signs are there to see.
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