Some Art (and some not)

I'm on my way to Huddersfield Art Gallery when I see a crowd watching some Morris dancing in the town square. Now I normally think it's vaguely unsettling, that style of English folk dancing. I mean, it's not exactly flamenco, is it? It has a kind of preciousness about it, too, not helped by the fact that most of the people who do it seem to be middle class solicitors and accountants - and their wives.
But this is different. It's a sort of punky, death-metal kind of Morris dancing. The're all dressed in raggedy black outfits with faces painted like Michael Stipe of REM. And the stick-work is properly aggressive, both on the floor and on each other. It's dead exciting.
In the Art Gallery they've got a Bacon study which was donated by the CAS in about 1962 when it was worth twopence. They must be delighted about that now! Otherwise there's not much except a visiting exhibition including Carl Andre's "Equivalent VIII" - or "the bricks" as everyone knows it. The most interesting thing about this is the furore it created when it was first bought by the National, especially the exaggerations about how much it cost, mainly promoted by the Daily Mirror. Plus ca change...

But the thing that made me laugh today was this bronze of Harold Wilson battling against the wind. We all did that here, too.