Artistic Taste

Robust British humour at a London gallery has drawn censure from the po-faced unelected. The Courtauld Gallery is celebrating the famous foreigner Van Gogh with souvenier soap at £5 a bar for "the tortured artist who enjoys fluffy bubbles" and a "box of wise emergency advice" for scarcely three times more. Harking back to the artist's notorous self-harm incident, the Courtauld is also selling ear-shaped erasers, thereby prompting complaints of shallowness, nastiness and insensitivity to the Rothermere Stürmer on Sunday, which certainly ought to know. The editor of the art magazine The Jackdaw wondered if the gallery would be selling pencils in the shape of Frida Kahlo's artificial leg; which of course is hardly getting into the spirit of things. Kahlo's disability was the result of a bus crash that seriously injured her pelvis and spine, and the perils of public transport are hardly a joking matter even when the victim happens to be a Communist, a woman and a wog.