New Lamps for Old A few weeks ago, a friend described me as being “recently old“, a witty contradiction which reminded me of a statement from Peter de Francia’s inaugural speech as Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art, Mandarins and Luddites, where he described the obsessive search for the modern and the novel, as “a man rushing into an antique shop demanding something new.” If this was true in 1971, it is even truer today, with the popular preoccupation […]