Which dead British artist would you like to see on the new £20 note?
Hmm.
Zadie Smith? A writer is an artist aren’t they? Tracy Emin? Grayson Perry? That spot painting bloke?
What? They’ve got to be dead you say? That’s a problem that can be solved isn’t it?
The only reason to take part in such things is to troll Guardian readers.
So I vote for Ted Hughes.
Or Tolkein.
Mick Jagger
yes I know not dead (why do I always hit return too fast)
Aryeh Friedman – “Mick Jagger”
Still not trolling competently. Try harder.
But if we are going to pick a musician, so to speak, then I vote for Sid Vicious. A better artist than Misses Smith or Emin. Also far more likely to make Jessica Valenti cry. What’s not to like?
Better yet, it is a wedge issue. Miss Valenti will condemn and thus alienate everyone who likes to think of themselves as cool. Splitting the Leftist community and increasing joy for everyone else.
Michael Powell. If you want a more familiar choice, Alfred Hitchcock.
But I imagine they’ll go with Lowry, Hepworth, Constable or Turner. Because it’s only art if it’s in a gallery with tax payers supporting it.
Eric Gill. Painting a portrait of his sister. With a dog on her lap.
Graham Chapman.
I tried to comment along the lines that Tim has suggested, only to find that my latest incarnation has been banned from commenting.
Winston Churchill.
what have you got against Smith and Perry?
The Alfred Hitchcock £20 gets my vote.
Just the first names that came to mind that I could make that joke about.
@JeremyT: Winnie’s going on the new fiver.
To the substantive; Robert Hooke, partly because it’d amuse me to have him after Sir Isaac was only on the pound, partly because he doesn’t get as much renown as he deserves, but mainly to meet the howls of “But he wass a scientist, not an artist” with the dual response of a. he was an important architect in his day and b. look at Micrographia and tell me the drawings aren’t superb. And thus we get another scientist…
Hitchcocks a good one — instantly recognizable (the side profile line drawing), obviously knew his business. Plus he worked in cinema which is 1000% per cent more interesting than paintings.
There’s a family legend that we’re related to The Big Man so by ancient law this means that 10 percent of every new twenty quid note would actually belong to me. PAY UP.
Roue le Jour has it.
Do ‘Piss Artists’ count?
Graham Chapman: seconded. Also Eric Morecambe. Also Spike Milligan.
Comedy is one of the things the British are great at. We should celebrate it more. I also vote to make Bring Me Sunshine the national anthem, for the same reason. The dance, of course, would be compulsory.
James Hogg /Robt Burns/ Henry Raeburn etc …… Get Scots on all the notes, and give the SNP a quandary about giving up the pound. I’ll bet they’d hate being teased.
Patrick O’Brian.
Tommy Cooper, though perhaps just the hat
Anoneumouse said:
Given these austere times put Prince Charles on it. Then there would be no need to reprint the notes when Queen Elizabeth dies.
Hans Holbein the Younger’s portrait of Henry VIII.
Rolf Harris!
(Too soon?)
Hogarth; I was going to suggest George Morland one of the most prolific of British artists who reportedly produced 4,000 paintings because he was famously drunk most of the time *but managed to produce paintings sought after by galleries and museums even while drunk* but Hogarth was better-looking.
Banksy would be a fun choice because, you know, no one knows who he is or what he looks like.
Robert Palmer
It’s a pity about the late requirement, but Ian Rank-Broadley would be a nice ironic choice.
None of Tim’s suggestions are in any meaningful sense artists.
Definitely William Hogarth, but I doubt he’ll get many votes.
Banksy. Just because I would SO like to see him become qualified.
Oohh – Russell Brand for the same reason (hey – dumb-ass comedy is and art damnit!).
Not sure if I’ve been missing it or it’s new, but this banner now appears on the G:
“We notice you’ve got an ad-blocker switched on. Perhaps you’d like to support the Guardian another way? Become a support today.”
No, fuck off.
Fucking money-grubbing capitalist bastards.
LS Lowry, a genius of the stature of Van Gogh, the creator of an immediately recognisable and extremely powerful visual language who laboured under the burden of being a rent-collector from Salford and who refused every honour offered to him while he was alive, including the CH.
Matchstick Men on the currency? What more fitting honour could there be for the former Chief Cashier of The Pall Mall Investment Company?