Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Sunday

Daisy Dunn

Saturday night telly worth staying in for

If you don’t go out on a Saturday night, you stay in and imagine what it would be like to be out. And if you do that, there’s a chance you’ll find yourself in front of Take Me Out, the dating programme that airs on the ITV primetime slot once enjoyed by Blind Date. Last Saturday, incredibly, it completed its sixth series. Such is the Tinder-like trend for having dates brought to you, rather than actually having to go out to get them yourself. And what an eye-opener it is. Thirty women, apparently tailored by the same outfitter, totter down a staircase, and take up position behind thirty electric lecterns.

Friday

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

France’s cultural excess is immoral (but I still love it)

For a committed, if unsuccessful, capitalist, I enjoy French culture an embarrassing amount – every last state-funded drop of it. Give me five-act operas with cast lists the size of a small Chinese city, give me obscenely expensive works of public art, give me inhumane concrete estates, give me unintelligible modernist music and I’ll be drooling with pleasure all night. In fact, I’m seeing a five-act French opera with a cast list the size of a small Chinese city tonight in Bordeaux. That’s the kind of disgusting thing I like to do. In my defence, I am aware that what I am doing is immoral and what is being created should be

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Tutus, loo rolls and a roomful of balloons

A tip: go see Martin Creed’s retrospective at the Hayward in the company of a child. I didn’t, but I tagged on to a merry gaggle of five-year-olds being guided round by their mums. I watched as they pointed at the enormous rotating beam with a neon sign that reads ‘MOTHER’. ‘Jump up and touch it, Mummy,’ said one girl. As we carried on, we came across a machine playing rude raspberry sounds. Peals of laughter rang out. Nearby, a man was playing the piano slowly, semitone by semitone. The little girl in the tutu tapped him on the shoulder and asked if he was part of the show. He

Kate Chisholm

When a Chinese and a Japanese visit Tokyo’s Yasukuni war shrine

What does freedom mean to you? That’s the question the BBC World Service has been asking of us through its season of programmes Freedom 2014. The Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield (whose daily blog from space went viral) gave us a vivid and unusual image of what freedom, or rather the lack of freedom, looks like to him. While circling the earth in the international space station, he noticed that each time he went past the lights of Berlin were two different colours. After a while he realised this was ‘a poignant reminder’ of the city’s history; of its former lack of freedom; of how it had been divided by a

Deborah Ross

You may be the Only One Left Awake at Only Lovers Left Alive

Jim Jarmusch is the noted American ‘cult director’, and if you were to judge him solely on the basis of Only Lovers Left Alive you’d be minded to think the cult can keep him.  It’s a take on the vampire genre, which is fair enough, as who hasn’t had a go, but this is so lethargically meditative and so packed with pompous in-crowd references and such a monotonous yawn that if, by some miracle, you make it to the end, I should warn you there is every chance you will find yourself the Only One Left Awake. Poor you. Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton star as Adam and Eve, which

Andrew Lambirth

Four artists you ought to know — and a famous one you can know better

In this round-up of exhibitions in London’s commercial galleries, I feature three shows of little-known but mature contemporary British artists. There is a great deal of interesting and worthwhile art being made out there, but not enough of it comes to public attention. Most museums won’t show it, and there are only a handful of commercial gallerists who are prepared to back quality over proven popularity. In such a world, the quieter talents tend to get overlooked, so it is a particular pleasure to be able to draw your attention to the subtle small paintings of Liam Hanley (born 1933). Hanley paints in oil and draws in pencil on linen

Lloyd Evans

Brave Tommies and dim earls — Oh What a Lovely War is hoity-toity reductionism

Here it is. Fifty years late. Oh What a Lovely War was originally staged at Stratford East in 1964. It returns to its birthplace to cash in on this year’s anniversary of the Great War. Sorry, I meant commemorate. The title is so familiar that one overlooks its callow, misanthropic glibness. Does anyone think war ‘lovely’? The show’s narrator sprints through the causes of the conflict, and its chief battles, without offering any historical insight. Music-hall songs and comedy stereotypes trundle past on a conveyor belt of laughter and slaughter. The show was inspired by angry dogmatist Joan Littlewood, who wanted to sock it to R.C. Sherriff for writing a

Anna Picard

Rigoletto in a gentleman’s club

So it’s farewell to the fedoras and adieu to the jukebox. After 32 years of service, Jonathan Miller’s Little Italy staging of Rigoletto has been given the heave-ho by English National Opera and replaced by a younger model. First seen and disliked in Chicago in 2000, then seen and disliked again in Toronto, Christopher Alden’s nearly-new production affords the London audience an opportunity to congratulate itself for being less conservative than the North Americans, thereby mitigating its customary fright at the provocations of Continental Regietheater. Potted palms, Turkish carpets, oil lamps and leather armchairs fill the stage in Michael Levine’s handsome reconstruction of a mid-19th-century oak-panelled gentleman’s club, Alden’s analogue

Michael Henderson

What now for ENO?

It has been a bracing start to the year at English National Opera. David Alden’s production of Peter Grimes, praised to the skies for the musical performance under Edward Gardner, returned to the Coliseum. Next up is Rigoletto (reviewed on page 50), directed by Alden’s twin, Christopher. Then comes Rodelinda, in another new production (or co-production, as is often the way these days) by Richard Jones. Audiences will be particularly keen to see the Rigoletto, and not shy of making comparisons with the celebrated production by Jonathan Miller, which has finally been stood down after three decades. Hanging over everything, though, is the realisation that Gardner’s time at the helm

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Anything you can smash, I can smash better

Art is under attack. Another week, another expensive poke in the eye. Last Sunday, Miami artist Maximo Caminero destroyed a $1 million vase by Ai Weiwei in protest at the museum ignoring the work of local artists. Before this, there was Wlodzimierz Umaniec’s defacement of a Tate Modern Mark Rothko in the cause of ‘Yellowism’, which saw the  Pole jailed for two years. Then came the story of the kids caught clambering over a $10 million Donald Judd. It’s hard not to smile. The irony of it all is too delicious. An art form that has for 100 years demanded that practitioners shaft society’s norms is, in turn, having its

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Give Steve McQueen a Nobel prize not an Oscar

Film critic Armond White has been booted out of the New York Film Critics Circle. Officially it was for heckling Twelve Years A Slave director Steve McQueen at a press conference. But they can’t have liked him telling the truth about the movie. Namely, that it’s crap. We should listen to  hecklers. Especially when they’re as serious as White. That they have to heckle their message is usually a sign that something is up. And something is up.  The consensus surrounding Twelve Years a Slave is getting unhealthy. For many the very act of telling Solomon Northup’s story is enough to immortalise the film. No matter that the acting is one-note, the

Candy Neubert

this is a message

As I make my way to the greenhouses a seagull kills me in its pure white throat. Quiet in the tomatoes. Quiet among the beans. Soft dark patches where the rain leaks in. Can I come home? Has it been too long? Tall weeds growing through the coils of hose.

Alistair Elliot

The Old Man Comes Out With an Opinion

This long orchestral piece records a day the composer spent one summer meditating in Dibnah’s yard on the sounds of dereliction, or possibly the dereliction of sound: the settlement of rust, the flake and drift toward the earth of forged and hammered things, the creak of shiny flanges in the wind, and the occasional crash of martial metal as boys dribbled a biscuit box along between the ornamental tetanus hedges of Fred’s Versailles, parterres of ferrous oxide. Sometimes I wish that Fred’s new crush-compactor had crumpled the composer (violin solo) and his jalopy (piano, timpani) in one bright ingot, multicoloured foil (cymbals), and hoyed the lot in the canal (a

Tuesday

Sebastian Payne

How much does a degree improve your lifetime earnings?

What do you say to an arts graduate? Hamburger and fries, please. It’s an old joke but one that still rings true as students consider the value of a university education. A new survey from the graduate recruitment site Totaljobs.com today suggests that 40 per cent of graduates are still looking for work six months after graduating, whilst a quarter are still unemployed a year later. The news isn’t much for those who manage to bag a job – the latest ONS’ employment figures suggest that nearly half of graduates who have found work are in jobs that don’t require degrees. But even if the student of today takes the

Thursday

David Blackburn

Take a look at John Maynard Keynes’s armchair

Discoveries: Art, Science and Exploration at Two Temple Place (until 27 April) is like a giant cabinet of curiosities. Maps, gizmos and memorabilia are spread across two floors of this glorious high-Victorian building on the Embankment. There are drawings from doomed polar expeditions, bones and teeth of fish from the Woodwardian Collection (see above), early botanical diagrams, hoards of medieval gold, the loot of empire (the Sufi snakes-and-ladders board in ebony and mother-of-pearl is memorable) and John Maynard Keynes’s armchair. The exhibits are drawn from the eight museums of the University of Cambridge. Much is made of the fact that this is the first time the university’s museums have collaborated

Clarissa Tan

So long, Scandinavia. Bonjour, Benelux! 

So long, Scandinavia. Bonjour, Benelux! BBC4, your subtitle-friendly channel, has filled the hole left by Nordic-noir The Bridge with Belgian crime drama Salamander (Saturday). At first, I thought this might involve a series of murder mysteries set in Flemish country houses, all solved by a dapper English detective called Horace Parrot. Not to be. Salamander is a 12-parter that kicks off with a break-in at the very heart of evil, a private bank in Brussels. The robbery eventually lands incorruptible police investigator Paul Gerardi (Filip Peeters) in the midst of a dangerous conspiracy, as he is chased by all manner of crooks keen to protect secrets they’d kept in their

Peter Hoskin

Bury every copy of Monuments Men in mines across Europe, so George Clooney can try again

You know that old quip ‘I’m not just a pretty face’? I always thought it was meant to be said tongue-in-cheek, with an undertone of self-deprecation. Surely it’s not for those literal instances when a really beautiful person does something really, really smart. It’s for when those of us on the middle-to-lower rungs of the loveliness ladder have flashes of minor inspiration. And so, ‘I’m not just a pretty face.’ Like a joke. Hahahahaha. But what would it mean if George Clooney — ol’ salt-and-pepper-spit-curl George — said ‘I’m not just a pretty face’? The reason I ask is that he, or at least the character he’s playing, does just

Giannandrea Poesio

Bach is made for dancing

It appears that J.S. Bach’s music is to theatre-dance what whipped cream is to chocolate. Masterworks such as Trisha Brown’s MO, George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco and a plethora of less-known, though equally acclaimed compositions owe a great deal to the giant of baroque music. Wayne McGregor is the most recent addition to this illustrious roster of successful Bach-inspired dance-makers with Tetractys —The Art of Fugue, which world-premièred last Friday. Set, as the title implies, to Michael Berkeley’s orchestration of The Art of Fugue, played on the piano by Kate Shipway, the new work stands out for the intensity of the dialogue between music and dance. Linear beauty dominates a majestic

Anna Picard

Manon Lescaut is twerking — should we applaud or shudder? 

Last seen clambering over the MDF wheelchair ramps of Laurent Pelly’s Royal Opera House production of Jules Massenet’s opéra comique, Manon the minx, the ‘sphinx étonnant’ of Abbé Prévost’s 1731 novel Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, reappears in two guises as part of Welsh National Opera’s Fallen Women season; as the heroine of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut and the antiheroine of Hans Werner Henze’s Boulevard Solitude, both directed by Mariusz Trelinski. The connection between her story and La traviata, the third opera in WNO’s season, is deeper than a coincidence of job descriptions. In La dame aux camélias, the source for Verdi’s opera, Marguerite’s lover, Armand, buys

Andrew Lambirth

‘Castiglione: Lost Genius’ loses his genius in a sea of brown

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609–64) was, I must admit, unknown to me until I visited this show, the only Castiglione I was properly aware of being the one who wrote The Book of the Courtier published in 1528; clearly not the same man. The artist Castiglione was a tempestuous character, always losing his temper and getting into fights. He tried to throw his sister off a roof and is said to have committed murder; perhaps more importantly for his artistic career, when he was at the height of his popularity in Genoa, he slashed to shreds a painting commissioned for the Doge of Venice, and fled the city in which he