Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Saturday

Mark Glazebrook

Intimate insight

And did those feet in ancient timesWalk upon London’s suburbs green?And was a canvas full of sunOn England’s pleasant pastures seen?And did Pissarro’s light divineShine forth upon our clouded hills?And was IMPRESSIONISM builded hereAmong these dark Satanic mills? Well, up to a point, yes, if Camille and his son Lucien may be merged and those Satanic north of England mills, later to be turned a smoggy white by L.S. Lowry, kept in the distance. Although retaining Danish nationality, having been born in the Danish West Indies, Camille Pissarro’s feet, or rather one of them, in a genetic manner of speaking, may have hailed from the same vicinity as William Blake’s

Andrew Lambirth

Sweetness and Light

People love to sniff the scandal of forgery. Didn’t that old rogue Tom Keating practically become a folk idol? The disputes of scholars are mostly dry stuff, but the notion that the National Gallery’s recently and expensively purchased ‘Madonna of the Pinks’ by Raphael could be a fake has been resurrected by arts reporters and newshounds hungry for headlines on the occasion of this eagerly awaited Raphael exhibition. I have heard artists and critics voicing their doubts about the authenticity of this painting — one of the former opining that the faces do not look sufficiently Italian to be by Raphael, but are instead ‘neurotic and unmistakably Low Countries’ —

Michael Vestey

Digital watch

Did the BBC’s creation of its Radio Four-type digital radio network BBC 7 force the commercial digital station Oneword to close? The report last week investigating the corporation’s move into digital radio seemed to think so. Tim Gardam, a former BBC and Channel 4 executive, whose report it was, said that the BBC ‘was basically unconcerned about the potential effect of BBC7 on Oneword’. The Oneword ‘assumption that it would be allowed to pursue this market alone was scuppered’ once BBC7 was launched. He thought the station’s collapse might have been avoided if the BBC had been willing to share its renowned archive with it. It is a pity that

Robin Holloway

Update on Three

It’s several years since I’ve attempted in these columns an overview of the state of Radio Three. Perceptions are sharpened by an actual absence from these islands of some three months, followed by a season in the country, where its beams do not penetrate. So I come to it refreshed, with a wider perspective from which to measure benefits and disabilities than if, glued to the tacky Radio Times, I’d never been away. Positives first: plenty of the network’s manifold and manifest excellences remain intact. A passionate addict of ‘serious classical music’ (ugh) and the idea, and actuality, of a service wholly devoted to its dissemination, I find this ideal

Saturday

Michael Tanner

Grave and glittering

While it’s clear, from the ending-times of most of their performances, that neither of London’s major opera houses feels it is worth considering seriously their patrons who don’t live in the capital and have to use public transport, it often seems even clearer that most Londoners wouldn’t dream of going further afield for an opera than Bow Street or St Martin’s Lane. At least I can’t see any other explanation of why each visit I have paid to Sadler’s Wells this year has been to a theatre half-full, if that. And several of those visits have been far more enjoyable than almost anything to be found in the West End

Giannandrea Poesio

Stamping feat

Foot stamping is a common feature of many forms of dance. This is not surprising because it provides immediate rhythmical accompaniment to the dance, while being integral to the dance action. Inspired by what many consider as the most natural and first man-made rhythm-making in the world, illustrious choreographers have often drawn upon this primeval idea for their artistic creations. Footfalls, therefore, have often been extrapolated from their traditionally non-theatrical contexts and imported into ballets such as those by Maurice Béjart and Jiri Kylian, or into more radical theatre-dance works, such as Maguy Marin’s memorable May B (1981). In Jean-Pierre Perreault’s Joe, rhythmical patterns created by stamping, tapping, and shuffling

Andrew Lambirth

Private passions | 23 October 2004

If travel indeed broadens the mind, much of its benign influence and inspiration must come from contact with foreign culture, very often in the form of museum collections in the country visited. (The British, perhaps surprisingly, are valued museum-goers.) The remarkable assembly of masterpieces and lesser Salon items that fills the Louvre actually says a great deal about French history, if correctly interpreted. Likewise the contents of the National Gallery reflect upon our national character and patterns of taste with no less piquancy and point. So if our public galleries continue to stage sumptuous exhibitions which showcase the world’s great collections for us here in London, one of the great

Saturday

Michael Tanner

Puzzlingly unmoving

Hard to credit, but at the Royal Opera the new production of Massenet’s Werther begins with the prelude being played while the curtain is still lowered, no one messing around in front; and when it rises, at the point indicated in the score, we see a honeysuckle-covered wall, with a water spout spouting water, and part of a quaint old house. Old-style realism, or semi-realism, which many of us have been pleading for, if not in all cases, at least in such classic period pieces as this. When characters appear, they are dressed in period, too. Fairly soon, however, I began to wonder whether the director Benoit Jacquot, collaborating with

Toby Young

Who needs friends?

Cloaca, Kevin Spacey’s debut as the artistic director of the Old Vic, must rank as one of the biggest disappointments of the year. It isn’t bad, exactly, but I was expecting so much more from the man who electrified British theatergoers with his star turn in The Iceman Cometh six years ago. I sat there in the audience thinking, ‘He put his career in Hollywood on hold for this?’ A new play by a Dutch author called Maria Goos, Cloaca is reminiscent of Art, the long-running hit about three middle-aged male friends who argue about the value of a blank canvas. Cloaca features four middle-aged men, rather than three, and

Giannandrea Poesio

Californian class

I wish ballet companies due to visit London in the next few months could bring programmes that are as richly varied and neatly constructed as those presented by San Francisco Ballet last week. Artistic eclecticism as well as the ability to respond to a diversity of stylistic and technical demands are two of its most noticeable qualities. This 69-strong company, under the 20-year directorship of Helgi Thomasson, has matured into one of the best companies today. I do not recall the last time I saw such an impeccable rendition of George Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments, the crowning glory of the second programme. The complex intricacies of the dance phrasing, the

William Packer

Salutary shock

The experience of the critic is one of constant revision, for nothing remains ever quite the same, least of all old opinions. And of all the major figures of 20th-century art, no one forces us to think again, every time, more than Salvador Dal

Andrew Lambirth

Flower power

Constance Spry (1886–1960) was a remarkable figure who exerted a powerful influence over the taste of generations of home-makers, particularly from the 1930s to the 1950s. Born in Derby, she was brought up in Ireland where she studied hygiene and physiology, with a view to a career in nursing. A natural communicator, she soon found herself lecturing on first aid and home nursing for the Women’s National Health Association in Ireland. From the start there was a noticeable emphasis on self-help and what can be done in the home. But Spry was always capable of working equally well with larger institutions, and at the beginning of the first world war

Saturday

Toby Young

Preserving our heritage

What will happen to British culture when the United Kingdom disintegrates into half a dozen warring republics? Who will protect our museums from marauding bands of looters when the rule of law breaks down? What will become of the crown jewels when the royal family is banished to Monaco? If our cultural heritage survives at all, it’ll be thanks largely to India, judging by the loving care with which three classic works of English literature have been adapted recently. Later this year, cinema-goers have two treats in store: Bride and Prejudice, in which Elizabeth Bennett is transformed into a Bollywood heroine, and Vanity Fair, Mira Nair’s distinctly Indian take on

Saturday

Petronella Wyatt

Pretty boys

As I was sitting in the car the other day, I looked to my right and saw a billboard depicting a pair of giant legs. Glancing up, I noticed, for what must be the umpteenth time, the face of Brad Pitt emerging somewhat incongorously from a Greek helmet. There was a gaggle of girls standing about and staring at it with gloopy expressions on their faces. Brad Pitt — to the modern female the epitome of physical perfection. What a miserable thought. I don’t know a single member of my sex who has been to see Troy to see Troy. They have all been to see Troy to goggle at

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

Fine Arts Special

Over in Notting Hill, at England & Co., 216 Westbourne Grove, W11 (until 12 June), is a fascinating retrospective of that underrated painter Albert Herbert (born 1925). Herbert studied at the Royal College of Art with the Kitchen Sink painters, Bratby, Middleditch et al., but was less drawn to gritty social realism than to an art altogether more symbolic and concerned with states of mind. (‘Art is not about meanings but feelings,’ he has said.) An early dose of Surrealism was compounded by the influence of Francis Bacon, briefly a tutor at the RCA, and Herbert began to explore his own intensely personal narratives through shared stories, many of them

Saturday

Lloyd Evans

The peace movement’s fight has gone

Poetry and conflict are as old as each other. From war springs suffering and from suffering song. Fourteen months after the invasion of Iraq, the ancient association is as vibrant as ever. According to the Guardian, an anthology entitled 100 Poets Against the War has outstripped the opposition and become the nation’s most frequently borrowed book of poetry. Even now I hold the volume in my hand. And I read with tremulous fascination about its torrid and telling birth-throes. Last year, on the eve of conflict, Laura Bush was favoured with a visitation from Apollo. The god of verse implanted in the First Lady’s mind the bright idea of staging

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

Art for the people

How do people respond to Rubens these days? Is all that lush flesh so out of fashion that he is of historical interest only? The good people of Lille evidently think not, for a large and ambitious Rubens exhibition has been organised under the special patronage of M. Jacques Chirac to celebrate the fact that this year Lille shares with Genoa the status of European Cultural Capital. Rubens is considered an apt choice for a landmark exhibition, and certainly the sumptuous display at the Palais des Beaux-Arts is impressive. It is also the first major exhibition devoted to Rubens ever to be held in France. It deserves to be a

Saturday

Interconnect

Apocalyptic vision

The Royal Academy’s retrospective exhibition The Art of Philip Guston: 1913–1980 (until 12 April) comprises some 80 paintings and drawings dating from 1930 to 1980, by one of America’s most original 20th-century painters. It’s not easy to look at, being in turn demanding, forbidding, horrific and beautiful, but it’s certainly real, and as an intensely moving human document it deserves to be seen. Guston was born of Russian-Jewish parents in Canada, and moved to America in 1919. When he began to paint in 1927, he was largely self-taught. He worked on government-funded mural projects and absorbed the drawing techniques of the Old Masters. The early work in this exhibition portrays

Saturday

Interconnect

Visual treats of 2004

Andrew Lambirth looks forward to this year’s exhibitions — from El Greco to Ken Kiff The chief thrill of this year’s gallery-going has to be the El Greco exhibition at the National Gallery (11 February to 23 May). It will be the first major showing of his work in this country, and for many the first chance to study his visionary paintings in any depth. Domenikos Theotocopulos (1541–1614), who settled in the Spanish city of Toledo in 1577, was known as ‘the Greek’ because he hailed from Crete, whence he introduced a modern version of the Byzantine style to a shocked and admiring audience. Trained as an icon painter before

Saturday

Wf Deedes

The spoils of Waugh

Those of us who have been cashing in on the centenary of Evelyn Waugh’s birth, which falls on 28 October, have had a good year. Stephen Fry has won acclaim for his direction of the film based on Waugh’s Vile Bodies, renamed — on orders from the marketing men, I guess — Bright Young Things. Michael Johnston has attracted attention by writing an unauthorised sequel to Brideshead Revisited, which at the behest of the Waugh estate will be available only on the Internet. My own account of adventures with Waugh in Abyssinia during Mussolini’s war in 1935 has sold more copies than I would expect any book of mine to