Arts feature

I’m standing alongside Angela Rosengart, in a room full of portraits Picasso drew of her, when something spooky happens. Out of the corner of my eye, the old woman beside me becomes the young woman on the wall. It’s over in an instant, but it’s still strange and rather wonderful. For a moment, Frau Rosengart is young again, just as Picasso saw her. We’re in the Rosengart Museum in Lucerne, a grand neoclassical building (formerly a branch of the Swiss National Bank) that houses Rosengart’s extraordinary art collection — more than 100 works by Klee, plus dozens of other modern masters: Léger, Kandinsky, Modigliani...

It sounds like mission impossible. To celebrate this year’s 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, the RSC set itself the task of mounting a play about the controversies surrounding the translation. A drama, therefore, entirely lacking in drama. No action or spectacle, no romance or comedy, no surprise twists or last-minute poisonings. Just people talking. And for David Edgar, who accepted the commission, this was part of the attraction. ‘A meeting between people who are unrelated but share a common purpose,’ he tells me, ‘can be as exciting and vivid and active as that great staple of drama, the family meal. Even sitting around writing a letter to a relative is a recognisable form of human behaviour.’ We meet in a break from rehearsals.

Too often art is subjugated to curators’ theories or interpretations. Let the work speak for itself, says Andrew Lambirth The casual observer of London’s art scene, or even the devoted reader of exhibition listings, might be forgiven for thinking that the range of shows available throughout the conspectus of the nation’s museums was of a healthy vigour and diversity. In fact, it could be effectively argued that there are still too many different blockbusters simultaneously competing for box-office success, with museums forever chasing revenue by putting on displays of tried-and-tested favourites, and not actually serving the public in the best possible way.

Those BBC refuseniks will rue the day they passed up the chance to relocate to Salford, England’s new cultural capital, says William Cook Standing on the roof of Daniel Libeskind’s Imperial War Museum North, staring at the shiny new buildings down below, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in Hamburg or Berlin. There’s the same futuristic skyline, the same glint of glass and metal. There’s even a sleek modern tram, snaking between the shops and cafés along the quay. But this isn’t a continental conurbation — this is Salford. The improbable renaissance of this unloved city sums up England’s biggest schism, not between black and white or rich and poor, but between north and south.

Without Roy Harper’s baroque, mellifluous, melancholy folk there would have been no ‘Stairway to Heaven’. James Delingpole meets a neglected genius In 1970, shortly before the release of Led Zeppelin III, guitarist Jimmy Page invited his folk-singing chum Roy Harper up to his Oxford Street offices to have a look at the new album. ‘What do you think?’ asked Page. ‘It’s nice,’ replied Harper, toying with the amusing picture wheel built into the sleeve. ‘Look at it!’ said Page. ‘Yes, it’s nice,’ said Harper. ‘No. Look at it!’ said Page, growing exasperated. And then Harper noticed the title of track five, side two. ‘Oh. Oh! Thanks! I don’t know what to say.

There is a ban on comedy flyering in Leicester Square. Westminster Council has decided that flyers are litter and that the flyerers — usually anxious baby comedians – ‘harass’ the tourists. This is ridiculous. Most comedians would scream at their own reflection in a pint. Even so, if the council finds any flyers it will remove the venue’s licence. As if comedians did not have enough woes — manic depression, calm depression, depression that is not really depression but suppressed rage, poor rates of pay, joke theft, Frankie Boyle — their solitary reason for living, which is attention, is now at threat.

Lloyd Evans mingles with sozzled Scots, benumbed punters and performers with nothing to lose at this year’s Fringe It’s for losers, Edinburgh. The world’s down-and-outs come here in droves every August. This year I was one of them. Having failed to secure my usual lodging, a spartan cell on the university campus, I had to book a backpackers’ refuge on the Royal Mile. It was better than a park bench. Just about. The website promised ‘fitted sheets’ and ‘lounge with real fire (gas/coal effect)’ as tokens of its commitment to luxury. I rented a towel (20p, no deposit), which turned out to be fairly clean on one side. The accommodation was rammed. Six rooms, eight bunks each. Nearly 50 of us sharing four showers. No soap.

The Cambridge Footlights (King Dome) have a lot going for them. Poise, brains, clean-cut looks, nice accents and privileged status at the Edinburgh Fringe as keepers of a sacred flame. But in reality these advantages count against them. Audiences know that comedy comes from a paranormal neverland, from damaged grotesques, from halting, slobbering outsiders. Comedy is unpleasant. And these boys are anything but. So it takes them a while to convince us that they’re the real deal and not some artful muck-about from the college quad. Their comedic sources are obvious. Movie spoofs, workplace mix-ups. And much of their material defies current political orthodoxies. A joke about the Jamaicans not being able to muster an army feels distinctly weird.

We owe Giverny to the generosity of Americans Whoever coined the famous aphorism ‘When good Americans die, they go to Paris’ didn’t tell the full story. For American plein-air painters, Paris was never more than limbo. Heaven, they eventually discovered, was Giverny, presided over by the Impressionist deity Monet. It was 1887 when the first American scouts came to reconnoitre the small Normandy village 80 kilometres down the Seine. They reported back to Paris, and within a few summers Monet’s rural retreat was infested with artists’ studios and the fields around were sprouting clumps of painters’ white umbrellas.