Arts feature

In May 1904 a young artist called James McBryde wrote excitedly to his great friend M.R. James. ‘I don’t think I have ever done anything I liked better than illustrating your stories. To begin with I sat down and learned advanced perspective and the laws of shadows...’ In May 1904 a young artist called James McBryde wrote excitedly to his great friend M.R. James. ‘I don’t think I have ever done anything I liked better than illustrating your stories. To begin with I sat down and learned advanced perspective and the laws of shadows...

Andrew Lambirth finds the National Gallery’s new exhibition on Canaletto and his contemporaries both illuminating and enjoyable Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697–1768), better known as Canaletto, is a safe bet and a crowd-pleaser, and the weary critic is entitled to ask — not another Canaletto show? What can there be left to say? But note the exhibition title — Venice: Canaletto and his Rivals. Venice comes first, the great tourist trap herself, kingdom of the sea and romance-magnet, and in the placing of the words the unashamed popularism of the show emerges. Or so the cynic might think.

On the southern edge of Manchester, a few miles from the airport, there is a commuter town where the Victorian novel remains very much alive. This year Knutsford celebrates the bicentenary of its most famous daughter, who immortalised this ‘dear little town’ in several of her finest stories. More than 150 years after it first appeared, in weekly instalments in Dickens’s Household Words, Cranford remains Mrs Gaskell’s most enduring creation. And in these streets you can still trace the outline of the world that she created. Elizabeth Gaskell was born in 1810, in Chelsea, the daughter of a Unitarian minister. Her mother died when she was a few months old, and Elizabeth was packed off to an aunt in Knutsford.

Julian Perry (born 1960) paints images of genuine topicality in an immaculate high-definition realist style. Julian Perry (born 1960) paints images of genuine topicality in an immaculate high-definition realist style. His last show in 2007 dealt with the allotment sheds bulldozed by the relentless encroachment of the Olympic site. Since then he has been painting pictures of coastal erosion, visiting locations around England and composing hallucinatory images of deracination and loss. ‘Clifftop with Fridge Freezers’ was one of the first of the new series. I asked him to describe the subject.

Britain’s architects can produce the best designs in the world, says Amanda Baillieu. So why aren’t any on display at the Venice Architecture Biennale? Something has gone very wrong for the British at the Venice Architecture Biennale. This three-month event may play second fiddle to the older and larger Art Biennale, but for architects it is meant to be the only festival where they can let rip, free from the restraints of budgets, planning and bureaucracy. They come to gossip, to see what their rivals are up to and schmooze clients. Even Norman Foster has dropped by to talk up his firm’s plan for Hong Kong’s new £1.8 billion arts district. Some 30 countries show their wares in national pavilions, slugging it out for punters and prizes.

Despite the economic gloom, ENO’s John Berry is optimistic about the future of opera Opera director David Alden said in a recent interview, ‘Opera is alive, popular — and hot.’ I agree. Opera is very much in the public eye and thriving in UK opera houses, cinemas and performing arts centres. However, as we wait to see the outcome of the coalition’s spending review, the arts community has been vocal about its concerns and fears. London is not Munich or Vienna where public subsidy for the arts is a way of life and debated on the same level of necessity as health and education. Yet Britain is revered worldwide for the energy and quality of its performing arts institutions.

New York is in the grip of memorial mania, writes Tiffany Jenkins In early 1991, the construction of a federal office building in lower Manhattan was halted after an unexpected discovery. Underneath the ground, covered by a patina of concrete and steel, was the coffin of a colonial-era African. It was not alone. Construction work was halted, archaeologists called in, and it was soon established that the site was a major burial ground from the 17th and 18th centuries. As many as 15,000 to 20,000 black men, women and children were buried there, by the historians’ count, making this one of the most important archaeological finds in all America. The significance was not lost on New York’s people or its authorities.

William Cook goes to Skegness and watches Cannon & Ball attract an adoring audience It’s August and Edinburgh is full of fashionable young comedians, but here in Skegness the Festival Fringe seems a million miles away. With its amusement arcades and fish and chip shops, this unpretentious place feels forgotten by the metropolitan arts establishment. There are no TV producers on the windswept promenade, no theatre critics in the bingo halls. Yet Skegness boasts a theatrical heritage far older than the Edinburgh Festival — traditional seaside entertainment. And this summer it’s playing host to Britain’s most seasoned seaside entertainers, Cannon & Ball. Throughout the 1980s Cannon & Ball were one of the biggest acts in Britain.

Nina Conti appears convinced that her puppets are real. Freddy Gray investigates Isn’t Nina Conti too good-looking to be a ventriloquist? One thinks of blokes in working-men’s clubs with frazzled hair, not Nina with her smiling face and big brown eyes. It’s hard not to look at her, which must be a professional disadvantage: isn’t the audience meant to watch the puppet? I want to put this technical question to Nina, but worry that it might sound creepy. Instead, feebly, I ask if she believes reports that ventriloquism is making a comeback. ‘I’m not sure I really buy into that,’ she says, with a kind and apologetic shrug. But the art of talking through a puppet does seem to be enjoying a renaissance.

Charles Moore on how to renew and maintain life in the deserted villages of rural Romania To understand this story, one must go back nearly 25 years. As Soviet Communism moved towards collapse in the late 1980s, people were in danger of forgetting Romania. Because of Romania’s relative independence from Moscow, the West played down the insane policies of its despot, Nikolai Ceausescu. The Spectator, I am glad to say, did not. We sent in journalists under cover, and started a scheme, paid for by kind readers, to send free copies of the magazine, much sought after by print-starved intellectuals. The world finally took notice of Ceausescu’s horrors when he began a policy of systematically destroying all villages, housing peasants in concrete blocks of flats.

The ‘seriously handsome’ Toby Stephens talks to Mary Wakefield about the magic of acting With some people, their prep school selves seem barely submerged beneath the adult surface. They talk away like grown-ups but one shrug, a grin, and you can see their inner schoolchild. Toby Stephens, sitting opposite me in a boxy room high up on the top deck of the National Theatre, is a good example. He’s 41, seriously handsome with dark red hair and a fine-boned 1940s face; he’s a dab hand at playing cads and attempted world domination as the evil Gustav Graves in Die Another Day (quite outshining that drip Pierce Brosnan). But there’s something about him that still seems to be 12. It makes me want to hug him, though I’m quite sure that wouldn’t help.

What are the ingredients of a good audio guide? Henrietta Bredin investigates These days you’re more than likely, at any museum, gallery, exhibition or public building of interest, to be offered an audio (or even a multimedia) guide with which to ‘enhance your visitor experience’. There will probably be a small cost involved and you will then find yourself with a pair of headphones and an attached box to sling around your neck — or something known in the trade as a wand, which looks like a large telephone with a selection of buttons to choose from.

Marianne Gray talks to the down-to-earth Oscar nominee Brenda Blethyn about her latest film Brenda Blethyn doesn’t really understand why people continually ask her why she plays dowdy, often downtrodden characters, like Cynthia, the despairing mother in Secrets & Lies, or James McAvoy’s heartbroken mother in Atonement, or Mrs Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, who horse-trades her daughters. Or, indeed, like her latest role, the anxious Elizabeth, an ignorant, conservative, prejudiced woman, in London River. ‘I just don’t see it like that,’ says Blethyn, who has made a brilliant career out of playing understated, restrained women. ‘Everyone must be portrayed. Everyone must have a voice, even the flawed ones. I don’t try to smooth out the edges.

Andrew Lambirth talks to John Richardson, biographer and friend of the artist John Richardson has spent a lifetime in the company of great art and artists, and is justly celebrated for his ability to evoke, explain and evaluate their work in beautiful prose. Best known as the biographer of Picasso, he has written about many other artists, including Manet and Braque, and has curated a number of seminal exhibitions since the Picasso retrospective he staged in New York in 1962. For the past 50 years he has lived in New York, though born in England in 1924. He was in London recently for the installation of his major new curatorial excursion, Picasso: The Mediterranean Years 1945–62 at Gagosian Gallery (6–24 Britannia Street, WC1, until 28 August).