The Royal Academy Summer Show boasts that it is the world’s largest open submission contemporary art exhibition, but this year it focuses on invited artists and distinguished foreign visitors. Thus it neglects both the Academicians, its real strength and raison d’être, and the until now faithful corps of British artists who submit year in, year
A small but beautifully staged exhibition is now on show in the garret of Dr Johnson’s House in London. It was in this room that Johnson worked on his mammoth Dictionary of the English Language. A large roof-space with eaves and heavily charred roof timbers (the roof was set on fire by the Germans a
Nabucco; Pelléas et Mélisande Arriving for the first production in Opera Holland Park’s new season, we were greeted with a reassuringly retro set. Since there is no curtain, what we see is what we’re going to get, and it is a stage full of battered suitcases and nothing else. For the operagoer, this sets bells
The other day I had to address a group of media students from Michigan State University on the purposes of TV criticism. I came up with about five, the last of which was: always impress on your audience what a massive waste of life almost all TV-watching is because it’s mostly rubbish, it sucks out
Gillian Ayres and David Bomberg: two painters with markedly different visions of the world, but united in excellence. Interestingly, there is a period of Bomberg’s work — the Spanish paintings of 1929 — when his paint surfaces seem to resemble Ayres’s of the late 1970s and early 1980s in their impacted intensity. But apart from
This season’s they-don’t-make-’em-like-that-any-more offering at the Old Vic is Gaslight. The chief reason for going to see it is that it stars the talented young actress Rosamund Pike. Time spent gazing at the astoundingly beautiful Miss Pike is never wasted. But Gaslight has other attractions as an entertainment. It’s a 1938 three-act thriller set in
Until recently I was one of those insufferable prigs who proudly announces, ‘Oh, I never watch television, it’s all rubbish these days.’ But there was little virtue in my self-restraint, and I had no idea whether there was anything worth watching or not. The fact is that when you are out at the theatre four,
Fidelio is so full of wonderful music, and its subject matter is so stirring and so perennially relevant, that it should be a frequent feature of any opera house’s repertoire. In fact it is rather rare, and this new production is the first time it has been seen at the Royal Opera for 14 years.
Stylistic accuracy is one of the most problematic aspects of restaging dance works. ‘Style’ is a fluidly ambiguous notion encompassing a multitude of factors: the training of the choreographer and dancers, particular aesthetic trends, interpretative choices, and so on. Hence the difficulty of getting it right. Stylistic appropriateness goes far beyond any detailed reproduction of
The best way to get serious press coverage for your big show is to provoke the hacks by shutting them out from the first night. It’s a high-risk strategy but in the case of the now famous King Lear with Ian McKellen it’s worked a dream. The director Trevor Nunn and the RSC chief Michael
Channel 4’s Diana: The Witnesses in the Tunnel (Wednesday) was, as promised, pretty tasteless stuff, though not for the reasons we were told. There are those who still believe the princess’s death was not an accident, and that the royal family, Lord Stevens and both French and British governments are part of a huge conspiracy
This weekend, as the orchestras of England celebrate the 150th anniversary of this country’s most celebrated composer, is an appropriate time to review the national monument that is Sir Edward Elgar. Does he continue to speak of and for England? Or was he merely a late-romantic nostalgic, whose music was hopelessly outdated when he died
I have been dipping into the Modern Sculpture Reader, edited by Jon Wood, David Hulks and Alex Potts, an invaluable compilation of texts produced by the Henry Moore Institute at £20. It’s a hefty paperback tome determined to give sculpture its rightful place in the anthology stakes — so often dominated by painting — and
It’s always a problem, comparing a new band with others who have gone before. Critics have to do it, defining the new in terms of the old, because there has to be some way of describing the indescribable. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been caught, having read somewhere that someone was
At last ENO has come up with a production which can be greeted almost without reservation, and of a treacherously tricky opera, Britten’s last and for many his greatest, Death in Venice. After a gruelling two weeks in which I have seen major works manhandled beyond bearing at the Royal Opera and at Glyndebourne, I
Right until the end of his life, Euan Uglow remained one of the most elusive English painters. An intensely private man, known only to a small circle of devoted artists, critics, models, collectors and former students, he disliked promotional exposure and the celebrity cult. His reputation has always been high, but it was largely confined
Water opens with a beautiful little Indian girl sitting on the back of a cart joyously chewing on sugar cane. She has luscious hair, pinchable cheeks, dark eyes, a nose-ring and tinkling silver anklets. (So cute; Madonna would kill for her.) A middle-aged man is on the cart, too, lying on his back and groaning.
Very sadly I couldn’t get hold of Sea of Fire (BBC2, Friday), the (reportedly superb) drama documentary about the destruction of HMS Coventry in the Falklands War, because tapes weren’t available till just before broadcast. But not to worry. I think I can still tell you with some confidence how it went. The first thing
A large portrait of Mark Elder hangs backstage at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. It’s not a flattering representation; in it the Hallé’s music director looks tired, haggard, old. Interestingly, the picture is positioned so that the conductor doesn’t have to go anywhere near it as he passes through the corridors from his dressing room
How do you react to the news that Kay Hartenstein Saatchi, ex-wife of Charles, the woman who helped to discover (or invent) the original Brit Art brat pack, is putting on a exhibition of London’s best young artists this week? Perhaps your eyes have already begun to widen with excitement? Perhaps you feel a sudden