Earlier this year, a book appeared celebrating the first ten years of the Stirling Prize for architecture. Back in 1996, recession was only just ending and the National Lottery just beginning. It was the end of a bleak time for architects, doubly afflicted by the criticisms of the Prince of Wales. One unexpected benefit of
‘Museums are the new United Nations.’ So says Jack Loman, the director of the Museum of London. He is one of many professionals, and increasingly policymakers, calling on cultural institutions to act as instruments of foreign policy. Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, is enthusiastic about this mission and is currently
Opera North’s home at the Grand Theatre Leeds now boasts a resplendent auditorium, with lacquered walls and raked stalls, so that I have now finally seen the stage; and above all greatly improved acoustics. More remains to be done, as the news release grimly informs us, stressing that Phase II of the plan ‘will have
From its very opening scene this film is exquisitely, lavishly gorgeous and on and on it goes, being exquisitely and lavishly gorgeous — oh, the frocks, the shoes, the petit fours, the piled-high candies! — until you start thinking, enough with the exquisitely and lavishly gorgeous already. How much exquisitely and lavishly gorgeous can a
At the Cheltenham Festival last week, Professor John Sutherland was on a panel discussing Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea — which on this occasion won the mock-Booker prize for 1966, defeating The Jewel in the Crown, The Comedians and The Magus. Prof. Sutherland made the point that a prequel like WSS can exist because the
Twilight, the witching hour — that tantalising moment on the cusp of day and night when everything seems strange, poignant and full of possibilities. It is a gift to the photographer, whose raw material is light: its shifting subtleties, its evanescence, its poetic potential. The V&A has collected in this exhibition the work of eight
There are many who might consider it an absolute crime that someone who would look so entirely delectable in a dirndl is instead about to hit the stage of the London Palladium draped from head to toe in a habit and wimple. Lesley Garrett, however, is so thrilled that she can barely contain herself. Other
It is a Monday morning, after a week’s run of Summer and Smoke, and following the example of Tennessee Williams I have just brewed myself a coffee pot of liquid dynamite, and sitting down immediately after breakfast I am hoping its pressure on my heart will stimulate this article. Tennessee Williams was a proud punisher
Regular readers of this column will be aware that I champion small exhibitions which combine judicious selection with sufficient breadth to give an adequate representation of the artist under discussion. With Adam Elsheimer (1578–1610) there is no choice: the fullest retrospective must needs be a small exhibition. An artist who worked slowly, suffered from depression
In 1944 an Allied bomb fell into the circular courtyard of the ancient Roman-inspired house that Andrea Mantegna had built for himself in Mantua, bouncing off its frescoed frieze. It failed to detonate. On 11 March of the same year, another landed on the Eremitani church in Padua, blowing the Ovetari chapel, whose walls were
Dawson Carr is the approachable but authoritative curator of Later Italian and Spanish Painting at the National Gallery. Talking to him you soon sense a total engagement with his work. He was born in Miami and worked at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles for 16 years. Armed with a tape recorder I met him
There are many different ways to start a ballet season, but an artistically disjointed triple bill is not the ideal one. Even on paper the Royal Ballet’s opening programme for 2006/7 looks awkward, and the rationale behind joining Balanchine’s Violin Concerto (1972), Jirí Kyliàn’s Sinfonietta (1978) and Glen Tetley’s Voluntaries (1973) remains unclear. Little matters
My friend Mitch rings up. ‘Guess what my album of the year is?’ He is trying to fool me into suggesting Donald Fagen’s Morph the Cat, for Mitch and I are both Steely Danoraks of long standing. But I know he was a little disappointed by the album, and he knows I wasn’t. I can’t
Each time I see Shostakovich’s once controversial opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk I am impressed by what brilliant performances it seems to incite, fascinated by it dramatically and musically, but left unsatisfied by its unevenness and what I think is finally its incoherence. As far as productions go, it is hard to imagine that any
The recently concluded Kandinsky exhibition at Tate Modern was widely appreciated for showing how music influenced the artist’s move towards abstraction. Two concerts featuring seminal compositions by Schoenberg were held alongside talks which explained how abstract forms hit painting and music at about the same time. What was not so fully explored was the blissfully
It’s strange that while Britain has gone fairly mad over Mozart’s 250th anniversary, with vulgarities ranging from Mozart for Babies on Classic FM to Mozart mugs on coffee mugs, etc., we haven’t heard much about possibly his only cultural peer, Rembrandt. The Germans have now put us thoroughly to shame on the artist’s his 400th
Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8–1543) needs no introduction: his vision of kingship in the person of Henry VIII has become part of our national identity, despite Holbein himself being a German whose first taste of success was in Basel. It’s a strange fact that, although endowed with a robust tradition of drawing and linear ornament
Places, like property prices, go up and down. Margate, in the most northerly corner of Kent, is just beginning the uncertain journey upwards again. The county’s largest resort, it has acres of ribbed brown sand and a harbour enclosed by a pier, ending in a lighthouse. Margate thrived when Turner painted there, and London workers
So, to cut straight to what you really want to know without having to wade through several paragraphs of plot-rehash followed by the director’s CV and his favourite seasonal vegetable, will you like this film? Hell, how should I know? I don’t know the first thing about you. But I will say this: OK, The
It’s more than three years since there was a production of Wagner’s ultimate masterpiece, Tristan und Isolde, in the UK, and I have been looking forward eagerly to Welsh National Opera’s revival of the one they share with Scottish Opera. Yannis Kokkos, who was the original designer and director, pays tribute in the programme to