Culture

Culture

The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.

Andrew Lambirth

Pastoral perfection

Exhibitions

One of the highlights of the Royal Collection is Gainsborough’s ‘Diana and Actaeon’, a painting I always make a point of visiting when I am viewing a new temporary exhibition in the Queen’s Gallery One of the highlights of the Royal Collection is Gainsborough’s ‘Diana and Actaeon’, a painting I always make a point of visiting when I am viewing a new temporary exhibition in the Queen’s Gallery. An unusual picture, it is Gainsborough’s only mythological subject with an identifiable classical literary subject. Best-known for his portraits, Suffolk-born Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88) would have preferred to spend his time painting landscapes, but couldn’t make a living at that.

Freddy Gray

Totally Tom: class act

Arts feature

If you are feeling chippy — and I hope you are not — you might find Totally Tom annoying. If you are feeling chippy — and I hope you are not — you might find Totally Tom annoying. Here are two Old Etonians, Tom Palmer and Tom Stourton, who want to be comedians. They have been catapulted towards success at an early age thanks to the internet, and their act is all the rage at this month’s Edinburgh Fringe. Girls like them, obviously. ‘Oh, my God, Tom!’ shouts a nubile blonde as they walk into the room. ‘I was just about to text you!’ Chippiness, however, would be quite the wrong reaction. Totally Tom are totally brilliant. They are talented, funny, and admirably self-effacing.

Mark Greaves

Let there be light | 20 August 2011

Arts feature

The bare brickwork of Westminster Cathedral’s ceiling was always meant to be covered in mosaic. Mark Greaves meets Tessa Hunkin, who will bring the project to life Three years ago, Tessa Hunkin was asked if she would like to undertake the biggest mosaic project since the Hagia Sophia. The project, which would probably take decades and cost tens of millions of pounds, was to decorate the ceiling of Westminster Cathedral. Monsignor Mark Langham, then cathedral administrator, told her, ‘We will have work for you for the rest of your life.’ The cathedral, built in 1903, was always meant to be covered in mosaic. The bare brickwork of its vast domes and vaults is not part of the design — it was just never finished. But momentum is building to change that.

Giannandrea Poesio

Sheer magic | 20 August 2011

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The term ‘circus’ is used in the ballet world with disparaging intentions to criticise any excessive display of technical bravura. The term ‘circus’ is used in the ballet world with disparaging intentions to criticise any excessive display of technical bravura. Yet in the appropriate context, dazzling acrobatics can be high art, as the Guangdong Acrobatic Troupe of China demonstrated last week. I would never have thought that I would have raved about a version of the immortal Swan Lake in which the ballerina swivels on point while balancing either on her partner’s bicep or on his head. But there I was, gasping with surprise like a six-year-old.

Chris Ayres

Silly and sweaty

Cinema

There is panic in the extraterrestrial markets. The Ursa Minor indexes are tanking, and slime-based lifeforms throughout the galaxy are dumping the Outer Space equivalent of Italian bonds and piling into something a bit safer — gold. But gold is running out, so aliens looking to diversify their portfolios with the universe’s most valuable metal are left with only one option: steal it from some backwater of a planet like, well, Earth. OK, I’m speculating here. But imagine this scenario playing out 150 years ago, and you pretty much have the backstory of Cowboys & Aliens — in which an intergalactic mining vessel thuds down somewhere in the New Mexico Territory with the intention of gittin’ it some bullion.

Peter Phillips

In times of trouble

Music

This year is the 500th anniversary of the death of Tomás Luis de Victoria, whose work, as I have written before, I consider to be the most moving High Renaissance music there is. This year is the 500th anniversary of the death of Tomás Luis de Victoria, whose work, as I have written before, I consider to be the most moving High Renaissance music there is. But we could have had little idea how the world’s tragedies would follow the Tallis Scholars around, making performances of his ineffable six-voice Requiem as useful as they have been appropriate. From the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, through the disaster at Fukushima to the bombed restaurant in Marrakesh and the murderous performance recently in Oslo, my troupe and/or I have been there or thereabouts.

Michael Tanner

Love in the Alps

Opera

Opera Holland Park has as its speciality little-known Italian operas from the last decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th. It’s a period that seems to have been swarming with composers who were eager, somehow, to combine the ardours of Verdi with the larger symphonic constructions that were being created across the Alps. OHP has turned up some worthwhile specimens, of which last year’s Francesca da Rimini by Zandonai was one of the classiest. This year is La Wally by Catalani, of which everyone knew, or still does, the hit number ‘ebben?...N’andro lontana’ thanks to the movie Diva. Alas, that turns out not only to be the best thing in the score, but also to have been composed, as a song, 15 years earlier.

Kate Chisholm

Bearing witness

Radio and podcasts

Even the great Alan Bennett sounded out of synch with the times as he read from his new short story ‘The Shielding of Mrs Forbes’ for this week’s Book at Bedtime (Radio 4). Even the great Alan Bennett sounded out of synch with the times as he read from his new short story ‘The Shielding of Mrs Forbes’ for this week’s Book at Bedtime (Radio 4). His peculiarly English brand of wit, mordant, slightly sinister, a touch supercilious, grated on the nerves. No one else on radio can put together a character with such economy and yet such excruciating vividness. But in the light of the events of last week his characters sounded a bit jaded, a little worn out, too caricatured to gather us in as listeners.

Simon Hoggart

Let them eat cake

Television

Prince Charles turned up on TV again this week, in Britain’s Hidden Heritage (BBC1, Sunday), wandering round a country house in Scotland that he had helped to restore. Prince Charles turned up on TV again this week, in Britain’s Hidden Heritage (BBC1, Sunday), wandering round a country house in Scotland that he had helped to restore. He was interviewed by Paul Martin, best known as the presenter of Flog It!, in which he gets aerated by an auction for a Georgian silver salt cellar, or a set of cigarette cards. For some reason, presenters who would sink their fangs into a politician, no matter how important, are reduced to quivering lapdogs by royalty.

13 August 2011

Barry Humphries

An Australian in Lautrec’s Paris

Arts feature

The remarkable career of Charles Conder At the small but distinguished exhibition at the Courtauld Institute — Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril (until 18 September) — we glimpse many of the habitués of the Moulin Rouge with the exception of Charles Conder. A marginal figure in at least four works by Lautrec, he is also the subject of a fine portrait drawing at the Art Gallery of Aberdeen. Conder was born in London in 1868 and as a child went to Australia with his parents. He showed an early aptitude for art and at the age of 15 was employed as an illustrator for the Sydney Morning Herald.

Andrew Lambirth

Hungarian photography, Richard Long, Thomas Struth

Exhibitions

As regular readers of this column will know, I am not a great admirer of photography exhibitions, but the current show in the RA’s Sackler Galleries is more enjoyable than most. I have long loved the work of André Kertész and Brassaï, and besides presenting a lavish selection of their photographs, this show offers the context of their fellow Hungarians to further illuminate their achievement. The effect is interesting, if not entirely happy. Nothing seems to diminish Brassaï, but Kertész suffers by comparison. In the company of such relatively unknown photographers as Imre Kinszki, Rudolf Balogh and Erno Vadas, Kertész looks less strikingly original.

Ed Rex

Imogen Heap

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Imogen Heap, the English songwriter whose gloves let her control her music with hand gestures, has perfected the art of delegation. While most musicians leave it to their labels to sort out a press biography, she forged hers from 1,500 contributions from her Twitter followers; where others endlessly pore over potential concert setlists, she lets visitors to her website choose hers. It’s what the 21st century has termed ‘crowdsourcing’, and Heap is now taking it one step further: she’s co-writing her fourth album with her fans. She’s brought out two songs from the album so far, and both have involved asking the public to contribute ideas: from musical snippets to recollections of slightly embarrassing personal experiences.

James Walton

Simon Hoggart: Chilean Miners

Television

Angus Macqueen is a film-maker whose CV includes The Death of Yugoslavia, Gulag, Cocaine and a slightly odd period commissioning the likes of The Secret Millionaire as Channel 4’s head of documentaries. These days, happily, he’s back making his own stuff — and BBC2’s Chilean Miners: 17 Days Buried Alive was another gem. Commentary was kept to a minimum and the reconstructions were nicely restrained, leaving the heart of Friday’s programme filled by gripping interviews with six of the miners themselves. These proved to be a varied lot, from Mario ‘Perry’ Sepúlveda, a family-loving Jehovah’s Witness, to Samuel Ávalos, a cheerfully foul-mouthed former street-kid, who praised mining as the best way to sweat off a hangover.

Kate Chisholm

Kate Chisholm on The Reunion

Radio and podcasts

There was a scary moment on last Sunday’s The Reunion when we heard that the derivatives market has ‘exploded’ since the collapse of Barings in 1995. Banking has become more, not less, dependent on the kinds of gambling on future (i.e., virtual) values that brought down Britain’s oldest merchant bank. When Barings fell, just over $1 billion went down the drain. Now, the derivatives market is worth $1.4 quadrillion — a figure that becomes more and more meaningless the bigger it gets, wafting through the ether like a cloud of poisonous gas.

Michael Tanner

Dorset delight

Opera

Dorset Opera dates back to 1974, but I have only just been for the first time. The quality of what I saw and heard was such that I’m annoyed with myself, ashamed even, for not having been before. The annual effort begins each year as soon as the Bryanston School holidays start; everyone involved in the performances lives in the school accommodation: that includes the star singers, the conductors, directors, the chorus, largely consisting of young people from around the country, and the orchestra, freelance professionals; and no doubt many more. They assemble on a Saturday and the – this year – five performances take place during the second half of the second week.

Marcus Berkmann

Blighted by Dylan

Music

Is it true that Bob Dylan is 70? I would never have guessed: there has been so little about it in the newspapers. No doubt he is out on the road right now, on his never-ending tour, murdering his old tunes with a relentless indifference, unbothered by what his fans might think. But you have met a Dylan fan. You might well be a Dylan fan. They are not like the rest of us. It is 20 years or so since I saw Dylan live but I have never forgotten the experience. The most serious trainspotters were down at the front, making sheaves of notes. Others cheered a song they knew Dylan hadn’t played for seven years, four months and 18 days. Someone who had missed the fourth night in the run of seven was ostracised by his fellows.

Chris Ayres

Monkey business

Cinema

Apes have always made lousy movie stars. They never have front-page affairs with other celebrity animals; there’s no Most Emotional Grunt category at the Academy Awards; and teenage girls don’t lie in bed at night, dreaming of one day meeting the Right Orangutan. That’s why, if you going to make a summer blockbuster named Rise of the Planet of the Apes, with a primate in the starring role, you’d better cast a pretty damn good human foil: an actor of such prodigious handsomeness and talent, the audience will forget it has paid good money to spend two hours in the company of hominoids.

Patrick Carnegy

Power games in Stratford

Theatre

There’s something decidedly odd in being part of a largely grey-haired audience sitting respectfully through a play about the discomforts of a cantankerous old butcher’s ménage consisting of a chauffeur, pimp, demolition worker and, ah yes, a professor of philosophy incomprehensibly returning from his American campus to the bosom of his dysfunctional family. This revival of The Homecoming is also Harold Pinter’s return to the RSC after a long absence and it’s part of the company’s celebration of its 50th birthday. In 1965, the premiere of The Homecoming was a landmark of Peter Hall’s early years as founder-director of the RSC. The play was then as iconoclastic as Waiting for Godot and Look Back in Anger.

Lloyd Evans

Pushy mothers

Theatre

Weird experiments in stone and glass clutter the South Bank opposite the Tower of London. The near-spherical City Hall looks like a speeding squash ball photographed at the moment of impact with a racquet. Around it stretches an acre of sloping flagstones, ideal for freestyle biking and skateboarding. (Sure enough, both activities are vigorously suppressed by patrols of scowling guards.) Nearby, the Scoop is a roofless amphitheatre fashioned from a crater of layered granite. It’s an eerie and compelling sight, as if a divine whirlwind had ripped deep spirals out of a barren moonscape to produce a huge grooved funnel. As I took my place on a freezing seat, I sensed that the artificiality of the space seems to work against the warmth and intimacy it’s supposed to generate.

Giannandrea Poesio

Mariinsky Ballet | 13 August 2011

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It’s somewhat surprising that there are many people who are still amazed by the Mariinsky Ballet’s sparkling response to the choreography of George Balanchine. After all, it is well known that the father of modern American ballet, born Georgi Melitonovic Balanchivadze, had been trained at the Imperial Ballet School, from which developed the artistic principles that have long informed the Mariinsky Ballet’s tradition. It is true that once in the United States Balanchine reworked those principles with movement ideas that were typical of the Americana he felt so attracted by. Yet all his creations remained unmistakably rooted in the old Russian school.

6 August 2011

Andrew Lambirth

Cy Twombly and Poussin

Exhibitions

When a major artist dies while an exhibition of his or her work is up and running, there is inevitably a surge in visitor numbers. Consequently, the death of Cy Twombly at the beginning of last month has sent along to Dulwich a number of people who didn’t know his work to find out what all the fuss was about. Others, the long-standing admirers of Twombly, will visit Dulwich with sadness in their hearts that this delightful and surprising artist, this genius of the wayward mark, will make no more new work. Dulwich is not the easiest of London galleries to get to, but I recommend this show, not just for its quota of Twomblys, but also for the added bonus of Poussin, seen here in great glory. Their juxtaposition is a stimulating one.

Andrew Lambirth

John Hoyland – an appreciation

Exhibitions

It’s difficult to believe that John Hoyland is dead. He was a man so full of life, with such appetite for living, that his absence from our midst makes no sense. Even when grievously ill in the past months, he was more likely to engage in anecdote and tell jokes than complain of his increasingly frail condition. The spirit of the man continued to shine brilliantly despite the adverse circumstances. His last exhibition, all new paintings, opened at the Beaux Arts Gallery in Cork Street in April. At the private view, Hoyland, although already much reduced physically, sat in the midst of his vividly coloured and exhilarating work, and accepted the homage of friends and admirers.

Laura Gascoigne

In Monet’s garden

Arts feature

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.

Alex Massie

Saturday Morning Country: Elvis Presley

Sure, you don't necessarily think of Elvis as a country singer. But then you remember his gospel roots and the rockabilly and it all makes sense. How could such a great American ever escape the greatest American musical genre of them all? He never did. Or, if you prefer, he just often returned to it.

Michael Tanner

A hole-hearted Siegfried

Opera

Everything is there – except the central character English Wagnerians really can’t complain about what they’ve been offered this year, so long as they can get around the country, and particularly around the countryside. In London we have only had ENO’S Parsifal, but that was musically magnificent. Many of us found Glyndebourne’s Meistersinger tremendous both musically and as a production, and in the north there have been acclaimed performances, with more to come, of Das Rheingold in concert, a treat I have still in store; and a memorable Walküre, also in concert, in Manchester three weeks ago, which introduced a potentially great Wotan, Egils Silins.

Lloyd Evans

Musical mockery

Music

They’re back. In August the capital fills with bored, dim-witted, half-naked semi-vagrants who have nothing to do here but get in the way of Londoners who do have things to do here. Tourism is an invitation to robbery. If you aren’t going to a place to work, you’re going there to get worked over. The rites of mob travel invert all the natural obligations of xenophilia. Natives become swindlers and their victims happily connive in the evacuation of their own purses. No one objects because it’s understood that a tourist isn’t a visitor in the proper sense. He’s in London but not engaged with it. He’s half here and half at home.

Deborah Ross

Project Nim

Cinema

Project Nim is a story about man and chimp in which chimp comes out of it well, man does not and, I’m warning you, it’s fascinating, but not pretty. The starting point is an Oklahoma lab in 1973 when Nim, a male baby chimp, is taken from his mother at a fortnight old and sent to be raised by a human family as part of an experiment to discover if another species can learn to communicate with us. We follow Nim all the way, from the moment he is wrenched from his mother’s arms, through Seventies’ academia — a peculiarly hilarious time; Nim is fond of the odd spliff — and right to the end, by which time his helpless innocence has been fully exploited and science has lost interest.

Giannandrea Poesio

Mariinsky Ballet

More from Arts

It is 50 years since what was formerly known as the Kirov Ballet — now Mariinsky Ballet — paid its first, legendary visit to London. Thanks to the commendable efforts of Viktor Hochhauser, the impresario who made that first visit possible, the company has become a familiar focal point of the London summer dance season. This year is no exception, with a rich programme of both classical and modern ballets. For its opening last week, the celebrated Russian company chose the work it is traditionally associated with: Swan Lake. Konstantin Sergeyev’s 1950 production might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it remains a classic in the ballet’s performance history.