Arts Archives

Numb to fiction

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In the recent EastEnders cot-death controversy, both sides behaved pretty much as you’d expect. The BBC-bashers denounced the ‘offensive’ suggestion that grieving mothers routinely steal other people’s babies. In the recent EastEnders cot-death controversy, both sides behaved pretty much as you’d expect. The BBC-bashers denounced the ‘offensive’ suggestion that grieving mothers routinely steal other people’s babies. The corporation itself used words like ‘challenging’ and ‘sensitive’ — before caving in to the criticism.

Andrew Lambirth

New look

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There has already been a certain amount of controversy over this exhibition: not just the predictably ruffled feathers of Royal Academicians omitted from the selection, but also the kind of ill feeling among the Academy’s organisational staff which gives a museum a bad name. There has already been a certain amount of controversy over this exhibition: not just the predictably ruffled feathers of Royal Academicians omitted from the selection, but also the kind of ill feeling among the Academy’s organisational staff which gives a museum a bad name. This is a great pity, as the exhibition is a remarkable one — out of 12 rooms, eight contain some of the best-displayed Mod Brit sculpture I’ve seen for a long time, in interesting and revealing juxtapositions.

Deborah Ross

Leaden mess

Cinema

Hereafter is directed by Clint Eastwood, produced by Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg, and written by Peter Morgan, although what would attract one of these big names to such a project, let alone three, is anyone’s guess. Hereafter is directed by Clint Eastwood, produced by Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg, and written by Peter Morgan, although what would attract one of these big names to such a project, let alone three, is anyone’s guess. Honestly, I had more fun this week doing my tax return which, every year, nicely reminds me what a pitiful amount of money I earn and what a total loser I am.

Michael Tanner

No-hoper

Opera

As I sat fuming through the latest absurd production of Carmen, this one directed by the controversial Daniel Kramer for Opera North, it struck me that this opera, like one other of the trio of popular masterpieces set in or around Seville, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, suffers because its central figure leads a separate life of her or his own; though they are most famous in the context of these works.

Damian Thompson

Pill-popping pianist

Music

What would Glenn Gould’s playing have sounded like if he hadn’t chomped his way through bucketloads of Valium? It’s not a question that is asked in Genius Within, a much-praised documentary about the tortured Canadian pianist that has just been released in Britain. What would Glenn Gould’s playing have sounded like if he hadn’t chomped his way through bucketloads of Valium? It’s not a question that is asked in Genius Within, a much-praised documentary about the tortured Canadian pianist that has just been released in Britain. But perhaps it should have been. In the nine months before his death at the age of 50 in 1982, Gould consumed more than 2,000 pills of every variety.

Lloyd Evans

Losing the plot

Theatre

An all-Hall haul this week. Sir Peter directs his daughter Rebecca in Twelfth Night at the National. This traditional and very fetching production opens in a sort of Elizabethan rock-star mansion where Orsino (Marton Csokas) lounges on a carved throne, in Lemmy locks and Ozzy cape, intoning the play’s gorgeous opening lyrics. Then the plot begins. There’s a she who dresses as a he and falls in love with another he who sends her to another she who loves the she who’s dressed as a he. Did you follow that? Don’t worry. Later, up pops another he who’s identical to the first she and they all get married. The audience is rarely at ease with any of this.

Giannandrea Poesio

Ruffled feathers

Opera

The Royal Ballet could not have timed better its new run of Swan Lake. Swans — and black ones, in particular — are all the rage these days. The Royal Ballet could not have timed better its new run of Swan Lake. Swans — and black ones, in particular — are all the rage these days. Unsurprisingly, the first performance played to a packed house, although the sell-out could not be entirely credited to the swan-o-mania prompted by Aronofsky’s movie Black Swan. Sarah Lamb starred in the demanding double role that the ballet is famous for and which the film focuses on. Not unlike the character portrayed by Natalie Portman, she is a diaphanous beauty, who knows how to turn into a splendidly vicious and irresistible seductress.

James Delingpole

Wasted talent

Television

‘We’ve got our main presenters,’ they explained. ‘What we need are interviewees to fill the guest slots. People with strong opinions on ...well, what are your views on the EU, for example?’ So I told them my views on the EUSSR, while swearing quite a lot. This seemed to make them happy. ‘It’s called 10 O’Clock Live,’ they said. ‘You probably saw our pilot. The one-off special with Lauren Laverne, Charlie Brooker, David Mitchell and Jimmy Carr? It got pretty good ratings.’ No, I replied. That isn’t the sort of programme I’d watch in a million years. Lefty comedians making lefty jokes to a lefty audience about politics from a relentlessly lefty perspective? No, thanks.

Kate Chisholm

Born of a fury

Radio and podcasts

As the battle rages between the American and British military PR over which brigade is being the most effective force for change in Afghanistan, it’s easy to forget that this proud country has its own ideas about what it needs in the future. As the battle rages between the American and British military PR over which brigade is being the most effective force for change in Afghanistan, it’s easy to forget that this proud country has its own ideas about what it needs in the future. In Lost Voices of Afghanistan (Radio 4, late on Saturday evening) we heard from those whose thoughts have long been buried beneath the cruelty, corruption and religious bigotry of the past three decades.

Ursula Buchan

Our avian friends

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Several new facts have rocked me back on my heels recently: Alastair Cook garnered more runs at the Gabba in Brisbane than Don Bradman; there are 100,000 miles of blood vessels in your brain; more people in this country can recognise Simon Cowell than Pope Benedict; and we spend as much annually on ‘wild bird care’ — £200 million — as we do on peat and potting composts, and rather more than on fertilisers.

26 January 2011

Alex Massie

Charlie Louvin 1927-2011

Sad news. Charlie Louvin has died. Here's his New York Times obituary. And here he is with his brother Ira reminding us just why these Alabama boys were one of the great double acts in the history of American music.

22 January 2011

Niru Ratnam

Creative protesting

Arts feature

It’s time to heed the complaints and free art schools from the constraints of the university system, says Niru Ratnam The Turner Prize award ceremony always attracts protest — usually in the shape of the Stuckists, a group of bedraggled, eccentric-looking artists who gather outside Tate Britain in funny hats and bemoan the death of representational painting. But this year they were upstaged by around 200 art students, who entered the museum in the afternoon and refused to leave, staging what was described as a ‘teach-in’. In addition to wearing their own humorous hats, the students made speeches, marched round and chanted.

Alex Massie

Saturday Night Country: Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris

There's a sad lack of Gram Parsons footage on Youtube. And what there is isn't of the greatest visual or audio quality. But we must make do with what we have and so here it is, the Streets of Baltimore in glorious black and white and filled with that old-time feeling... https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Ed Rex

Reinventing the circus

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An elderly gentleman prodding me in the face with his inflatable iguana might expect to command my full attention. As I found my seat in the Albert Hall, though, the gentleman in question had to turn away disheartened, as I was too busy taking in the spectacular set of Cirque du Soleil’s Totem to be distracted by his intrusive pet. An elderly gentleman prodding me in the face with his inflatable iguana might expect to command my full attention. As I found my seat in the Albert Hall, though, the gentleman in question had to turn away disheartened, as I was too busy taking in the spectacular set of Cirque du Soleil’s Totem to be distracted by his intrusive pet.

Charles Spencer

Labour of love | 22 January 2011

Music

I have long believed that a part of you dies in winter and doesn’t come back to life until you feel the sun on your face and a mid-westerly breeze in the air. I have long believed that a part of you dies in winter and doesn’t come back to life until you feel the sun on your face and a mid-westerly breeze in the air. We must take comfort where we find it in these dark days and I have recently discovered a splendid pick-me-up that might just get you through the next couple of months with a spring in your step.

Deborah Ross

Steps to destruction

Cinema

I have always suspected that, if you look for the black swan within yourself, it will end in tears, and now Darren Aronofsky has proved me right. It will end in tears, as well as bloody gashes, horrors glimpsed in mirrors, warped hallucinations of a sexual nature and breaking your mother’s hand in a door jamb. If you think you may have the black swan within you, just leave well alone. Go shopping. Play Scrabble. Clear out the hall cupboard, as you have been meaning to do for ages (I don’t think you can squeeze another thing in there, although, God bless you, you will keep trying). And if you don’t want to listen to me, then at least take this film as a warning. This is an intensely compelling film which you might well want to see, but you would not want to live it.

Lloyd Evans

Non-stop larks

Theatre

Gently does it. The Fitzrovia Radio Hour takes us back to the droll and elegant world of light entertainment in the 1940s when the airwaves were full of racy detective shows and overheated melodramas about pushy Yorkshiremen and rogue Nazis. The show is set in a radio studio during a live performance and we watch the actors rattling through their scripts while scurrying here and there to provide the effects for an exceptionally complex soundtrack. Cabbages get walloped with machetes to suggest stabbing. A game of billiards is done with some doorknobs being chinked together. A melon gets squished to represent the sound of a horse having its head chopped off. It’s a neat idea.

Giannandrea Poesio

Still life

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Ballet is a dying art, according to Jennifer Homans’s bestselling history of ballet, Apollo’s Angels. Ballet is a dying art, according to Jennifer Homans’s bestselling history of ballet, Apollo’s Angels. Sensationalist as it may sound, this claim is cogently argued at the end of the book, which turns dreary ballet history into an engaging narrative. Inevitably, the statement has ruffled many feathers, particularly among those ‘hyperspecialists’, ‘balletomanes’ and ‘insiders’ who, she says, speak an ‘impenetrable theory-laden prose’ and have reduced dance to a ‘recondite world’.

Michael Tanner

Gender problems

Opera

It’s sometimes intriguing to speculate, as you go to an opera in a fringe production of one kind or another, about how much messing around (used neutrally) this or that popular work can take. It’s sometimes intriguing to speculate, as you go to an opera in a fringe production of one kind or another, about how much messing around (used neutrally) this or that popular work can take. OperaUpClose scored an enormous success with its version of La Bohème in 2009/10 (though its claim to be the longest-ever run of an opera should be balanced by the fact that The Cock Kilburn could seat only about 40 people).

Kate Chisholm

Writerly magic

Radio and podcasts

A frock that shocks, a terror-filled red coat and diamonds of seductive power are all promised next week in an alluring late-night series on Radio 3 (produced by Duncan Minshull). Listener, They Wore It gives us five 15-minute essays about clothes. Not a subject I would normally bother with, never being someone noted for my sartorial elegance or originality. But by chance I opened up one of the preview discs and was hooked immediately. The novelist Tracy Chevalier is talking about the impact on her teenage self of Guy de Maupassant’s short story ‘The Necklace’. Chevalier based an entire novel on a pearl necklace so she knows the value of wearing the right beads.

Simon Hoggart

Reality check

Television

Horizon (BBC2, Monday) asked, ‘What is reality?’ and didn’t really have an answer. Horizon (BBC2, Monday) asked, ‘What is reality?’ and didn’t really have an answer. Well, it seems nobody does, though plenty of physicists, mathematicians and astronomers are working on it. As the voiceover told us, ‘Once you have entered their reality, your reality may never look the same.’ You can say that again. It appears that quantum particles can literally be in two places at the same time. But we are made up of quantum particles, and we are never in two places at the same time, even if that would occasionally be useful. So maybe there are more of us, all made up of the same particles but doing different things in different places.

15 January 2011

Ariane Bankes

Best in show | 15 January 2011

Arts feature

Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain, talks to Ariane Bankes about the planned revamp of the museum and 100 different ways of showing sculpture The evening after first meeting Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain, I bumped into a mutual friend who told me, only half-joking, that she could be frightening. Fair enough, I thought: to become the first woman director of one of Britain’s pre-eminent public galleries you have to frighten a few people along the way. As it happened, I hadn’t found her alarming at all at the press briefing that morning: direct, brisk, purposeful — she was, after all, embarking on a wholesale top-to-toe redesign and rehang of the gallery — but approachable.

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 15 January 2011

The Spectator's Notes

The question of what is art vexes the tax authorities as well as philosophers. Last month, the Art Newspaper reported the latest twist in a wonderful, long-running row. The European Commission has decided that two pieces of installation art — ‘Hall of Whispers’ by Bill Viola, and ‘Six Alternating Cool White/Warm White Fluorescent Lights/Vertical and Centred’ by Dan Flavin are not, after all, works of art. The first is classified as ‘DVD players and projectors’ and the second as ‘light fittings’. This makes them liable not for the 5 per cent VAT rate that applies to art sales, but the standard rate — now 20 per cent. In this month’s issue, the Art Newspaper campaigns vigorously for a reversal.

Nicola Mccartney

Never the same

More from Arts

Simon Starling’s art often involves some form of recycling — his controversial ‘Shedboatshed’ won the 2005 Turner Prize – and his ‘new’ exhibition at Camden Arts Centre (until 20 February) is no different. Simon Starling’s art often involves some form of recycling — his controversial ‘Shedboatshed’ won the 2005 Turner Prize – and his ‘new’ exhibition at Camden Arts Centre (until 20 February) is no different.

Peter Phillips

Timeless miracle

Music

Dotting through the list of composers’ anniversaries in 2011, I was struck both by the number of people mentioned and by the utter lack of fame of almost all of them. Dotting through the list of composers’ anniversaries in 2011, I was struck both by the number of people mentioned and by the utter lack of fame of almost all of them. Where on earth do the compilers of the Classical Composers Database find these people, most of whom are too dead to write in and represent themselves? But, like all lists, this one is not without interest. The first named is D. Dinis (1261–1325), King of Portugal, who apparently was the earliest troubadour in the Portuguese language. I wonder if his political opponents dubbed him ‘the minis’.

Andrew Lambirth

More real art, please

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Although I am an admirer of Dulwich Picture Gallery, and like to support its generally rewarding exhibition programme, I will not be making the pilgrimage to see its latest show, Norman Rockwell’s America. Although I am an admirer of Dulwich Picture Gallery, and like to support its generally rewarding exhibition programme, I will not be making the pilgrimage to see its latest show, Norman Rockwell’s America. This is not just because it’s quite a hike to Dulwich for me, involving a bus, a train, another bus and another train (anything in excess of three hours from door to door), but also because I don’t think the trip will be worth it.

Lloyd Evans

Going for gold

Theatre

There’s gold out there. The search for lost masterpieces beguiles many a theatrical impresario but with it comes the danger that the thrill of the chase may convert a spirit of honest exploration into an obtuse reverence for the quarry. There’s gold out there. The search for lost masterpieces beguiles many a theatrical impresario but with it comes the danger that the thrill of the chase may convert a spirit of honest exploration into an obtuse reverence for the quarry. The huntsman starts to believe that neglect proves excellence. Sturdy Beggars, an independent troupe who accept no public subsidy, are mounting a season of ‘forgotten gems’ from Eastern Europe.

Michael Tanner

Witch craft

Opera

Is Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel an opera for children of all ages, or for grown-ups and for children, or mainly for grown-ups? I went to the Royal Opera’s revival of it just after Christmas, to a 12.30 matinée (there were several), which I took to be for the benefit of children, as well as possibly being an unusual piece of thoughtfulness about transport on the part of the management. Is Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel an opera for children of all ages, or for grown-ups and for children, or mainly for grown-ups? I went to the Royal Opera’s revival of it just after Christmas, to a 12.

Kate Chisholm

Cruel cuts

Radio and podcasts

You might be forgiven for thinking that the cuts to broadcasting have already been implemented, with nothing but Mozart on Radio 3 and the Bible on Radio 4 on Sunday. Meanwhile, we’ve discovered that the actor who played the unfortunate Nigel Pargetter in The Archers, Graham Seed, has lost 75 per cent of his income, with only a few weeks’ warning — is he another silent victim of the national overspend? Switch over to the BBC’s World Service and the New Year diet becomes even more stringent. No drama for at least a month, so that between the briefings on world news and sport there are instead endless repeats of The Strand, Crossing Continents or The Forum with just one or two new half-hour documentaries per week. We should be asking questions.