Culture

Everyone knows about the magnetism of Paris and New York in the annals of modern art, but Belgian painters such as Van de Velde, Toorop, Van Rysselberghe, Evenepoel, Khnopff, Rops, Magritte, Delvaux and Permeke are remarkably significant. The galleries of satellite cities such as Brussels (now only two and a quarter hours away from London by Eurostar) always repay study. On the other hand, actual works of groundbreaking art were often executed far away from large urban centres. They were produced in sleepier and more outlandish locations. Aix-en-Provence, Arles and Tahiti will conjure up the names of Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin. The Belgian port of Ostend is currently conjuring up the unique and outstanding figure of James Ensor (1860–1949).

We were on holiday last week for half- term and, as so often when I have time off, I started to fret. What on earth was I going to write about in ‘Olden but golden’? Mrs Spencer gets very cross about this sort of thing. ‘If that’s all you’ve got to worry about, you can count yourself lucky,’ she said, before starting to grumble herself about her forthcoming ballet teacher’s exam. But my problem was a real one —though, to be fair, so was hers. The fact is that for the past month, instead of unearthing new delights, I’ve been continually indulging my obsession for classic Blue Note jazz, which I wrote about last month.

I was in Zagreb last weekend. The city closes early on Saturday, so I ended up watching television in my hotel. Once you’ve flicked past German stock-market reports and volleyball from Belgrade, there’s not a lot of choice, except one or two English-language cable programmes you would never dream of watching at home. Take CNN’s Quest, featuring someone — from his accent, British — called Richard Quest, who fancies himself as a character and goes around barking at people. He also barks banalities at us. His topic was art. ‘Art. We all know it when we see it. But do we really understand it?

‘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 floating it as a new strategy. A recently appointed programme manager has been working on the viability of the idea for the DCMS, undeterred, it seems, by the hostility towards Labour’s foreign policy and the criticism of its cultural policy enacted to date. Many think government foreign policy can only benefit from this approach.

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 a heavy emphasis on maximising the public access to and enjoyment and interpretation of the theatre’s heritage environment’, and thereby incidentally reminding us how much of the £21 million already spent has found its way into the pockets of consultants. The new era has been launched with a production of the most ebullient and tuneful of Verdi’s tragedies, Rigoletto, by Charles Edwards.

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 movie-goer be expected to take? Let’s see some heads getting chopped off! But on and on it goes — oh, the fountains, the chandeliers, the oak-lined vistas, the sumptuous, gilded rooms ...honestly, at certain points you feel as if you’re being beaten to death by a late 18th-century copy of Hello! magazine.