Yorkshire, says William Cook, is the sculpture capital of Britain. It was the birthplace of ‘Britain’s greatest sculptors, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore’ – but is this just coincidence, or ‘is there something about Yorkshire that makes great sculpture happen here?’ In this week’s lead Arts feature, he visits the ‘stunning, 500 acre’ Yorkshire Sculpture Park, ‘adorned with works by every sculptor you can think of’, which, on a sunny day, is ‘a great artwork in its own right’.
It’s one thing to produce a biopic. It’s another to produce a hagiography. But the Diana film, however ‘is so inept that, even with its messianic overtones, it cannot be counted as a hagiography’, says Peter Hoskin in his film review this week. Of all 113 minutes there were ‘about 30 seconds’ that he enjoyed. The rest of it is ‘clichés on the theme of heartache’. All in all, it doesn’t sound like a film Hoskins would recommend.
David Tress is an artist who ‘resists categorisation’. ‘He has been called a Romantic and a Neo-Romantic, a mixture of Impressionist and Expressionist, a traditionalist and a modernist, yet not one of these labels quite fits’, writes Andrew Lambirth in his review of his exhibition in Cork Street, which is on until 12th October. Below is an interview with Tress, as he discusses his work both in and out of the studio.
The Royal Opera House’s new season is just kicking off, and they’ve decided to open it with a ‘1984 production of Puccini’s last opera, Turandot’. Unfortunately, as Puccini’s last opera, it is ‘a terrible end to a career’, says Michael Tanner. The actors in the main roles do the best that they can, and certainly in the case of Lise Lindstrom, who plays Turandot, one can only hope that ‘her voice is soon put to more worthy purposes’. But even with beautiful singing and ‘plenty to keep the eye busy’, there’s not much anyone can do to save ‘an opera that is already disgusting’.
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