Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Steerpike

Michael Dobbs shuffles Cards in the House of Lords

Filming of season three of Netflix’s House of Cards will begin in four weeks’ time in Maryland, creator Michael Dobbs revealed at Norman Tebbit’s book launch last night. Lord Dobbs, who was an advisor to Thatcher, said that he had to ‘tone things down a little bit’ to make the plot ‘credible’, although he’s clearly proud of his work, telling Mr S: ‘Kevin [Spacey] is wicked. It’s like the West Wing for Werewolves’. When he’s not the toast of America’s TV, Dobbs sits on the Lords’ standards committee. Channelling his inner chief-whip, Dobbs says he’s ‘tightening up on behaviour’ in the upper chamber: ‘We are doing things properly, making sure rules

The hidden, overlooked and undervalued: Andrew Lambirth’s spring roundup

Jankel Adler (1895–1949), a Polish Jew who arrived in Glasgow in 1941, was invalided out of the Polish army, and moved to London two years later. A distinguished artist in his own right, he turns out to have been a hidden presence on the English art scene, a secret influence on indigenous artists. He is usually cited as a crucial inspiration for Robert Colquhoun, but as his work grows more familiar, it becomes clear that a whole host of other artists must have been aware of him, from S.W. Hayter to Cecil Collins. Interestingly, the sculptors who were coming to maturity in the 1950s (just after Adler’s death) also seem

Robin Ticciati interview: ‘Glyndebourne is a festival where the established and the fresh exist together’

Glyndebourne, the great Sussex opera house, celebrates its 80th anniversary this summer. Hurrah! There is a new music director, too, 31-year-old Robin Ticciati. Hurrah! And he opens the season next week with a new production of Der Rosenkavalier directed by Richard Jones. Hurrah! Summer has begun. There are few finer plots of land to be on a summer evening in England than Glyndebourne, one of those rare places where the frame matches the picture. In a way Glyndebourne defines England, and summer, and the way the English take their pleasures. Certainly there is no place like it anywhere else. People at other festivals may love music just as much, and

Henri Le Sidaner: the artist who fell between two schools

Like other species, artists club together in movements not just for purposes of identification but for longevity. Individuals who don’t belong to schools take longer establishing reputations during their lifetimes, and tend to lose them sooner after their deaths. Henri Le Sidaner (1862–1939) was one such individual: a contemporary of the Post-Impressionists who painted in dots but was not a Pointillist; revelled in complementary colours but was not a Fauve; and drew a veil of dreams over reality but was not a Symbolist, or only briefly. He was, as his friend the critic Gabriel Mourey described him, ‘a sort of mystic who has no faith’. When asked what school he

Lloyd Evans

Everyone should see this pious anti-war monologue – seriously

Off to the Gate for a special treat: a pious anti-war monologue from the prize-winning American George Brant. Curtain up. And within seconds all my preachy prejudices have fallen apart. The speaker is a female pilot in a jump suit sealed within a see-through cage. Slaying men is her vocation. Interesting! The story moves with amazing deftness and clarity. She flies missions over Iraq. Loves it. The speed, the jeopardy, the power, the solitude. ‘The blue’ is her term for her intoxicating and deadly haven in the skies. Home on leave, she hits the bars. A one-night stand. She likes the guy. Back in Iraq, she’s pregnant. Skypes him. He

‘Sometimes audiences applauded Frank; sometimes they threw stuff at him’

Frank is a music biopic, but only of sorts, as it is not at all like your average music biopic. It’s not that processional march we have come to expect; that chronological story of tough beginnings, the moment of discovery, tour montages, calendar dates flying, and finally making it big. In fact, this is about a musician for whom making it big would be the death of him, and very nearly is. Also, it stars Michael Fassbender wearing bad knitwear and a giant paper-mâché head. So it is not Walk the Line or Dreamgirls or The Karen Carpenter Story, is what I’m saying, and it is profoundly more interesting and

Nothing beats Book at Bedtime

There I was trapped in the bathroom at 10.55 p.m., unable to leave for fear of missing anything. The time it would have taken me to get to the bedroom, touch the screen of the digital radio, encouraging it to dawdle its way into life, was just too long, too risky. Vital information in the story might have been lost. The tension, created by that single voice holding me on a thread, would have been dissipated. It came as a surprise. Book at Bedtime (Radio 4, Monday to Friday evenings) is often such a disappointment these days that the radio gets switched off at 10.51 (after six minutes you know

Fifties domestic harmony

Our love affair with the 1950s has been going on for years and shows no sign of abating. Pangolin London, the city arm of the Gloucestershire foundry, has cleverly used the visceral appeal of Fifties design — if ever a period merited the term gay in its original sense, this one does — to show how sculpture can be incorporated into a domestic setting (until 17 May). All too often works of sculpture, whatever their size, are put on pedestals or instinctively relegated outdoors or to public spaces. Sculpture in the Home, inspired by a series of promotional touring shows staged by the Arts Council between 1946 and 1958, closely

Lara Prendergast

Let’s call the Turner Prize what it really is – an uninspiring ode to a multimedia world

The Turner Prize shortlist has been announced, and includes a video artist who uses YouTube clips, an artist who pairs spoken word with slide shows and photography, and a historical documentary about African art. Among the four nominees for the most ‘prestigious and provocative’ contemporary art prize, not one of them is a traditional painter or sculptor. In short, the Turner Prize seems to have morphed into a film and photography prize. The Tate seem to be aware of this. The nomination announcement said the four artists’ methods ‘suggest the impact of the internet, cinema, TV and mobile technologies on a new generation of artists’. Of course, there’s no reason

‘When HBO want a gritty, hard-bitten, authentic American, they think: Old Etonian’

You don’t expect to find a slice of Eton College in deepest Dalston, but tonight a distinctly posh Waiting for Godot opens at the Arcola Theatre. The Beckett play is being directed by Eton’s former head of theatre, Simon Dormandy, and his Vladimir and Estragon are Tom Palmer and Tom Stourton, two of his past pupils. Together Palmer and Stourton (son of BBC’s Ed) are sketch comedy duo Totally Tom – perfect casting for Dormandy’s ‘reimagined’ production of the play, with its frequent references to music hall, the artform Beckett so loved. Dormandy, an actor as well as a director, has worked with Cheek by Jowl and the Royal Shakespeare

The problems at Tate Britain go beyond the director

Last week, Tate Britain was one of six museums across the UK to be nominated for the Art Fund’s Museum of the Year award, an annual prize in which the winner receives the not inconsiderable sum of £100,000. A couple of weeks earlier, Waldemar Januszczak, the Sunday Times’s ‘cor blimey’ art critic (don’t get me wrong, he has a winning shoot-from-the-hip style) was calling for the head of Penelope Curtis, Tate Britain’s director since 2010. Despite approving of the chronological rehang of the permanent collection which she oversaw last year – in fact, he proclaimed it a ‘miracle’ – Januszczak still insisted Curtis must go. He gave his reasons: she puts

The very best of Broadway – a director’s cut

‘America,’ said John Updike, ‘is a vast conspiracy for making you happy.’ If that’s true, there have been few more successful conspiracies than the Broadway musical — that is, the ‘book’ (meaning ‘play’) musical — a dramatic form that blends drama of character and narrative with song and dance. ‘Words make you think thoughts, music makes you feel a feeling, a song makes you feel a thought,’ said the songwriter Yip Harburg. The best musicals have a thrilling seamlessness and a cumulative emotional charge; the worst are chunks of dialogue interleaved with musical interludes. The first ‘book’ musical was John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, written in 1728. Lacking a genre

A fresh perspective on reassuringly familiar artists

This exhibition examines a loosely knit community of artists and their interaction over a decade at the beginning of the last century. It is centred around the marriage of Ben and Winifred Nicholson (which began to split up in 1931), involves their crucial joint-friendship with Christopher Wood and a fruitful exhibiting relationship with William Staite Murray, topped off by the all-pervading influence of a true original, Alfred Wallis, Cornish fisherman, marine-stores dealer and compulsive painter. The intellectual and artistic meeting of these individuals was a formative impulse in the development of Modernism in England; and it could be said — with some justification — that they brought out the best

Civilisation doesn’t need a woman presenter – and it doesn’t need to be remade!

I was pleased to see that June Sarpong had added her weight to Kathy Lette’s petition to get a woman to present the BBC’s remake of Civilisation. I’ve often wondered what became of her after Five Go Dating, a show I used to watch religiously, and one which – if you’re listening, Channel 4 – equally deserves to be resurrected. Lette’s letter is in yesterday’s Times. She complains that Kenneth Clark’s original had little to say about women (true) and that because of this, a ‘female historian’ should take the reins this time. ‘A female presenter’, argues the Australian novelist, ‘would ensure that the series is not just about History but

John Deakin is no genius – and he has not been forgotten

Every so often, John Deakin, jug-eared chronicler of Soho and hanger-on at the Colony Rooms, is breathlessly rediscovered as the unknown giant behind Bacon and the forgotten man from Soho’s  generation of genius. All that is so much tosh: Deakin is no genius and he has not been forgotten. In fact, he can never be forgotten, most importantly because Bacon commissioned photographs from Deakin that he used to make his paintings but also because Deakin himself was the subject of one of Freud’s greatest portraits (above) and because Deakin’s photographs capture Bohemian Soho in aspic for the mental tourist of the future. In Under the Influence: John Deakin and the

James Delingpole

Generation War does something very un-German – bottles it

I was so looking forward to Generation War (BBC2, Saturday) — a three-part drama series covering the second world war from the perspective of five young men and women on the German side. Any nation capable of producing the ME-109, the 88mm gun and the Tiger tank, not to mention Das Boot, really ought to have no problem making one of the most authentic, searingly honest war dramas ever to hit our screens… How wrong I was. Consider a scene from this week’s opening episode involving Friedhelm — bookish, bolshie, anti-war younger brother of the more pugnacious and efficient Leutnant Wilhelm Winter. There they are on the Eastern Front, in

Khovanskygate is about the dreadfulness and possible glory of being Russian

Within the space of a few weeks we have had the rare chance of seeing the two great torsos of Russian opera, Borodin’s Prince Igor, unfinished because the composer was often otherwise engaged, and Musorgsky’s Khovanshchina, unfinished because its composer died of drink. Prince Igor at the Coliseum was musically magnificent, and dramatically utterly absurd, ‘self-parody’ that did not do justice to its low-jinks. By contrast, Birmingham Opera Company’s Khovanskygate is musically at least as superb, and dramatically gripping though questionable. As is usual with BOC, the location is unorthodox, in this case an immense tent in the middle of Cannon Hill Park. No seats, except for the disabled, and

Blue Ruin is unwatchable, bloody – but, from what I saw, rather good

Blue Ruin is a low-budget yet highly accomplished revenge thriller although whether you have the stomach for it is another matter. I do not have a strong stomach, as we know, and as I braced myself for the next startlingly bloody burst of violence, having yet to recover from the last startlingly bloody burst of bloody violence, I was often just longing for it all to be over. I like excellent film-making as much as the next person but, ideally, I would also like to be able to watch it. Stuff you don’t need to know but might like to: this has been a huge festival hit, winning several prizes,