Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Thursday

Julia Copus

The Orange Rug

for Antony and David Impossible to picture a time without it there beneath the living room window, afloat in the shadows of our father’s desk. Its flattened tassels were the rays of sun in a child’s drawing; it was where we must gather, three breathless children, our coats on for school, or to show who was first to be ready for bed, and if we’d a score to settle this was where we must do it. When was the last time we stood there, myself and my two, fly brothers, in the days before their bodies hardened and wives and children hovered round them? It is late, perhaps – a

Shanta Acharya

Why Some People Read Poetry

(After W.S. Merwin) Because you know already if you didn’t you would have to make that appointment which means you would have to spend a lot of time talking, not to mention money you do not have, to someone who will not be listening or listening without hearing, maybe hearing without understanding, and what good would that do to you if you were not even heard like that mad man shouting across the road stumbling then not moving after falling; God knows it is past midnight, you are driving fast alone to get home then hitting something, lost in a strange part of town looking for help, mugged by some

Alan Jenkins

Sisters

These two, DOROTHY AND CLARICE DENCH — A pair of local spinster sisters, as I guess — Both died, two years apart, aged ninety-five. Yet ‘We are only here a little while’ Is carved, with names and dates, into this bench: A saying of theirs, perhaps, that raised a smile When each new birthday found them still alive, That friends recalled with wry tenderness? Did they walk their dogs here every day Then stop at ‘their’ bench and sit gratefully, Half-hearing distant cries (Howzat? or Play!), Half-watching men in whites move on the green As ‘Flush’ and ‘Bingo’ barked at long leg-drives That rolled, to dry applause, towards the screen?

Liz Anderson

Royal rocks

It’s a smallish dark room but, wow, what a lot of sparklers. There are more than 10,000 diamonds set in tiaras, crowns (Diamond Diadem, above), brooches, swords, earrings and necklaces, on display at Buckingham Palace in a special exhibition Diamonds: A Jubilee Celebration (until 7 October). These stunning pieces were acquired by six monarchs over three centuries. Many of the stones have been recut or made into new settings, such as the Fringe Brooch, belonging to Queen Victoria. The larger stones in this brooch are believed to have come from one of the two jewels given to her by the Sultan of Turkey. She wrote in her journal of 8

Kate Chisholm

Classic celebrations

It’s 20 years since Classic FM launched itself on the airwaves with a blast from Handel’s ‘Zadok the Priest’. Its mission was to play ‘the world’s greatest music’ non-stop to an audience for whom the classics was a no-go area. On paper it’s worked a treat. The station now claims five million-plus listeners, who love its blend of Vivaldi, Prokofiev and John Barry interspersed with adverts for dental implants, Age UK and classicfm.com/romance. Last Friday was devoted to its birthday celebrations. Alan Titchmarsh brought in a celebration card, John Suchet confessed that as a newsreader on ITN he dreamt of being able to present a programme on the station (he’s

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Identity crisis | 13 September 2012

The greatest moment in the history of television — and one which will surely remain unsurpassed for ever — was the final episode of The Sopranos. Part of its genius was to reward all of us who had stuck with it so loyally for the previous 85 episodes by allowing us to make up our own minds how it ended. Did Tony get wasted by those hitmen-like figures we saw entering the restaurant where he was having the rapprochement dinner with Carmela? Well, maybe. Or did the Feds finally get their wiretaps and informants properly organised and put Tony away for ever? Or did he — as I prefer not

Deborah Ross

Star quality

Hope Springs is a comedy drama about a long-term marriage that has effectively stalled, and is one of those films that is only as good as its stars. Luckily, in this instance, the stars are Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones. Meryl, we know about. I once had dinner with Meryl, and have talked of little else since, until I realised it got on everybody’s nerves, but have gaily continued nonetheless. She is the greatest film actress of her generation, our generation, any generation. She could play my left shoe, if she put her mind to it. She may even be playing my left shoe right now. How would I

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Song and strife

Without You is a show that requires a bit of prior explanation. However, if you’re a gay jobless thesp living in New York in 1994, and your Mom’s dying of cancer back home in Illinois, and you’ve landed a role in Rent, a new musical about Aids, then you’re already up to speed. You have all the data required. In fact, you’re probably Anthony Rapp, the author of this musical autobiography which has just arrived from Edinburgh. Rapp tells two tales through narrative and song. First we hear about Rent which, you may be aware, is a smash-hit musical based on La bohème and relocated to New York during the

Stephen Bayley

Science fiction as reality

What’s that in your pocket? Magic or art? The near ubiquitous iPhone may be rammed with very new technology, but it is a witness of very old, even mysterious, values. Few of us understand its inner workings, even as we indulge ourselves daily with its impressive powers to astonish. ‘My life,’ Daniel Harris wrote in Cute, Quaint and Hungry, his witty critique of consumerism, ‘is suspended above an abyss of ignorance. Virtually nothing I own makes sense to me.’ This is a familiar feeling. If we had to start over, few of us would know how to light a fire, still less design and manufacture a beautiful smartphone. If civilisations

Thursday

Philip Hancock

Martini Man

Blondes, brunettes, ginger nuts, I’ve had ’em all, sunshine. Could be Janet the cleaner or that Irish cook at the day nursery. A dead cert’s Aunty Pat. What Aunty Pat? His wife puts two and two together. But in the back of his minivan? Unsnaring her heel from his bosun’s chair, ruining her Wolford’s on a gripper rod. From a dust sheet, wood slivers and flecks of paint adhere to her pasty arse, her perfume made nameless by linseed. He lies back thinking of cricket bats and summer fences. Tells her how it works for kneading old putty: softening it up, bringing it to life. Got to look after your

Kathryn Simmonds

The Unborn

mooch about and waste time starting things they’ll never finish. The next world is nothing to them but shadows, some don’t have patience for any of that crap at all – What, grass, they say, waving their wobbly arms, You mean you actually believe in grass?

Rosanna Durham

Peacocks and passion

Not many peacocks could handle an 8,000-strong festival audience. But such is the gentle atmosphere of the annual End of the Road music festival — set in the historic Larmer Tree Gardens, north Dorset — that the resident peacocks get on just fine with their weekend visitors. Last weekend was the seventh outing of the festival and, true to form, the line-up did not have something for everyone’s musical taste. Listening to unfamiliar music was half the joy of the weekend. Still, the curators have a strong musical bias so it is a good thing I enjoy Americana, modern folk, blues and indie pop; otherwise there were the peacocks for

Olivia Glazebrook

That’s entertainment

Comparisons may be odious but sometimes they are irresistible — and, frankly, more fool the BBC for screening Treasures of Ancient Rome on the same night as The Shock of the New (Monday, BBC4). Here is Alastair Sooke on the spread of the Roman Empire: ‘Rome’s generals romped around the Med, sacking cities willy-nilly…’ Here is Robert Hughes (in 1980) on the impact of the first world war (and for anyone watching Parade’s End the implications of this speech — and indeed Hughes’s whole programme, The Powers That Be — will strike with particular resonance): ‘The life of words and images in art was changed radically and for ever because

Deborah Ross

This world really is a stage

Joe Wright’s adaptation of Anna Karenina is so bold and audacious its bold audacity becomes the story, rather than the actual story itself. This is both a strength — it is always visually dazzling, inventive and surprising — and a weakness, as it is so goddamn distracting. The entire action, more or less, is set in an old decaying theatre beneath a proscenium arch with its own backstage, balconies and rat runs, and an origami-ish ability to fold in on itself, or fold out on itself to become ballroom or bedroom, and even horse-race track. According to Wright, this makes sense as high society in Tsarist Russia was all about

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Chance encounter | 6 September 2012

If you’re thinking of putting on a West End show, here’s what you need. Half a million quid. That should cover it. Unless it’s a musical, in which case you’ll need five or ten times as much, depending on how munificent/crazy you happen to be. Investors tend to be fretful, superstitious types who rarely make rational decisions about the start date of their theatrical ventures. No producer is willing to send 500 grand’s worth of dramatic wonderment into the skies if his rivals aren’t launching similar attractions in the same week. So the West End calendar is either overcrowded or utterly barren. Every year there are two dead zones. One

Andrew Lambirth

Cut to the Chase

Circles and Tangents sounds like a show of abstract art, but actually the title is somewhat misleading. As Vivienne Light, the exhibition’s curator and author of the accompanying book, explains, the circles are intended to denote networks of artists (not the circular forms in a Ben Nicholson painting, though Nicholson is included in the show), and the tangents are really digressions. Clear? Put more simply, the exhibition focuses on art made on or about Cranborne Chase, the lovely unspoilt stretch of Dorset landscape once William the Conqueror’s hunting ground and more recently the inspiration for countless painters and sculptors. The work on show is largely figurative and much of it

Amander Baillieu

What’s it all about? | 6 September 2012

The Venice Architecture Biennale, the world’s biggest and most prestigious architecture exhibition, struggles to know who it’s for — the professional architect or the interested public — and indeed why it exists at all. This is partly Venice’s fault. To spend one’s time looking at architectural models, drawings and, this year, photographs and film when you could be slinging back Bellinis in an 18th-century palazzo seems perverse. Added to which, the Biennale organisers have now decided the vernisagge — the private view — should take place in late August, when Venice is at its hottest and the Corderie, the former rope-making factory of the Arsenale where the main exhibition is

Saturday

Douglas Murray

The history of Islam is not off-limits

I’ve only just got around to watching Tom Holland’s documentary for Channel 4 from earlier this week: ‘Islam: the untold story.’ It had some good things in it, despite suffering from the two problems all documentaries now suffer from: attention-grabbing statements at the end of segments which are not followed up on, and endless shots of the presenter doing strangely unconnected things (travelling on an elevator, sitting on a bed etc.) But Holland was an engaging and pleasant presenter, and the documentary was something of a landmark in that it finally brought to wider public attention a subject which has been almost completely off-limits in recent years. Because of violence

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

Conversation pieces

Anyone interested in art holidaying in the Lake District this summer — or indeed taking a short break in the Lakes — is in for a treat. The Lakeland Arts Trust, which administers both Blackwell and Abbot Hall, has mounted a pair of exhibitions which offers a range of painting and sculpture a good deal better than most things currently on view around the country. And many people may find that tuning into the wild beauty of Cumbria will help them to look with greater enjoyment and discernment at contemporary art. Certainly Baillie Scott’s magnificent 1898 Arts and Crafts house, Blackwell, on the shores of Lake Windermere, is the perfect

Michael Prodger

Making Russia great

Catherine the Great was born neither a Catherine nor with any prospects of greatness. As Sophie Frederica Augusta of Anhalt-Zerbst she was a minor German princess with modest expectations, but when the Empress Elizabeth of Russia chose her to be the consort of her nephew and heir, the Grand Duke Peter, Sophie’s and Russia’s fates were transformed. In 1744 the 15-year-old Sophie arrived in her new country, converted to Orthodoxy, changed her name to Catherine and set about becoming history’s ultimate self-made woman. She was to rule Russia for 34 years and turn it into a global power. She overhauled Russia’s economy, foreign policy, legal system and education; she expanded