Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Saturday

Giannandrea Poesio

Shock and awe | 18 June 2011

Two weeks ago, the unsettling proximity of a perfectly sculpted naked male butt with my nose made me think again about the critic/artist relationship. I am talking, of course, about Dave St Pierre’s much talked about performance of Un peu de tendresse bordel de merde! at Sadler’s Wells, the raunchiness of which attracted and dominated the interest of various media for a few days. Chastely translated into ‘a little tenderness, for crying out loud’ — although a more appropriate translation would be ‘a little tenderness, for fuck’s sake!’ — the 2006 work, like many other examples of modern day dance- theatre, relies considerably on shock values, although it also includes

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Academic loser

Here’s the thing. This box-set business. Do you get it? I tried. I failed. But everyone else goes stark raving mad about these fictional treasures. Once you’ve sampled a box set (or boxed-set?), you’re hooked. Here’s the thing. This box-set business. Do you get it? I tried. I failed. But everyone else goes stark raving mad about these fictional treasures. Once you’ve sampled a box set (or boxed-set?), you’re hooked. You won’t be seen again until you’ve visited every corner of the dream kingdom encased within its magical walls. Didn’t happen to me, though. I sat through the first six minutes of The Wire in total bafflement. It seemed to

Kate Chisholm

Limited vision

It must be a fix, surely? The list of tunes voted online ‘by the nation’ as the eight favourite ‘discs’ we would like to be marooned with on a desert island is the dullest, most unoriginal, least controversial combination we listeners could possibly have come up with. It must be a fix, surely? The list of tunes voted online ‘by the nation’ as the eight favourite ‘discs’ we would like to be marooned with on a desert island is the dullest, most unoriginal, least controversial combination we listeners could possibly have come up with. The organisers of the poll as they studied its results must have been rueing the meeting

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Stuff of legend

A few years ago, my at-the-time-quite-impoverished screenwriter friend Jake Michie told me about this brilliant new children’s TV series he’d dreamed up about the Knights of the Round Table. A few years ago, my at-the-time-quite-impoverished screenwriter friend Jake Michie told me about this brilliant new children’s TV series he’d dreamed up about the Knights of the Round Table. All the male leads would be young and pretty with boy band haircuts; Arthur would be a bit of a rugger-bugger lunk, while the real hero would be a younger Merlin who would use his magic to get his pal out of all sorts of scrapes; and obviously there’d be monsters and

Saturday

Marcus Berkmann

Live truths

I met a Distinguished Old Rock Critic at a party recently, and was delighted to find that the obvious acronym didn’t apply. I met a Distinguished Old Rock Critic at a party recently, and was delighted to find that the obvious acronym didn’t apply. We chewed on this and that: CDs vs downloads, the blackboard-scraping quality of Chris Martin’s voice, and the unending need to hear the wonderful new music we know is out there somewhere but can’t seem to find. He is my senior by some years but the bug is still in his system, which I found encouraging. I met a Distinguished Old Rock Star recently, too, and

Andrew Lambirth

Conflicting demands

This year, the sequence of galleries has been subtly altered, and for a change we enter the fabled Summer Exhibition (sponsored by Insight Investment) through the Octagon rather than Gallery 1. This brings the visitor straight into the heart of the show, and it’s quite a good idea at this point to turn right into the Lecture Room for a gallery dedicated entirely to RA members, hung by that éminence grise, Michael Craig-Martin. Of course this is Craig-Martin’s choice, so the more traditional practitioners are excluded, but the Lecture Room nevertheless looks better than it has done for years. A big tattooed head by Tony Bevan keeps company with Humphrey

Robert Gorelangton

Priestley values

The J.B. Priestley flame is kept alive today by his son Tom, who resides in the same Notting Hill flat he has lived in for more than 50 years. His father — novelist, dramatist, scribe, broadcaster, socialist (who died in 1984) — was glad that Tom, now 79, hadn’t chosen the same life. ‘The only time he came here to the flat he said, “Don’t be a writer. Dreadful business.”’ Tom is a retired film editor who manages the literary estate. He is the offspring of J.B.’s second marriage to Jane Bannerman, the divorced wife of the humorist writer Bevan Wyndham Lewis. There was one more Mrs Priestley after her

Laura Gascoigne

Identity crisis | 11 June 2011

Laura Gascoigne on how the Venice Biennale is searching for its place in art history Picture one of the world’s largest private yachts moored at the quayside of the Riva dei Sette Martiri, protected by a metal perimeter fence and a security detail. Now imagine two battered sea freight containers dumped in the shape of a tau cross on the quay just out of spitting distance of the security fencing. One is Roman Abramovich’s 115m superyacht Luna; the other is a Haitian pavilion showing Vodou-inspired sculpture by the Grand Rue Sculptors from the slums of Port-au-Prince. Welcome to the opening of this year’s Venice Biennale (until 27 November), bigger than

Michael Tanner

Puccini’s riddle

Puccini’s last, incomplete opera Turandot is a work that I usually find disgusting and boring, so much so that it is one of the very few repertoire works that I avoid seeing. Puccini’s last, incomplete opera Turandot is a work that I usually find disgusting and boring, so much so that it is one of the very few repertoire works that I avoid seeing. However, having loathed Christopher Alden’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream so intensely a fortnight ago, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to see Turandot done by Welsh National Opera in his production of 1994, now revived, and I wasn’t disappointed: I found it disgusting and interesting.

Deborah Ross

It’s a set-up

I’ll say this for DreamWorks: when it latches on to a concept it doesn’t let it go. I’ll say this for DreamWorks: when it latches on to a concept it doesn’t let it go. There have been four Shreks (with a spin-off, Puss in Boots, due in November), it’s preparing a third Madagascar, it has begun work on a sequel to How to Train Your Dragon and now this, Kung Fu Panda 2, and so should any of these films feel like more of the same, it’s probably because they are more of the same. As it happens, I didn’t see the first Kung Fu Panda — God must have

Kate Chisholm

Walking and talking

It’s all in the voice. It’s all in the voice. Whether or not the person speaking is seeking to engage the listener, or just saying what comes into their head without much thought of what they are trying to get across, or of who they are talking to and why they might want to listen. I reckon it’s not easy. Clare Balding has a gift for it, taking us along with her every step of the way as she walks the country for her Ramblings series on Radio 4 (Saturdays). Dominic Arkwright and his guests on Off the Page (Thursday) never got further than the studio mike. They were discussing

Simon Hoggart

Princely war

The Duke at 90 (BBC1) was another engagement in Prince Philip’s ongoing war against the media. The Duke at 90 (BBC1) was another engagement in Prince Philip’s ongoing war against the media. As usual, he won this skirmish. There was a difference between this programme, presented by Fiona Bruce, and the earlier ITV effort with Alan Titchmarsh, who had decided that constant fawning was the way to the Duke’s heart, as he had done last year with the Prince of Wales. Presented with Sir Walter Raleigh’s problem he would not have laid his cloak down for the Queen, but would have placed himself in the puddle, a human duckboard. The

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Righteous anger

Can a documentary ever be as entertaining as a fictional feature film? And, if it can, does that mean it cannot be a serious contribution to public debate? Inside Job, director Charles Ferguson’s Oscar-winning account of the origins of the US subprime mortgage debacle and the 2008 banking crisis, is a case in point. It is compelling viewing — and as a guide to why the financial world went mad, it is more vivid than any screen drama I’ve seen (though the BBC’s The Last Days of Lehman Brothers felt pretty authentic), and easier to absorb than any of a shelf full of books on the subject. But that doesn’t

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

Inquire within

In the Mellon Gallery of the Fitzwilliam is an unashamedly rich and demanding exhibition of Italian drawings, ranging from the 15th to the 20th century. I say ‘demanding’ because you need to look closely and with attention at these works — not simply to decipher what is going on (the narrative component), but to appreciate how it has been achieved (the formal aspect). So much of the stuff that is produced under the name of art today is easy on the eye and mind, with as much aesthetic nourishment as used air. Real art solicits the spectator’s involvement: it’s not a variant on wallpaper, it requires interpretation and response, intellectual

Susan Moore

Out of the ordinary | 4 June 2011

From high in the sky over Cappadocia Susan Moore looks down at part of the largest contemporary land art project in the world There are few artists whose work is best seen by hot-air balloon. There are even fewer whose works can only be photographed in their entirety by satellite. To describe the Australian Andrew Rogers as a land artist on an epic scale seems something of an understatement. Over the past 13 years he has masterminded the construction of 47 monumental structures in 13 countries spanning seven continents and involving some 6,700 people. The more remote a site, the better it suits his purpose. Rogers has a penchant for

Mark Mason

A touch of clarse

There aren’t many things on which John Humphrys is undecided, but one of them shows itself nearly every time he presents the Today programme. It’s a trait shared by many broadcasters, and indeed people from all walks of life, and constitutes one of the great social barometers of our time. It’s the inability to decide whether your ‘a’s should be long or short. If your upbringing conditions you to pronounce ‘grass’ to rhyme with ‘ass’ rather than ‘arse’ — if, in short, you’re a non-posh non-Southerner — there is a temptation, on moving to London, to lengthen your ‘a’s in order to fit in. To say ‘clarse’ instead of ‘class’

Laura Gascoigne

Call of the wild

‘Not something I’d want on my wall,’ said an English lady visitor to Antwerp’s Rockox House, standing in front of a painting of wolves attacking cattle. ‘Not something I’d want on my wall,’ said an English lady visitor to Antwerp’s Rockox House, standing in front of a painting of wolves attacking cattle. ‘Nor that,’ said her friend of another painting showing lions feasting on a live gazelle. I didn’t dare tell them that I’d come to Belgium specially to see a whole exhibition of paintings by the artist responsible, Roelandt Savery (1576–1639), in his native Kortrijk. ‘Kortrijk where? Roelandt who?’ you may be asking. If Savery’s name rings a bell,

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

No laughing matter | 4 June 2011

A miracle at the Barbican. I reached the venue after a mere half an hour blundering around following directions from helpful staff. The main stage, which is so vast it feels like an open-air theatre, is the result of an alluring misconception of scale. You build a venue the size of the cosmos and you get universal art. But art finds its own measure. If the habitat suits the substance all should be well. The latest delight here is an update of Sheridan’s The School for Scandal directed by Deborah Warner with a very classy cast and an absolute ton of money. Warner, a recent arrival at Obvious Island, wants

Michael Tanner

Royal rewards

Macbeth may not be Verdi’s greatest opera, in fact it’s hard to imagine anyone’s claiming it is, yet in a performance that is as musically inspired as the one I saw at the Royal Opera last week (the second of the run) it comes across as an inspired work, almost all the way through, and one which can be considered seriously alongside Shakespeare. Macbeth may not be Verdi’s greatest opera, in fact it’s hard to imagine anyone’s claiming it is, yet in a performance that is as musically inspired as the one I saw at the Royal Opera last week (the second of the run) it comes across as an

Deborah Ross

Golden boy

I have zero interest in motor racing and zero interest in cars generally yet this documentary about the Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna knocked me for six, which I think is a cricketing metaphor but can’t say for sure, as I also have zero interest in cricket. I have zero interest in motor racing and zero interest in cars generally yet this documentary about the Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna knocked me for six, which I think is a cricketing metaphor but can’t say for sure, as I also have zero interest in cricket. (I quite like ice dancing as a sport but only in the secret hope someone is