Arts Reviews Archives

Saturday

29 Jan 2011

Ruffled feathers

The Royal Ballet could not have timed better its new run of Swan Lake. Swans — and black ones, in particular — are all the rage these days. The Royal Ballet could not have timed better its new run of Swan Lake. Swans — and black ones, in particular — are all the rage these days. Unsurprisingly, the first performance played to a packed house, although the sell-out could not be entirely credited to the swan-o-mania prompted by Aronofsky’s movie Black Swan. Sarah Lamb starred in the demanding double role that the ballet is famous for and which the film focuses on. Not unlike the character portrayed by Natalie Portman,

James Delingpole

Wasted talent

‘We’ve got our main presenters,’ they explained. ‘What we need are interviewees to fill the guest slots. People with strong opinions on …well, what are your views on the EU, for example?’ So I told them my views on the EUSSR, while swearing quite a lot. This seemed to make them happy. ‘It’s called 10 O’Clock Live,’ they said. ‘You probably saw our pilot. The one-off special with Lauren Laverne, Charlie Brooker, David Mitchell and Jimmy Carr? It got pretty good ratings.’ No, I replied. That isn’t the sort of programme I’d watch in a million years. Lefty comedians making lefty jokes to a lefty audience about politics from a

Kate Chisholm

Born of a fury

As the battle rages between the American and British military PR over which brigade is being the most effective force for change in Afghanistan, it’s easy to forget that this proud country has its own ideas about what it needs in the future. As the battle rages between the American and British military PR over which brigade is being the most effective force for change in Afghanistan, it’s easy to forget that this proud country has its own ideas about what it needs in the future. In Lost Voices of Afghanistan (Radio 4, late on Saturday evening) we heard from those whose thoughts have long been buried beneath the cruelty,

Ursula Buchan

Our avian friends

Several new facts have rocked me back on my heels recently: Alastair Cook garnered more runs at the Gabba in Brisbane than Don Bradman; there are 100,000 miles of blood vessels in your brain; more people in this country can recognise Simon Cowell than Pope Benedict; and we spend as much annually on ‘wild bird care’ — £200 million — as we do on peat and potting composts, and rather more than on fertilisers. Several new facts have rocked me back on my heels recently: Alastair Cook garnered more runs at the Gabba in Brisbane than Don Bradman; there are 100,000 miles of blood vessels in your brain; more people

Saturday

22 Jan 2011

Niru Ratnam

Creative protesting

It’s time to heed the complaints and free art schools from the constraints of the university system, says Niru Ratnam The Turner Prize award ceremony always attracts protest — usually in the shape of the Stuckists, a group of bedraggled, eccentric-looking artists who gather outside Tate Britain in funny hats and bemoan the death of representational painting. But this year they were upstaged by around 200 art students, who entered the museum in the afternoon and refused to leave, staging what was described as a ‘teach-in’. In addition to wearing their own humorous hats, the students made speeches, marched round and chanted. The ‘teach-in’ was a protest against proposals unveiled

Ed Rex

Reinventing the circus

An elderly gentleman prodding me in the face with his inflatable iguana might expect to command my full attention. As I found my seat in the Albert Hall, though, the gentleman in question had to turn away disheartened, as I was too busy taking in the spectacular set of Cirque du Soleil’s Totem to be distracted by his intrusive pet. An elderly gentleman prodding me in the face with his inflatable iguana might expect to command my full attention. As I found my seat in the Albert Hall, though, the gentleman in question had to turn away disheartened, as I was too busy taking in the spectacular set of Cirque

Deborah Ross

Steps to destruction

I have always suspected that, if you look for the black swan within yourself, it will end in tears, and now Darren Aronofsky has proved me right. It will end in tears, as well as bloody gashes, horrors glimpsed in mirrors, warped hallucinations of a sexual nature and breaking your mother’s hand in a door jamb. If you think you may have the black swan within you, just leave well alone. Go shopping. Play Scrabble. Clear out the hall cupboard, as you have been meaning to do for ages (I don’t think you can squeeze another thing in there, although, God bless you, you will keep trying). And if you

Lloyd Evans

Non-stop larks

Gently does it. The Fitzrovia Radio Hour takes us back to the droll and elegant world of light entertainment in the 1940s when the airwaves were full of racy detective shows and overheated melodramas about pushy Yorkshiremen and rogue Nazis. The show is set in a radio studio during a live performance and we watch the actors rattling through their scripts while scurrying here and there to provide the effects for an exceptionally complex soundtrack. Cabbages get walloped with machetes to suggest stabbing. A game of billiards is done with some doorknobs being chinked together. A melon gets squished to represent the sound of a horse having its head chopped

Giannandrea Poesio

Still life

Ballet is a dying art, according to Jennifer Homans’s bestselling history of ballet, Apollo’s Angels. Ballet is a dying art, according to Jennifer Homans’s bestselling history of ballet, Apollo’s Angels. Sensationalist as it may sound, this claim is cogently argued at the end of the book, which turns dreary ballet history into an engaging narrative. Inevitably, the statement has ruffled many feathers, particularly among those ‘hyperspecialists’, ‘balletomanes’ and ‘insiders’ who, she says, speak an ‘impenetrable theory-laden prose’ and have reduced dance to a ‘recondite world’. Indeed, the worrying demise of classical theatre-dance depends greatly on the mental onanism of some scholars, as well as on the art-less vision of teachers

Michael Tanner

Gender problems

It’s sometimes intriguing to speculate, as you go to an opera in a fringe production of one kind or another, about how much messing around (used neutrally) this or that popular work can take. It’s sometimes intriguing to speculate, as you go to an opera in a fringe production of one kind or another, about how much messing around (used neutrally) this or that popular work can take. OperaUpClose scored an enormous success with its version of La Bohème in 2009/10 (though its claim to be the longest-ever run of an opera should be balanced by the fact that The Cock Kilburn could seat only about 40 people). At the

Kate Chisholm

Writerly magic

A frock that shocks, a terror-filled red coat and diamonds of seductive power are all promised next week in an alluring late-night series on Radio 3 (produced by Duncan Minshull). Listener, They Wore It gives us five 15-minute essays about clothes. Not a subject I would normally bother with, never being someone noted for my sartorial elegance or originality. But by chance I opened up one of the preview discs and was hooked immediately. The novelist Tracy Chevalier is talking about the impact on her teenage self of Guy de Maupassant’s short story ‘The Necklace’. Chevalier based an entire novel on a pearl necklace so she knows the value of

Simon Hoggart

Reality check

Horizon (BBC2, Monday) asked, ‘What is reality?’ and didn’t really have an answer. Horizon (BBC2, Monday) asked, ‘What is reality?’ and didn’t really have an answer. Well, it seems nobody does, though plenty of physicists, mathematicians and astronomers are working on it. As the voiceover told us, ‘Once you have entered their reality, your reality may never look the same.’ You can say that again. It appears that quantum particles can literally be in two places at the same time. But we are made up of quantum particles, and we are never in two places at the same time, even if that would occasionally be useful. So maybe there are

Saturday

15 Jan 2011

Ariane Bankes

Best in show | 15 January 2011

Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain, talks to Ariane Bankes about the planned revamp of the museum and 100 different ways of showing sculpture The evening after first meeting Penelope Curtis, director of Tate Britain, I bumped into a mutual friend who told me, only half-joking, that she could be frightening. Fair enough, I thought: to become the first woman director of one of Britain’s pre-eminent public galleries you have to frighten a few people along the way. As it happened, I hadn’t found her alarming at all at the press briefing that morning: direct, brisk, purposeful — she was, after all, embarking on a wholesale top-to-toe redesign and rehang

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 15 January 2011

The question of what is art vexes the tax authorities as well as philosophers. Last month, the Art Newspaper reported the latest twist in a wonderful, long-running row. The European Commission has decided that two pieces of installation art — ‘Hall of Whispers’ by Bill Viola, and ‘Six Alternating Cool White/Warm White Fluorescent Lights/Vertical and Centred’ by Dan Flavin are not, after all, works of art. The first is classified as ‘DVD players and projectors’ and the second as ‘light fittings’. This makes them liable not for the 5 per cent VAT rate that applies to art sales, but the standard rate — now 20 per cent. In this month’s

Nicola Mccartney

Never the same

Simon Starling’s art often involves some form of recycling — his controversial ‘Shedboatshed’ won the 2005 Turner Prize – and his ‘new’ exhibition at Camden Arts Centre (until 20 February) is no different. Simon Starling’s art often involves some form of recycling — his controversial ‘Shedboatshed’ won the 2005 Turner Prize – and his ‘new’ exhibition at Camden Arts Centre (until 20 February) is no different. Never The Same River (Possible Futures, Probable Pasts) is Starling’s selection of 30 artists’ works exhibited at the centre over the past 50 years, installed in the same positions they originally occupied, juxtaposed with three new pieces referencing time by Sean Lynch, Jeremy Millar

Andrew Lambirth

More real art, please

Although I am an admirer of Dulwich Picture Gallery, and like to support its generally rewarding exhibition programme, I will not be making the pilgrimage to see its latest show, Norman Rockwell’s America. Although I am an admirer of Dulwich Picture Gallery, and like to support its generally rewarding exhibition programme, I will not be making the pilgrimage to see its latest show, Norman Rockwell’s America. This is not just because it’s quite a hike to Dulwich for me, involving a bus, a train, another bus and another train (anything in excess of three hours from door to door), but also because I don’t think the trip will be worth

Lloyd Evans

Going for gold

There’s gold out there. The search for lost masterpieces beguiles many a theatrical impresario but with it comes the danger that the thrill of the chase may convert a spirit of honest exploration into an obtuse reverence for the quarry. There’s gold out there. The search for lost masterpieces beguiles many a theatrical impresario but with it comes the danger that the thrill of the chase may convert a spirit of honest exploration into an obtuse reverence for the quarry. The huntsman starts to believe that neglect proves excellence. Sturdy Beggars, an independent troupe who accept no public subsidy, are mounting a season of ‘forgotten gems’ from Eastern Europe. The

Michael Tanner

Witch craft

Is Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel an opera for children of all ages, or for grown-ups and for children, or mainly for grown-ups? I went to the Royal Opera’s revival of it just after Christmas, to a 12.30 matinée (there were several), which I took to be for the benefit of children, as well as possibly being an unusual piece of thoughtfulness about transport on the part of the management. Is Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel an opera for children of all ages, or for grown-ups and for children, or mainly for grown-ups? I went to the Royal Opera’s revival of it just after Christmas, to a 12.30 matinée (there were several),

Kate Chisholm

Cruel cuts

You might be forgiven for thinking that the cuts to broadcasting have already been implemented, with nothing but Mozart on Radio 3 and the Bible on Radio 4 on Sunday. Meanwhile, we’ve discovered that the actor who played the unfortunate Nigel Pargetter in The Archers, Graham Seed, has lost 75 per cent of his income, with only a few weeks’ warning — is he another silent victim of the national overspend? Switch over to the BBC’s World Service and the New Year diet becomes even more stringent. No drama for at least a month, so that between the briefings on world news and sport there are instead endless repeats of

James Delingpole

Waste not, want not

‘I want everyone to be as angry as I am,’ says Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and I hope he succeeds for the thing that makes him so angry is one of the things that makes me most angry, too: the senseless eradication of the world’s fish stocks. ‘I want everyone to be as angry as I am,’ says Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and I hope he succeeds for the thing that makes him so angry is one of the things that makes me most angry, too: the senseless eradication of the world’s fish stocks. All this week on Channel 4, HF-W has been campaigning in a series of programmes called Hugh’s Fish Fight. In