Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Monday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The crash from an Austrian perspective

It’s not all politics at Westminster. There’s a pretty good think-tank scene too, with lectures on topics that you’re unlikely to read about in the newspapers. One took place today: the Adam Smith Institute hosted a lecture by Steven G. Horwitz, from St. Lawrence University, entitled “An Austrian perspective on the great recession of 2008-09”. As many CoffeeHousers will know, “Austrian” refers to von Mises, Hayek and the others whose analysis of bubbles and crises certainly seems to fit current events. My colleague Jonathan Jones was there, and took some notes – which I have moulded into a six-point briefing.  It’s not often we do a post based on a

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

Death watch

Although I stopped watching TV some years ago, films are a continuing solace and pleasure. Among the Christmas treats was a previously unseen Jack Nicholson movie, entitled The Bucket List. The plot revolves around two very different Americans, Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, both of whom are suffering from cancer and are given a mere matter of months to live. The Bucket List is their wish list of things to do before they die, some of the more exotic of which the wealthy Nicholson enables them to achieve. The excellent Freeman, a poorer man but the greater philosopher, reminds Nicholson of a more important consideration: the two questions asked of Ancient

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Hit Liszt

Damian Thompson highlights the gems among the prolific and pilloried composer’s nine million notes The extraordinary thing about Franz Liszt is that he remains one of the most famous composers of the 19th century despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of his music is forgotten — and likely to stay forgotten. He wrote enough of it, that’s for sure. If you were to listen to his works one after another without interruption, it would take about a week. I’m basing that estimate on the fact that Leslie Howard’s 98 CDs of Liszt’s complete piano music, which are just about to be reissued by Hyperion, last for just over five

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Twin peaks

It’s that time of year. The great reckoning is upon us. Insurance is being renewed. Tax returns are being ferreted out. Roofing jobs are being appraised and budgeted for. And spouses are being trundled into central London for the annual session of dialysis at the theatre. It’s that time of year. The great reckoning is upon us. Insurance is being renewed. Tax returns are being ferreted out. Roofing jobs are being appraised and budgeted for. And spouses are being trundled into central London for the annual session of dialysis at the theatre. And here to meet them is Ayckbourn’s yuletide comedy Seasons Greetings, which features three hilariously miserable families bickering

Deborah Ross

Film: Farewell to arm

Unless you’ve been living under a rock — in which case, keep it to yourself; I’m done with rocks — you’ll have already heard about 127 Hours. Unless you’ve been living under a rock — in which case, keep it to yourself; I’m done with rocks — you’ll have already heard about 127 Hours. It’s the latest film from Danny Boyle and is based on the true story of Aron Ralston, the poster boy of survival who, as a 27-year-old in 2003, went climbing in the Bluejohn Canyon in Utah and got his forearm trapped between a boulder and the canyon wall. After five days of shoving, tugging, chiselling, screaming,

Michael Tanner

Production values

In the absence of any operas to attend, I’ve been reading the most recent defence of ‘director’s opera’, a book with the characteristic title Unsettling Opera, by the American academic David J. Levin. In the absence of any operas to attend, I’ve been reading the most recent defence of ‘director’s opera’, a book with the characteristic title Unsettling Opera, by the American academic David J. Levin. Anyone braving one of these books — there are plenty of them now — needs to have a high tolerance for jargon, indeed for deformed prose of many kinds. They tend to rehearse the same basic argument, in Levin’s case with close attention to

Kate Chisholm

Single vision

There’s been much grumbling in the shires about Radio 3’s 12-day Mozart marathon. There’s been much grumbling in the shires about Radio 3’s 12-day Mozart marathon. Why burden us with so much baroque? Where do you go if you can’t abide all those notes? But actually there’s something wonderfully cleansing about knowing that what you’re going to hear at any time of day or night on the music station is bound to have a K number attached to it. It’s like going on a diet after too many mince pies and brandy butter. Hearing nothing but Mozart is certainly a test of the composer’s mettle, but as the Bach and

Simon Hoggart

Forgotten laughter

The Radio Times now lists 72 channels, and that’s not all of them. The Radio Times now lists 72 channels, and that’s not all of them. No wonder television has to feed on itself, like a hungry tigress scoffing her cubs. In particular, it devours the past, so this week we had a Morecambe and Wise evening on BBC2, starting with the Christmas show from 1976, a third of a century ago. These shows got peak audiences of 28 million, inconceivable now, and just as French education ministers can allegedly tell you what every child in the country is studying at any moment, programme controllers could sigh with pleasure and

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

Direct observation

Although he was the leading portrait painter of Regency England, Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830) has somehow slipped beneath the catch-net of modern public recognition. Although he was the leading portrait painter of Regency England, Thomas Lawrence (1769–1830) has somehow slipped beneath the catch-net of modern public recognition. He was the son of a Bristol innkeeper, who moved with his family to Devizes in 1773 to take over the Black Bear public house, and by 1780 young Lawrence was charming all and sundry with what Fanny Burney called ‘his astonishing skill in drawing’. His precocious talent came in handy when his father was declared bankrupt and Lawrence became the family breadwinner with

Harry Mount

Turkish time travel

Harry Mount looks across the Dardanelles and sees yesterday’s weather today In Canakkale — the biggest town on the Dardanelles, where more than 130,000 British, Australians, New Zealanders and Turks were slaughtered in the 1915 campaign — Mark Wallinger, the 2007 Turner Prize winner, has dreamt up a clever little work about memory. On the Asian quayside, looking across to the Gallipoli killing fields on the European side of the straits, is an old shipping container, tricked out like a 1950s picture house; think Cinema Paradiso, and you get the idea. Using a 1950s-style sign, Wallinger has named it ‘Sinema Amnesia’ (Sinema is Turkish for cinema). The sign says that

Michael Deacon

Lords of laughter

What do the following comedians have in common? Morecambe and Wise, Ronnie Barker, Frankie Howerd, Bob Monkhouse, Peter Sellers. They’re all dead, yes. But something else. None of them was knighted. Instead they were all made OBE, an honour Michael Winner once charmingly described as ‘what you get if you clean the toilets well at King’s Cross station’. Still, they did better than Les Dawson, Tony Hancock, Tommy Cooper and Peter Cook. Those four got nothing. I find this curious. In most cases, at least. Hancock died a bit too young (suicide at 44), and accepting anything from the honours system would have turned Cook from satirist to court jester, in two

Scott Jordan-Harris

Prime cut

The recent restoration of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is now available for home viewing in three plush editions, in Eureka’s Masters of Cinema DVD series. The recent restoration of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is now available for home viewing in three plush editions, in Eureka’s Masters of Cinema DVD series. Metropolis is the foundation of all subsequent science-fiction films. It is a movie of incalculable influence that deserves to be seen by all — and the chief attractions of this version are 25 minutes of footage unseen for 80 years, and long believed lost, as well as a recording of the original score. Premiered the year The Jazz Singer’s sound changed cinema,

Deborah Ross

Right royal triumph

The King’s Speech is a joy, and I adore it. The King’s Speech is a joy, and I adore it. In fact, I love it so much that, if I could, I would take it home and put it down for a good school and wrap it up warm in the cold and, should it catch a chill, I would nurse it and offer hot lemon and maybe even oxtail soup, which is actually quite disgusting, but always appealing when you are sickly, for some reason. Yes, it’s a full-blown heritage crowd-pleaser and, yes, the banter between the king and his speech therapist is too snappily arch to be even

Michael Tanner

Vapid Wagner

It is characteristic of Wagner’s operas, in their remarkable urgency and depth, that initially one thinks they are dealing with one or another opposition, for instance, Power versus Love in the Ring, only to find, as one gets further into them, that they are very much more complicated than that, and often that what seems to be their subject matter is not what actually is. It is characteristic of Wagner’s operas, in their remarkable urgency and depth, that initially one thinks they are dealing with one or another opposition, for instance, Power versus Love in the Ring, only to find, as one gets further into them, that they are very

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Classy act

Michael Grandage, boss of the Donmar, is a most unusual director. He has no ideas. His rivals go in for party-theme, concept-album, pop-video Shakespeare (provincial folksiness in metropolitan disguise), but Grandage just goes in for Shakespeare. He arrives with no prejudices or pieties, only solutions. He’s the bard’s delivery boy. His current production of King Lear sweeps the stage clean of the usual Ozzy Osbourne clutter and reduces the inventory to just three items, a map, a chair and a pillory for Kent. Nothing else. This daring austerity opens things up and allows the mysterious, grotesque, lurching and inscrutable play to do its best and worst, to charm, horrify, move

Giannandrea Poesio

Magical adventures

English National Ballet has a long history of Nutcrackers, each memorable in its own way. This one, created by ENB’s artistic director Wayne Eagling for the company’s 60th anniversary, is no exception. Contrary to today’s trends, Eagling has opted for a fairly traditional staging, steering away from the lure of modern readings, satirical reinterpretations and impenetrable psychological takes. For the seasoned viewer and newcomer alike, this Nutcracker has the same retro flavour that some illustrated books from 50 to 60 years ago possess, thanks also to Peter Farmer’s luscious sets and costumes. One of its greatest novelties is that the action takes place in this country and not in some

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Weekly shockers

Did you hear the one about Jordan’s disabled son? Unlikely, since you probably don’t watch Tramadol Nights (Channel 4), nor read the Mirror (‘Katie Price furious after Frankie Boyle joke about her disabled son’), nor the Guardian (‘Frankie Boyle’s Katie Price joke sparks Ofcom investigation’). Did you hear the one about Jordan’s disabled son? Unlikely, since you probably don’t watch Tramadol Nights (Channel 4), nor read the Mirror (‘Katie Price furious after Frankie Boyle joke about her disabled son’), nor the Guardian (‘Frankie Boyle’s Katie Price joke sparks Ofcom investigation’). Don’t worry, I’m not going to repeat it here. What kind of sicko do you think I am: Rod Liddle?

Kate Chisholm

Everyday surprises

It’s so unnerving, knowing there are going to be two big surprises tomorrow night (2 January) on The Archers, but having no idea what’s in store. It’s so unnerving, knowing there are going to be two big surprises tomorrow night (2 January) on The Archers, but having no idea what’s in store. Experience warns me that it’s not going to be pleasant. But who’s for the chop? The press release says one half of the double-whammy will play out an existing storyline. That’s easy. I bet we’ll find out that Ian is the secret father of Helen’s baby. For the uninitiated, he’s gay but ages ago wanted to be a

Saturday

Peter Phillips

Arts administration: Questions of privilege

The rights and wrongs of internships for those who are seeking a first job have been hotly debated in the press recently, and nowhere more so than with reference to young people who hope to make a career in arts and music administration. But the principles remain the same whatever the discipline: is it legal for an organisation to employ people who are usually given a stipulated job when they become an intern, and not to pay them; and is it acceptable that these opportunities tend to go to young people who are already rich enough (through parental support or earnings from a gap year many cannot afford to take

Tristram Hunt

Wedgwood Museum: At risk

We are fairly certain that the late Robert Maxwell never met the even later Josiah Wedgwood, but Cap’n Bob’s nefarious legacy is now being keenly felt by Wedgwood’s descendants. For it was in the aftermath of Maxwell’s plundering of the Mirror Group that the Pension Protection Fund was established to compensate pensioners in the wake of insolvency. And now this legislation is being used to asset-strip one of the great museums of England. On the southern edge of Stoke-on-Trent stands the Wedgwood Museum, dedicated to ‘The People Who Have Made Objects of Great Beauty from the Soils of Staffordshire’. A museum that in 2009 won the £100,000 Art Fund Prize