Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Saturday

Martin Gayford

Flemish tour de force

Some years ago I was walking through the closed galleries of the Uffizi with a group of journalists, when we passed the Portinari Altarpiece. In those spaces, free for once of jostling crowds, it was suddenly obvious what a wonderful work of art this mighty triptych was. With paintings, as with people, you often get an instantaneous impression — in this case of force, density, presence. In comparison, the big Botticelli pin-ups looked flimsy. Despite the surrounding competition (which is hot, to say the least), here clearly was one of the greatest pictures in Florence. And it is not a masterpiece by a Florentine, or even an Italian, but a

Matthew Dennison

Victorian virtues

The fight has gone out of Victorian- bashing as a pastime. The high moral aims and low double standards of so much 19th-century culture, characterised by unsmiling portentousness and once regarded by Evelyn Waugh, Nancy Mitford et al. as a ‘shriek’, pale alongside the emptiness of modern celebrity worship. ‘Victorian’, which once meant ugly, silly or undesirable, has come to suggest the opposite — and so a harmlessly malicious parlour game falls by the wayside. But the massive swell of the 19th century continues to throw up genius oddities. Take Henry George Alexander Holiday, who died 80 years ago this year after a career that embraced notable successes as both

Henrietta Bredin

Smoke signals | 15 December 2007

The indulgences of Christmas in the forms of food and drink are fairly well represented in the operatic canon but less socially acceptable indulgences, such as smoking and even drug abuse, don’t feature quite so frequently. Hardly surprising, really, as singing doesn’t seem naturally to combine with snorting a line or the long, luxurious inhalation of nicotine-rich smoke deep into the lungs. Surprisingly, however, back in the days when smoking was considered to be positively beneficial — ‘Craven A: for your throat’s sake’ — a number of opera singers actually advertised for tobacco companies. The fabulously glamorous and velvet-voiced bass Ezio Pinza not only won a legion of adoring fans

Andrew Lambirth

A look ahead to 2008

At the National Gallery the year starts with a show of Pompeo Batoni’s stylish portraits of 18th-century Grand Tourists in Italy (20 February to 18 May). The painter Alison Watt (born Greenock, 1965) has now completed her two-year stint as the NG’s seventh Associate Artist and will be showing the fruits of her labours in the Sunley Room (13 March to 22 June). Watch out for the endless fascinations of drapery. The summer slot is filled by Radical Light: Italy’s Divisionist Painters 1891–1910 (18 June to 7 September), which traces the development of Italian pointillism into the excesses of Futurism. I’m looking forward to seeing work by Giovanni Segantini, though

Michael Tanner

Subverting Wagner

Presumably Bernard Haitink took, or was administered, a huge overdose of Valium before he began conducting Parsifal at the Royal Opera last week. What else could explain this fairly experienced Wagnerian’s conducting so featureless an account of Wagner’s last, most subtle and all told perhaps greatest score? Even the opening bars, unaccompanied melody with telling inflections which prefigure what will happen to it later, gave the impression of being a first run-through by players who had been told just to perform the notes — the exact opposite of how it sounded six years ago, when Simon Rattle inflected virtually every note separately. And because there was no emphasis, colouring or

Deborah Ross

Night of disaster

Honestly, Polish films. They come over here, open in cinemas — our cinemas; your local Odeon — and, if that weren’t enough, they are smart and they are funny and it shouldn’t be allowed. What is the government doing about this? Does the government even know exactly how many Polish films are actually coming over here, and stealing our audiences? It’s obscene. Why doesn’t someone put a stop to it? I, for one, would not be recommending The Wedding if I could help myself, but I can’t. Alas, self-discipline has never really been my thing. The Wedding is, thankfully, no My Big Fat Polish Wedding, which would be very tiresome

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Scholastic mystery

Doubt: A Parable is a small intriguing play set in a New York Catholic school. When a 12-year-old boy is caught getting smashed on altar wine, the fanatical head teacher, Sister Aloysius, starts to investigate. She’s convinced that the lad has been corrupted by a charismatic and handsome young priest Fr Flynn. Outraged, Fr Flynn claims that his closeness to the boy is innocent and that her groundless accusations have torn their friendship to pieces. This is a highly unusual play. Tedious and slow to start with, it consists of nothing but seated characters talking to each other. Yet it’s peculiarly gripping because after the dull opening scenes you realise

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Seasonal shortcomings

Sorry, you’re not getting your Christmas present this year. Yes, I know what you want: one of those columns where I avoid TV altogether and just rant madly about myself for 800 words. Well, tough. It’s been one of the crappest, most hateful years of my life and, though I’m not holding you all totally responsible, I do think you must bear your share of the blame. You have not adored me enough. You have not showered me with sufficient — indeed, any — gifts. You have not bought nearly enough copies of Coward on the Beach or How to Be Right as perfect Christmas presents for all your friends.

Saturday

The Skimmer

The Bash Britain Corporation

The BBC’s version of the Nativity this Christmas will depict Mary and Joseph as asylum seekers rejected by brutal Britain. Yes, once again the Beeb plays fast and loose with history so that we can all think the worst of our country. So let’s remember some facts. First, this country’s record in giving genuine asylum seekers refuge is second to none, a matter for pride rather than disparagement. Second, Mary and Joseph were not in any sense asylum seekers, nor were they dirt poor. They were a Middle Judean family who had gone to Bethlehem to participate in a census (primarily for tax purposes) but arrived so late all the

Ariane Bankes

All points East

Serendipity is the best aspect of travel — the chance encounter, the unexpected discovery — and a journey overland to China by rail can throw up all sorts of surprises. In Moscow we bumped into the countertenor Michael Chance, who was there for the first of a series of recitals with the Soloists of Catherine the Great, and who whisked us off to their rehearsal in the city’s Catholic cathedral. This celebrated ensemble was founded in 2001 by Andrey Reshetin, a former violinist in a radical, agitprop Russian rock band, but classically trained and now dedicated to the authentic performance of baroque music. In the course of scouring the archives

Andrew Lambirth

Drawing on experience

Theatres of Life: Drawings from the Rothschild Collection, The Wallace Collection, Manchester Square, London W1, until 27 January 2008 Pop Art Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, until 20 January 2008, Sponsored by Lehman Brothers Waddesdon Manor, the stately home of the Rothschilds near Aylesbury now managed by the National Trust, is lending for the first time a group of master drawings for outside exhibition. London’s Wallace Collection is the fortunate recipient, and some 75 high-quality drawings (mostly French 18th-century) are currently on display in the basement galleries of Hertford House in Manchester Square. Here is yet another example of the current fetish for subterranean galleries devoid of natural light. Revealingly, it’s

Laura Gascoigne

Marital tensions

Bauhaus 1919–1933, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, until 17 February With all the ‘boundary-blurring’ going on in contemporary art, the old distinction between art and craft ought to be history. But snobbism is apparently so hard-wired into our aesthetic psyche that the distinction has managed to survive by appealing to the Wildean doctrine, ‘All art is quite useless.’ If something has a use, the theory seems to go, it isn’t art: if it’s useless, it’s in with a chance. The new Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art — mima for short — set out with a mission to show arts and crafts under the same roof. Its reasons are historic: its

Deborah Ross

Insight denied

Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon on 8 December 1980 as he returned to his New York home after a recording session. As Lennon entered his apartment building, Chapman drew a pistol, called out to Lennon, then shot him several times. This film, based on Chapman’s own journals as well as various transcripts, is told almost entirely in Chapman’s own words, beginning with an opening, raspy voiceover that goes: ‘There was no emotion in my blood, there was no anger, there was nothing. It was dead silence in my brain; dead cold quiet. He looked at me, he looked past me. And then I heard a voice in my head.

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Bitter sweets

Happy Christmas, New End The Seagull; King Lear, New London A blast of seasonal cheer at the New End Theatre. Paul Birtill’s bitter and hilarious family satire, Happy Christmas, starts like a subversive salute to The Homecoming. Upwardly mobile John introduces his posh fiancée Mary to his dysfunctional all-male family. The script is crammed with offbeat gags. ‘Strange taxi-driver,’ giggles Mary as she enters; ‘do you really think his granddad was on the Titanic?’ She refuses to be cowed by John’s ghastly brothers. Kenny is a workshy alcoholic — ‘There’s an art to being on the dole’ — who immediately bums a tenner off her and later rifles through her

Giannandrea Poesio

Rubies to the rescue

George Balanchine’s Jewels is an ideal acquisition for the Royal Ballet, for the evening-long work provides the artists with a stimulating stylistic and technical challenge. Created in 1967, this triptych of independent dance episodes was inspired by the choreographer’s visit to the New York showrooms of Van Cleef & Arpels. Hence the idea of translating the magic of precious stones such as emeralds, rubies and diamonds into what could easily be regarded as a choreographic compendium of Balanchine’s most distinctive traits. In Emeralds, Fauré’s subdued music underscores a choreographic layout that, though never dynamically explosive, stands out for a visually engaging game of contrasts between angular, staccato movements and smoother

Charles Spencer

Sound and fury

I went out on the razzle with a bunch of reformed drunks last weekend. God, it was fun. The aim was a serious walk, eleven and a half miles, kicking off from Eastbourne, walking over Beachy Head and the Seven Sisters, before doing a sharp right for the final slog to the village of Alfriston and supper. As I motored down to Eastbourne, listening to dear old Brian Matthew’s delightful Sounds of the Sixties on Radio Two, the sun was shining, the sky was an eggshell blue, God was in his heaven and all was right with the world. We met up at Eastbourne station, eight of us in all,

Michael Tanner

Breaking hearts

The Rake’s Progress, Royal College of Music; The Turn of the Screw, English National Opera The Royal College of Music’s Britten Theatre is the ideal size for Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, indeed the ideal size for almost every opera I can think of until the first third of the 19th century. What must make it appealing for young singers is that they can sing without straining, that every word can be heard, and that their expressions are visible to everyone in the audience — but of course that deprives them of excuses, too. Not that there was much need of excuses for the second cast of the Rake. First, I

Kate Chisholm

Prepare and reflect

The onset of Advent in the last days of November is supposed to be the herald of great joy at the jollities to come, but for most of us who have left childhood behind it seems to have become a season of dread. How to get through all that shopping and scribbling of cards with the same old time-worn message, ‘Another year gone and still nothing done’? Worse still, all those dreadful parties, fuelled by gassy champagne and greasy snacks. All I want to do, as soon as the leaves fall and the nights draw in, is to go into hibernation, and it requires a superhuman effort to venture out

Simon Hoggart

Dark doings in the suburbs

No doubt one reason why British people like Kath & Kim (often on BBC2, now on Living, Thursday) is that it takes the mick out of Australian suburban life. That makes those of us who lead British suburban lives feel superior. But it’s more than that. It’s very funny. It’s worth watching just for the strangulated, aspirational accents (‘pul-oyse’, ‘luck at moy’), which are a source of delight to Australians, too, as you’ll see on their website, kathandkim.com. On the surface it’s just another family sitcom, but it’s more subtle than the norm, and at times rather dark. Kath is a bubble-haired but not bubble-headed divorcee, recently remarried to Kel

Wednesday

Henrietta Bredin

The Suffolk Way

I spent last weekend at the Aldeburgh Documentary Festival and it’s an event I can thoroughly recommend. It’s been going for 13 years now, with a programme devised by Craig Brown, and the roll-call of speakers it attracts is hugely impressive. On a blowy wet Suffolk day it’s extraordinary to be able to take refuge in the Aldeburgh Cinema and find, up on the stage in front of you, behind a slightly rickety round table, lit by a standard lamp with a dusty pleated shade that looks as if it came from the sitting-room of someone’s great-aunt (and probably did), Libby Purves and Max Hastings, talking about the challenges of