Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Saturday

Andrew Lambirth

Topsy turvy

Born Georg Kern in 1938, Baselitz adopted the name of his birthplace in Saxony, East Germany just after his definitive move to the West in 1958. Brought up in an atmosphere of gloom and social realism, he had been expelled from art school in East Berlin for ‘social-political immaturity’. He fared better in West Berlin and firmly grasped the fashionable nettle of existential angst while struggling with a whole raft of Western influences, from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. He developed his own brand of uncouth and aggressive figuration, making his trade-mark (from 1969) the upside-down motif. Baselitz paints his pictures flat on the floor, working all round them, but

Robin Holloway

Pleasure at the Proms

Positively oceanic was the season’s principal novelty. It was not a new commission; rather, the rediscovery 440 years after its composition of the Mass in 40 parts by Alessandro Striggio, whose final Agnus Dei rises to a staggering 60, which ought to leave Tallis’s celebrated Motet (whose inspiration is reckoned to originate here) pale and gasping in comparison. Which is to hint already at disappointment. In the event (17 July) it was Striggio who paled. Even what one expected — an exploitation of spaces and masses in great planes of slow-shifting harmony — was curiously ordinary for such an extraordinary venture; almost completely devoid of the intricate finesse of the

Mark Glazebrook

Magnificent six

Anyone who goes into the Annely Juda Gallery in Dering Street expecting something like those light, airy, weight-denying abstract steel sculptures, painted bright red all over perhaps, like the Tate’s song-evoking ‘Early One Morning’, 1962, is in for a big surprise. All works shown here stand with absolute, resolute, broad-based firmness as if to proclaim that they are what they are. ‘Jupiter’, for example, made in 2005, boasts some nine points of contact with the floor. Caro famously shed the need for a pedestal over 40 years ago and this decision continues to add a certain strength of identity to his sculptures. Self-contained strength is what most of his recent

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Dazzling Dexter

Too many musicals in London? It depends whether you think the West End should be a temple or a funfair. Room for both, I’d say. But the fact that many musicals are thriving doesn’t mean any musical will. Hit shows succeed because they get virtually everything right. Bad Girls gets three out of five things right. The stylised sets are magnificently gruesome, the acting is terrific and the lyrics are pert and witty. But the tunes are forgettable and the plot is mishandled. The writers style themselves ‘story drivers’ so they should decide which car they’re in. They’ve got half a dozen excellent storylines here and they want to keep

Deborah Ross

Gorgeous George

Michael Clayton is one of those American films about American lawyers doing American lawyer stuff which isn’t usually my kind of thing. And, anyway, didn’t money-hungry men in neat suits stop being cool or interesting in about 1982? But you know what? This is a pretty decent corporate thriller: tense, exciting, involving, and best of all it stars George Clooney, who is just so hot. I recently read he’d broken a foot in a motorcycle accident and just in case he happens to be a Spectator reader — and why not?; all the best people are — I would like to say this: ‘George, I am willing and ready to

Kate Chisholm

Guilty pleasure

Guilty pleasure (Radio 4) Unmasking the English (Radio 4) In 1908 Gerald Mills borrowed £1,000 (worth about £52,000 in today’s money) to set up a publishing company with his friend Charles Boon. Among their first authors were P.G. Wodehouse and Jack London, who would probably be horrified to realise that their books are now associated with a company that promotes titles such as Purchased for Pleasure and Tall, Tanned and Texan. But you can’t be snooty about a publisher who sells 200 million books worldwide every year (that’s one every six seconds according to a proud Mills & Boon editor). Or who once turned down a manuscript by Helen Fielding,

Simon Hoggart

Porn with knickers on

I once knew a young woman who worked for a large public-interest organisation. She was clever and well educated, but funds were tight, and she feared she was about to lose her job. In which case, she planned to follow a university friend and become a high-class prostitute. It sounded marvellous, she said. The agency vetted the clients, she worked at home, and made hundreds of pounds a day for little work and next to no risk. Her parents thought she was a secretary; when they were in town she simply took the day off. It sounded dreadfully sad to me, and I was delighted when I heard that my

Saturday

Ursula Buchan

Mowl’s quest

It is more than 40 years since the foundation of the Garden History Society signalled that the study of the history of gardens and designed landscapes had become an important subject in its own right, instead of being simply an optional add-on to the study of historic buildings. Since then, our knowledge of the subject has increased exponentially, with academic research enlisted as a guide to preserving existing gardens, as well as uncovering those thought lost. The trick, however, is how to ensure that knowledge of garden history, acquired in academic circles, filters out to the general reader, and there is none better at this than Timothy Mowl, who since

James Forsyth James Forsyth

James Suggests….

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara: This fictionalised account of the Battle of Gettysburg is one of the best historical novels you’ll ever read. The characterisation is masterful and the plotting so good that you almost forget that you know the battle ended the South’s chances of victory in the Civil War. The individual chapters are so neatly bound that it is also a perfect book to dip into from time to time.  The Breach: One of the better films I’ve seen this year, it deals with the relationship between FBI agent turned defector Robert Hanssen, played by Chris Cooper, and the young FBI recruit, Ryan Phillippe, ordered to befriend

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

A Matter for Debate

Lloyd Evans Zimbabwe – last in the dictionary and too often last on the agenda. The new season of Intelligence Squared debates opened with the motion ‘Britain Has Failed Zimbabwe.’  Moderator Richard Lindley set the scene by taking us back to Salisbury, now Harare, on November 11th, 1965 where, as a young journalist, he reported on Ian Smith’s announcement of UDI. Back then, everyone expected that within weeks British paratroopers would descend from the heavens and sort the country out.  They’re still waiting. Peter Godwin, a Zimbabwean journalist, opened in support of the motion with an unsettling quip: ‘If we were in Zimbabwe you wouldn’t be able to go to

Robin Simon

Masters of the artistic universe

On The Courtauld’s 75th anniversary, Robin Simon looks back at its colourful and distinguished history The Tate Gallery …sorry, I’ll start again. ‘Tate’ spent £100,000 a few years back just to lose its ‘the’. Staff are strictly instructed by the gallery’s Oberkommando to refer to it according to the brand name, as in ‘I’m at Tate’. It sounds as if they come from Mars — or Yorkshire. It doesn’t work, and I enjoy the announcement on the Victoria Line at Pimlico which gets it all wrong: ‘Alight here for the Tate Britain.’ The Courtauld Institute of Art turns 75 on 6 October this year and has also undergone a rather

Andrew Lambirth

Miller’s colourful tale

This beautiful exhibition celebrates the 100th anniversary of Lee Miller’s birth in Poughkeepsie, New York State, and it takes place 30 years after her death from cancer. When she died, her only child Antony Penrose had no idea of her achievements as muse and artist, and only learnt about them gradually. As he grew to understand her better, he determined to set about the rehabilitation of her artistic reputation. This he has achieved with exemplary thoroughness, through a series of publications and exhibitions which have made Lee Miller a well-known and much admired figure. The last substantial museum show was at the National Portrait Gallery in 2005 — is it

Roger Kimball

Splendid isolation | 22 September 2007

It is not surprising that Edward Hopper (1882–1967) is an immensely popular artist. His pleasing deployment of colour and easy-going presentation of the paraphernalia of everyday life give his work an immediate warmth and likeability. His muted palette, careful modulation of hues, and soft-edged precision are a recipe for visual charm. Considered simply as aesthetic objects, Hopper’s pictures make few demands: they are, on the contrary, quietly inveigling, almost seductive in their plain-as-day obviousness. And if we’ve never seen diners or drugstores or city streets exactly like the ones that Hopper paints, we’ve seen ones that remind us of them — or vice versa. Hopper seems to give us the

Michael Tanner

A neglected master

Opera: Iphigénie en Tauride, Royal Opera House; Romeo und Juliet, St John’s Iphigénie en Tauride Royal Opera House Romeo und Juliet St John’s It is astonishing that Gluck achieves such greatness with such limited musical resources. For me he ranks with the top four or five operatic composers, yet he remains a permanently semi-neglected figure. Elaine Padmore, the Royal Opera’s director of opera, begins her welcoming note in the programme, ‘It is all too seldom that Gluck’s operas appear in our schedules’ and then semi-apologetically explains that the new production of Iphigénie en Tauride is being mounted ‘as a preface to our Ring cycles this autumn’, a piece of condescension

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Treasure hunt

No idea why, but the hunt is on for lost 20th-century masterpieces. Michael Attenborough is searching for gold at the Almeida and Matthew Dunster has his pan in the stream at the Young Vic. Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding is an adaption of her 1946 bestselling novel. We’re in the Deep South where romantic tomboy Frankie (energetically played by Flora Spencer-Longhurst) wants to run away from home and begin a new life with her elder brother. Frankie’s character, depending on your point of view, is an adorable free spirit or an irksome little whinger who deserves to be clattered over the head with a horseshoe. The play’s structure

Patrick Carnegy

Making waves

Between the towering majesty of Greene King’s brewery and its bottling plant in Bury St Edmunds nestles the Georgian gem of the Theatre Royal. Built in 1819 by William Wilkins (architect of the National Gallery) and now reopening after a £5 million restoration, its survival is something of a miracle. From 1925 it was effectively swallowed by the brewery when it was used as a barrel store. Reclaimed in 1965, it remains the sole surviving working theatre from the Regency period. The new and brilliantly executed refurbishment strikes an ideal balance between fidelity to Wilkins’s exquisitely proportioned semi-circular auditorium and the modernising provision of 360 comfortable seats (the original theatre

James Delingpole James Delingpole

True grit | 22 September 2007

At the launch of Patrick Bishop’s 3 Para at the Cavalry and Guards Club last week, I met some of the boys who’ve been doing their bit in Helmand. At the launch of Patrick Bishop’s 3 Para at the Cavalry and Guards Club last week, I met some of the boys who’ve been doing their bit in Helmand. God, they looked tough, with a keen, frankly rather unnerving, glint in their eye which set them dramatically apart from all us milksop civvies. One senior NCO told me what a thrill it had been when for the first time in 26 years’ service he’d finally been able to give the command

Saturday

Robert Gorelangton

Old gold

Warren Mitchell is lying on an air mattress in rehearsals. He’s 81 and in constant pain, made worse by a recent operation. Warren Mitchell is lying on an air mattress in rehearsals. He’s 81 and in constant pain, made worse by a recent operation. He looks very tired, very old and I wondered, hauling him up off the floor by his wrists, whether he’d make it through our interview, let alone a ten-week tour. Why on earth isn’t he at home with his feet up instead of rehearsing all day long? Doesn’t his wife object? He says, slowly and with effort, ‘Yes, my wife does object; she says, “You’re not

Andrew Lambirth

Feat of clay

The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army, British Museum, Sponsored by Morgan Stanley Here’s a show to pull in the public. More than 100,000 advance tickets already sold (Michelangelo’s drawings, though popular, sold only a fifth of that before it opened), and so much media coverage you scarcely need my review. Except, of course, that most of what passes for reporting is ill-informed and simply parrots the party line of press release and salesmanship. In other words, it’s just another form of advertising, which is why the art institutions of our country are desperate to get it — the life-support system of free publicity apparently necessary to the economic survival of

Matthew Dancona

Back to basics | 15 September 2007

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. But not with Sir Elton John, who last week brought the Red Piano Show that has thrilled audiences at Caesar’s Palace for two years to London’s O2 Centre. While not yet etched in legend quite as deeply as Sinatra’s residency at the Sands, or Elvis’s performances at the Las Vegas Hilton, this was still pretty amazing stuff, not least because this particular knight was only performing on this particular night. Sir Elton has made a bit of a thing in recent years of going ‘back to basics’, especially with his excellent 2001 album, Songs from the West Coast, which pared down to its