Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Saturday

Charles Spencer

Never say never

I promise I’m going to come up with some hot musical recommendations this issue, but I must thank those Spectator readers who wrote about last month’s column in which I announced my intention to stop smoking. The letters — all from reformed smokers — were full of kindness, sympathy and practical suggestions, and they have spurred me on. I was especially moved by a letter from a 91-year-old former prisoner of war on the Burma–Siam railway who said smoking had been a lifesaver during that terrible time. He continued to smoke during his working life, and found it a great help, and gave up when he retired at 60. Now

Russell Chamberlin

Saving the spike

It seemed a curious place for one of the grimmest of Victorian institutions, tucked under manicured downs, surrounded by handsome villas with flowering gardens and cosy cottages. But when the Guildford Union Workhouse was built in 1905, it was positioned on the edge of the town in order not to offend the susceptibilities of the townsfolk. After the abolition of workhouses it was turned into a hospital, and then, in the 1980s, the site was used for an upmarket residential estate. Curiously, the ‘spike’ or casual ward for vagrants survived and received Grade II listing in 1999. Spikes figure largely in the books of George Orwell and Jack London, who

Andrew Lambirth

Let there be light

Andrew Lambirth is entranced by the central purity of Dan Flavin’s installations Many artists are involved to a greater or lesser degree with the depiction of light, but Dan Flavin (1933–96) made it his exclusive subject, and in the process was responsible for the apotheosis of the humble fluorescent tube. As an artist, Flavin was largely untaught, though he attended art history classes at Columbia University and drew passionately from an early age. He made his first light piece from a ready-made yellow fluorescent tube, entitled ‘The Diagonal of May 25, 1963’ and dedicated to Brancusi. It was exhibited the same year, and at once usefully associated Flavin with both

Saturday

Mark Steyn

Beyond good and evil

Twenty years ago George Jonas wrote a book called Vengeance, about the targeted assassinations of various murky Arab figures that took place in Europe in the wake of the Munich massacre. According to film critic Terry Lawson in the Detroit Free Press the other day, George Jonas ‘claimed to be the leader of the assassination squad’. Er, no. George Jonas claims to be the former husband of Barbara Amiel, which no doubt is a life of highwire thrills in its own way but not to be compared with whacking terrorist masterminds across the Continent. He’s also Canada’s greatest living public intellectual — and, before you indulge in metropolitan scoffing about

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Devilish delight

What was I thinking? A fortnight ago I berated the hammy, eggy, lardy, puddingy acting style of the RSC. Well, here’s a play where grandiosity, exaggeration and overemphasis are perfectly suited to the material. It’s the early days of the Roman Empire. Tiberius has retreated to the sun-kissed paradise of Capri in order to murder and eat children, or whatever he got up to there. His dominions have fallen into the hands of Sejanus, a psychotic upstart with imperial ambitions. Barry Stanton plays Tiberius as an avuncular devil with a voice as rich and smooth as a cup of hot chocolate. It’s hard to imagine this cuddly old bear warming

Michael Tanner

Bare necessities

The revival of Richard Eyre’s production of La Traviata at the Royal Opera didn’t go quite as planned, because Elena Kelessidi was ill, but I wonder whether that made much difference so far as the audience was concerned. We had instead Victoria Loukianetz from the Ukraine; she has previously sung Gilda at Covent Garden, and Oscar is also in her repertoire, two roles that seem a lot more suitable than the fairly heavy one of Violetta. But the opera was played mostly as a costume concert, understandable as Loukianetz had flown in the afternoon of the performance; the audience seemed happy with it that way, with innumerable gusts of applause,

Simon Hoggart

Mock Tudor

My advance DVD from the BBC was marked ‘The Virgin Quenn’, which I thought was pleasing and evocative. Possibly the quenn was a mythical beast, condemned to live for only one generation due to its perpetual virginity. Or perhaps it was bawdy Tudor slang, used by Shakespeare: ‘Why, friend, a queen shall have a quenn, as well as Mistress Scapegrace!’, a line which would have made the groundlings collapse in ribald glee. Either way it seemed a more promising introduction to The Virgin Queen (BBC1, Sunday) than that provided by Radio Times, which promised ‘a hotbed of erotic intrigue’, backed by a ‘Tudor rock’ soundtrack, with Essex played as if

Michael Vestey

Sobering thoughts

The astonishing removal of Charles Kennedy for having been a heavy drinker confirmed my long-held belief that the Liberal Democrats are by far the nastiest and most ruthless bunch of all. It was frustrating to see gullible people regarding them as the nice party when I knew differently. Their dirty tricks in election campaigns are legendary and probably gave Alastair Campbell ideas in the first place. I heard a real stinker of a poisonous viper on Today during the campaign to oust Kennedy: former MP Jenny Tonge, who is now apparently ‘Baroness’ Tonge. All Liberal Democrats need to hear now is that Menzies Campbell and Simon Hughes are secret cross-dressers

Andrew Lambirth

Intention and chance

Edwina Leapman (born 1934) is an abstract painter and colourist of beguiling subtlety. Her current show at Annely Juda Fine Art (until 25 February) is a mini-retrospective of 30 years’ work, and a celebration of 30 years of exhibiting with the same gallery. (This continuity is to be applauded in an age when artists swap galleries on a whim or because of a better offer.) Ascending to the top floor of number 23 Dering Street, W1, go through to the rear gallery for the beginning of the exhibition and the earliest works. The first painting dates from 1976 and was shown that year by Annely Juda. It’s a large pearlescent

Saturday

Mark Steyn

Meet the moppets

Years ago a movie buff pal said to me he couldn’t understand why I liked the theatre. ‘A great show is only great to the people who were there,’ he said. ‘A great film is for ever.’ Ha! Tell it to your humble critic after a month in which he’s reviewed the ‘new’ King Kong, the ‘new’ Producers and now the ‘new’ Fun with Dick and Jane, with a week off for Brokeback Mountain (or Fun with Dick). Like the old warhorses of the provincial rep, movies are now revived every few years with a new set and a younger cast. And yet, even in as cannibalistic a village as

Roderick Conway-Morris

Adventures of the gods

The Christian Church sought to banish the ancient gods, but their fascination proved too strong. Their reappearance in their many manifestations during the Renaissance transformed Western visual culture, reviving, nourishing and sustaining the nude and the erotic as legitimate subjects of art. How the antique gods and demigods descended to earth again, enlivening panels, canvases, furniture, cameos, jewels, medals, ceramics, prints, and as sculptures, is now unfolded in a thought-provoking exhibition of more than 200 pieces at Palazzo Pitti. The seeds of the revival of ancient mythology were sown in the Middle Ages. Pagan authors were still read as part of the study of Latin, including Ovid, whose Metamorphoses comprised

Andrew Lambirth

Poetry of place

Is London a model city or a sink of iniquity? Defining things in terms of extremes is of course a typical dialectical strategy intended to stimulate discussion. London is a melting-pot, a vast stew of energies and lassitudes, of good and evil. In this exhibition we are offered a taste of how artists respond to its present-day reality: ten contemporary painters and one sculptor interpret London as she lives and breathes. Subtitled ‘A Provocative Exhibition’, this display has been put together by Mireille Galinou of the London Arts Café. It’s worth a visit, not because it will resolve any debate about the state of the capital, but because it features

James Delingpole James Delingpole

What’s the point?

The older I get the less tolerant I grow towards any form of entertainment — a play, a film, a TV programme, a book, whatever — that doesn’t deliver sufficient value. Tempus fugit, mors venit, and the last thing I want to be doing in my declining years is wasting precious leisure time on anything that doesn’t amuse me, make me happier, teach me a useful new fact about the second world war or otherwise enrich my life. This is why, for example, I have resolved never to read another contemporary literary novel. You don’t learn anything; the plots are never quite racy or involving enough to distract you from

Peter Phillips

Celebrating Mozart’s genius

Why, exactly, are we celebrating Mozart this year? Because the anniversarial numbers have trapped us (he was born in January 1756)? Because there is something new to be said about him? Because we cannot live without his music and want to pay tribute to that fact? Whatever the answer, we are in for a media extravaganza which only an ostrich is going to be able to ignore, so it might be strengthening to work out in what spirit we approach the party. The benefits are very straightforward: there will be a lot of glorious music to listen to, some of which we may not have heard before, especially in the

Saturday

Michael Tanner

Pleasure count

Humperdinck’s minor masterpiece Hansel and Gretel is one of those operas that disappears for a time and then comes in waves. I hope that Opera North’s splendid new semi-production of it heralds a fresh wave, because we’ve had a long period without it. It went very well in the grand spaces of Leeds Town Hall, where it has another couple of performances before moving to three other northern destinations. The greatest single cause for pleasure was having the orchestra of Opera North on stage, so that it could be heard to full advantage; I don’t imagine that any other orchestra in the country would have sounded finer. And certainly no

Laura Gascoigne

That elusive something

There’s a central chapter in Moby Dick where the narrator Ishmael traces his fascination with the whale to the colour white. For all its associations ‘with whatever is sweet, and honourable, and sublime’, he feels that ‘there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood’. Could it be, he wonders, that ‘by its indefiniteness …it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation?’ Ishmael is on to something here. Chromatically, as the colourless sum of all colours, white

Michael Vestey

Abuse and censorship

The distaste for torture and abuse of prisoners or detainees has never been shared by everyone in this country, though on the whole we’re better than those in many other countries. We have our own sadists who somehow end up in charge of others as well as those who, under pressure to provide results, overstep the mark. Document: Recruiting the Reich on Radio Four this week (Monday) uncovered some examples from the post-war period which, needless to say, were covered up. Using the Freedom of Information Act, the presenter Mike Thomson examined documents alleging abuse and even torture committed by Intelligence officers after the war, and he wondered if it

Andrew Lambirth

Man of distinction

The name of Bacon in the 17th century inevitably suggests Sir Francis, first baron Verulam and viscount of St Albans, Lord Chancellor and natural scientist, philosopher and writer. Of an acutely inquiring mind, Sir Francis died of a chill caught trying to deep-freeze chickens. Nathaniel Bacon (1585–1627) was his nephew, and showed some of the same characteristics, being not only devoted to horticulture but also, more surprisingly, a painter of considerable talent and distinction, who experimented with new colours and varnishes. He is currently celebrated at Tate Britain in Nathaniel Bacon: Artist, Gentleman and Gardener (until 17 April), a focus exhibition built around a major painting which the gallery acquired

Saturday

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Festive viewing

I can’t remember a Christmas where I watched so little Christmas TV as this one, which is a shame in a way, because I do think that mammoth sessions in front of the box are the key to feeling truly Christmassy. Going to church helps, too, obviously, but it’s never quite enough. The only way you’re ever going to trick your mind into conjuring up an approximation of all those Christmases you think you remember from childhood where cheery robins perched on snowy gateposts, the turkey breasts were never dry and the presents were always as exciting as you’d hoped they’d be is by brainwashing yourself with constant exposure to

Peter Phillips

Importance of hummability

In a recent article in the Times, Matthew Parris wrote stirringly about the inspiration which may come from listening to buskers: ‘Amazing how a snatch of music heard in passing can lift the imagination and spirit.’ To him the essence of this snatch is hummable or whistle-able melody, and we are told that the ‘superior’ musicians who ignore such a simple ingredient are ‘the parasites on a beast whose lifeblood is melody’. He went on to have a go at Sir John Tavener, who apparently has written new music to ‘Away In A Manger’ because he found the existing tune trite. When Sir John was asked by an interviewer whether