In any epoch most of what is built is mediocre, though we may not realise it at the time because our neophilia persuades us of merit where there is none. Equally, we may fail to distinguish the few exceptions — those instances where architects and builders have ascended to a higher standard of mediocrity or
If a football manager produces a string of losses, the writing is on the wall and out he goes. He’s accountable — to shareholders, to the fans. The director of the Royal Ballet is not a football manager. Nor is it easy to see to whom he would account for his plans and outcomes. The
In 1961 the Venezuelan-American sculptor Marisol Escobar made a startling appearance at the New York artists’ group known as the Club that would set the tone for her unconventional career. The Club was where the alphas of contemporary American art met. Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and their ilk gathered there to take
‘In many ways,’ Georg Baselitz muses, ‘I behaved against the grain of the times I grew up in.’ The era was 1960s Germany; in that context, Baselitz feels he was subversively respectable. ‘For example, I never took any drugs. I have been a very faithful husband, I just wanted to hold on to my wife,
The Globe’s new chatelaine, Emma Rice, has certainly shaken the old place up. It’s almost unrecognisable. Huge white plastic orbs dangle overhead amid plunging green chutes like rainforest vines. The back wall is smothered in a blinding rampart of explosively coloured saffron petals. Up top, partially concealed by pillars, lurks a rock band togged up
‘So you’re going to see the gay sex opera?’ exclaimed my friend, open-mouthed. People certainly seem to have had some odd preconceptions about Mark Simpson’s new chamber opera Pleasure. The distinguished critic of the Daily Telegraph let it be known that he awaited ‘with trepidation, something set in the lavatories of a gay nightclub’. And
Let me start this week with an admittedly hard quiz question: in 1954, how did the sudden illness of Jack Lester, head of London Zoo’s reptile house, transform British television? The answer is that his reluctant stand-in as the presenter of BBC’s Zoo Quest was the show’s director, David Attenborough. Offhand, it’s not easy to
A story John Piper liked to tell — and the one most told about him — is of a morning at Windsor presenting his watercolours of the castle to King George VI and the Queen. She admired his storm-tossed battlements; the King did not. ‘You seem to have had very bad luck with your weather,
Heart of a Dog is a film by Laurie Anderson and it’s a meditative, free-associating rumination on life, loss, love and dogs, with particular reference to her and her late husband’s (Lou Reed, who died in 2013) beloved rat terrier, Lolabelle (who died the same year). It follows no linear logic. It’s a visual collage,
Monday’s ‘World on the Move Day’ on Radio 4 was a bold challenge to government policy and proof that radio is much the most flexible, the most accommodating, the most powerful medium when compared with TV. Without much ado, the day’s planned schedule was squeezed, manipulated, overturned to allow the team behind the Today programme
