In his centenary year, the status of Jackson Pollock (1912–56) looks assured: a self-created American hero who is now accorded all the reverence due an Old Master. The most famous of the Abstract Expressionists, nicknamed Jack the Dripper because of his trademark style, his emphasis was on paint and process: the surface of the canvas
Living Architecture is a new social enterprise that adds a touch of glamour to the traditional British holiday. Instead of a cute cottage, cramped caravan or crumbling castle, Living Architecture provides bespoke, mod-con accommodation designed by the most distinguished architects and artists for as little as £20 per person, per night. Though current locations are
Last November I suggested that Nicholas Hytner had gone mad. Now he confirms the diagnosis with a new satire by Nicholas Wright, Travelling Light, which is the most embarrassing and mindless blunder I’ve ever seen on a subsidised stage. Hytner’s November crime was to mount a retro sitcom about Stalin’s terror. Now he baits the
The Enchanted Island is a baroque concoction at the New York Met which has been widely touted and last Saturday was relayed worldwide to cinemas, a transmission that went less smoothly than any I have seen before, with some sharp variations of volume and a temporary complete breakdown. On the whole, the sound level is
My grandfather served in the trenches, but he declined to talk about it. I suppose the horrors had been insupportable. If he had lived day and night with those memories, it might have destroyed the life he built up at home, as a headmaster in a mill town near Manchester. Recently one of his pupils,
Several people I spoke to when this exhibition was first mentioned thought it would be a Hockney retrospective, considering that he was commandeering all the first-floor galleries at the RA. But actually the retrospective element is very slight, consisting of half a dozen early landscapes and a couple of photo-collages, before we encounter the first
The Descendants is a comedy-drama about a dysfunctional family — is there any other kind of family? I’ve yet to meet one — made by Alexander Payne, who also made About Schmidt and Sideways, but whereas I warmed to those films, I could not warm to this. I liked it. I enjoyed it. I did
It was uncanny, discomfiting, even a little bit alarming. He seemed to be reading my mind, as if my thoughts were being hurled back at me through the ether. Why are we so tired? Why does it feel as though time itself is speeding up, making midlife so much more nerve-wracking an experience than it
