Arts Reviews

The good, bad and ugly in arts and exhbitions

Saturday

Michael Tanner

Miller’s antiques

Having had no operatic performances at all in January, English National Opera is filling February with two hardy perennials, Jonathan Miller’s productions of The Mikado and Rigoletto. Odd, considering how successful they both are, as are so many of his productions, all of which must be thought of as old, that he is not asked to do any new ones. One wonders how many of today’s directorial Wunderkinder will still have any of their productions running after more than 20 years — and how many will be thought of primarily with the director’s name attached. This particular pair, though Miller subjected them to superficially similar treatment, and with similarly brilliant

Andrew Lambirth

Impresario or artist?

Right from the start of this retrospective exhibition, the complications set in. In Room 1 are four paintings from the 1981 series ‘Dear painter, paint for me’. One of them strikingly depicts a figure (presumably the artist?) seated on a black sofa placed out in the street and surrounded by black plastic rubbish bags. The painting has the air of a snapshot, and you begin to think, so Kippenberger was into photorealism? But, no, we soon learn from a handy wall panel that Kippenberger didn’t paint these pictures himself, but hired a Berlin sign painter, Mr Werner, to do them for him. Does this make them less/more/just as interesting? While

James Delingpole James Delingpole

As time goes by

Until I had a daughter I used to think the problem with me and girls was me. But when you’re given the chance to observe the female of the species up close from birth onwards under home laboratory conditions, you soon lose any post-feminist illusions you might have about the blame for the war between the sexes being divided roughly 50/50. Chicks are great. I love their poppety faces, their pretty girlie clothes, and their darling little whims. But the fact remains that they should never, ever be taken as seriously as they think they ought to be taken. Do that and you might as well say to the lunatics

Mark Glazebrook

Quest for self

Over a year ago my six-year-old grandson Henry Flynn rushed home from his multi-ethnic south London school playground in Streatham with a solemn but urgent question for his father, an art historian, as it happens. So far as is known, incidentally, mainly Anglo-Saxon and Celtic blood flows in young Henry’s veins. ‘Am I a Muslim, dad?’ he asked. Now, at the well-planned eight-year-old Sharjah Art Museum in the United Arab Emirates until the end of February, there is a British Council travelling exhibition involving 22 artists from nine separate countries which is also about the quest for identity. Many of the exhibits are photographic portraits and one of them is

Saturday

Ursula Buchan

Gardeners’ gardener

Christopher Lloyd died on 27 January. Not since the deaths of Gertrude Jekyll in 1932, William Robinson in 1935 and Vita Sackville-West in 1962 has so much homage been paid in the broadsheets to the memory of a gardener. In the nation at large, more people mourned the deaths of Percy Thrower and Geoff Hamilton, but these were television personalities. Christopher’s reputation rested on a weekly column, ‘In My Garden’, in Country Life from 1963 until shortly before his death, his contributions to the Observer and the Guardian, a succession of thoughtful, opinionated books, such as The Well-Tempered Garden, and, most particularly, on his garden and nursery at Great Dixter

Andrew Lambirth

Great leap forward

Andrew Lambirth on Maggi Hambling’s forceful seascapes and Rose Wylie’s quirky art Let me at once state an interest: I have just written a book with Maggi Hambling about her life and works, currently available from all good booksellers. But long and intimate knowledge of an artist’s oeuvre should not disqualify the critic from writing more; in fact, it’s to be hoped that experience may bring with it increased insight and understanding. So let me say at the outset that, in her new paintings at the Marlborough, Hambling (born 1945) has produced something remarkable — an extension of her territory as an artist and a great leap forward in terms

Saturday

Toby Young Toby Young

Head turner

It’s been 44 years since Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? made its debut on Broadway, but it still seems extraordinarily fresh. Why? The obvious answer is that the subject matter — the battle of the sexes — is timeless. Anyone in a heterosexual relationship will experience a shudder of recognition at certain points during a performance of this play, if not all the way through. But I don’t think that’s the reason. Rather, it’s because Albee’s ear for dialogue is so good. His ability to capture the rhythms and cadences of the way people speak is uncanny. Paradoxically, even though Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is set in

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Classic question

‘Why can’t all our schools be like Eton?’ the heroic Claire Fox asked on Question Time (BBC1, Thursday) last week, and the question was so shocking that the pinkos, class warriors and terrorist-sympathisers who comprise the majority of your typical QT audience weren’t sure whether to clap or hiss. The point the Fox Goddess (what I particularly like is the way you think she’s going to be another of those ghastly women but then she turns out to speak pure truth and wisdom) was trying to make is that all this government talk about giving schools more freedom is so much tosh. No state school, even if it wanted to,

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