Holding the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936 was a coup for the British avant-garde, putting newbie surrealists such as Paul Nash and Roland Penrose on an equal footing with founding members of the European movement. But André Breton, who opened the show, was unimpressed by Nash, Penrose and co. Instead, he singled out
Medusa is the bad hair day from Hades. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s retelling of the Greek myth is frizzy, tangled and splitting at the ends. The premise is promising. This Medusa story is a Perseus prequel: the girl who became a gorgon. The young Medusa (Natalia Osipova) is a priestess at the temple of Athena (Olivia
Grade: B– One of the things not to like about Vampire Weekend, other than their cloying preppiness, Ezra Koenig’s ingratiating voice, the bizarre cultural appropriation that never gets called out and the Upper West Side archness of the lyrics, is the fact they rarely put more than two decent songs on an album. That’s true
Grade: A Old skag head’s back, then — older (40 now!), probably none the wiser, still a very good songwriter. This may be the best thing he’s ever done, at least since those incendiary first moments of the Libertines. Yeah, I can do without the affected drawl skittering this way and that around the melody
Notre Dame is only important from a Shakespeare’s-birthplace point of view. Architecturally it is a nullity beside the cathedrals of Beauvais and Laon, Albi and Marseille, Rouen and Clermont-Ferrand (a sinister marvel of black tufa). The ashes of the cathedral are now the site of a proxy struggle between some of the greatest fortunes on
Grade: A– If your 12-year-old daughter’s a bit thick, she probably likes Ariana Grande. Come on, dads — you’ve got to face up to this stuff, you’ve got to JUDGE. Be ruthless. If, however, she’s a bit smarter, but also sullen, lazy and probably prone to self-harming, she’ll be a big Billie Eilish fan. Only
‘Where was the Kahlo brow?’ asked my guest in the first interval of English National Ballet’s She Persisted, a triple bill celebrating female choreographers. She was right: Frida had been plucked. It was an odd decision for a production that does not otherwise shy from ugliness. Broken Wings, a ballet inspired by the life of
Two households, both alike in dignity. Capulets in red tights, Montagues in green. Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet opens in a piazza where the clash of swords makes a fifth section of the orchestra. Strings, woodwind, brass, percussion… and steel. If Shakespeare’s young bloods and blades once seemed remotely Renaissance, made romantic by distance, Verona’s
There was a moment more than 20 years ago when Bankside Power Station was derelict but its transformation into Tate Modern had not yet begun. I remember thinking, on a visit to the site, how beautiful and impressive the huge rusting generators looked — like enormous real-life sculptures by Anthony Caro. Nothing that has since
Blame Kenneth MacMillan. The great Royal Ballet choreographer of the 1960s, 70s and 80s was convinced that narrative dance could and should extend its reach beyond boy meets sylph and began wrestling with heavyweight essay subjects such as the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire (Mayerling) or the last of the Romanovs (Anastasia). And now look:
Choreographer Richard Alston is now 70 and his latest outing at Sadler’s Wells is a greatest hits medley. As with all clip shows, some of it is super, some soporific and some merely meh. We begin with Martin Lawrance’s Detour, first performed last year. The piece is a powerful hybrid of fluid dance and martial
If you want to lose friends and alienate people in the art world, try telling them you support Britain leaving the EU. As someone on the left, I’ve always argued a left-wing case for leaving. It is, to say the least, an unfashionable position, usually met with anxious looks, sullen silence or overt hostility from
Grade:A Royal Trux are back — kind of. Singer (if that’s what you want to call what she does) Jennifer Herrema is ankle tagged for some misdemeanour, almost certainly involving narcotics, so may not show up at some gigs to promote the new album. And her partner and ex-husband Neil Hagerty has washed his hands
Please believe that I try to give every production my full attention, to do due diligence, to blink and miss nothing. But when, halfway through Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch’s Since She, one of the male dancers appeared on stage with cowbells attached to his willy, I’m afraid I spent a fair few minutes looking hard
Grade: D Among the many reasons for moving to Iran is this vapid, talentless, derivative, hyperbolically oversexed drivel aimed at your 11-year-old daughter. The land of the mad mullahs is about the only place on earth you’ll be able to avoid this unmitigated crap, a collection of chemically processed ur-songs that make Taylor Swift seem
Being in the south of France obviously gave Vincent an enormous joy, which visibly comes out in the paintings. That’s what people feel when they look at them. They are so incredibly direct. I remember in some of his letters Vincent saying that he was aware he saw more clearly than other people. It was
The trouble with Don Quixote is Don Quixote. Whenever the doddering, delusional Don is onstage, tilting at windmills, riding his straw-and-sawdust nag on wheels, jousting with bedposts, our spirits and sympathies suffer. Quixote’s quest only really works as an excuse for Kitri, Basilio, Espada the Matador and Mercedes the street minx to dance up a
If you’re tired of hygge then you’ll like Harald Sohlberg. The Norwegian painter eschewed the cosy fireside for the great outdoors, eager to see what view might greet him as he wandered the woods and country roads of Norway in the failing light. While his contemporary Nikolai Astrup filled his landscapes with people, Sohlberg preferred
Grade: A– I’m here to make you feel old. It’s now nearly 20 years since the pleasing, laconic, Stones pastiche of ‘Bohemian Like You’ hit the charts, the breakthrough song of these faux-indie Portland slackers. They were ever a little despised, even then, partly for their pop sensibilities and partly because there is indeed something
Grade: B Resident Evil 2 takes the original zombie shooter, which has become a cult classic and, to many, the quintessential horror video game, and gives it a lick of digital paint. Gone are the blocky hallways of the Raccoon City police station, along with the slow moving hordes of undead who, if you squinted,
