This is the Tate website glossary’s definition: “Abstract expressionism is the term applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning in the 1940s and 1950s, often characterized by gestural brush-strokes or mark-making, and the impression of spontaneity.” Wikipedia helpfully … [Read more...]
Pap goes the easel: Painting After Postmodernism, Belgium-USA
Paul Manes, Departure, 2013, oil on canvas, 264.1 x 396.2 cm Brussels—It’s being billed as a “manifesto exhibition,” and the curator, my friend, the art historian and filmmaker Barbara Rose, is happy to say “This is a polemical show.” Indeed, the first line of her catalogue essay reads: This exhibition intends to prove that painting as an autonomous discipline can still … [Read more...]
As it is? Pinter’s at his best in No Man’s Land
If you’ve ever doubted that Harold Pinter deserved his 2005 Nobel Prize, take yourself to see Sean Mathias’ production of No Man’s Land with the duo of theatrical knights, Sir Ian McKellen (as Spooner) and Sir Patrick Stewart (as Hirst) at Wyndham’s Theatre. Forty-one years ago, at the same venue, another pair of knights, Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, starred in Peter Hall’s … [Read more...]
The Higher Criticism and The Good Food Guide
The Good Food Guide is a peculiarly British phenomenon, founded in 1951 by one Christian socialist classical scholar, Raymond Postgate (1896-1971), and edited for many years by another, Christopher Driver (1932-1997). More accurately, Postgate (who was also a crime writer) and Driver (a journalist and CND supporter) compiled the GFG, as it was, a bit like Zagat guides, put together … [Read more...]
Groundhog Day, the (Buddhist) Musical
Intelligence is not exactly the first quality you look for in a musical. Of course there have been a few intelligent examples of the genre – mostly by Stephen Sondheim, and I’ll concede that there are a few intelligent, or at least witty instances of musical theatre from Cole Porter, Oscar Hammerstein, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Kurt Weill and the Gershwin brothers. Even … [Read more...]
Chrome Yellow: the Colour of the 2016 Edinburgh Festival
Cecilia Bartoli as Norma (Photo Credit: Hans-Jörg Michel) Last year’s was the first Edinburgh Festival I’ve missed for twenty-something years, and I was very pleased to return this year, if only briefly, to attend half a dozen performances at the International Festival. Next year will be the 70th anniversary of the great post-War European cultural gathering initiated by the late Sir Rudolf … [Read more...]
Young Chekhovathon for Chekhovaphiles (of all ages)
Young Chekhov A bit of a sucker for aesthetic marathons, there’s nothing I like better than taking a whole week out of one’s life to hear and see Wagner’s Ring; Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach had me avid for tickets; a painter’s late-career retrospective is usually my kind of show; and from the sublimity of Proust, and at least some of the 12 volumes of Anthony … [Read more...]
His Kingdom for a Horse: Another Bad Brexit Deal?
The Almeida Theatre is one of the wonders of North London – a little theatre that has had a costly makeover, leaving the uncomfortable seating untouched, but still attracting high-paid Hollywood stars to work for relatively tiny fees. Why? The Almeida’s current Artistic Director is Rupert Goold, still the hottest director in town, which is at least half the explanation. Actors want to … [Read more...]
How an Operatic Sow’s Ear Becomes a Silk Purse at Wormsley
Director Tim Albery and conductor Tobias Ringborg’s production of Mozart’s Idomeneo for Garsington Opera at Wormsley transforms this operatic sow’s ear into a silk purse. By tightening up the story, cutting down the recitative but adding music from the Anhang, the appendix to the published edition, they have restructured the youthful composer’s flabby piece. In a “conversation” in the programme, … [Read more...]
82 Portraits, One Still-Life, and a Few Nice Loans – Is This the Future of Exhibitions?
Two thought-provoking exhibitions have just opened in London. At the Sackler Gallery of the RA are “82 Portraits and One Still-life by David Hockney”; and at the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery, “Painters’ Paintings: from Freud to Van Dyck.” Each of these is at least slightly novel, and indicative of changes that must be afoot in the art world. None of Hockney’s 82 portraits … [Read more...]