1970s
Sarah Kent
The soundtrack to Tate Britain’s seminal exhibition Women in Revolt! is a prolonged scream. On film, Gina Birch of the punk band The Raincoats gives vent to her pent-up anger and frustration by yelling at the top of her lungs for 3 minutes (main picture). And in many ways, this whole exhibition is a scream of rage.Sick of being marginalised by the male-dominated art world and tired of being treated as second class citizens in every other walk of life, in the 1970s women artists went on the offensive. They began organising, protesting and demonstrating and making work that is, in itself, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
For Finnish composer Osmo Lindeman, the decision to pursue electronic music was made in 1968 during a visit to Poland. He had recently started using graphical notation for the scores of his compositions and was having problems getting conductors and orchestras to follow what he wanted.In Poland, he met composer Andrzej Dobrowolski and visited the Warsaw School of Music’s electronic music studio. He found that Dobrowolski also used graphical notation. With electronic music, Lindeman saw that there no barriers to using any type of score. He had the way forward. He would embrace electronic music Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Marilou lies on the ground. She’s been bludgeoned to death by a fire extinguisher. Its foam covers her body. Her murderer is a forty-something man who has become obsessed with her. She shampoos hair in a barbers, where he first comes across her. Their affair turns sour after he finds her in bed with two other men. After the murder, her killer ends up in a mental hospital.This depraved, sordid story is told on a song-by-song basis by its provocative creator Serge Gainsbourg on his 1976 album L'Homme à tête de chou. The narrative of the album whose title translates as “the man with the cabbage Read more ...
Sarah Kent
RE/SISTERS is a show about the brave women who’ve been fighting to protect our planet and the artists whose work – mainly in film and photography – is, in itself, a form of protest. The opening section, Extractive Economics demonstrates the problem – companies trashing the planet for profit, regardless of the cost to people and the environment.Simryn Gill’s photographs offer horrifying evidence of a mindset which views the earth as resource to be polluted and plundered at will. A mangrove forest in Malaysia is festooned with rubbish washed in by the tide while in Pilbara, Western Read more ...
Sarah Kent
A polar bear stands guard over the seal pup it has just killed (main picture). How could photographer, Hiroshi Sugimoto have got so close to a wild animal at such a dangerous moment? Even if he had a powerful telephoto lens, he’d be risking life and limb. And what a perfect shot! Every hair on the bear’s body is crystal clear; in fact, it looks as if her fur has just been washed and brushed.Once you start peering more closely, other anomalies begin to emerge. The sea ice looks suspiciously like expanded polystyrene dusted with flour rather than snow, and the distant ice hills are clearly Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
When ABBA split in 1982, Agnetha Fältskog went on to a solo career that was mostly overshadowed by the titanic popularity of her former band. By the 21st century ABBA’s status in pop, especially with the Mamma Mia phenomenon, had become iconic.They were as big as it’s possible to be, now cemented by the continuing success of the holographic Voyage show in London. Fältskog also finally achieved widescale solo recognition and Top 10 chart placings across the world with 2004’s My Colouring Book, an album of covers, and its successor, 2013’s A. Her new album, A+ is a reimagining of the latter Read more ...
James Saynor
The director Mary Harron is famous for staying classy while tackling blood-splashy topics – notably the attack on pop art’s leader in I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) and whatever the hell was going on in the Bret Easton Ellis novel that became Harron’s American Psycho (2000). Almost any male director would have gone Brian-De-Palma-berserk with the latter, but Harron’s film is more memorable for an OCD Christian Bale handing out his business cards than any ultra-violence. She’s got a cool eye and a steady hand when people are wielding guns and knives.Perhaps surprisingly, there’s none of that in Read more ...
Sarah Kent
At last, after waiting several years, we get to see Philip Guston’s paintings at Tate Modern. His retrospective was scheduled to open in summer 2020 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, but the murder of George Floyd made the institution nervous. The problem? Guston’s absurdist paintings of Klu Klux Klan (KKK) members. They could be seen to condone white supremacy or, at least, to make light of it. So the show was postponed until the artist’s intentions could be made clear.Hannah Arendt’s phrase “the banality of evil” sums up the ethos of these cartoon-like pictures. Made in the late Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The acronym “HCA” in the title stands for Hornsey College of Art, the North London college which, in late May 1968, was occupied by its students and a few staff in a high-profile protest which went on into that July. What was wanted were changes in how student union funds were disbursed and how the college was run. Ultimately, barbed wire and dogs were employed to end the dispute.Earlier, future Kink and neighbourhood resident Ray Davies had been a student there. Seventies pop star Lynsey De Paul also studied at the college. In November 1966, Pink Floyd played there with lighting equipment Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In September 1955, the grandly named London Skiffle Centre set up for business each Thursday in a room above the Round House pub in Soho’s Wardour Street. A prime mover in the venture was blues acolyte Cyril Davies. Two months after the opening, Lonnie Donegan’s “Rock Island Line” was issued as a single. It was previously out as a track on a 1953 Chris Barber album. Despite the wonky timeline, the skiffle boom was on.Davies – now in partnership with fellow blues enthusiast Alexis Korner – grew increasingly dissatisfied with skiffle and in March 1957 the duo renamed The London Skiffle Centre Read more ...
Sarah Kent
One of the most cherished memories of my 40 plus years as an art critic is of easing my way between Marina Abramović and her partner Ulay. They were standing either side of a doorway at Documenta in Kassel, Germany, leaving just enough room for people to squeeze through, trying not to touch their naked bodies.That was in 1977; Imponderabilia (pictured below right) is now being performed again at the Royal Academy by young artists trained for the purpose by Abramovic. For me, this induces a strong sense of déja vu; and although the feeling may be inevitable in a retrospective, it’s Read more ...
AngelHeaded Hipster: The Songs of Marc Bolan and T Rex review - musical doc falls between two stools
Adam Sweeting
Seeking to be both a documentary and a musical tribute to Marc Bolan, AngelHeaded Hipster doesn’t quite pull it off on either count. It’s based around the making of an album (whence the film gets its title) of versions of Bolan’s songs by an interminable list of artists including U2, Joan Jett, Devendra Banhart, Macy Gray, Beth Orton and many more, produced by Hal Willner and released in 2020. Willner, who died shortly before the album's release, made his name by creating multi-artist tributes to such fabled names as Charles Mingus, Kurt Weill and Harold Arlen, but one might hesitate to put Read more ...