Features
Yuletide Scenes 2: The Adoration of the KingsFriday, 20 December 2013
Jan Gossaert’s The Adoration of the Kings, painted in 1510-15, is a sumptuous, richly detailed and even, to us today, slightly hilarious painting. It’s the large central panel of a Flemish altarpiece which includes practically every motif of the... Read more... |
Yuletide Scenes 1: A Scene on the Ice near a TownThursday, 19 December 2013
The term “snow day” may have been coined with the most recent spate of cold winters in mind, encapsulating the modern-day, not to mention British, consequences of winter weather, but Hendrick Avercamp’s Seventeenth-century “snow day”, painted in... Read more... |
Sifting the Evidence: the Great Train Robbery, 50 Years OnTuesday, 17 December 2013
There’s a wonderful moment in Bruce Reynolds’s autobiography when he describes what became of his mate, a fellow train robber who had fled to Canada but was hunted down by the enigmatic Tommy Butler. Four and a half years after the Great Train... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Rennes: 35th Trans Musicales FestivalTuesday, 17 December 2013
White noise saturates the air. At mind-melting volume, it shifts through the aural spectrum to settle on the bass end. A voice begins yelling angry-sounding gobbets. The words are unintelligible. The stage is in darkness. Gradually, it becomes... Read more... |
Britten 100: Death in MoscowMonday, 16 December 2013
“A cold coming we had of it,” grumble the three kings in T S Eliot’s poem “The Journey of the Magi” later set by Britten as his Canticle IV. “Just the worst time of year for a journey,” they complain, carried onwards by the ungulate bass notes of... Read more... |
Peter O'Toole dies at 81Sunday, 15 December 2013
Perhaps 20 people in thick puffa jackets and clumpy boots crouched behind a wooden sea wall on a shingle beach in Whitstable. Or Islington-on-Sea, to give it its modern name. The north coast of Kent glittered in the sun. Across the Medway you could... Read more... |
Listed: The Many Faces of Nelson MandelaSaturday, 14 December 2013
Nelson Mandela had a nose for the dramatic gesture. The evidence is there in his speech at the Rivonia Trial in 1964, in his symbolic walk to freedom as he emerged on foot from captivity in 1990, his astute performance at the Rugby World Cup in 1995... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Berlin: the 26th European Film AwardsSunday, 08 December 2013
Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty was the deserved big winner at the European Film Awards, with Best Film, Director, Actor and Editor. The bigger question the European Film Academy needs to confront is how few of its winners seemed to really care... Read more... |
Listed: The 10 Most Tasteless Album CoversSaturday, 07 December 2013
OK, R Kelly is gross. We knew that. The number of deeply creepy and abusive acts he's been accused of beggars belief (just Google if you want grotty details, it's all on Wikipedia). The fact that he continues happily along his way with wealth and... Read more... |
'I photographed Nelson Mandela'Friday, 06 December 2013
In 1997 I was in South Africa working on Truth and Lies, my book about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, when the New York Times Magazine said that they were doing a major feature on Mandela. He’d been in office for three years. The... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Turin Film FestivalWednesday, 04 December 2013
Turin, December 2013. Berlusconi has finally been kicked out of the Italian parliament. The country is disaffected, fed up with its politicians, broke. Youngsters, including university students, have no hope for the future. It’s a perfect time for... Read more... |
Turner Prize 2013: Laure Prouvost's work is visually seductive, funny and cleverTuesday, 03 December 2013
According to one broadsheet, Laure Prouvost was a “rank outsider” and the money was on comic doodler David Shrigley and the elusive Tino Seghal, he of those ghastly, utterly patronising performances designed to jolt the guileless gallery-goer from... Read more... |
