19th century
A Hankering after Ghosts, Dickens and the Supernatural, British LibraryWednesday, 30 November 2011
Well, if you haven’t yet realised that 2012 is Dickens Central, there’s no hope for you. The 200th anniversary of Dickens’s birth is still two months away, but Claire Tomalin’s biography has scampered out of the starting gate already, as has Robert... Read more... |
LS Lowry, Richard Green GalleryTuesday, 29 November 2011
How can you review LS Lowry? The Salford rent-collector-cum-painter simply did what he did: sending his bendy, pipe-cleaner people through white-floored industrial streets, in scenes that seemed hardly to change in decades. While Lowry fully... Read more... |
Judith Paris, Waxing Lyrical, New DioramaThursday, 24 November 2011
Mme Tussaud was born in Bern in 1760. Well, in Strasbourg in 1761. Her father was a respectable tradesman. Or possibly the local hangman. Her mother was a clergyman’s daughter. Or more likely a servant. She taught the King’s sister to model in wax... Read more... |
Ian Hislop: When Bankers Were Good, BBC TwoWednesday, 23 November 2011
There were those who laughed and those who spat outrage when Lloyd Blankfein, chairman of Goldman Sachs, said in a press interview that he was simply “doing God’s work”. Although Blankfein did have the insight to add that if he slit his wrists... Read more... |
Wuthering HeightsMonday, 07 November 2011
You can forget “I am Heathcliff”. And abandon hope of “I cannot live without my soul” and “I love my murderer” while you’re at it. Andrea Arnold’s newest addition to the canon of Wuthering Heights adaptations is the story flayed so raw you can see... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Moscow: Nikolai Ge at the Tretyakov GallerySunday, 06 November 2011
The Nikolai Ge retrospective at Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery marks the 180th anniversary of the artist’s birth – not the kind of round centenary or bicentenary landmark that often brings such projects to fruition. But the show is literally a... Read more... |
Snow Flower and the Secret FanSaturday, 05 November 2011
World cinema – like its cousin world music – is an awkward generic term that we generally apply to the output of those far-off countries or cultures about which we know (and perhaps if we are really honest, care) little. Watching movies with... Read more... |
Alice in Wonderland: Through the Visual Arts, Tate LiverpoolFriday, 04 November 2011
What a curious curate’s egg Tate Liverpool has pulled out of its hat with Alice in Wonderland. And what a complete rag-bag of minor, uninteresting artists. It starts with a disparate mix of recent works by a few better-knowns – neatly beginning at... Read more... |
Halloween Special: Patrick McGrath on Sheridan Le Fanu's horror storiesMonday, 31 October 2011
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, son of a Protestant clergyman and grand-nephew of the playwright Sheridan, was born in Dublin in 1814. He spent part of his boyhood in County Limerick, where from local storytellers he heard legends of fairies and demons.... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Choreographer Christopher WheeldonSaturday, 15 October 2011
Those of us un-Zeitgeisty enough to miss the Royal Ballet’s first new full-length ballet in 20 years during its first run can now catch up. Opus Arte’s DVD release of the televised Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland tells a different story from the... Read more... |
The Elixir of Love, English National OperaThursday, 15 September 2011
“An elixir with a kick, sir, one that really packs a punch”, sings Adina in Jonathan Miller’s Midwestern The Elixir of Love, and she couldn’t be more right. A night spent among the floral prints, perky ponytails and pastel wipe-down surfaces of this... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Bridge, Mahler, Ksenija SidorovaFriday, 09 September 2011
This week there's another new Mahler symphony recording, along with some disquieting British piano music and an enjoyable disc of originals and transcriptions played by a young Baltic accordionist.Frank Bridge – Piano Music Vol 3 Mark Bebbington (... Read more... |
