Holland
Marcel van Eeden, Sprueth Magers LondonMonday, 27 June 2011
An article in this week's New Yorker bemoans the death of drawing in art. Why has the emphasis on craft, Adam Gopnik writes, been replaced by concept? He has evidently not seen the fantastic noirish drawings of Marcel van Eeden at Sprueth Magers in... Read more... |
BBC Symphony Orchestra, Renes, Spitalfields MusicSaturday, 18 June 2011
Everyone in the BBCSO is a potential soloist. I know this because the course I run at the City Literary Institute linked to the orchestra has welcomed principals, duos, two string quartets and three viola foursomes (proving that department the most... Read more... |
Dutch National Ballet, Hans Van Manen, Sadler's WellsThursday, 12 May 2011
In a world crying out for even below-mediocre ballet choreographers (Benjamin Millepied, anyone?), the Dutch old master Hans Van Manen is an extraordinarily well-kept secret. Why a man of such superb balletic accomplishment, theatrical instincts... Read more... |
London Sinfonietta, Atherton, Queen Elizabeth HallFriday, 15 April 2011
The most interesting thing about Louis Andriessen's musical snapshot of the famous eroticist Anaïs Nin - being given its UK premiere at the Queen Elizabeth Hall last night - was that the scene on the chaise longue in which Nin (Cristina... Read more... |
Antonioni Project, Barbican TheatreWednesday, 02 February 2011
Back in the early 1960s, anyone with half a curious cultural brain in their heads would take themselves off to small fleapit cinemas like The Academy or the Classic in Oxford Street (now defunct). There you could catch the latest European art... Read more... |
Interview: Anton Corbijn on making The AmericanThursday, 25 November 2010
Joy Division brought Anton Corbijn to England in 1979 and, nearly 30 years later, made him a cinema director. The sleeve of the band’s album Unknown Pleasures fascinated him so deeply he felt compelled to leave Holland for the country where such... Read more... |
Moombahton, Boombahchero and 21st-century genre meltdownMonday, 18 October 2010
Some days I feel like I've woken up on the other side of some wormhole in the spacetime continuum, and the world is a subtly but definitely different place to yesterday. So it was last week when I got a slightly drunken email from a music... Read more... |
On Their Toes!, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Birmingham HippodromeWednesday, 16 June 2010
Hans van Manen does basic instincts in ballet better than anyone alive. The Dutch choreographer, nearly 78 and far too little exposed in Britain, is a near-contemporary of Kenneth MacMillan, another specialist in sexual relations, but where... Read more... |
After Life, BarbicanSunday, 16 May 2010
"We need to inform you officially. Mr Walter, you died yesterday. I’m sorry for your loss." It comes as no great surprise to learn that Michel van der Aa’s opera After Life is based on a Japanese film. The Borgesian hyper-real scenario, the no-place... Read more... |
Hans Teeuwen, Soho TheatreFriday, 14 May 2010
“You pay money I be funny?” There are times in stand-up when it seems the wrong kind of transaction has taken place. A comedian brings a warped vision of the world to a paying public. He – and the weirder ones are always a he – parade neurosis,... Read more... |
Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World, Tate ModernMonday, 08 February 2010
Modernist art movements are a lot like totalitarian regimes. They produce their declaratory manifestos, send forth their declamatory edicts, and, before you know it, a Year Zero mentality prevails: the past must be declared null and void. Seeking to... Read more... |
The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters, Royal AcademyFriday, 22 January 2010
This exhibition may claim to reveal the real Van Gogh through his letters, but what of the Sunflowers, the Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear, oh, and Starry Night, with its roiling night sky and dark, mysterious cypress tree? What even of the dizzying... Read more... |
