Arts Blog
Reviews and news from the world of the arts
A Holy Grail?
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- Posted by Jonathan Theodore
- 14 July 2008
Footage containing the missing quarter of Metropolis (1927), long deemed forever lost, has been discovered in a small museum in Argentina A seminal film from the silent era, Fritz Lang's tale of violent class struggle in a futuristic Berlin is the visual and technical prototype of every artsy sci-fi picture since. Yet it was butchered by Paramount to around half its original length for the US [...]
Spot the fake
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- Posted by Heather McRobie
- 04 July 2008
After admitting that around one third of its Coptic art collection was fake, the Brooklyn Museum of Art hasannounced plans to display them in an unusual exhibition next year, in which Coptic works still considered to be genuine will be deliberately placed alongside those which have now been deemed counterfeit. The Independent reports that the exhibition will serve to alert other museums of possible fakes in their collections, [...]
A giant soapbox
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- Posted by Heather McRobie
- 27 June 2008
In the wake of extensive debate earlier this year, the pressure is on for Jay-Z at Glastonbury this weekend: detractors questioned the rapper's suitability to headline the Pyramid Stage this Saturday, which Jay-Z and others responded to by pointing out the thinly-veiled racism behind many of the comments. But he isn't the only artist hitting back at whinging festival-goers: the New York Times reports that Kanye [...]
Celebrity or artist?
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- Posted by Heather McRobie
- 23 June 2008
Giving your first novel a title as earnest as "All The Sad Young Literary Men" was probably always going to invite the playground bullies of cultural commentary, and New York writer Keith Gessen has been at the receiving end of increasingly critical attacks by influential New York gossip website Gawker in the last few weeks, in which Gessen is accused of elitism and pretentiousness. The author meanwhile retorted [...]
U2 could be rich...
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- Posted by Heather McRobie
- 13 June 2008
Three graduates at the Royal Academy School became the envy of art students across the county when Charles Saatchi bought their entire graduate collections hours before the degree show even opened to the public. Carla Busutill, Angus Sanders-Dunnachie, and Jill Mason can now reasonably expect to join the ranks of celebrated artists from Hirst and Emin to Stella Vine, whose careers were launched after Saatchi discovered their work. According [...]
Death and Mick Jagger
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- Posted by Heather McRobie
- 09 June 2008
Heather McRobie riffs on Mick Jagger, bestiality and a good, old-fashioned Hollywood smackdown in this week's Arts Blog.
Two very different great artists– musician Bo Diddley and fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent – died this week, and tributes to both poured in, including an homage to Diddley by Atlanta band the Black Lips, whose cover of his classic song Mona was distributed for free online. Although both deaths were widely reported in the news, some commentators complained complained that Diddley’s death in particular didn’t [...]
Fast and furious
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- Posted by Heather McRobie
- 30 May 2008
Sebastian Faulks's new James Bond book received mostly positive reviews this week, with the New York Times noting "Devil May Care obeys the Bond series's most fundamental command: keep the action coming fast and furious."
And the action online also came fast and furious in response to the book's launch, with Neil Smith speed-reading Devil May Care and live-blogging his chapter-by-chapter review on the day of its [...]
Musing the muse
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- Posted by Grace Shortland
- 26 May 2008
When Lucien Freud’s painting Benefits Supervisor Sleeping was sold last week for £17.2m arts columns nationwide began murmuring about capitalism, commodity culture and – crucially – the role of the artist’s muse. Indeed, as the writer Joanna Moorhead points out, the silent, subservient, selfless (and almost without exception female) muse is an uncomfortable concept for today’s society. It was, therefore, reassuring to hear Freud’s model Sue Tilley [...]
Home and Away
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- Posted by Natasha Periyan
- 16 May 2008
From air-kissing New Yorkers in London to wistful Palestinians in Dubai - we go globetrotting as Natasha Periyan rounds up this week in the arts
Face off?
Polly Stenham's That Face premiered at the Duke of York’s theatre this week, after debuting at the the Royal Court last year. The 21 year old’s portrayal of a middle class family’s meltdown attracted rave reviews, with the Independent’s Paul Taylor remarking that it was a "dazzling debut" and a "richly deserved success". Our own Andrew Billen was more restrained in his praise, however, commenting [...]
What's happened to black theatre?
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- Posted by Natasha Periyan
- 10 May 2008
Missed opportunities
The UK-US divide between the exposure given to black artists has surfaced in the blogosphere this week. Bonnie Greer noted on Comment is Free that the days when "black people acted, directed and wrote plays" were "gone with the wind". After coming to the UK twenty-two years ago to join a "thriving" and representative theatre scene, she concludes that this has all but disappeared.
David Harewood, [...]
Robot love
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- Posted by Natasha Periyan
- 03 May 2008
An existential crisis over what it means to be human looms, with the publication of David Levy's book Love and Sex with Robots. Despite the tabloid title, Levy's is a scholarly work, which argues that robotic machines will gradually replace our fellow human beings as companions, both for love and sex. In this week's NS Michael Bywater, finds the robot revolution plausible; "Love is not something to do [...]
Bad sex
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- Posted by Natasha Periyan
- 25 April 2008
Two goliaths of the arts world, David Mamet and David Edgar have drawn their battle lines this week, at a time when both have productions staged in London’s West End. The two Davids have waged their war via essays that stake out their respective political positions.
Edgar’s article in the Guardian this week is a riposte to Mamet’s Village Voice piece, in which he [...]
Busting a skank
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- Posted by Grace Shortland
- 18 April 2008
A twenty tonne lion has provoked heated debate in Scotland and prompted the resignation of the curator Richard Calvocoressi. Created by Ronald Rae, the benign granite sculpture has charmed visitors in Holyrood Park (opposite the Scottish parliament) since it was first exhibited there two years ago. However, when Rae offered the lion to the Scottish parliament’s unique art collection his gift was refused. Calvocoressi, who at the time was [...]
In the Doherty
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- Posted by Grace Shortland
- 11 April 2008
In the words of new director Roger Wright this year’s proms promise to “juxtapose the familiar and the unfamiliar”. Alongside Elgar’s gushing sentiment the eclectic sounds of Stockhausen, Dr Who and Vaughan Williams will be heard. Abandoning Nicholas Kenyon’s practice of adopting a theme for each programme Roger Wright has chosen to structure the season around the anniversaries of a series of significant composers.
The centenaries of [...]
Farewell Angus Fairhurst
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- Posted by Grace Shortland
- 04 April 2008
The premature death of the artist plus the rest of the news from the arts world
“Ridiculously charming, a radical gardener…and an intensely intelligent artist.” This was how curator Sadie Coles described the British artist Angus Fairhurst, following his suicide last week. The 41-year old was found dead in woodland near Argyll on 29 March. Fairhurst, whose career was launched in 1988 by Damien Hirst's iconic ‘Freeze’ show, was a key member of the Young British Artists. Working in sculpture, photography, film and video [...]
