modernism
aleks.sierz
Adultery has had a good press recently. Websites such as meet-to-cheat.com, illicitencounters.com and lovinglinks.co.uk have been in the news, and statistics suggest that more of us are being unfaithful than ever before. But although adultery is a staple of farce and mainstream drama, there are few plays that deal with the subject with quite the unsettling ambiguity and disturbing depth that characterise Martin Crimp’s modernistic play, first performed in 2000 and now beautifully revived by the up-and-coming Amelia Nicholson.Crimp’s love triangle is composed of a fortysomething couple, Read more ...
judith.flanders
Museum shows don’t often evoke a sense of smell, but without even trying, this Ballets Russes exhibition has visitors’ nostrils flared. The show is – intentionally – a feast for the eye, and even for the ear, with ballet scores (sometimes rudely overlapping) playing in every room. But smell?True, Diaghilev was said to have worn Mitsouko perfume, and sure enough, a flacon sits in one of the galleries. But more to the point, look carefully at the costumes. The first response is – how incredibly gorgeous. Heavy with embroidery, with appliqué, with silk, with satin, velvets, lace, gilt wire, even Read more ...
sue.steward
Edward Weston was once obsessed with photographing "toilets" (his word) and did it repeatedly in pursuit of the perfect image. "That gloss enamelled receptacle of extraordinary beauty" is how he described the scuzzy lav at the Gold Circle Mine in Death Valley, and seemingly near-orgasmic with excitement, said it was "an absolute, aesthetic response to form". That statement wasn’t about toilets alone, of course; this legend of American photography was, understandably, a perfectionist in every thing he photographed. But he was also, during the early years of this collection of 37 prints (1920s Read more ...
alain.debotton
Judging from the success of interior design magazines and property shows, you might think that this country was now as comfortable with good contemporary architecture as it is with non-native food or music. But scratch beneath the metropolitan, London-centric focus, and you quickly discover that Britain remains a country deeply in love with the old and terrified of the new. Country hotels compete among themselves to tell us how ancient they are; holiday cottages vaunt that they were already in existence when Jane Austen was a girl. The draughty sash window shows no signs of retiring. Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
A metallic shower rained down upon us as five percussionists of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's percussion sextet unleashed the meteoric potential of five huge metal thundersheets on our unsuspecting ears, and percussionist number six, a pianist, encouraged her muzzled instrument (a metal brace lying across its stringed body) to gnash away rhythmically and to dance amid the downpour. 1939 was when John Cage came up with this breathtakingly original, endlessly exhilarating work, First Construction (in Metal), that opened this late-night Prom. It was the most invigorating 10 minutes I've Read more ...
aleks.sierz
One of the many absent friends in contemporary British drama is the play that tackles questions of religious belief. At a time when more and more people take their faith more and more seriously, this lacuna at the heart — or should that be soul? — of new work is surely regrettable. But perhaps the tide is now turning: in May, Drew Pautz’s Love the Sinner at the National examined belief and sexuality; now Australian playwright Anthony Weigh, whose new play opened last night, wrestles with death and memory.The set-up is simple. Following a horrific massacre at a quiet infant school, somewhere Read more ...
fisun.guner
These days, it seems that approaching any new Saatchi exhibition, especially one that promises to be even bigger than all the previous ones held at the multi-galleried, three-storey Chelsea venue, makes the heart fairly sink. How much bigger, you want to ask, and why use size as a measure of anything? Surely there isn’t enough headspace to accommodate all those loud, clamorous, “look-at-me” artworks favoured by Saatchi all in one go? And this is just Part One. Part Two will be something to look forward to in late October. I’m probably not alone in feeling this. After all, this isn’t the Read more ...
fisun.guner
Does form always have to follow function? Is ornamentation really such a heinous crime? Or is Modernism itself the enemy of the people? The second part of this excellent five-part series – fab archive footage, great interviews with designers young enough to no longer be beholden to the Modernist creed – focused on the founding of the Bauhaus and the Modernist aesthetic. And after juggling a lot of questions, it gently guided us towards more or less the same position as Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus to Our House, though in a far more respectful, design-conscious way: Modernism worked in theory but Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
For those of you who think that classical music ends with Mahler - or Brahms just to be on the safe side - that the musical experimentation of the past 60 years was some sort of grim continental joke, an extended whoopee cushion of a musical period that seemed to elevate the garden-shed accident into some kind of art form, you have two people to blame: Adolf Hitler and Edgar Varèse.Hitler's influence we shall come to another time. Edgar Varèse's impact was on display this weekend at the Southbank's retrospective, Varèse 360°. Everyone from Frank Zappa to Harrison Birtwistle have Read more ...
fisun.guner
Anthony Caro makes works with the human figure in mind. The venerated sculptor, who, at 86, remains seemingly unstoppable, came to prominence in the early Sixties with his brightly coloured abstract steel sculptures. These, such as his seminal 1962 work, Early One Morning – an open-form sculpture of welded steel plates and delicately balancing rods painted in bright red – chimed with an era of optimism and confidence. Any figurative references were entirely incidental.A different Caro emerged in the Eighties when he produced monumental works of solid mass and volume. Rich with references to Read more ...
fisun.guner
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 overturn 1,000 years of Western civilisation with a universal aesthetic utopia of brightly coloured squares and boldly delineated lines, a confident Theo van Doesburg, founding member and chief theorist of the Dutch movement De Stijl, wrote, “What the Cross represented to the early Christians, the square represents to us all. The square will Read more ...
aleks.sierz
She’s the most famous young pout in Hollywood. And her first West End appearance has already sparked a media frenzy, making this contemporary version of Molière’s The Misanthrope the hottest ticket in town, with massive advance bookings already guaranteeing anyone associated with the show a credit-crunch-proof Christmas. Of course, I’m talking about Keira Knightley – I mean, who isn’t? But what about the play, which opened last night with a barrage of paparazzi flashbulbs? And how does La Knightley shape up?Written by Martin Crimp, this take on Molière’s 1666 tale about the sourpuss Read more ...