The Victoria & Albert Museum always excels in its presentation of fashion – from the memorable Vivien Westwood exhibition back in 2004 to Balenciaga (2017) and the current blockbuster Dior show. Smaller in scale than the lavish Dior exhibition, but no less significant, this is the first international retrospective of iconic fashion designer Mary Quant,…
A Riveting Ripper at the Coliseum
Jack the Ripper’s frenzied killing spree in Victorian London has never ceased to fascinate and appall. Iain Bell, composer of the ambitious new opera of the same name, and his librettist Emma Jenkins, decided, when creating their new work, to rid the stage of his presence altogether and to focus instead on the Ripper’s…
Stop Press – Tate Britain nails it at last!
Here at ArtMuseLondon we’ve been less than enthusiastic, to say the least, about some of the temporary exhibitions Tate Britain has put on of late. Mayhap some imp of perversity has been loose around Millbank these past few years. How else to explain the questionable curatorial decisions, the squandered opportunities, the telltale signs of hobby-horses…
Sorolla: Spanish Master of Light
The Spanish impressionist artist, Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923), is little known outside of Spain. Half a million flocked to his retrospective at the Prado Museum in 2009. Meanwhile his house in Madrid, now the Sorolla Museum, has become a tourist destination and is best visited, I imagine, out of season. And yet how…
McBurney’s Magic Flute Enchants Again.
Mozart’s Magic Flute is an unusual opera, full of Viennese slapstick, magic and strange journeys through a fairy-tale landscape. Emanuel Schikaneder, who wrote the libretto, was a theatre-manager, actor and most importantly, Mozart’s friend. The two relished working together and being both a little strapped for cash in 1791, they strove to create an opera…
Parr Displaying His Humanity at National Portrait Gallery
Porthcurno, Cornwall, England, 2017. Martin Parr/Magnum Photos/Rocket Gallery In the same week I watched Don McCullin, photographer extraordinaire, take pictures of fox hunts and Eastbourne in the rain, in the BBC’s Looking for Britain, I find myself at Martin Parr’s Only Human show at the National Portrait Gallery. In it, Parr also explores identity and what…
PRIVATES ON PARADE: The Renaissance Nude at the Royal Academy
You can’t put on a show like this without provoking the odd giggle, but The Renaissance Nude will also have you pondering, especially in today’s context, what our attitudes toward sex and nudity and gender were in the past, and hit they might become.
‘The Merry Widow’ Comes of Age
‘Can you hold my drink so that I can leap over you,’ bellows a middle-aged woman in front of me to perfect strangers. Friday night at the Coliseum and some of the punters in the dress circle have been overdoing the Sauvignon. It’s also the opening night of The Merry Widow and all this boisterous…
Diane Arbus: In the Beginning
Diane Arbus in Washington Square Park, New York City, 1967. Photograph: John Gossage Diane Arbus remains a giant in the photography world. Her suicide at the age of 48 has contributed to her legendary status. Hailed as a tormented genius, much has been written about her psychological fragility and her obsession…
SCANDI-NOIR IN SE21: Harald Sohlberg the Dulwich Art Gallery
There is a sense in these works of the landscape giving form to thought, a quality that puts you in mind immediately of the similarly curious, almost uninhabited cityscapes of Atkinson Grimshaw.
ARTMUSELONDON 