English National Opera’s 208/19 season opened with Richard Strauss’s dark and disturbing psycho-drama Salome in a visually striking and lyrically-sung new production.
Oceania at the Royal Academy of Arts
Oceania, the Royal Academy’s new survey of Pacific Art, opens with a 35 ft. cascade of polyethylene sheeting, which sweeps through the central octagonal hall like an azure wave. It’s been sewn using traditional techniques by the contemporary Māori women’s collective Mata Aho. An adjoining roomful of seagoing paraphernalia continues the watery theme; here…
Last chance to see ‘Augustus John: Drawn from Life’ at Poole Museum
Venture out of the metropolis for the day (or longer) to the small seaside town of Poole, next to Bournemouth, for a small but perfectly formed exhibition of paintings, drawings and sculpture by Augustus John, at one time considered one of the most famous British artists of the twentieth century, though his sister Gwen is…
Fortune’s Favours: ‘Sir Richard Wallace the Collector’ at the Wallace Collection, London
How to typify the Wallace? Can you, indeed? In spirit it’s maybe close to the passion of a collector such as Sir John Soane, who also founded his own public museum (there is something very English about this kind of obsession – think of the Ashmolean in Oxford, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge). It’s something like the Frick in New York, only bigger, better, wider-ranging. There’s not an item in it that doesn’t have some claim to be exceptional – rare beyond belief if not unique, superlatively made, exquisitely beautiful.
The Kahlo Cult: ‘Frida Kahlo – Making Herself Up’ at the V&A
That the V&A’s Frida Kahlo exhibition is fully booked until the end of August says a lot about her iconic status today – and it’s not her paintings that people flock to see but the “iconography” of Frida: her clothes, her painted plaster corsets, her jewellery and her ephemera. Her striking countenance with its distinctive…
LOST HISTORY RECLAIMED: William Kentridge’s ‘The Head and the Load’
‘…shadow-play, defunct documentation, African dance, early jazz, Dada-ist insanity and historical fact…’
MIXED MESSAGES IN MIXED MEDIA: MICHAEL JACKSON ON THE WALL National Portrait Gallery, London
In which your humble reviewer is left asking questions. When Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ video launched in 1983 it was a major media moment at a time when media moments were still a rarity. David Dimbleby, no less, introduced it on British TV, and back then in the 80s it blew our little sparkly socks off….
EAST MEETS EAST END: A NEW DIVAN AT WILTON’S MUSIC HALL
…the combination of music and poetry can be blissful, or it can be exhausting. On Thursday it was exhilarating, high-spirited, unexpected and delightful.
Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One at Tate Britain
Tate’s survey of the impact of the First World War on art opens with a series of iconic images of conflict. There is Jacob Epstein’s Terminator-like torso in bronze from his ‘The Rock Drill’ of 1913-14, as unnerving as ever. There are photographs of shattered cathedrals, actual helmets dented by shrapnel, and post-war Illustrated Michelin…
A Great Spectacle: a revved up RA Summer Exhibition & opening of new gallery spaces
Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, London W1 The RA Summer Exhibition, 250 years old this year, is as English as strawberries and cream, Wimbledon tennis, and wasps at a summer picnic. It’s a key part of the summer season and is the world’s most democratic art show: any one can submit work, from professional artists…
ARTMUSELONDON 