The Engine

Mark Rothko retrospective, The Tate Modern, London Francis Bacon retrospective, The Tate Britain, London Two simultaneous retrospectives of two major 20th century artists seems indulgent, also the decision to depict Rothko as a major modern, Bacon as a major Brit.  However, perhaps this division is telling and necessary. Rothko's painting is obviously hardly painting in the traditional sense but that's not the point, is it?  It's an architectural style of painting, his works sit well in large buildings like the Tate Modern or in the skyscrapers of New York, Frankfurt or Tokyo. The dimensions of his canvases are a statement of their own, his work is consistently bold and large with a masculine and legitimate bravura. But the works are essentially viewed in their context, just as the music of Mozart or Schubert (cited as influences on Rothko) need to be set in their specific contexts as well as being liberated from that by the process of analogy. It's clear in Rot

BYZANTIUM 330-1453 ROYAL ACADEMY, LONDON This exhibition deals with the period between the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Renaissance, a period that is often called The Middle Ages, the Medieval Period or simply but not very informatively, ‘the Dark Ages’. During this time a major locus of civilisation was Byzantium and its formation from the Eastern half of the Roman Empire until its destruction by the Ottoman Turks is a story not of great, original innovations but of absolute uniformity and continuity. Essentially this was a period of retrenchment and austerity when many of the great gains of the Greek and Roman periods were consolidated but civilisation and therefore all the patterns of life including art and culture, remained essentially static. Perhaps that’s why a poet as WB Yeats writes several great poems about Byzantium, because it represents absolute perfection and utter stasis, possibly reflecting his own radical assortment of views albeit deployed in the

COLD WAR MODERN, VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM, SOUTH KENSINGTON, LONDON  The Cold War Modern exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum is an attempt to reconcile versions of modernity represented by both sides in the Cold War. The exhibition includes a detailed Cold War chronology beginning after 1945 and then the thaw in East\West relations after the death of Stalin and Kruschev's famous speech denouncing Stalin (and his crimes of the 1920s and 1930s, including the famine in the Ukraine that was probably manipulated for political ends, the show trials and the era of the purges). There was some mention of the pre-1939 era, a prelude to the Cold War, but the chronological division also echoed the ideology of the exhibition which focused on how detonated and defused all the various legacies of the Cold War had become. Later versions of Communism in Eastern Europe, particularly in Yugoslavia, harked back to the 1917 era as a Golden Age which could be somehow recaptured only if

Liberty by Glyn Maxwell, dir Guy Retallack at The Globe Theatre, London So just time for my yearly visit to The Globe Theatre, London. The Globe Theatre is more a museum than a theatre and all the events staged there have a self-consciously staged or 'theatrical' feel. I wouldn't describe this is real theatre but something between tourism and a museum visit. One spends at least 50% of ones time soaking up the atmosphere, the ambience and that's great of course. Therefore Glyn Maxwell's play 'Liberty' has certain limitations imposed by the self-consciousness of The Globe Theatre project, ie this is a really ancient and very beautiful theatre and part of history ITSELF. Its unsurprising then that The Globe Theatre chooses historical subjects to supplement its Shakespearian efforts. 'Liberty' deals with the French Revolution, the politics and ideological struggles rather than the actual events or personalities. Because of that it has a strongly abstract

THE POVERTY OF SILENCE: VILHELM HAMMERSHOI AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY The Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershoi (1864-1916) was the sort of technically competent yet uninspired artist who crops up in all kinds of guises throughout history. Normally figures like Hammershoi acquire a quiet celebrity in their own lifetimes, then are quietly forgotten about after they die. Now this happened to Hammershoi. But he has somehow been miraculously resurrected at the RA this summer. Why? The RA's audioguide, the assorted 'experts' gathered there describe Hammershoi's work as 'poetic', 'beautiful', 'mysterious', 'enigmatic'. His works consist of interiors (usually with a single female figure whose back is turned), landscapes and postcard-like representations of Copenhagen and London, his favourite European city. A typical Hammershoi interior has light flooding through windows into a beautiful but empty drawing room. However, the effect of Hammershoi&

Eric Rohmer's new film is a wonderful, light comedy of love, jealousy, loss and lovers re-united, perfect for this season. It seems to follow after the lightest of Shakespeare's comedies, there is a deliberate concatenation of eras and epochs as a Bucolic idyll set in 5th century Gaul is reformulated through the 16th century and then finally to our own time. The story of Astrea and Celadon is fitted exactly to the 16th century, the era of the High Renaissance, because of the intensity of its idealisation of 'nature' (as against culture) and the themes of jealousy, loss echoed in Celadon's death and subsequent posing as a woman. Celadon then falls in love again with Astrea, who suffers the jealousy of the other shepherdesses and her own sexual ambiguity in falling in love ardently with another 'woman'. There are some beautiful touches, such as Rohmer's handling of Astrea's friends, the gentle but wonderful comic dialogue and a sudden reinvention o

British Orientalist Painting, Tate Britain, London  Perhaps moving on from Edward Said's groundbreaking study 'Orientalism' this is a full-scale attempt to come to terms with, interpret, explain, account for Britain's continuing involvement in Middle East affairs from the seventeenth-century onwards. The Renaissance period is indeed the exhibition's starting point with an already evolved and evolving interface between Britain and the Ottoman Empire. It has to be remembered that the West developed in tandem with the East and didn't really begin to accelerate in terms of its development until 1870 or so, when it adopted dynamite, the machine gun and other modern, epoch-defining inventions. The exhibition references this and intriguingly attempts to contrast British images of the Orient with French ones, perhaps the most revealing aspect of this exhibition for it subtly contrasts and sends up two attitudes. The exhibition maintains that French artists tended

Street and Studio: An Urban History of Photography at the Tate Modern, South Bank, London Street and Studio seems to be a roundup of all the greatest photography of the late 19th and 20 centuries. Obviously the exhibition attempts to make a contrast between impromptu camerawork and studio photography, yet it’s hard to make sense of what exactly is being done here. For all that, the exhibition is patently very enjoyable so long as you’ve seen the photos already, know the great names and their significances, but if not then it does seem a mite confusing. That hardly matters though for there’s so much on offer here it’s hard to know where to begin to describe it all. Work by Lee Miller, Robert Mapplethorpe, Diane Arbus contrasts effectively with the work of more conventional or more established photographers such as Cecil Beaton and Henri Cartier-Bresson. However, the exhibition often tries to do too much, leaving the spectator waiting to fill in the dotted lines between each phot

THOMAS HOPE, REGENCY DESIGNER: VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM, SOUTH KENSINGTON, LONDON Thomas Hope (1769-1831), eminent Regency period designer and visionary, is given a makeover at the V & A Museum. What's interesting about Hope giving his life and work a very modern inflection is his eclecticism, travels through the former Ottoman Empire, willingness to experiment, to create fusions and juxtapositions of the different cultures that captivated him. In this sense his work is thoroughly Post-Modern (but Post-Modernism seems also to be so retrograde). Recreations of his travels, rooms at Duchess Street off Portland Place, London and mansion at Deepdene, Surrey complement this exhibition. Hope is portrayed at the entrance to the exhibition in Ottoman gear. Themes of exoticism and orientalism are entwined in his design, something that had begun to surface in Europe as a fashion or fad at this time. For instance, in Mozart's opera Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail the Tur

The Story of the Supreme s from the Mary Wilson Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum, South Kensington, London 1.) Strange Fruit The background to the story of The Supremes, the history of America in the 1960s, the era of the fight against racism and segregation in the deep south. Berry Gordy jnr, head of Motown records, sought a black group that could crossover, appealing to black and white audiences simultaneously. The Supremes, the group with more number ones than any 60s band apart from The Beatles, managed to do that, and they did it with an admix that guaranteed a wholesome, positive image and appeal which also catered to the black community in the US that desired positive images but also criticised The Supremes for ‘not being black enough’. This retrospective offers plentiful historical background information about the period, including material about the legitimate face of black liberation represented by the Reverend Martin Luther King and more confrontational move

PROMETEO by Luigi Nono (1924-1990) If you know the works of Ligeti and Stockhausen, then you can imagine what Luigi Nono's (1824-1990) opera PROMETEO is like. The evening was fantastic and surely very like the premieres of Wagner's DAS RHEINGOLD or Mozart's DIE ZAUBERFLOTE although the Royal Festival Hall was almost half empty. (shame on you British music lovers, do you really exist at all?) However this didn't detract from the importance of this event, the UK premiere of PROMETEO by Luigi Nono. It's taken 20 or more years for this work to be premiered in the UK, which tells you something about how much Britain lags behind the continent in its appreciation of the artistic avante garde. In Germany alone there have been 56 performances of this work since then. The libretto is obviously derived from the well-known legend of Prometheus, but the text itself is incomprehensible to the ear, if not to the eye. I had the text before me, it was part of the programme, b

NEW CHINESE DESIGN at the VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM, LONDON China is huge. China is becoming topical. Yet China remains a mystery to most people in the West. ‘Made in China’ has become a familiar tag, but the spectacular creative energy in modern China is barely known. During the last twenty years, the Chinese have rediscovered their pre-socialist past and begun to combine their own traditions with global influences to produce a cultural rebirth. At the heart of this lies a new culture of design. This exhibition will take you on a journey along China’s coastal cities to experience the country’s creative landscape. The journey starts in the far south, where graphic designers in Shenzhen began to explore new directions in the early 1990s. Next we move up to Shanghai. Here consumerism and urban culture have combined to produce astonishing fashion and lifestyles. Finally, we travel to Beijing, where monumental architecture for the Olympic Games is transforming the skyline of this ancien

French (and Polish) cinema resurrected some of its bete noires in the 1980s, hence the makeover of 'Camille Claudel' (1988) in that decade with Adjani and Depardieu. Camille lived in the shadow of both her brother Paul, the sculpture Auguste Rodin, who purloined all her major art thinking and works. She was committed by her mama to the booby hatch where she festered for years. I remember especially in that decade, and this was just before the Communist implosion, the film 'Danton' by Andrzej Wajda (1983) with Depardieu, especially at the end when Danton is executed, Robespierre covers his head with a cloth. Its almost saying, this is the blackest day of all, darkness at noon, but it is also meant to say that Robespierre implicitly knew he was next. Danton the libertine, Robespierre the thin-lipped, narrow-minded fanatic, engulfed by the forces he set in motion. "The revolution, like Saturn, devoured its children." The film was very keen to be seen to

CAPOTE (2005) Dir Bennet Miller, starring Phillip Seymour Hofmann and INFAMOUS (2006), dir Douglas McGrath, starring Toby Jones, Sandra Bullock etc Capote is (yet another) bio-pic of an American hero, this time novelist Truman Capote, author of classic works Breakfast at Tiffanys and In Cold Blood , comes under the microscope. After Capote's success with Breakfast at Tiffanys , the author began to experiment with an innovative new form, which he called 'the non-fiction novel' (something of an oxymoron). This novel is concerned with the horrific slaying of a family of four, the Clutters, in Kansas by two white drifters. The film details Capote's first interest in the case, his travels backwards and forwards by train to Kansas from New York with his childhood friend Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird . His increasing absorption in the case and the ensuing trial of would-be murderers Perry Smith and Richard Hickock. Capote gathered copious notes and man

The Painted Veil (2006), dir John Curran, starring Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Diana Rigg and Love in the Time of Cholera (2007), dir Mike Newell, starring Javier Bardem The Painted Veil , adapted from a Somerset Maugham novel, is a moving tale of a love affair played out before the backdrop of a cholera epidemic in China sometime in the early 20th century. The film depicts the horrors of cholera, the beauty of the Chinese landscape, the trials and tribulations of Walter and Kitty Fane’s relationship. Love in the Time of Cholera , (another adaptation from the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, adapted by Ronald Harwood) shares with The Painted Veil the theme of Europeans in a non-European locale, coping, or failing to cope, with cholera. In The Painted Veil , Walter Fane (played by Edward Norton, an American actor with a high art reputation), a British medical official sent to a remote Chinese Province to help control a cholera epidemic is estranged from his wife Kitty, who has be

Al Gore's film leaves another inconvient truth in its wake: was this film worth making in the light of its own not insubstantial carbon imprint? I think the answer is yes, but only just. The film is at least an attempt to put across all the issues in an accessible, quite amusing and entertaining way. Gore's own religious (some would say lunatic) views shine through, although he hardly has to constantly justify them. But he is always addressing a certain audience of would-be moralists in the US who really don't think that anyone in America should move an inch to do anything about the issues that Gore depicts. Gore doesn't mention it directly, but this film is really about American exceptionalism, why it feels it can remain outside the international consensus, outside the Kyoto agreement on global warming. This film is at least a relevant, timely contribution to the debate on climate, fossil fuels and all the rest of the environmental issues that have been revolving

From the director of THE RETURN THE BANISHMENT (CERT TBC) (Izgnanie) A film by AndreY Zvyagintsev WINNER BEST ACTOR - Konstantin Lavronenko – Cannes Film Festival 2007 Starring Konstantin Lavronenko, Alexander Baluev and Maria Bonnevie In Russian with English subtitles / Russia 2007 / 150 mins UK RELEASE DATE: 15 August 2008 Opening at selected West End Venues and selected cinemas nationwide An Artificial Eye Release The Banishment (Based on a short story by William Saroyan entitled ‘The Laughing Matter’) is Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s second feature following his Golden Lion win with The Return in 2003. This is a tale of pride and patriarchy, which illuminates the dark soul of the Russian male. The rural setting and tragic tale suggest something as earthy and epic as an Emile Zola novel or as majestic Greek tragedy. Alex (Lavronenko) returns after 12 years to the countryside. Accompanied by his wife Vera (Bonnevie) and their two children, he

'The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford' (starring Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck) attempts to poeticise the torpid life of racist psycho (or Southern rebel) Jesse James, but is really a study in celebrity culture, the psychopathology of 'leaders'. The film details the latter part of Jesse's career as his family and other gang members are gradually whittled away, leaving only Jesse, his brother Frank and the dregs of criminality they gather around themselves from local small towns and villages. Jesse is gunned down by Robert Ford while dusting a photo, standing on a chair, a very vulnerable position, (perhaps Jesse was more famous for his housekeeping and general household role than for his gunslinging? This suggests a feminine role for Jesse, a way to breach his defences and ultimately to destroy him.) so its clear that Jesse trusted Robert Ford and his brother Charley implicitly. But he clearly misjudged the situation, a sign that his powers of m

The German economic recession is deepening, unemployment increasing and thus we have three escapees, Christian von Richthofen, Rolf Clausen and Kristian Bader from Hamburg in London, their agitprop work 'Auto Auto'. However this work is thoroughly offbeam in a crazily Teutonic way, imagining a car as a musical instrument then dismembering it tunefully. There are some stunning moments in 'Auto Auto' and much of it is mildly humourous, but overall I had to wonder whether von Richthofen (I suppose everyone must be wondering if he is a relative of Manfred von Richthofen, the Bloody Red Baron?!? or even of Frieda von Richthofen, 'wife of D H Lawence'), Clausen et al really have enough comic material for their show? The problem, the lameness of much of the humour is the fact that it plays on certain bland, overworked cliches of Germanness, such as the German car industry, (German engineering - Vorsprung durch Technik) Adolph Hitler, even J S Bach and W A Mozart wh

Lou Reed's Berlin (2007), dir Julian Schnabel A film that dares to talk about the birth, death and resurrection of a pop album, rather than a Messiah or a martyr, really shows us where our culture has arrived at. Lou Reed originally produced this album in 1973, but it was a commercial flop for a set of rather obvious reasons. First of all its an intensely depressing experience. A young mother, Caroline, a drug addict involved in a drug-fueled relationship, has her children taken away from her then commits suicide. Secondly, the sentiment is simply trowelled on, as in the voices and cries of little children at the end of the album. There is much to cringe about here, but also much to celebrate, for some of the songs on the album, are instantaneous classics. The route that Schnabel takes in depicting the first live concert of this album since its conception is quite predictable in form, unlike his recent film 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly', and unlike other recen

ALEXANDER RODCHENKO AT THE HAYWARD GALLERY, LONDON Alexander Rodchenko abandoned painting and sculpture for photography, photomontage, then clearly an irritation to Stalin who clearly opposed his 'formalism' in favour of Socialist Realism. There's a fair amount of that in Rodchenko's work though, for most of his public work would have been channelled through the party, hence his snaps of marching muscled minions in Red Square replete with bobby sox and blue shorts. There are portraits of the poet Mayakovsky, who seems unusually intense, and Mayakovsky's lover, Lilya Brik. (and also a famous portrait of Osip Brik, Lilya's husband and member of the avante-garde grouping Noyvi Lef, presumably with the letters LEF in Cyrillic reflected on his glasses) Photomontage clearly had cinematic origins reflected in the fact that Rodchenko made collaborative posters for Dziga Vertov, maker of the seminal film 'Man with a Movie Camera'. Rodchenko's relation

The Leopard (Il Gattopardo), 1963, dir Luchino Visconti, starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon This film by Visconti followed on from his major early neo-realist works Ossessione (1943) and La Terra Trema (1948), a period when Visconti was concocting internationalist spaghettis with disparate European and American talents. Some of these films are very good and Il Gattopardo is surely one of the very good ones, but sometimes they lurch towards the ludicrous side of camp (such as his Death in Venice - although it is still visually splendid). They mark a period which might be summarised in general terms as the end of the dominance of European arthouse cinema and the beginnings of a more complexly stratified Hollywood cinema, still capable but more readily capable of immense international syntheses in the same sense that European directors like Visconti were once capable of. Visconti, both an aristocrat and a Marxist, went to the novel Il Gattopardo (The titl