The Engine

Alberto Giacometti at the Tate Modern, Sunday July 16 th 2017 Born in Italian Switzerland in 1901, Alberto Giacometti was the son of a significant post-impressionist artist and much of his early work was imitative of his father’s style.  He was later galvanised to move to Paris in 1922 where he encountered the works of the cubists and the surrealists.  His early busts are conventional, typical works, completely classical in impulse.  He liked to work with soft, malleable materials like clay or plaster rather than in bronze.  However, he eventually found the financial help he needed to transform his works into bronzes.  His later style emerged gradually. In his early period Giacometti was equally a painter and a sculptor, his busts were usually intimate portraits of close friends and family members.  Giacometti’s engagement with the surrealists is clearly reflected in his work of the 20s and 30s in Paris when he also became fascinated with the crea...

Beyond the Great Wave – The Art of Katsushiko Hokusai (1760 – 1848) at the British Museum Katsushiko Hokusai was born in Edo (Tokyo) in 1760.  Europe was simultaneously engulfed in the Seven Years War.  Then Edo had one million inhabitants like London.  Hokusai had many names but the name Hokusai was adopted when the artist was 39 and is the most common of all the pseudonyms he used.  Another one is Gakyo Rojin Manji or The Old Man Crazy to Paint.  His childhood name was Tokitaro (later Tetsuzo), he was adopted by the mirror-maker Nakajima Ise.  In his teens, he trained as a woodblock cutter and by the time he was 20 he became part of the floating world school ( ukiyo-e ) by joining the studio of Katsukawa Shunsho.  Shunsho was a leading floating world artist and Hokusai stayed with him until his death in 1792.  Throughout his forties and fifties Hokusai completed many illustrations for popular fiction and special commissions for figurative ...

Alien: Covenant (director Ridley Scott, starring Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston) This seems to be the most interesting entry in the Alien franchise after the first film but coming rather belatedly when the director Ridley Scott is on the verge of becoming an octogenarian. Obviously at that age people begin to consider their own mortality and the script is much more introspective than previous instalments except for Prometheus .  There are references to high art such as Michaelangelo, Wagner and P.B.Shelley but they are somehow integrated into a script which is both insightful and hollow.  The script, however, is the main issue with the film.  Visually Covenant offers us some new and intriguing sights but the sound design (I hesitate to use the term soundtrack because that isn’t quite right) is the feature that sets the film apart.  A dull rhythmic thud accompanies the action along with some intriguing leitmotifs (obviously, Wagner is referenced seemin...

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST by OSCAR WILDE at the THE MAC, BELFAST On Tuesday 11 th of April, 2017 Team Director                         Lisa May Musical Director          Matthew Reeve Designer                         Diana Ennis Lighting Designer         Zia Bergin-Holly (Irish Times Theatre award winner - Best Lighting Design) Cast Lady Bracknell                             Ross Anderson-Doherty Miss Prism                 ...

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St Joan by Bernard Shaw at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast Production information Press night  September 15, 2016 Authors       George Bernard Shaw Adaptation         Philip O'Sullivan Director      Jimmy Fay Set         Grace Smart Lighting      Ciaran Bagnall Sound          Conor Mitchell Technical    Keith Ginty (technical manager), Philip Goss (set builder) Stage manager          Kate Miller (company stage manager) Production manager       Alan McCracken Cast includes     Alan McKee, Abigail McGibbon, Lisa Dwyer Hogg, Rory Nolan, Philip O’Sullivan, Tony Flynn, Kevin Trainor, Eimear Fearon Casting      ...

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE at the TATE MODERN The new major retrospective of the American artist Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) at the Tate Modern follows a conventional re-telling of the narrative of the artist’s life. The early work, development and maturity, fame, the final years and the visionary final statements. The chronological narrative begins with the artist working in black and white, charcoal and pencil, in order to develop an abstract style and a truly American form of Modernism.   Georgia O’Keeffe was born in 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, a northerner and daughter of Irish and Dutch-Hungarian parents. O’Keeffe turned to the landscape to create a specifically American form of Modernism distinct from the European form and used traditional American icons such as the apple, the prairie and flowers, symbols of the American wilderness and its fecundity. She did not turn to abstraction before encountering and documenting the natural world. O’Keeffe loved to walk in the c...