Arts
Dying of the light
It’s a comfort that the creation of a new ballet inspired by French court entertainment can still happen in the…
Thinking inside the box
Someone once asked Joseph Cornell who was his favourite abstract artist of his time. It was a perfectly reasonable question…
Glastonbury knight
I had meant to write a dispassionate account of this year’s Glastonbury, really I had. But I’m afraid my plans…
Show and Tell
There’s no such thing as a tasteful rape scene — or there certainly shouldn’t be. It’s an act of grossest…
Bid low, break even
A new Seagull lands in Regent’s Park. Director Matthew Dunster has lured Chekhov’s classic into a leafy corner of north…
Eyes wide shut
Asif Kapadia’s documentary about Amy Winehouse, whom Tony Bennett describes as ‘one of the truest jazz singers that ever lived’,…
Anniversary fatigue
There’s a part of me that thinks OK, we’ve heard enough now, one year on from the beginning of the…
The bankers’ darling
This week’s Imagine… Jeff Koons: Diary of a Seducer (BBC1, Tuesday) began with Koons telling a slightly puzzled-looking Alan Yentob…
Culture buff
They’re just recovering in Adelaide from the sold-out success of the Cabaret Festival which was directed by the wonderful, endlessly…
Eyes wide shut
Asif Kapadia’s documentary about Amy Winehouse, whom Tony Bennett describes as ‘one of the truest jazz singers that ever lived’,…
Dying of the light
It’s a comfort that the creation of a new ballet inspired by French court entertainment can still happen in the…
Glastonbury knight
I had meant to write a dispassionate account of this year’s Glastonbury, really I had. But I’m afraid my plans…
Glastonbury knight
I had meant to write a dispassionate account of this year’s Glastonbury, really I had. But I’m afraid my plans…
The bankers’ darling
This week’s Imagine… Jeff Koons: Diary of a Seducer (BBC1, Tuesday) began with Koons telling a slightly puzzled-looking Alan Yentob…
City life
To gentrify or not to gentrify. That is the question, says Stephen Bayley
Maestro maker
When Margaret Thatcher imagined perfect power, she thought of the orchestral conductor. ‘She envied me,’ said Herbert von Karajan, ‘that…
Maestro maker
The writer and director Peter Bogdanovich has made three of my favourite films of all time (The Last Picture Show,…
Better than Bayreuth
Which of Wagner’s mature dramas is the most challenging, for performers and spectators? The one you’re seeing at the moment,…
![‘Sculpture with Colour (Deep Blue and Red) [6]’, 1943, by Barbara Hepworth](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/exhibitions1.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Shape-shifter
In the last two decades of her life, Barbara Hepworth was a big figure in the world of art. A…
Savile exposed
Ho hum. Bit icky. Not bad. Hardly dazzling. The lukewarm response to An Audience With Jimmy Savile has astonished me.…
Look back in anger
‘Cringe!’ said Boy, after I’d exposed him to a few seconds of last week’s special nostalgia edition of TFI Friday.…
Sea sound
It’s often not visual images that stimulate memory but a smell, a taste, the sound of pebbles crashing on to…
Culture Buff
This is a very operatic time in Sydney; the SSO has just done Tristan & Isolde, OA has opened it’s…
Maestro maker
The writer and director Peter Bogdanovich has made three of my favourite films of all time (The Last Picture Show,…
Maestro maker
When Margaret Thatcher imagined perfect power, she thought of the orchestral conductor. ‘She envied me,’ said Herbert von Karajan, ‘that…
