They might be worthy… but are they Turner Prize winners?
This year’s Turner Prize finalists have been chosen for their promotion of social causes. But has rewarding virtue left any room for art?
Today’s highlights
The greatest European film you’ve never seen
A lost avant-garde masterpiece, supressed by the Nazis, stuns the London Film Festival and captivates JASON SOLOMONS
The movement and the music: #MeToo and its songs of revolution
Four years on from the hashtag that
started a revolution, SOPHIA DEBOICK on the female performers who chronicled their experiences of harassment and hope for change in song
Art
They might be worthy… but are they Turner Prize winners?
This year’s Turner Prize finalists have been chosen for their promotion of social causes. But has rewarding virtue left any room for art?
The genius, and lies, of Joseph Beuys
On his centenary, Germany’s best-known post-war artist remains as influential – and contentious – as ever.
When the original global Britain got on its (electric) bike
Five years before the Festival of Britain came another international exhibition showcasing post-war UK innovation. Seventy five years on, it is a sombre reminder of some of the qualities which – despite much voguish rhetoric – the country has lost, writes RICHARD HOLLEDGE
Why Black art matters
An exhibition of ten British African artists in Cambridge challenges and inspires, writes RICHARD HOLLEDGE
Hondalea: Where art can be found amidst the abyss
A stunning new sculpture in a disused
Spanish lighthouse seems to
offer a portal to the earth’s
core.
Multicultural Man: On an art house
WILL SELF on his visit Stephen Wright’s House of Dreams and its extraordinary insider-outsider artwork
Books
The greatest characters in European literature
CHARLIE CONNELLY comes up with the first half of his rundown of the top 20.
The writers who took inspiration from rejection
Even the greatest writers have had to get used to having their work turned down.
Book review: Nina Simone’s Gum by Warren Ellis. Something special to chew over.
A beautiful book about an extraordinary obsession with a piece of used chewing gum
Multicultural Man: On learning from literature
WILL SELF on educating ourselves from past and present literature
Mud Sweeter Than Honey: Communism’s untold story
Albania’s experience under the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha has received less attention than other repressive regimes. A new book provides a timely and truly chilling spotlight.
French literature’s tainted treasures and lost gems
Two writers with strikingly different reputations, whose long-lost work has recently been unearthed.
Music
Micheline Ostermeyer: The woman who combined sporting and musical brilliance
From the Olympic field to Parisian concert calls, Micheline Ostermeyer never failed to provide that special something
The movement and the music: #MeToo and its songs of revolution
Four years on from the hashtag that
started a revolution, SOPHIA DEBOICK on the female performers who chronicled their experiences of harassment and hope for change in song
Kurt Cobain – Rock’s last voice before the corporate takeover
BONNIE GREER looks back at the life of Kurt Cobain and recalls the significance of ‘The 27 Club’ in music.
The band that broadcasts Berlin’s essence
Public Service Broadcasting captures Berlin’s musical history with a magical new album – Bright Magic
How Estonia sang its way to freedom
Three decades ago, dulcet tones from Estonia signalled the country’s newfound freedom, writes SOPHIA DEBOICK
Multicultural Man: On Jamaican music
WILL SELF on the reggae culture and music from his youth, and finding it in Cornwall.
Film
The greatest European film you’ve never seen
A lost avant-garde masterpiece, supressed by the Nazis, stuns the London Film Festival and captivates JASON SOLOMONS
The woman behind James Bond
Barbara Broccoli on film, family and Daniel Craig’s farewell in No Time To Die.
007’s guide to Europe
Fancy a trip to the continent now the pandemic is easing? JOHN RAIN looks back at some exotic European locations James Bond has been to, and who he killed there
The death of a soprano
As The Many Saints Of Newark revisits the world of The Sopranos, RICHARD LUCK remembers the day the screen’s favourite mobster prematurely cut to black…
French film introduces the urban spaceman
From France comes a giant leap in tales
about life on housing
estates.
Meet the luvvies who loved, and hated, Brexit
As his new book of celebrity encounters
is launched, TIM WALKER
remembers some
memorable interviews
with those on both sides
of the EU divide
Theatre
Theatre Review: Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror and the Light makes a bit of a carry on
A stage adaptation of the author’s The Mirror and the Light makes for feeble and pretentious watching
Theatre Review: a familiar Hamlet leaves nothing fresh in the state of Denmark
A modern production of the Shakespeare classic fails to provide a new angle
Theatre Review: The Normal Heart
The cruellest pandemic play that leaves audiences haunted long after it’s finished
Theatre Review: Wicked
A once sexy, sassy and sensational production is now showing signs of aging
Theatre Review: Camp Siegfried
The production adopts an ambitious task of trying to get the audience to feel for two German-American teenagers who fall in love in a Nazi summer camp, and falls short
Theatre Review: The Last Five Years
This play presents another example of a risk averse post-pandemic West End and it should do better than that
Great European Lives
Micheline Ostermeyer: The woman who combined sporting and musical brilliance
From the Olympic field to Parisian concert calls, Micheline Ostermeyer never failed to provide that special something
Chantal Akerman: The director who truly treasured time
The Belgian filmmaker believed all you ever really have in life is time and she took control of her own in the most definitive way she knew how.
Henning Mankell: The optimistic activist who captured disillusionment
His greatest character was weighed down by disillusionment and ennui, but the author behind Wallander was quite different.
Juliette Gréco: The French chanteuse whose greatest triumph was silence
She lived in an extraordinary time, among some of the most colossal figures of 20th Century Europe. But, Juliette Gréco outlived them all – and did so on her own terms.
Dag Hammarskjöld: The life of a peacemaker
The youngest UN secretary-general who changed the world and would have done so more had he lived a little longer
Toni Fritsch: The Austrian who revolutionised the Dallas Cowboys
He spoke no English, and had never seen an American Football before but Toni Fritsch was a natural, and he went on to change the game forever.