I’ll confess that when I first read that Tate Britain was to mount an exhibition entitled Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals, I wasn’t exactly filled with excitement. Don’t get me wrong: Turner has been one of my favourite artists ever since I first saw his work at the Tate in my mid-teens, and while … Continue reading Turner and Constable Together: surely a must-see show
If you have any interest at all in the extraordinary work of the Quay Brothers, you should certainly be sure to visit the exhibition Dormitorium - The Film Décors of The Quay Brothers, currently at Bloomsbury’s Swedenborg House until Friday 4 April. But even if you’ve never heard of the Pennsylvania-born, London-based, Central-and-Eastern-Europe-obsessed twins and … Continue reading Impossible Worlds Made Real: The Quay Brothers in Bloomsbury
As you may be aware, I’ve posted my personal ‘best of the year’ lists ever since I started writing here in 2016, and each time I’ve felt moved to mention the parlous state both of the UK and of the world in general. This last year saw no improvement on either front, which means that … Continue reading My best movies, music, books, etc, of 2023
A confession: I wasn't familiar with the work of Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) until around a decade ago, when a friend also attending the Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna suggested we take a break from movies and visit the Morandi museum. So I missed a film – who knows how good it would have been? – … Continue reading Less Is More: the idiosyncratic genius of Giorgio Morandi
It’s not often that I write about the visual arts, mainly, I suppose, because I suspect that most of you reading my posts know at least as much as I do about the subject, maybe more. But just occasionally, as happened with the Swiss painter Félix Vallotton or the Malian photographer Malick Sidibé, I come … Continue reading Ripe for (re)discovery: marvellous artist Milton Avery
When I heard, from a friend who works for Time Out, that Tony Elliott (1947-2020) had died the previous evening, I wasn’t entirely surprised; though he appeared, on the last occasion I saw him in late January, to be in reasonable health and good spirits, I knew that he’d been engaged in a grim battle … Continue reading Two or three things I know about Tony Elliott
If by any chance you follow me on social media, you may recall that before the coronavirus took hold in the UK, I was an almost absurdly frequent visitor to London’s Wigmore Hall, one of the world’s finest venues for performances of chamber music; for some years I had been going there so often that … Continue reading Musical Marvels: The Wigmore Lockdown Concerts
It being 50 years since Manfred Eicher first set up his ECM label, it was perhaps unsurprising that this year’s London Jazz Festival should mount an ‘ECM day’, with three concerts featuring artists associated with the label. I missed the first, by the Julia Hülsmann Quartet, but managed to catch the second and third, and … Continue reading How Garbarek Got His Groove Back (plus a Gig by Joe Lovano)
The first time I saw the American composer and pianist Carla Bley perform live was back in June 1974, when she played keyboards for the Jack Bruce Band; the first of her albums I bought was ‘Dinner Music’, released a couple of years later. Thereafter, I not only made sure that my collection of her … Continue reading Of Life (and Death?): new music from Carla Bley
Tate Britain’s exhibition devoted to the work of the great photographer Don McCullin is, in its own pleasingly straightforward and unpretentious way, one of the finest exhibitions I’ve been to in some years. Of course, as someone who used to peruse the Sunday Times magazine in his teens, when McCullin’s strikingly vivid, often deeply disturbing … Continue reading Photographic genius at the Tate: the remarkable work of Don McCullin
notes and observations by Geoff Andrew 