Tag: history
Isaac Julien: Once Again… (Statues Never Die)
Tuesday, October 22nd, 2024 Art Column,Dr. Albert C. Barnes was one of the greatest art collectors of the 20th century, and one of its most odious personalities. He made his fortune with eyewash – an antiseptic compound called Argyrol. Although he claimed to have invented this wondrous product, in reality he only marketed it. His career could serve as a […]
The Three Musketeers
Saturday, June 8th, 2024 Film Reviews,Why did I wait so long to read Alexandre Dumas? One of literature’s all-time best-sellers, he had to be doing something right. The grandson of a French nobleman and a African slave, Dumas (1802-70) was as unlikely as one of his own plots, and no less successful. He spent money as fast as he made […]
William Kentridge & Sydney Biennale
Saturday, May 4th, 2024 Art Column,Contemporary art is a gigantic billboard for political platitudes, but if there is one artist who consistently transcends the overwhelming shallowness, it’s William Kentridge. As a South African who lived through the fall of Apartheid this may have given Kentridge a more complex understanding of history and politics than so many of his mono-dimensional peers. […]
Golda & Fremont
Friday, May 3rd, 2024 Film Reviews,If ever a film release could be said to be badly timed, it’s Golda, the bio-pic of former Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, who led her country through the Yom Kippur War of 1973, after a surprise attack from their Arab neighbours, Egypt and Syria. It arrives at a time when another intransigent Israeli Prime […]
Heavenly Beings
Saturday, March 23rd, 2024 Art Column,If you’ve been looking for an excuse to immediately fly down to Hobart, look no further. Of all the shows I regret seeing late in the day, and all those that most urgently need to travel to other venues, Heavenly Beings: Icons of the Orthodox Christian World at David Walsh’s Museum of Old and New […]
The Iron Claw & Priscilla
Friday, January 19th, 2024 Film Reviews,If ever a film proves it’s possible to make a powerful story out of anything, it’s The Iron Claw. Those who spent their childhood watching World Championship Wrestling on TV may have distant memories of large, flabby men in tights roaring threats, jumping off turnbuckles, and thumping each other in a peculiarly unconvincing manner. The […]
The Boys in the Boat & The Holdovers
Friday, January 12th, 2024 Film Reviews,In those heady days when John Wayne was dispatching hostile injuns by the dozen, no-one could have envisaged Hollywood making clean-cut white Americans into the bad guys. It would have taken a clairvoyant to predict the tide of identity politics that has swept over the United States in recent times, engendering a new generation of […]
Corsage
Friday, February 10th, 2023 Film Reviews,Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1837-98) was the original ‘people’s princess’. She hated the pomp and ceremony of the Habsburg Court and would absent herself from Vienna for months on end. She was known for her charitable works and her affection for the common people. A famous beauty, she kept her weight down to a terrifying […]
Tár & Babylon
Friday, January 27th, 2023 Film Reviews,Last week I thought Michelle Williams was unbeatable for Best Actress at this year’s Oscars, but after watching Tár, it’s hard to see Cate Blanchett coming second. Todd Field’s film about a musical genius who falls for the seductions of fame and power, is a classic Faustian tale. Blanchett’s Lydia Tár doesn’t exactly sell her […]
Triangle of Sadness & The Lost King
Friday, December 23rd, 2022 Film Reviews,There’s a kind of shameful pleasure in seeing one’s own prejudices played out on screen, and this is precisely what we get from the films of Ruben Östlund. The Swedish director has struck the right note at Cannes, where his two most recent features – The Square in 2017, and this year, Triangle of Sadness, […]