Put sex in the title, slap on an age restriction and you’re sure to draw the crowds. That venerable institution, the British Museum, is offering the first comprehensive exhibition of Shunga art, called Shunga: Sex and pleasure in Japanese art (until 5 Jan 2014). It’s got London whispering about it in the most unlikely…
Othello from a military perspective? It sounds like yet another director’s far-fetched take on Shakespeare’s endlessly adaptable plays. In fact, it’s not. The dress may be modern, the bunkers concrete and the guns automatics, but Nicholas Hytner’s brilliant version of Othello at the National Theatre slots right into place with the text. This is a…
I remember travelling through Spain with an Australian friend. We’d both look at tall bluegums in the dry countryside and sigh for home. There are many similarities between Australia and South Africa, not only in the wide open spaces and the big skies, but also in a complex historical view of indigenous and colonial cultures.…
Tate Britain has had a radical rehang as part of its ongoing change, and recently unveiled a chronological display of its British art which now shows off many gems which were languishing in storage. Presented around the outer perimeter of the Millbank galleries, the new display, the BP Walk through British Art, has proved hugely popular…
The estuary of any river is often a bleak and moody place, where sea and river merge, and the Thames is no exception. The exhibition Estuary (until 27 Oct) at the Museum of London in Docklands celebrates the museum’s first decade, and if you haven’t yet seen this offshoot of the London Wall museum, it…
One of the stars of the National Gallery’s Vermeer show, The Guitar Player, is usually on permanent display, free, in a room which includes work by Frans Hals and one of the most moving self-portraits Rembrandt ever made. Their home is the glorious Robert Adam house, Kenwood, on Hampstead Heath, which is just round the…
There is no small measure of comedy in watching one National Treasure taking a shot at another. Playwright Alan Bennett (of History Boys fame) could well be considered one of Britain’s National Treasures, with his uncanny ability to capture the essence of the English. And one of their favourite pastimes is to visit National Trust…
The lights come up. Tumultuous applause. A full house audience undecided only whether to give a standing ovation or not. It’s a moment when most actors can breathe a sigh of relief. Not John Lithgow, playing the title role in the National Theatre production of The Magistrate, however. No, he has to take a deep…
Soviet oligarchs may take up riotous living once they settle in the West, but the Soviet Union isn’t a place one really associates with levity. The full irony of the title Gaiety is The Outstanding Feature of the Soviet Union: New Art from Russia, however, doesn’t actually hit one until you have seen the extended…
A name that brings to mind the grand landscapes of America is photographic pioneer Ansel Adams, who grew up with a Kodak in his hands. As an awkward boy, barely into his teens, he was capturing the great wilderness areas of his country, and continued throughout his long life to capture the magnificence of nature,…
London Letter 