My Kid Could’ve Done That! invited 15 artists to create work alongside their children. From leaking breasts to hours in front of childrens’ TV, the results are admirably honest
At five years of age, Astrid might well be the youngest exhibition curator of all time.
“I’m really looking forward to deciding where the art goes,” she says, demonstrating a natural instinct for her new role. “And I’ve really enjoyed working with Daddy too!”
Continue reading...In an extract from his book on late musicians’ estates, Eamonn Forde explores the feud that began shortly after Jeff Buckley’s death between the songwriter’s label and his mother
Jeff Buckley had released two live EPs (Live at Sin-é in 1993 and Live from the Bataclan in 1995) plus one complete studio album (Grace in 1994) before he died in 1997. Since his death, eight live albums and multiple compilation albums have been released, spanning music recorded while he was signed to Sony and also before he had a record deal.
The most contentious is Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk, which was released a year after his death. Buckley had already scrapped a batch of recordings produced by Tom Verlaine in late 1996 and early 1997 and was preparing to record afresh in Memphis, the place where he drowned in the Mississippi.
Continue reading...They brawled with the Sex Pistols, gaffer-taped a journalist to the Eiffel Tower and got thrown out of Sweden twice. Now, for their 18th album and final tour, the punks seem to be maturing at last
As Jean-Jacques Burnel drily admits, the Stranglers had “a bad reputation for quite a while”. During the punk years, their many outrages ranged from being escorted out of Sweden by police with machine-guns (twice) to gaffer-taping a music journalist to the Eiffel Tower, 400ft up, upside down, without his trousers. However, the singer and bass player says the biggest outcry actually came when they got themselves a keyboard player.
“It was seen as sacrilege,” he laughs, recalling this supposed affront to the ramshackle garage punk ethos. “And worse than that – he had a synthesiser. We were called heretics and ostracised. Nobody wanted anything to to do with us. But look what happened a couple of years later: synth pop!”
Continue reading...There is some sustained brilliance here, but unfortunately it comes from the guest stars – and at 108 minutes, this long-awaited album is in need of an edit
Chaotic preview events for Kanye West’s 10th studio album Donda have dominated social media feeds in recent weeks, each one promising a release date that never materialised. The coverage of the events has focused on Kim Kardashian dressed as a Balenciaga-clad sleep paralysis demon, $50 chicken tenders, potential Drake disses, levitation and cameos from alleged rapist Marilyn Manson and the homophobic DaBaby. Fans called West a genius capable of creating exciting theatre that evolves in real time; others saw him as an empty provocateur. Much like kindred spirit Donald Trump, West seems to instinctively know how to weaponise controversy to drive interest in a new project.
With the eventual release of Donda (named after West’s English professor mother, who died in 2007), there is a nagging sense the spectacle has overshadowed the actual music, with this bloated 108-minute album rarely sure of what it is trying to say. The intro, Donda Chant, a sequence of eerie recitations of his mother’s name seemingly designed to send you into a sunken place, is arresting, giving you the impression you’re about to undergo an immersive religious experience. But too often the songs that follow are built on half-baked ideas from a West more concerned with self-pity and martyrdom than confronting his contradictions.
Continue reading...From Bob Marley to the Congos, Junior Murvin and his own outstanding work on the mic, we celebrate the work of a man who seemed to dissolve time
When I moved to Kingston, Jamaica, in 2003 for a job, it was in the month that Lee “Scratch” Perry won the best reggae album Grammy for Jamaican ET, a record that, in true Scratch style, contained everything including the kitchen sink. I remember tuning in to a call-in radio programme during which Jamaicans were wondering who this guy was. It was not entirely surprising – Perry, though arguably the most influential Jamaican artist (and therefore arguably one of the most influential artists ever), is most renowned for his work as producer rather than frontman.
In truth, Perry – who has died aged 85 – was astoundingly skilled and prolific in both roles, and so it would be laughable to attempt any comprehensive “best of” or representative listing of Perry’s work (though you could turn to this good primer by David Katz, author of the exhaustive and essential 2000 biography People Funny Boy: The Genius of Lee “Scratch” Perry). The music he created seems to expand – perhaps explode – all notions of what music can be, so it is more prudent to pick some standouts that demonstrate his breadth and depth than a definitive greatest hits.
Continue reading...He played some of the most memorable characters of all time on The Muppet Show and Sesame Street - then became a brilliant comedy director. What is he most proud of?
I ask Frank Oz if he feels like the Paul McCartney to Jim Henson’s John Lennon, the one left behind to carry the flame after his revered creative partner suddenly and shockingly died. Oz takes a deep breath and turns his head to the side, thinking.
If you grew up in the 1970s and 80s, your childhood was shaped by Henson and Oz and their work with the Muppets, just as the kids who grew up in the 50s and 60s did so in the shadow of Lennon and McCartney. Even if you weren’t a devoted fan of the Muppets themselves, you couldn’t help but take in their influence osmotically, what with The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, the Muppets movies and Labyrinth swirling in the atmosphere. I was pretty much raised on the Muppets, just as I now raise my own kids on them, and I cannot remember a time when Henson and Oz’s creations were not stamped in my mind’s eye.
Continue reading...The modernist maestro had carte blanche to build a great museum. The result? A breathtaking icon hopeless for displaying art. British architect David Chipperfield relives his gargantuan repair job
Never has so much praise been lavished on so dysfunctional a building. The last major project of modernist master Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie is a perfectly square temple of steel and glass, raised above the street on its own granite acropolis. Built in 1968, not far from the recently erected Berlin Wall, it was intended to symbolise the freedoms of the west, its big black roof enclosing an epic column-free hall for the display of modern art. It has long been venerated as a 20th-century Parthenon, the ultimate example of Mies’s pursuit of “universal space”.
But as a museum, it has always been a disaster. Ever since it opened, the New National Gallery has been dogged by cracking windows, heavy condensation and awkward display spaces, presenting a curatorial nightmare for its staff. Beneath the impractical grand hall are subterranean galleries for the permanent collection that have the dreary feeling of a windowless office complex. It is one of the most extreme examples of the quest for purity of form trumping the demands of function.
Continue reading...By deeply connecting with the people and idyllic landscape of his island, Perry channelled a stream of ideas into mindblowing music
“Until reggae it was all Kingston … Kingston, Kingston, Kingston! Ska? … Rocksteady? … they were Kingston things with the same Kingston men doing the same Kingston things.”
Lee “Scratch” Perry – who has died aged 85 – was talking me through perhaps the most significant gear change in the earlier years of Jamaican music – and was understandably animated, even by his own hyperactive standards.
Continue reading...Ed Asner, a burly and prolific character actor who became a star in middle age as the gruff but lovable newsman Lou Grant, first in the hit comedy The Mary Tyler Moore Show and later in the drama Lou Grant, died on Sunday. He was 91.
Related: Ed Asner obituary
Continue reading...They’re big business … in Hollywood. But did you know Australia also has a small but rich seam of compelling and bizarre superhero movies?
The phrase “nobody makes superhero movies like Australia” has, I dare say, never before been written. Our humble government-subsidised film and TV industry is no more than a lemonade stand in the shadow of Hollywood’s arena spectacular, unable to compete budget-wise with the deep pockets of Tinseltown or produce bombast on the scale of American studios.
But scratch the surface of Australian film and TV history and you will find a small but rich vein of super strange locally made superhero productions with their own – forgive me – true blue je ne sais quoi. Their eclecticism and off-kilter energy provides a refreshing counterpoint to the risk-averse kind falling off the Hollywood assembly line.
Continue reading...This Has Gotta Stop lines include ‘I can’t take this BS any longer’ and follows negative comments about restrictions
Eric Clapton, a staunch critic of measures designed to tackle the Covid pandemic, has released a song entitled This Has Gotta Stop.
While the song does not directly mention lockdown measures or vaccines, the musician has performed on anti-vaccine songs in recent months. His latest offering has been interpreted by some as an attack on the measures recommended by health officials.
Continue reading...Prized collection smuggled across Europe by Jewish owners in 1930s expected to fetch more than $2m
A collection of prized Meissen porcelain smuggled across Europe after its Jewish owners were forced to flee the Nazis and later procured for Hitler before being uncovered in a salt mine by the “Monuments Men”, is to be auctioned in New York next month.
The extraordinary journey that the 18th-century artworks have undergone, reflecting the turmoil of the second world war years, has been reconstructed by art historians and restitution lawyers before their sale by Sotheby’s, the international auction house.
Continue reading...Producer and performer who worked with Bob Marley and pioneered both dub and roots reggae styles dies in hospital in Jamaica
• Obituary: one of Jamaica’s finest and most unpredictable musicians
Lee “Scratch” Perry, whose pioneering work with roots reggae and dub opened up profound new depths in Jamaican music, has died aged 85.
Jamaican media reported the news that he died in hospital in Lucea, northern Jamaica. No cause of death has yet been given. Andrew Holness, the country’s prime minister, sent “deep condolences” to Perry’s family.
Continue reading...Paintings commissioned by East India Company in 18th and 19th century up for sale at Sotheby’s
Remarkable paintings of the flora and fauna of India, including a work once owned by Jackie Kennedy Onassis depicting a stork eating a snail, are to go on sale in the first auction dedicated to Company School art.
Sotheby’s has announced details of a sale that shines light on overlooked Indian artists today regarded as forgotten masters.
Continue reading...She risked arrest, torture and jail to fight racism in 1980s South Africa, and her story is being made into a film
As a white South African, Sue Dobson risked arrest, torture and imprisonment spying for the black nationalist cause during the latter days of the brutal apartheid regime. She was a middle-class woman in her 20s when she joined the African National Congress (ANC) and infiltrated the white minority government – even having a honey-pot affair with a police official to obtain information, with the full support of her husband, a fellow activist. When her cover was blown in 1989, she fled to Britain, where she sought political asylum after threats to her life.
Now, for the first time in 30 years, she is ready to talk publicly about her story – that of a “very ordinary” woman who played an extraordinary part in fighting racism.
Continue reading...Charles Foster’s search for the meaning of human life leads him and his son to become hedgehog-eating hunter-gatherers in a Derbyshire wood
Charles Foster’s previous book, Being a Beast, is one of the oddest things I’ve read. In it, the author, a barrister, professor of law, part-time judge and former vet, attempts to live as a series of animals, often in the company of his charming and heavily dyslexic eight-year-old son, Tom. We see Foster eating worms and burrowing into the earth as a badger, swimming naked as an otter, foraging in bins as a fox. Now Foster is back with a follow-up, Being a Human, which acknowledges the charges of eccentricity and even insanity that were levelled at the last book.
Foster’s new work continues the project of its predecessor, although this time, rather than seeking to understand the brains and bodies of animals, his question is closer to home: what does it mean to be human? He begins with a contentious argument: far from being a story of progress, the history of humanity is one of disenchantment and loss, one where we have severed our links with other species and the natural world more broadly and in which we live meagre, circumscribed lives. “Few of us have any idea what sort of creatures we are,” he says and embarks on a quest to find out.
Continue reading...Three Texas authors expose the myth that the 1836 battle at a San Antonio mission was about freedom. It was about slavery
As the ancient American struggle over how much truth to tell about the traditional oppression of minorities bubbles over, with arguments over everything from the teaching of Critical Race Theory to the mention of anything gay in the presence of anyone under 18, this engaging new book about the history of the Alamo arrives at the perfect moment.
Related: Our Own Worst Enemy review: a caustic diagnosis of America after Trump
Continue reading...As the high school comedy returns for a third series, its Bafta-winning star talks about stage fright, embarrassing scenes, and the torment that lay behind her desire to please people
In June, Aimee Lou Wood, 26, won a Bafta for best female performance in a comedy programme for her role as another Aimee (a teenager) in the hit Netflix show Sex Education, about a set of sexually active high school students, now returning for a third series. Even before the Bafta, Wood was always being stopped in the street. Fans wanted to talk to her, about Sex Education, about everything, because they related to her so strongly. Wood is naturally so friendly, she’d engage in conversation and make herself late. Then she starred opposite Bill Nighy in the forthcoming Oliver Hermanus film, Living: “Obviously, every single person recognises Bill Nighy, and he handles it with such grace,” Wood says, when we meet to talk in a north London photo studio. “With people in the street, I was like [she mock hyperventilates]: ‘Did I say the right thing? Was I nice enough?’ Now I’m learning to be: ‘Thank you so much!’ and carry on walking.”
It’s easy to see why fans relate to Wood: never mind the dazzling prettiness, she’s sparky, warm and expressive. She comes from a working-class family in Stockport, Greater Manchester, and although, following her parents’ divorce, her mother’s new partner paid for her to attend a private secondary school, she kept her rich Mancunian tones: “I sound like my mum and I like that. I like that I sound like where I’m from.”
Continue reading...Many shops plan to open early for the arrival of Sally Rooney’s latest novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You next month
When they were children they lined the streets in their witch hats and capes, keen to pick up the latest Harry Potter title as bookshops opened their doors at midnight. Now they are a little older, the prospect of a tussle with some millennial emotions could see them queuing around the block again on 7 September, as dozens of bookshops plan to open early for the arrival of Sally Rooney’s latest novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You.
In a nationwide promotional push, prompted by signs of big public demand, freshly printed copies of the Irish author’s third novel are to be served to customers with special commemorative merchandise as they enjoy a coffee and pastry.
Continue reading...After a summer of free entry, visitors will now have to pay up to £8 to climb the London project. But will they bother?
It has been called a “BTec Eiffel Tower” and a “slag heap”. It’s been compared to “a car-park Santa’s grotto, with dogs pretending to be reindeer”. The Marble Arch Mound, the temporary artificial hill commissioned by Westminster city council as an “ambitious” visitor attraction, has become, as a representative of the local community put it, “an international laughing stock”.
The council responded to criticism by allowing free entry during August, and a certain number of the curious and the ghoulishly fascinated have turned up. This week it will start charging again. Given fundamental flaws in the project’s conception, the question is whether people will want to pay £8 for a weekend fast-track ticket now, any more than they did when it first opened at the end of July.
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