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Author: Jane Wright, Commissioning Editor, Arts & Culture, The Conversation UK
Original article: https://theconversation.com/posh-house-drama-eltons-new-album-and-art-to-make-you-weep-what-to-watch-see-and-listen-to-this-week-254848
This week I’ve seen Disney’s latest bingeable series, The Stolen Girl, variously described as a “posh-house drama”, “the equivalent of an airport novel” and “enjoyably preposterous” – so what’s not to like?
One episode in, I’m lapping up the lavishly immaculate interiors and clipped tones of rich people who call everyone “darling”. And I always enjoy the hilariously shonky portrayal of journalists and the way dramatists think they speak to each other. Local hack Selma to her (extremely mild and unbothered) boss: “I’m sorry I missed the deadline! I was focused on the background story, it’s important.” Boss, rolling his eyes: “Can’t you put an alert on your phone or something?” Selma: “Next time I will, I promise!”
The fact that no newsroom boss has ever spoken like that to a reporter who missed a deadline is neither here nor there. This twisty-turny thriller grabs you by the lapels and doesn’t let go. Private-jet stewardess Elisa and criminal lawyer Fred are horrified to find their daughter Lucia has vanished, after a hastily arranged playdate-turned-sleepover with a new schoolfriend turns out to be a meticulously planned abduction.
But why their daughter? Is there more to Elisa and Fred and their perfect life than meets the eye? From leafy Cheshire to the south of France, their secrets and lies play out, unravelling their once-happy lives. Like the recent Netflix hit Adolescence, social media is a factor in facilitating the crime – but crucially, through the investigations of Selma, also an instrument of solving it.
The Stolen Girl is streaming on Disney now.
Painting and pain
A decade in the making, the National Gallery’s take on the most exciting 50 years of Siena’s artistic production showcases an astonishing array of works. Art history expert Louise Bourdua describes Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350 as “a pleasure for the eye and commendable for its ability to make medieval religious art accessible”.
The exhibition focuses on so much more than the pre-eminent painters Duccio, Simone Martini and brothers Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti. On show is a wealth of Siena’s visual culture represented in illuminated manuscripts, reliquaries (containers for holy relics), sculptures, gold and enamel work, rugs and silks.
Showstoppers include Duccio’s stunning gold-painted Crucifixion triptych, Pietro Lorenzetti’s five-panel altarpiece from the church of Santa Maria della Pieve in Arezzo, and the beautifully carved head of Christ by Lando di Pietro – identified as the creator of the work by the personal handwritten prayers concealed within the sculpture, also on display.
Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350 is at the National Gallery until June 22.
The child of immigrant Jamaican parents growing up in the turbulent Britain of the 1970s and ’80s, Donald Rodney’s artistic expression was shaped by his experience of a socially and racially fractured environment.
His first retrospective exhibition in more than 15 years, Donald Rodney: Visceral Canker at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, is a chance to see the remarkable work of an artist who died at just 36 from sickle-cell anaemia. Described by the Jamaican cultural theorist Stuart Hall as an “emblematically black disease”, it would eventually claim Rodney’s life and that of three of his siblings.
Encapsulating painting, drawing, pastels, photography, sculptural assemblages, installations and computer-generated art, the show reveals an artist who was angry, ambitious and audacious; who meshed his experience of racism with his illness to draw the poisonous connections of slavery and colonialism to a childhood blighted by anti-immigrant sentiment, the rise of the far right, and pain.
But as contemporary art specialist Richard Hylton explains, by the late 1970s and early 80s, these children of black immigrants were becoming adults, and new forms of British cultural identity were being explored – including a whole new wave of artistic expression that saw young black British artists rail against the idea of black youth as the public enemy. Rodney’s work endures as an invitation to look beneath the surface of images and society, to better understand the pernicious workings of inequality and racism.
Donald Rodney: Visceral Canker is at the Whitechapel Gallery until May 4.
The ballad of John and Yoko (and Elton)
Capturing an early 1970s charged with political unrest, anti-war sentiment and media saturation, the new documentary One to One: John & Yoko is a revealing exploration of John Lennon’s post-Beatles life and activism with his Japanese partner, Yoko Ono.
Often dismissed as a pop-star WAG, here Ono is firmly positioned as an artist in her own right. More crucially, we see the influential role she played in nudging Lennon into more radical territory beyond the political songs that emerged in the late-era Beatles. Musically and socially, the pair aimed to galvanise a generation disillusioned by the failure of 1960s “flower-power” to create any kind of genuine social change.
As a researcher of Ono’s performance art, Stephanie Hernandez found the film compelling in its portrayal of Ono’s avant-garde flair and Lennon’s energetic rock‘n’roll style as complementary forces driving their own brand of pop activism.
One to One is in cinemas now.
The irrepressible Elton John is back with a new album, Who Believes in Angels?, a collaboration with country singer Brandi Carlile.
Since 2020, almost half of the 100 biggest tracks have been collaborations. John has done his fair share of musical hook-ups, with luminaries such as Little Richard, Aretha Franklin, George Michael, Eminem and even Luciano Pavarotti. Now his first post-retirement album with the Grammy-winning Carlile has just reached the top spot in the UK album charts.
John has described the making of the album as “one of the greatest musical experiences” of his life. So what is it about this collaboration that has so “utterly revitalised” the 78-year-old showman? Is he not quite ready to leave the limelight? Or is he seeking a challenge across new genres, in hitching his piano to a much younger star from a different part of the musical universe? Glenn Fosbraey, an expert in pop music and performance, explains why John (and many other music legends) won’t let the sun go down just yet.
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