These 1716 sketches are part of the Royal Academy’s exhibition of Jean-Antoine Watteau, the first of its kind in Britain
ART
Watteau: The DrawingsRoyal Academy of Arts, 12th March-5th June, Tel: 020 7300 8000
Esprit et Vérité: Watteau and His CircleThe Wallace Collection, 12th March-5th June, Tel: 020 7563 9500 The Royal Academy is hosting the first major exhibition of Jean-Antoine Watteau’s drawings to be held in this country. This seems remarkable, given how the French artist valued his drawings; binding them in volumes to provide a permanent source of ideas for his paintings. Within a few years of his death in 1721, over 300 of his drawings had been published as etchings. Red chalk was a constant but he is known above all for his mastery of drawing in trois crayons: red, black and white. These are delicate scenes from Parisian life: the stout Persian gentleman; a woman seated on the ground in a striped dress; a young girl in a jaunty black hat, sketched from three angles (see above); a page of elegant soldiers swinging their guns.
To complement this show, the Wallace, home to one of the world’s finest collections of Watteau’s paintings, focuses on his dealer and publisher, Jean de Jullienne. It was he who first sold Watteau’s work to a new market of bankers, artists and other dealers, not associated with the royal court. He ensured that the artist’s subtle, charming, deceptively lightweight response to his baroque forerunners became the central defining influence on French rococo.
Emma Crichton-Miller
FILM
Submarine On general release from 18th March
Richard Ayoade, the ultra-timid star of television show The IT Crowd, has perched himself in the director’s chair of a full length British feature film with the ambition of someone who might just be deadly serious. It turns out to be an inventive and funny directorial debut. Submarine is adapted from Joe Dunthorne’s novel about Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts), a briefcase-wielding self-important adolescent with a huge crush on schoolgirl Jordana Bevan (Yasmin Paige). They live in a Swansea backwater, where it appears there’s little for teenagers to do but obsess. As if the huge potential embarrassments of young lust were not impediment enough to Oliver’s grandiose plans, he suspects his repressed mother (Sally Hawkins) of having an affair with a new age therapist neighbour (Paddy Considine) and is infuriated by the lack of interest shown by his father (Noah Taylor).
There’s more than a hint of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, but Ayoade has clearly also absorbed a lot of earlier great cinema. He’s very adept at catching that effervescent mix of callowness, off-beat chic, beach-worship and genuine romantic fondness that characterised the best of the early French new wave films.
Nick James
POP MUSIC
Screamadelica 20th Anniversary Tour, Primal ScreamOpens 14th March, O2 Academy, Leeds. Ends 26th March, O2 Academy, Brixton
If you can’t remember dancing to Primal Scream’s anthem “Loaded” back in 1991, you missed out on a seven-minute, four-chord medley of brass, organ, acid house piano and stylised guitars, reinforced by Peter Fonda’s anarchic proclamation, “We wanna be free, to do what we wanna do…” Now a wedding-disco favourite, the track was the pinnacle of their Mercury Prize-winning album Screamadelica, which grouped the rhythms and licks of gospel, house and rock under one big party tent, setting a musical agenda for years to come.
The band are celebrating the 20th anniversary of Screamadelica by performing the album in full over a nine-night tour across Britain in March. They are also releasing a boxset containing candy-coloured vinyl, as well a deluxe edition remastered by My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields. Those suffering from winter blues could do worse than revisit this gem of indie pop rapture.
Nick Crowe
CLASSICAL MUSIC
The Choral Pilgrimage 2011, The Sixteen11th March-4th November, various British venues, Tel: 020 7936 3420
What others would call a nationwide tour, Harry Christophers and The Sixteen describe as their Choral Pilgrimage. Christophers is founder and conductor of the early music choral group, and this annual procession through some of the country’s finest cathedrals, churches and halls is a hugely popular fixture. This year, the eleventh in the sequence, The Sixteen will perform a programme of works in praise of the Virgin Mary by the 16th-century Spanish master Tomás Luis de Victoria.
No ensemble of this era has opened more ears to Renaissance polyphony than The Sixteen, and Christophers supplements several of the concerts with workshops and educational events. The combination of the repertoire, the performers (Eamonn Dougan stands in for Christophers on a couple of dates) and the incomparable venues makes these concerts—which start in Oxford in March and conclude in Brighton in early November—unmissable.
Martin Kettle
THEATRE
The Umbrellas of CherbourgDir Emma Rice, Gielgud Theatre, previews from 5th March, runs to 1st October
The 1964 Jacques Demy movie, with a great score by Michel Legrand, was an art house sensation: a “through-sung” musical before they existed, with a bitter, fairytale romance between Catherine Deneuve’s shop girl and Guy Foucher’s hunky garage attendant. It’s a cinematic masterpiece and shows where modern musical theatre has gone wrong—no sex, yearning, or beauty (apart from The Phantom of the Opera). Instead, the west end is awash with back-catalogue pop songs, from Queen to Abba and The Jersey Boys, plus The Wizard of Oz titivated by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
This might be different: a complete overhaul by the innovative Kneehigh company, who did such an excellent job on Noël Coward’s Brief Encounter, finding interactive language between screen and stage, and a new way of defining onstage romance without resorting to cliché or sentimentality.
Olivier-award winner Joanna Riding plays the widowed mother, and cabaret artiste Meow Meow (who’s been “curated” by David Bowie, Pina Bausch and Mikhail Baryshnikov) takes the Deneuve role.
Michael Coveney
EXHIBITION
Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient WorldBritish Museum, 3rd March–3rd July
This show is a useful corrective to the violent narrative of modern Afghanistan. It displays a breathtaking sweep of objects that illustrate the rich cultural life of a region which was once a nexus of trade routes.
There are over 200 items, some dating as early as 2000 BC, which were saved by a handful of officials from the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul. They were gathered during a period of archaeological exploration between 1937 and 1978, but research ceased when the Soviets invaded the country in 1979. Many of these treasures were feared lost in the subsequent civil war and the rise of the Taliban who sought to destroy all traces of such an artistic or cosmopolitan history.
Ranging from ancient statuary to intricate golden jewellery, these objects tell the story of a thriving nation open to a host of international cultures from China to Greece. An intriguing example of the wealth of Afghanistan’s nomadic people is a gold crown from the 1st century AD; exquisitely crafted in hundreds of pieces, it is designed to be folded for ease of travel and concealment.
On loan from the National Museum of Afghanistan, the exhibition marks the first time in over 40 years that a show of Afghan art has been held in Britain. Once dismissed as the “graveyard of empires,” the Afghanistan that emerges tells a different story, one no longer written in blood and opium, but in lively cultural exchange.
Hester Westley
ART
Watteau: The DrawingsRoyal Academy of Arts, 12th March-5th June, Tel: 020 7300 8000
Esprit et Vérité: Watteau and His CircleThe Wallace Collection, 12th March-5th June, Tel: 020 7563 9500 The Royal Academy is hosting the first major exhibition of Jean-Antoine Watteau’s drawings to be held in this country. This seems remarkable, given how the French artist valued his drawings; binding them in volumes to provide a permanent source of ideas for his paintings. Within a few years of his death in 1721, over 300 of his drawings had been published as etchings. Red chalk was a constant but he is known above all for his mastery of drawing in trois crayons: red, black and white. These are delicate scenes from Parisian life: the stout Persian gentleman; a woman seated on the ground in a striped dress; a young girl in a jaunty black hat, sketched from three angles (see above); a page of elegant soldiers swinging their guns.
To complement this show, the Wallace, home to one of the world’s finest collections of Watteau’s paintings, focuses on his dealer and publisher, Jean de Jullienne. It was he who first sold Watteau’s work to a new market of bankers, artists and other dealers, not associated with the royal court. He ensured that the artist’s subtle, charming, deceptively lightweight response to his baroque forerunners became the central defining influence on French rococo.
Emma Crichton-Miller
FILM
Submarine On general release from 18th March
Richard Ayoade, the ultra-timid star of television show The IT Crowd, has perched himself in the director’s chair of a full length British feature film with the ambition of someone who might just be deadly serious. It turns out to be an inventive and funny directorial debut. Submarine is adapted from Joe Dunthorne’s novel about Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts), a briefcase-wielding self-important adolescent with a huge crush on schoolgirl Jordana Bevan (Yasmin Paige). They live in a Swansea backwater, where it appears there’s little for teenagers to do but obsess. As if the huge potential embarrassments of young lust were not impediment enough to Oliver’s grandiose plans, he suspects his repressed mother (Sally Hawkins) of having an affair with a new age therapist neighbour (Paddy Considine) and is infuriated by the lack of interest shown by his father (Noah Taylor).
There’s more than a hint of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, but Ayoade has clearly also absorbed a lot of earlier great cinema. He’s very adept at catching that effervescent mix of callowness, off-beat chic, beach-worship and genuine romantic fondness that characterised the best of the early French new wave films.
Nick James
POP MUSIC
Screamadelica 20th Anniversary Tour, Primal ScreamOpens 14th March, O2 Academy, Leeds. Ends 26th March, O2 Academy, Brixton
If you can’t remember dancing to Primal Scream’s anthem “Loaded” back in 1991, you missed out on a seven-minute, four-chord medley of brass, organ, acid house piano and stylised guitars, reinforced by Peter Fonda’s anarchic proclamation, “We wanna be free, to do what we wanna do…” Now a wedding-disco favourite, the track was the pinnacle of their Mercury Prize-winning album Screamadelica, which grouped the rhythms and licks of gospel, house and rock under one big party tent, setting a musical agenda for years to come.
The band are celebrating the 20th anniversary of Screamadelica by performing the album in full over a nine-night tour across Britain in March. They are also releasing a boxset containing candy-coloured vinyl, as well a deluxe edition remastered by My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields. Those suffering from winter blues could do worse than revisit this gem of indie pop rapture.
Nick Crowe
CLASSICAL MUSIC
The Choral Pilgrimage 2011, The Sixteen11th March-4th November, various British venues, Tel: 020 7936 3420
What others would call a nationwide tour, Harry Christophers and The Sixteen describe as their Choral Pilgrimage. Christophers is founder and conductor of the early music choral group, and this annual procession through some of the country’s finest cathedrals, churches and halls is a hugely popular fixture. This year, the eleventh in the sequence, The Sixteen will perform a programme of works in praise of the Virgin Mary by the 16th-century Spanish master Tomás Luis de Victoria.
No ensemble of this era has opened more ears to Renaissance polyphony than The Sixteen, and Christophers supplements several of the concerts with workshops and educational events. The combination of the repertoire, the performers (Eamonn Dougan stands in for Christophers on a couple of dates) and the incomparable venues makes these concerts—which start in Oxford in March and conclude in Brighton in early November—unmissable.
Martin Kettle
THEATRE
The Umbrellas of CherbourgDir Emma Rice, Gielgud Theatre, previews from 5th March, runs to 1st October
The 1964 Jacques Demy movie, with a great score by Michel Legrand, was an art house sensation: a “through-sung” musical before they existed, with a bitter, fairytale romance between Catherine Deneuve’s shop girl and Guy Foucher’s hunky garage attendant. It’s a cinematic masterpiece and shows where modern musical theatre has gone wrong—no sex, yearning, or beauty (apart from The Phantom of the Opera). Instead, the west end is awash with back-catalogue pop songs, from Queen to Abba and The Jersey Boys, plus The Wizard of Oz titivated by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
This might be different: a complete overhaul by the innovative Kneehigh company, who did such an excellent job on Noël Coward’s Brief Encounter, finding interactive language between screen and stage, and a new way of defining onstage romance without resorting to cliché or sentimentality.
Olivier-award winner Joanna Riding plays the widowed mother, and cabaret artiste Meow Meow (who’s been “curated” by David Bowie, Pina Bausch and Mikhail Baryshnikov) takes the Deneuve role.
Michael Coveney
EXHIBITION
Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient WorldBritish Museum, 3rd March–3rd July
This show is a useful corrective to the violent narrative of modern Afghanistan. It displays a breathtaking sweep of objects that illustrate the rich cultural life of a region which was once a nexus of trade routes.
There are over 200 items, some dating as early as 2000 BC, which were saved by a handful of officials from the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul. They were gathered during a period of archaeological exploration between 1937 and 1978, but research ceased when the Soviets invaded the country in 1979. Many of these treasures were feared lost in the subsequent civil war and the rise of the Taliban who sought to destroy all traces of such an artistic or cosmopolitan history.
Ranging from ancient statuary to intricate golden jewellery, these objects tell the story of a thriving nation open to a host of international cultures from China to Greece. An intriguing example of the wealth of Afghanistan’s nomadic people is a gold crown from the 1st century AD; exquisitely crafted in hundreds of pieces, it is designed to be folded for ease of travel and concealment.
On loan from the National Museum of Afghanistan, the exhibition marks the first time in over 40 years that a show of Afghan art has been held in Britain. Once dismissed as the “graveyard of empires,” the Afghanistan that emerges tells a different story, one no longer written in blood and opium, but in lively cultural exchange.
Hester Westley
