Prospero

SOME may never forgive Alexander McQueen for introducing us to the bumster: a low-slung trouser that delivered an eyeful of “bum cleavage”. Elongating and sexy on the runway, it was often less fetching on the high street. But like it or not, it was a typical twist on the ordinary by the British fashion designer. Following his death last year from suicide, his masterful creations and gothic imagination are the subject of an excellent new exhibition, “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty”, at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The clothes are breathtaking; resplendent and jarring, come-closer and run away all at once. The pieces are arranged to illustrate the evolution of McQueen’s talent and taste over nearly two decades of work. His creations are uniquely intelligent, and every turn of this show is infused with his character.
 
The first room appears simple, with some faceless mannequins dressed in McQueen’s tailoring. But the effect is an education: eyes are swiftly trained to drink in the precise curves of the fabric; the sharp lines and poised silhouettes. McQueen once explained that he approached his designs from the side, to get the biggest challenges out of the way first—all those lumps and bumps, bottoms and breasts. As we make our way into the next room, this doesn’t feel like a show about fashion. The atmosphere is far too dramatic for that, and our attention is too keen. We are gazing open-mouthed at garments that don't seem like clothes. But then, of course, they are.

Curated by Andrew Bolton, the exhibition gathers pace with a series of bewitching scenes arranged thematically (eg, romantic exoticism, romantic primitivism). Corsets and frockcoats steeped in bleak Victorian melancholy give way to Masai-inspired necklines and beading. An artful mutation of an American football uniform comes swathed in the lilacs and green of Japanese prints. Each room is arranged to enhance the marvellous clothes, as clips from his otherworldly runway shows play in the background.

Continue reading "Savage beauty, dark nature"»

THE directions have led me to a military checkpoint underneath Waterloo station. Officials scrutinise my census paper, and I’m nodded through. A soldier reaches around his machinegun into his pocket, slips me a token and whispers “Free drinks for the French”. I’m not French, but I have come dressed as a smart European from the late 1950s (below-the-knee skirt and a foulard) to experience the latest event from Secret Cinema.

I was first tipped-off about Secret Cinema by a friend who had heard about it from a colleague; most attendees discover it through the grapevine. True to its name, it doesn’t advertise overtly, but has an understated website where you can register for information about forthcoming events and purchase tickets. Ever since a few hundred people gathered to watch “Paradise Park” one night in December 2007, Secret Cinema has snowballed. During a three-week run of screenings this spring (which ended this past weekend), 12,000 attendees (including me) ended up descending on the Old Vic Tunnels for a mysterious cinematic adventure. In the past year Secret Cinema has held events in Berlin and New York, and organisers are scouting for locations in Rome.

Tickets are released about a month before the event, and sometimes sell out within hours. We buy them without knowing which film will be shown, or where, but they promise a unique experience: a screening (probably a cult classic) in a lively atmosphere that includes characters re-enacting scenes, thematic installations, related food and drink and some audience interaction. Events take place every couple of months, and each one is held in a different unknown location in London—a derelict theatre, a disused hospital, underground tunnels—revealed to ticket-buyers only days before. The company’s website is deliberately oblique, but it is the gateway to a lively presence across social-networking sites, where organisers plant clues and fans try to guess the next film.

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WHEN Commodore Perry convinced the Japanese to open ports to the west in 1854, their country had been isolated for two centuries. Europeans and Americans were amazed by what they saw. Traders started carrying back objects and works of art, and western artists and artisans began making work influenced by the Japanese aesthetic and techniques. This is obvious in the colours and compositions of Edouard Vuillard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and above all Vincent van Gogh. Between 1886, when Van Gogh arrived in Paris to stay with his brother Theo, and 1888, when he left for Provence, the brothers acquired hundreds of ukiyo-e or woodblock prints. Some of them can be seen on the walls of his radiant paintings of the period.
 
But Japonisme, the name given to works influenced by Japan’s arts, was not confined to the creations of painters. Designers of textiles, furniture and gardens were also inspired by their Japanese counterparts, as were gold and silversmiths. Westerners were captivated by the attentiveness, poetry and wit of Japanese observations of nature. This aesthetic is now the subject of a rare exhibition in London, which opens today. Wartski, a London-based antiques dealer that specialises in jewellery, is staging a loan show of some 160 objects made of precious metal and jewels, all created between 1867 and 1917. There are tea pots and cigarette cases, flasks, spoons and jewellery. A benefit for the Prince’s Trust, the show counts Prince Charles among its lenders. (The Fabergé seal in which a plump, green nephrite frog with diamond eyes straddles a graceful pink enamelled column is his; Wartski also made the gold wedding band that Prince William slid onto his bride’s finger last month.) The show includes work from other famous jewellers, including Lalique, Falize and Tiffany.
 
A rare pendant by Fernand Thesmar, a renowned enameller, shows a damsel fly perched on a bright green lily pad. Thesmar’s application of three translucent dew drops brings the image to life. Chrysanthemums, sometimes called Japan’s national flower, were the inspiration for a splendid diamond-set dress ornament by Vever (pictured). Each of the many petals of the two flowers is a long, narrow Mississippi River pearl. There are some lovely hair ornaments, too. One, from the firm of Georges Fouquet, is made of translucent horn decorated with diamond-studded facsimiles of sycamore seed pods.
  
Wartski is a famous dealer in Fabergé. Here Fabergé loans include acrobatic frogs, nestling rabbits, smiling rats, wicked monkeys and cuddling puppies carved from semi-precious stones. Many have jewelled eyes. Readers of “The Hare with Amber Eyes” (a current bestseller in Britain, reviewed by The Economist here) will immediately recognise the influence of netsuke—Japanese toggles carved from ivory or wood. It turns out that Fabergé owned some 500 netsuke, quite a few of which are visible in a photograph of his St Petersburg apartment in this show.

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IN BOSSA nova lore, there may be few stories more charming than the creation myth behind Elenco Records. One morning in 1961, so the story goes, Aloysio de Oliveira, a representative at Philips Records, arrived at his office in Rio de Janeiro. A prime mover in the world of bossa nova—a modern genre of  music that mixes Brazilian samba and cool jazz—his career had known better days. The sound Mr Oliveira had helped foster was losing momentum on the charts, in large part because of the company he worked for. To reach the coveted American market, Philips sidelined the Brazilian stars Mr Oliveira brought with him to the label. Bossa nova artists tended to be the backroom players of American show business, their roles reduced to providing novelty to the acts of performers such as Pat Boone and Sammy Davis, junior.

So that morning in Mr Oliveira's office, he evidently found a cockroach waiting inside the top drawer of his desk. Something about this vision of vermin clicked inside the company man, and he decided it was time to leave Philips's bossa nova ghetto. What happened next can be heard in a new set of CDs released by Soul Jazz Records: "Brazil Bossa Beat!: Bossa Nova and the Story of Elenco Records, Brazil" offers a 23-track survey of the fruits of Mr Oliveira's tumultuous split from Philips. Bossa nova would bloom like an eccentric orchid.

In 1962 Mr Oliveira helped organise a groundbreaking concert at Carnegie Hall in New York. The show placed Joáo Gilberto and Luiz Bonfá alongside two jazz greats, Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd. Messrs Gilberto and Getz would return the following year with a worldwide smash, the definitive version of "The Girl from Ipanema", an upbeat song written by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes and inspired by a supple 15-year-old carioca, but which deals obliquely with an awareness of mortality.

Mr Oliveira's involvement in the Carnegie Hall show was merely prologue. In 1963 he started Elenco Records on a shoestring in São Paulo. It became the quintessential bossa nova label—what Sun was to rock'n'roll, or Studio One was to reggae. Elenco was a kind of finishing school for the music. When the sound first appeared on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro in the early ‘50s, it was a mongrel with mysterious origins. By 1968, the year Mr Oliveira sold Elenco, bossa nova was the smartest come-on at the party and the soundtrack to cosmopolitan life. Brazilian pop music had moved from the shore to the penthouse.

On "Brazil Bossa Beat!", familiar tunes such as “Berimbau” (sung by its writer, Mr Moraes) are played at slower tempos and allowed to stretch out. The tracks include two stand-out performances from Quarteto Em Cy, a girl group branded in the Brill Building mode, including the jaunty “Amaralina”.

The collection runs hot to cold, ardent red to lonesome blue—it soothes and abrades. The variations are so numerous that a dozen songs in, the word “genre” begins to ring false. More accurately, bossa nova was a musical frame through which local musicians and poets viewed the rapid modernisation of Brazil. The country's economic boom continued into the mid-1960s, when, by way of a coup d'état, a militarised government took the reins, and held them until 1985. Yet the music Mr Oliveira issued from São Paulo reconciled the two seductive moods sweeping through Brazilian society: sumptuous living and revolution, froth and fright, nylon strings and gunmetal drums. Elenco encompassed all these things. 

"Brazil Bossa Beat!: Bossa Nova and the Story of Elenco Records, Brazil", released by Soul Jazz Records, is out now

WE ARE all going to die. Artists have been trying to pass this message on for centuries, for better or worse. The profundity of death can yield some pretty banal work. Perhaps the message is most profound when it is expressed obliquely, as with the art in "Still Life", a new exhibition of work by six contemporary British and American artists at the Lismore Castle. Though the multimedia show is about exploring "the status of images as objects" and the "relationship between painting, photography and the moving image", closer scrutiny reveals that these works are really about death.

Lismore Castle is well off the beaten track, in the sleepiest of sleepy Irish villages. First built in 1185, the castle now sits amid seven acres of beautifully tended gardens. While wandering up the long drive, the last thing a visitor might anticipate is an exhibition curated by Polly Staple, a judge for the 2010 Turner prize who spends most of her time directing events at Chisenhale gallery in London. The result is a welcome surprise (despite the grim subject).

Upon entering the show, the first work one sees is a video by Mark Leckey, who won the Turner in 2008. "Made In 'Eaven" (2004) is a short looped video featuring Jeff Koons's silver inflatable sculpture "Rabbit" in an otherwise empty and slightly rundown room. The camera moves around and towards the sculpture in the slow, wide-angled style of an estate agent's video brochure. But as the lens moves in on the rabbit's mirror-like surface, we fail to see a reflection of the camera or cameraman. The room appears vacant, void of even the person creating the film. The effect is disconcerting.

The exhibition also includes Gillian Carnegie's virtuoso monochrome paintings of flowers in a vase passing through various stages of decay, and Seth Price's "Vintage Bomber" (2008). Presented slightly apart from the other works, in its own room and up a flight of stairs, the atmosphere around "Vintage Bomber" invokes the experience of a mausoleum. It features the outline of a bomber jacket vacuum packed in a plastic casing, like a frieze sculpture in polystyrene. Upon first glance the work looks robust, like a car dashboard. But upon closer inspection it becomes clear that we are looking at a fragile memorial to an object (a person?) no longer present. It records a trace of humanity, homage to impermanence.

The exhibition encourages the viewer to engage not only with the art works but also with their extraordinary historic setting. Ms Staple invited Richard Wright (a 2009 Turner prize winner) to create a site-specific installation not in the gallery, but in a tiny, round garden building known as the Monkey Tower. Centuries of development at Lismore Castle are heavily documented, but nobody knows why the Monkey Tower was built. This mystery adds a poetic, real-life dimension to the curatorial concerns of loss and transience. The inner walls of the Tower's small stone structure have been plastered and covered by Mr Wright with an intricate pattern of hand-painted black triangles on a white background. This mural is mesmerising—a stark pattern in an otherwise cold and damp building. It is already starting to disintegrate, and after September 30th it will be painted over and gone forever, sustained only in photographs and recollections.

Mr Wright's work is a fitting end to this contemplative and philosophical exhibition—one that left this viewer reflecting on what it is to be alive in the knowledge that, before long, she will unavoidably cease to be so.

"Still Life", Lismore Castle Arts, until September 30th

Picture  Credit: Lismore Castle Arts

MAY I offer you some warm, bacteria-ridden dough topped with rotten milk and discs of rotten meat? No? That is a pepperoni pizza. If that sounds too unappetising, substitute "bacteria-ridden" with “risen” (pizza crust, like bread, relies on the work of a unicellular fungus known as Saccharomyces cerevisiae—or, more commonly, yeast), and "rotten" with “fermented”. The cheese and meat are both the delicious product of bacteria.

Fermentation preserves: saucisson lasts far longer and is easier to keep at room temperature than fresh pork. Sauerkraut and kimchi last longer than fresh cabbage. Paradoxically, fermentation can also make food safer to consume: for centuries in Europe it was easier to find potable beer than water. And it often makes food taste better. After being shot, game birds are hung to age; some believe they should be served only after their heads have fallen off.

The line between fermentation and rot is pretty thin. The only useful distinction between the two may be that rot produces something that tastes bad and fermentation produces something that tastes good. Or at least something that some of us enjoy, and often after an initial hesitation—even revulsion. The thought of eating blue cheese happens to make me queasy; it always has. But while I recoiled at first from the fermented fish pastes and sauces of South-East Asia, I could not now imagine my pantry without them, in both their liquid and solid states. The fermented fish provides a nice salty taste along with a serious jolt of "umami"—a meaty, rich savouriness. They are cellos where soy sauces and salt are violins. Used raw in combination with chilies, shallots and lime juice in a nuoc cham sauce, they not only complement the other ingredients, but undergird them all. Fish sauces provide structure. Shaken into long-simmering soups and stocks, they add complexity and depth.

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SUMMER reading is high-stakes. For those who otherwise submit to a rigorous reading regime, summer offers the chance to loosen up. Humid days invite a dip into the odd bestseller or waterlogged favourite. But some take the opposite tack, composing lists of all the classics they've been meaning to read and heading bravely to the library. Those with mixed inclinations seek books capable of addressing several impulses at once: a literary novel with a twisty-turny plot, say, or a history of something like an oyster.

Siri Hustvedt's "The Summer Without Men" fits into the final category. Mia Frederickson, the novel's heroine, is a 55-year-old poet whose husband of 30 years has just left her for a young French neuroscientist. The betrayal induces something called Brief Psychotic Disorder, a condition "which means that you are genuinely crazy but not for long". Seeking a change of pace, Mia decides to jettison Brooklyn for her Minnesota hometown. Here she reconnects with her mother, hangs out with a group of elderly women and teaches poetry to a class of seven pubescent girls.

As with Nicholson Baker's "The Anthologist", "The Summer Without Men" is a largely plotless story narrated by a poet. Lest that scare anyone (or everyone) away, note that Ms Hustvedt's effort, like Mr Baker's, is compelling thanks to the ever-intelligent, ever-askew quality of the author's observations. Of her former marriage, the narrator observes that "We had come to the point where listening to a story or anecdote at a dinner party would simultaneously prompt the same thought in our two heads, and it was simply a matter of which one of us would articulate it aloud." A seventh-grade girl in her class is neatly characterised in one sentence: "Ashley Larsen, sleek brown hair, slightly protruding eyes, walked and sat with the self-conscious air that comes with a newly acquired erogenous zone".

Despite the crack-up, Mia's mind is in fine form: she's learned and thoughtful; her head is stuffed with Freud, Hegel, Rilke and Blake. The novel includes her journal entries, poems and e-mails, including excerpts from a notebook she dedicates to documenting her pre-marriage sexual adventures. It never feels cluttered. Meanwhile, a mystery keeps the pages turning: from her Minnesota outpost Mia receives anonymous missives from a cruel e-mailer who goes by "Mr Nobody" ("I know all about you. You're Insane, Crazy, Bonkers"). Ms Hustvedt is an author in full control of her material; what might have been a mess is instead the ideal prescription for those indecisive readers who want a bit of everything in their summer investments.

“The Summer Without Men" by Siri Hustvedt, published by Picador in America and Sceptre in Britain, is out now

THE Hollywood version of me: a young starlet with impossibly shiny hair and a tweed blazer. She was playing a Columbia economics PhD candidate with a dissertation that sounded a lot like mine, on a network sitcom written by my ex-boyfriend. The principal character on the sitcom is his television alter-ego, and the fashionable economist played his new love interest. My actual relationship with the comedy writer was brief and definitely over. So I was surprised that such a short and unsatisfying relationship would inspire anything at all. Did my former boyfriend just need material? Did he realise that every sitcom needs a pretty, young economist? Was he playing out some unresolved feelings for me? In principle, inspiring a sitcom character would seem very romantic. In practice it was flattering, but also uncomfortable and confusing.

The role of the muse—someone who can inspire something wonderful, moving and ever-lasting—occupies a romantic space in our psyche. We’d all like to think we have a little Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel in us. But while she inspired great music, she also had painful and fraught relationships (hence her many surnames). More often than not, if someone creates art about you, it’s probably because the relationship itself was difficult and unfulfilling. Legend has it that the song "You Give Love a Bad Name" was inspired by Jon Bon Jovi’s brief fling with Diane Lane. Bon Jovi ended up marrying and having four children with his high-school sweetheart, but this lasting romance doesn’t seem to have yielded any memorable ditties.  

To an economist, the inspiration behind creativity is a compelling mystery. Creativity fuels innovation, which leads to economic growth. Successful innovation often comes from some form of conflict, a problem that needs solving. Personal turmoil, however, can undermine productivity—that is, unless you work in a creative industry. For artists, personal conflict tends to be a source of inspiration. 

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SO, WHAT'S the economic value of the royal family? All those jewels and palaces, hats and linens. Critics complain that such consolidation of inherited wealth among the lucky few makes little sense in the 21st century (apparently unaware of economic trends of the last decade). Defenders argue that the royal family is not only a source of national pride and idle entertainment but also some sweet tourist lucre, which more than pays for the priggish excesses of this pasty dynasty. (Tim de Lisle at Intelligent Life elegantly claims that both sides are missing the point.)

Annie Lowrey at Slate writes that while the royal family is covering the expense of the wedding and party, taxpayers may be spending up to £10m on police and security (much of the cost is in paying overtime, given that today is a national holiday). Will the sale of tea towels and knick-knacks to tourists really make up the difference? Perhaps:

Companies selling royal memorabilia—paper dolls, commemorative mugs, refrigerators, what have you—already report sales increases of 40 percent, a figure expected to climb. Pricewaterhouse Coopers analyzed the impact on London alone, estimating the benefit from domestic and foreign visitors' spending at £107 million. Retail researchers Verdict estimated a £620 million economy-wide windfall.

But, she writes, all these national holidays still hurt the economy. The Confederation of British Industry estimated in 2007 that each extra bank holiday costs the country around £6 billion. Given the timing of these nuptials, Britons can handily take an 11-day holiday using only three vacation days. (Many have duly taken this opportunity to escape the hordes and hoopla.)

Like the coming Olympics in London, a cost-to-benefit analysis of the wedding day will probably be a wash. For the royal family to earn its keep, they must boost tourism in the long term. And given the magnetism of this couple, luring us all like dumb furry moths to flame, these economic benefits may indeed bear out.

What’s interesting to note is the way the story of Will and Kate has gone against recent trends in celebrity publishing. At a time when the tabloids have never been keener to feed our rabid, schadenfreude-fuelled desire for blood on the tracks, this beatific couple is being held up as an antidote of sorts. There is indeed something thrilling about the purity of their celebrity—so clean and untainted, unearned but not appallingly so. Like the monarchy itself, the couple is a charming anachronism; storybook-friendly with some pleasant contemporary twists (their ages, her family and her university education are all nice touches). The novelty of youth and beauty, love and luxury, is something everyone seems keen to preserve. That is, at least for now.

Picture credit: aurélien (via Flickr)

LONG gone are the days of the traditional first waltz at a wedding. But with Prince William’s stag-do soundtrack best described as an eclectic mix of Bon Jovi, AC/DC, Rihanna and Nickelback, he and Kate Middleton may need a helping hand picking the reception entertainment. Here are eight songs they should be dancing to, all downloadable to the royal iPod.

JAMIE WOON Night Air
While Will Young and James Blunt continue to top the first-dance polls with their lukewarm ballads, a hipper alternative has come along in the shape of this dubstep balladeer. “Night Air” is spacious yet kinaesthetic, steering clear of sentimentality with its clean, undated sound.

PROCOL HARUM A Whiter Shade of Pale 
It’s long in the tooth, globally famous, fondly regarded and faintly ridiculous: yes, this will do nicely for the royals. And the organ fugue is just delicate enough to convince Prince Philip he’s listening to Bach.

PULP Common People
As they head for a comeback, Pulp deserve a place on every wedding dance floor for catching the mood of the 1990s pop culture in which today’s brides and grooms came of age. “Common People”, with its lovably venomous lyrics about class immobility, is most apt.

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FOR an event pronounced “boring” by one American network, the royal wedding is generating a monumental amount of coverage. In Washington, DC, a normally sophisticated bookshop declares itself “your first stop” for the wedding. In the papers, arguments rage about the meaning of the thing. People are indifferent, 20 columnists declare. No we’re not, another 20 retort. “Two cheers for the royal wedding,” says the New Yorker. They’re all missing the point.
 
Look around London and what you see is this: a little fervour, a fair amount of indifference, and plenty of people who find the wedding mildly interesting and gently amusing. The royal family isn’t really an issue: it’s a bit of a laugh.
 
This is Britain, where a whole way of life revolves around cups of tea. By their mugs and tea towels shall ye know them. For the royal weddings of the past, the celebratory crockery and linen in shops was starchy and deferential. This time the tea towels bear drily witty cartoon corgis. “It should have been me,” one pup sighs, neatly satirising both the public and the occasion. A mug from Philosophy Football, suppliers of T-shirts to more rarified sports fans, reads “My other mug supports the abolition of the monarchy”. If it's all too much, there’s also a Royal Wedding sickbag.

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JORGE MACCHI'S studio feels a bit like a tree house. It's on the top floor of his Beaux Arts home in the increasingly gentrified district of Villa Crespo in Buenos Aires. In order to reach his studio, he has to climb a grand historical staircase then walk across a large outdoor terrace, which offers a panoramic view of cirrus clouds that seem brushed onto the sky. For an artist whose work suggests serious daydreaming, the airy location couldn't be more appropriate.
 
Mr Macchi is one of Argentina's most celebrated living artists. His first large exhibition in a European museum will open on April 29th at the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (SMAK) in Ghent, Belgium. The exhibition, titled "Music Stands Still", will contain watercolours made in this room as well as sculptures, installations and videos, the most recent of which were also conceived here. Mr Macchi has another studio in an old "Tango neighbourhood", which he keeps "for the dirty jobs" like oil painting, but his rooftop retreat has become his most important thinking space.
 
The artist spends most mornings here, plotting out his universe on pieces of paper that measure 30cm x 40cm. Keen to remember the images that float through his head, he captures them quickly by sketching. “Drawings can be the first step for developing another kind of work," he explains. On the only solid wall, 30 or so watercolours depict a range of subjects, including pianos in strange states. One piano has keys that mutate into finger-like tubes that tie into knots; another portrays a bird's-eye view of a red balloon sandwiched between two grand pianos. As a teenager, Mr Macchi played piano for five hours a day, but he was better at drawing and ended up in art school. His work still betrays an intense relationship to music, particularly when he renders musical scores as visual objects or composes atonal music out of multi-lane traffic, as in his orchestral "Streamline" video.
 
Contemporary art has become synonymous with conceptual art, but Mr Macchi resists the term. "I am annoyed that everyone thinks I'm a conceptual artist," he says. "For me the work starts with an image, not an idea." How, then, does the artist explain his use of ready-mades, his disregard for virtuoso craftsmanship, and the pleasing conceptual buzzes around globalisation afforded by his work? "I have links with surrealism. I have no problem with that," he says. "And my work is also related to Arte Povera and the transformation of stuff that is thrown away into something that has transcendence."

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