Plastic Bag Awards 2021

2021 has been an odd year, yet again, and continues to be so. Between official lockdowns and self-imposed lockdowns when the government wasn't doing its prime objective of protecting its citizens, I managed to get out and see and do some things over the year. The categories are, again, abbreviated to make sure there are enough contenders to make it worthwhile convening the judging panel, but here they are, the Baggies of 2021! 

Best Theatre (Drama and Dance)

I only saw one drama this year but several dance productions. The nominees are:

'The Normal Heart' @ The National Theatre
'Romeo & Juliet' @ The Royal Opera House
'The Midnight Bell' @ Sadler's Wells
'L'Heure Exquise' @ The Linbury at the Royal Opera House
'Curated by Carlos' @ Sadler's Wells

'The Normal Heart' was the only play I saw this year and, while it's an important work, it's not a great drama. It was wonderful to see Alessandra Ferri dance twice over the autumn, especially dance with Carlos Acosta, I also saw the ballet that made me fall in love with the art form with my original Romeo, Steven McRae on his return to the stage after his injury. But the dance work that made me sit up and pay attention was the new work from Matthew Bourne, 'The Midnight Bell', telling stories of the seedy side of Soho between the wars. I'm looking forward to seeing it again one day.

The winner is 'The Midnight Bell' by Matthew Bourne at Sadler's Wells.

Best Exhibition

I managed to see a few good exhibitions over the summer and autumn, with all major galleries open and the Courtauld finally re-opened after a three-year restoration project in November (and it's looking good). The nominees are:

'The Making of Rodin' @ Tate Modern
'Sensing the Unseen' @ The National Gallery
'Sophie Taeuber-Arp' @ Tate Modern
'Poussin and the Dance' @ The National Gallery
'Durer's Journeys' @ The National Gallery

There have been some great exhibitions this year that gallery curators will have been working on for several years but fewer people than expected will have seen them due to the plague. That's unfortunate but those of us lucky enough to see them are very grateful.

Who knew that Rodin made naked models of his works to get the musculature and stance right before adding clothes? Who guessed that Durer made sketches from his travels around Europe to incorporate into his paintings? There's a lot to learn from exhibitions. I didn't expect to like the Poussin exhibition but I did, seeing his graceful paintings of dancers and it was a joy to discover Sophie Taeuber-Arp, a colour master I'd never heard of. 

But the Baggie goes to 'Sensing the Unseen' at the National Gallery, a digital and interactive exploration of Jan Gossaert's 'Adoration of the Kings'. Not only was this a great painting to explore but it was perfect for this experimental exhibition of different ways of looking at it, one of my favourite paintings in the collection.

Best Installation

This year I've split off installations from exhibitions since they are, essentially, different things, different ways of experiencing art. The nominees are:

'Rupture No 1: blowtorching the bitten peach' by Heather Phillipson @ Tate Britain
'Infinity Mirror Rooms' by Yayoi Kusama @ Tate Modern
'Forest for Change' @ Somerset House
'In Love With The World' by Anicka Yi @ Tate Modern

This has been a fine year for installations in London and I admit to wanting a holiday cottage in Kusama's Infinity Mirror Rooms. I loved the 'Forest' in the stone courtyard of Somerset House and I want to adopt one of the alien creatures floating round the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, but the winner is Heather Phillipson at Tate Britain.

This is a fabulous installation that should be called 'The Great All-Seeing God of a Thousand Eyes' and I can't help but gawp at it as I walk through and experience it. It's a sound and vision experience and occupies the central galleries of the Tate. It's fabulous.

Best Face Mask

The pandemic went on from 2020 into 2021 and more places started selling masks since the need continued. Cressida Bell produced a 'Fireworks' mask and the V&A Museum produced different William Morris designed masks (I bought a green one), but the award goes to the Tate that produced a fabulous mask based on the 'Punjabi Rockers' work by Chila Kumari Singh Burman. I bought two.  

And that's it, the reduced Plastic Bag Awards for 2021. Here's hoping we can get closer to normal next year. 

'Duncan Grant: 1920' at Charleston House

The first solo show of Duncan Grant's works in the last 40 years is on at Charleston at the moment, a re-creation of his first solo show in 1920. I do find it odd that Grant isn't more prominent in exhibitions while his contemporaries seem to be exhibited. I've seen his paintings in group or thematic exhibitions many times but not an exhibition about him. The exhibition is in the new gallery at Charleston House in Sussex.

The first painting you see is 'Venus and Adonis', one of my favourite works of his that I saw at an exhibition about Sussex modernist works at Two Temple Place a few years ago. The huge pink Venus lounging lazily after what I hope was a very lusty session while the tiny Adonis runs away in the distance. You actually have to look for Adonis (if you don't know where he is).  It's an odd composition is some ways - the swag curtain taking up so much space, the contorted body of Venus and the jug in the foreground. The colours are rich and deep. There's something about it that just makes it work as an artistic statement, a very calm painting despite the subject matter.

The largest painting in the exhibition is 'Interior' set in the dining room at Charleston and features Vanessa Bell and David Garnett, both working. Vanessa is painting a still life of the fruit on the table (interestingly using a chair as an easel) and Garnett is working on a translation. A stray chair is in the immediate foreground with a highlight that draws the eye. We also don't see all of either character, both their bodies are cut off in some way. There's a lot to read and wonder about in this painting. 

There are a few flower paintings and interesting still lives and I particularly liked 'Still Life with Flowers' with the red of the poppies really popping out. It's painted from the side and the jug is overpowered by flowers (apparently he used that jug in other paintings around the time of making this painting). Wouldn't you want that jug of flowers on a table in your home? 

It's an interesting approach to an exhibition, re-creating an artist's first exhibition, and this was definitely worth seeing. I'm surprised that more exhibitions aren't curated on this kind of theme.

'The Normal Heart' at the National Theatre

My last theatre play before the pandemic was 'The Visit' on the Olivier stage at the National Theatre and my return to plays was 'The Normal Heart', also on the Olivier stage. 'The Normal Heart' is an odd play in some ways, very autobiographical by Larry Kramer about the AIDS crisis in early '80s New York and written in 1985 while the crisis was still raging and turning into a world-wide epidemic. 

The play starts with the characters assembling on stage, lights go down and the 'thump, thump, thump' sound of Donna Summer's 'I Feel Love' blasts out into the auditorium for a few seconds  and we see the characters pull their shirts off and dance in spotlights before it all vanishes and we're in a doctor's waiting room meeting the first casualty of the epidemic. The hedonism before the tragic results. I's quite a powerful move.

The play and the arguments start with endless words, words, words, shouting and confrontation. It's not the easiest of plays to watch, especially if you're around my age and lived through it all. The strange cancer gradually comes to be associated with gay men and with sex and Ned Weeks, the lead character, feels the need to tell his community about it. But others who fought for equal rights feel that you can't tell men how to live their lives after finally finding (relative) freedom. That's the premise of the play, the results of the freedom to be out and enjoy life openly versus the emerging medical epidemic that calls for restraint.

There's a lot of polemic on both sides of the argument - 'it's my right to have lots of sex' versus 'be careful' - and I can't help but feel that this would've benefited from a good edit to make the play flow better rather than get stuck in a position every now and then. At the time it was written this was probably relevant but seems odd looking back when people were dying. It made me wonder when I first heard of AIDS and I can't remember, probably the mid-'80s but I probably didn't really understand it. In 1987 I worked in an unemployment benefit office and had quite a few AIDS/HIV men on my caseload so certainly knew about it by then and visited one of the main treatment hospitals in London to better understand it (as it was back then).

There's no happy ending to this play, it was written in 1985 after all. Ned's lover Felix catches the disease and dies - did he catch it from Ned or not? The best it can claim is that it reconciles Ned and his brother, a sub-plot in the play. I can't say I enjoyed the play but it did make me think and remember. The covid pandemic isn't the only one I've lived through (so far), there was an earlier one in my lifetime

Ben Daniels played Ned and Dino Fetscher played his lover. I liked seeing Liz Carr come on in her wheelchair, showing that just because you're disabled doesn't mean you can't turn in a powerful performance. The play has now closed and, while I'm not sure I enjoyed it, I'm pleased I saw it. 

'Curated by Carlos' by the Birmingham Royal Ballet at Sadler's Wells

'Curated by Carlos' is a triple bill of one-act ballets by the Birmingham Royal Ballet of which Carlos Acosta is the director. It's made up of 'City of a Thousand Trades', 'Imminent' and 'Chacona' and was being performed at a rather busy Sadler's Wells. I've never seen Carlos Acosta dance so the main draw was that he would dance with the great Alessandra Ferri as part of the show. I saw Alessandra dance at the Royal Opera House a few weeks ago and it's always special to see her on stage.

'City of a Thousand Trades' is a new work commissioned by Carlos Acosta as a love letter to Birmingham.  It's more choreographed movement than ballet with a weird musical landscape with lots of banging and strange percussion sounds. I found the music and movement quite distracting at times through the dance, and I kept thinking 'how on earth do they remember to raise an arm just there?' or 'move right just at that moment?'. There was no real fluidity to the work, nothing to suggest that this movement follows that movement, so how do they do it? Endless practice I suppose, with muscle memory, but also a lot of mental discipline. I'm pleased I saw it.

I preferred the second ballet, 'Imminent', which was more balletic, girls in slips and lads in vests and pants. They danced round the stage, leaping and posing, inter-changing duos as some ran on and some ran off and then got together as an ensemble again. It was a more 'traditional' piece so felt more familiar, less manic than the first dance. I thought it was beautiful.

The final piece was 'Chacona' and they'd saved the best till last. The music was by Bach but played by a piano, a violin and a guitar and that was really effective. As with the other two works, all the dancers were involved, dressed in black with dramatic lighting. In the first movement the dancers formed a 'wall' that moved every so often and Alessandra Ferri and Carlos Acosta moved through the 'wall' as they danced together, backward and forward from one side of the stage to the other. Alessandra is aged 58 and Carlos is 48 but you'd never guess. It was a joy to see them together and he effortlessly lifted her high into the air.

Then the ballet lads and lasses took over, pulling dramatic shapes in the dramatic lighting, moving together and then splitting into four rows of four dancers to dance and writhe in their personalised lighting before joining together again. It really was a dazzling performance of movement and sound. I hope to see it again one day.

'Romeo and Juliet' at the Royal Opera House

Last week I went to see 'Romeo and Juliet' at the Royal Opera House, the ballet that made me fall in love with the art form and, luckily, the dancer who played Romeo in that production six years ago was dancing again. Steven McRae danced Romeo in 2015 and I was in the audience when he snapped an Achilles tendon in 2019 so I had to be there to see his triumphant return to the stage last week, once again dancing Romeo, with Sarah Lamb as Juliet. What a privilege to see this joyous ballet with such great and graceful dancers as my re-introduction to the main stage of the Royal Opera House. The Royal Ballet dance Kenneth MacMillan's version of this eternal story - I've also seen John Cranko's version in Boston and, more recently, Matthew Bourne's re-imagining of the tale, but I prefer the Royal Ballet. Prokofiev was having a good month when he wrote the score for this ballet. 

We all know the story behind the work, the rivalry between the two houses of Capulet and Montague in Verona, how Romeo falls for Juliet and pursues her to marry secretly while she is supposed to marry another nobleman. She feigns suicide to avoid the marriage but Romeo believes she is dead so commits suicide himself and when she finds him dead she follows him into death. Whenever we get to the marriage scene I can't help but wish they don't marry since marriage signs their death warrants, but they always do. Maybe one day the friar will refuse to marry them...

Needless to say, I loved it. It was great to see the excitement of the sword-fencing scenes again, see the Happy Strumpets strut their stuff and see Romeo and his mates enjoying themselves before tragedy strikes. There were a few tense moments when Steven McRae took off to fly across the stage but he was on top form and seemed to revel in performing again. It's what he does, after all. He received huge cheers when he strode on stage at the start of the performance and an even louder ovation at the end, with Sarah Lamb pushing him forward for bows at the end and to accept the cheers and love from the audience. The bows at the end are usually led by the ballerina but that night it was all for Steven, and rightly so. 

And I still love that ballet.

'Poussin and the Dance' at the National Gallery

There's a small exhibition at the National Gallery at the moment about Poussin's dance paintings in the ground floor galleries. I'm not a huge fan of Poussin or that 'French academic' style he inspired but he is a great painter. He left France for Rome in the 1620s and that is where he studied the antiquities there, the statues and other objects, seeing how the artists of the past portrayed movement in stone and that's what he tried to reproduce in these paintings. 

The exhibition probably contains more sketches and drawings than it does paintings, but that's bonus for me. I love seeing great painter's drawings and preliminary sketches, see how they played around with positioning characters in the scenes of the paintings and how they might've changed their minds. I find it all rather fascinating. Poussin seems to have preferred ink for his drawings which gives nice lines and makes them longer lasting. I think my favourite was a study for 'Dance to the Music of Time', a detail from the painting which is the poster for the exhibition.

I admit to not paying much attention to most of the paintings on show - that's pretty, that's colourful - but three paintings that did grab my attention were all painted for Cardinal Richelieu and they were hung together, the 'Triumph of...' Pan, Silenus and Bacchus. Each of them are rather raucous scenes of drunken debauchery as you'd expect from the protagonists. There's a lot going on in these paintings and they're full of movement with lots of dancing, leering, drunken collapses, people loosing their clothes, they're joyous celebrations of life. Look at the detail in the paintings and decide what's happening, like in the 'Triumph of Pan' one man is trying to pull a satyr to his feet after he's drunkenly collapsed - who would put that at the front of a painting? Poussin, obviously.

Apparently, the urn just in front of the pair is a copy of an actual urn that was recently found and was creating a stir in academic circles at the time.

The final painting of the show is 'Dance to the Music of Time' on loan from the Wallace Collection for the first time, and it gets a room to itself. It's a very allegorical painting and is, oddly, quite relaxing. It shows Time playing his lyre and Poverty, Labour, Wealth and Pleasure holding hands and dancing together. Unlike the other paintings, there isn't a crowd around them, just them in a pastoral landscape. Above them in the clouds, we see Apollo and Dawn crossing the sky.

The exhibition was quite busy when I was there so I'll go back again in a few weeks time when it should be calmer. I'd like the opportunity to see the three 'Triumph' paintings again to focus on the detail. 

'L'Heure Exquise' at the Royal Opera House

'L'Heure Exquise' is a work by Maurice Bejart based on Samuel Beckett's 'Happy Days'. In the play, the lead character is buried up to the waist in rubble so in this dance version, she is buried in pointe shoes. The lead was played by the ever-graceful Alessandra Ferri partnered by Carsten Jung. Ferri has a long relationship with the Royal Ballet, training at the Royal Ballet School and joining the company in 1980, achieving the rank of Principal dancer and later becoming Prima Ballerina Assoluta. And she's still dancing. 

The performance was in the Linbury Theatre, much smaller and more intimate than the main stage, and it's great to be so much closer to the dancers. Ferri tells her stories of her past through words, song and, of course, dance. It starts with her buried to her waist in ballet shoes and then the mound of shoes opens up and she steps onto the stage to sift through her memories. One minute she's singing then the next she's riding Jung like a childhood rocking horse. He was a very able partner, morphing into whatever Ferri needed.

The most tense and puzzling section for me was when Ferri discovers a handbag full of memories - a compact, a pair of ballet shoes - that she takes out one by one, and then she pulls out a gun and holds it up in the air. What is that for? Why is it there? What happened in her past to make a handgun such an important memory? Especially when she points it at Jung and he slowly takes it from her. Clearly an important memory and, like the rest of the show, a puzzlement...

For most of the show I had no idea what was going on - just like when I saw the 'Happy Days' play a few years back - so I just let it wash over me. You don't always have to understand everything, sometimes just experiencing it is enough. It's always a delight to see Alessandra Ferri and admire her skill and art and I look forward to the next time.

'Mark Rothko 1968: Clearing Away' at Pace Gallery

A new gallery has recently opened in London and it's opening exhibition is by Mark Rothko, a small series of paintings in acrylic on paper. I've seen a few Rothko paintings over the years at various exhibitions and galleries, including the Tate collection, and they've always been big things but these were pleasantly small and would fit in anyone's living room. That was quite a surprise and joy - I could have one of these in my home.

There's something about Rothko's paintings that I can't quite put a finger on that attract me. I'm sure I read somewhere that they're quite meditative but that's someone else's view and not mine, but they are quite peaceful, quite restful to gaze at. Is it the colour palette, the shape, the size? I don't know, I'm still making up my mind, but I like them. 

There are 22 paintings on display and I probably spent a ridiculous amount of time examining the brush strokes and the colours - is the yellow in tis painting the same as the yellow in that painting on the opposite wall? Is this orange the same or is it slightly more pink? If the curators had spent more time thinking about people like me rather than the overall shape of the exhibition they would've hung some of the paintings side by side so I could examine them properly. Still, can't have it all I suppose.

It may be small but it's perfectly formed. I really enjoyed it and I'm pleased I've seen these rarely exhibited works. It's only on for another couple of weeks so, if you're in the West End, it's well worth visiting - book a slot through the Pace website and see some paintings you'll probably never have the opportunity to see again.

Matthew Bourne's 'The Midnight Bell' at Sadler's Wells

After over a year and a half I ventured back to a theatre to see Matthew Bourne's new dance work, 'The Midnight Bell' at Sadler's Wells. I've not read any of the Patrick Hamilton books this work is based around so I had no idea what to expect but a New Adventures production is always worth a look.

It's a glimpse into the lives of some of the denizens of Soho who frequent the pub, The Midnight Bell. The barmaid loves the barman but he's in love with the local prostitute, their regulars include the spinster and the gigolo, the rich bitch who plays with the madman but isn't really interested in him at all and then we have the gay lovers who happen upon one another in the pub one night. They dance their stories, tales of romance and sex, their hopes and dreams, of cheap hotels and sex in the park, all set in the years between the wars when the world was different but also the same. One of the gay lovers turns out to be a policeman but is this entrapment or something more? You'll have to see it to find the answer to that one.

The characters all seem to have sad little lives, slowly drinking their lives away while their passions boil under the surface but one character does seem to have a happier life. He is the sailor barman who opens the show singing (miming to an old song) of love and we follow his story along with the others and, in the end, he moves on, heading back to sea and more adventures. The rest are still there, drinking in the pub while he escapes. A brief moment of hope amid the smoke-clogged and beer-fumed atmosphere of the pub. 

I think that's what I really liked about this production, all the stories going on at the same time, sometimes literally at the same time in different parts of the stage. Life is a bit grim and dreary in the gloom of a London night with odd street signs providing the light and, of course, we know they've been through one war and are about to head into another one, all a bit sleazy and down at heel but there are moments of hope. Like when the spinster strips the gigolo to his underwear, ties him up and leaves him in the cheap hotel room - she's seen him for what he is at last. And when the sailor heads back to sea with a smile on his face, looking forward to new adventures.

I particularly enjoyed Michela Meazza dancing Miss Roach, the spinster, who I've seen before as the Queen in 'Swan Lake', and Netta Longdon as the rich bitch who ends up... or does she? George Harvey Bone was great as the madman and I really liked Liam Mower as the West End chorus boy. I also really liked Paris Fitzpatrick as the barman who bookends the show as he goes back to sea looking for hope and love. 

I'm very pleased that it was this production that got me back into a theatre after all this pandemic time and, for that, it'll have a special place in my theatrical memories. Thank you Sir Matthew!

'Fragmented Illuminations' at the V&A

There's a delightful small exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum called 'Fragmented Illuminations: Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Cutting at the V&A'. The museum has quite a collection of manuscript cuttings which was a bit of a fad for the Victorians, cutting out pretty pictures and framing them or finding other uses for them. The exhibition is only in two rooms, the first looking at the cuttings in the 19th Century and the second exploring the cuttings in their original context.

The first room goes under the title of 'Copyists, Restorers and Forgers' and considers some of the educational uses of the cuttings, such as copies of 15th Century illuminated capital letters published by the Arundel Society (for the promotion of knowledge of art). Much as I liked that room, the next room was better, with medieval and renaissance works on display and this gives a wider view of illuminated manuscripts.

The exhibits were wide ranging from religious works and psalm books to books of hours and legal text books. If there was a book then it deserved to be illuminated in some way, not just religious books. Books were made by hand before printing so all things were possible. It's a small exhibition but well worth seeing if you're going to the V&A. 

Sophie Taeuber-Arp at Tate Modern

Sophie Taeuber-Arp isn't as well known an artist as she should be and Tate Modern has put on the first ever retrospective of her work in Britain and it is a joyous celebration of her life and work. Born in Switzerland in 1889, she was educated and went to art school in Munich, met her husband Hans Arp (also an artist), became part of the dada movement, exhibited with Kandinsky and Sonia Delaunay and sadly died in Switzerland in 1943. I hadn't heard of her before this exhibition but she is now firmly on my radar.

Something I immediately noticed was that her works were relatively small in size and were created for the 'average' home. They weren't created as big public works that could be bought by the rich or public institutions, these are works for me and you. They are also very colourful and largely abstract. Apparently Taeuber-Arp came to abstraction through dissecting textiles and many, at least the early works, are quite linear in composition. She also used a wide range of materials in her work, using graphite, crayons, gouache, watercolour, oils and other media like wool to make 'appliqué paintings'. 

As you'd expect from a dadaist she was involved in lots of different things within the movement and turned her hand to most things. She created puppets for the Swiss Marionette Theatre and a series of 'dada heads' like hat stands and she turned the wood herself. One of the 'heads' is a portrait of her husband. I loved the puppets and it would be fun to see them in action (I think there's a video in the exhibition but I missed it). 

As well as being an artist Taeuber-Arp was also an architect and designer and some of her furniture is on display, all modular and functional and could easily be in a furniture shop today. There's also a gorgeous rug hung on the wall that she designed and made and it looked very deep and rich. She used her rugs and tapestries as the basis for creating other designs and there's a cabinet full of her experimental watercolour designs based on the rug. I like the idea of riffing on a design, developing it for a different work. 

As I walked through the exhibition I noticed that the colour palette became deeper and richer before becoming very sparse as I came to her later works. The works became more angular and geometrical as she delved deeper into her own abstraction. Some of the later works were simple line drawings in graphite and/or ink from during the Second World War when she didn't have access to a studio or lots of materials. There's also a gorgeous landscape drawn entirely in graphite that shows what a great draughtswoman she was. 

Sadly, Sophie died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty stove as she sheltered from the war in Switzerland in 1943 at the age of 53. It's very sad that we don't have her more mature works - who knows what she might have created after the war? Her friend Sonia Delaunay 'discovered' black in her 60s - what would Sophie have discovered?

Sophie lived and created in one of the most artistically stimulating times - the first half of the 20th Century. Der Blaue Reiter were working in Munich when she was there and dada sprung into life when she was ready to create, just as with Sonia Delaunay. There's a lovely photo of Sophie and Sonia in beachwear that Sonia designed at the opening of the exhibition. Sophie exhibited over the years with Sonia and with Vassily Kandinsky so that's pretty good company to be in. She discovered her own form of abstraction and pursued it for the rest of her life. I assume she isn't more well-known partly because she died during the war so wasn't there to celebrate the peace and create more great works. I wonder how she would have responded to the Abstract Expressionists and their huge canvases.  

This really is a very good exhibition that provides a good selection of her works across her lifetime. When I was there it was busy with a steady stream of people but not crowded, and I liked that since I could linger over the details of paintings without feeling I was hogging them. It seems to have been an unexpected success since Tate has run out of catalogues and is having to get more reprinted despite it being open for another couple of months. I'll definitely go back to see it again after the school holidays to spend more time with this wonderful artist. I need to learn more.