'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.