Sat urday 31 Aug ust 2019 The Guardian •
61Art
Cézanne
Whitworth, Manchester
★★★★☆
Sumptuous
sketches
reveal a genuis
riven by pain
George Warleggan appears, pistol
in each hand, before taking out a
French general and wounding the
man who is about to kill Ross, and
it may go down as the moment the
show really lost it. Until now it has
somehow managed to stay on the
right side of ridiculous.
This was the last ever episode- supposedly – of a gloriously
entertaining show that has pushed
me to my limits with its ludicrous
storylines, and the fi nale nearly sent
me over the edge.
Five months have passed since
the penultimate episode. Morwenna
is heavily pregnant, Caroline is still - implausibly – on at Dwight about
being in love with Kitty Despard and
Ross is acting strangely. Demelza
knows he is up to something,
but suspects that something is
troublemaker Tess Tregidden –
devastatingly confi rmed. “When
did I lose you, Ross? I look in your
face and see a stranger.” He can’t tell
her the truth, which is that he has
infi ltrated a French gang.
But the invasion is on. French
general Jules Toussaint turns up at
Nampara, news of which fi nds its
way back to George at Trenwith.
Yet Ross has a plan. With
Poldarkian speed, it all gets going –
Ross and the general discuss plans
while Dwight, hidden under the
fl oor, takes notes. But the document
is intercepted. Huzzah! Proof Ross is
a traitor. What’s this? He is actually
an undercover agent? “ So he’ll be
crowned as a hero,” sulks George.
Unless they inform the general
What others said
“As Ross strode out to sea (in slow
motion, naturally) I could think
of no better way to say goodbye.
How we will miss them.”
Sarah Carson iNewsTV
Poldark fi nale
BBC1
★★★★☆Classical
Götterdämmerung
Usher Hall, Edinburgh
★★★★★
Cornish
beefcake gets
the hammiest
of send-off s
Wag ner ’s epic
reaches its
breathtaking
conclusion
that he’s been had. There follows
a scene as hammy and cheesy as
a croque monsieur. “Forgive me
if your carpet is stained, madam,”
says Toussaint to Demelza , “but
I must perform a small execution .”
Demelza, always the quickest-witted
Poldark, pretends to side with the
Frenchman. Toussaint decides
not to shoot Ross and have a duel
instead.
Their moonlit swordfi ght seems
to go on for so long that by the time
Hanson decides to take matters
into his own hands and shoot Ross
himself, you’re almost cheering him
on. And then George appears in his
Tarantino moment, guns blazing.
“I’d rather you kill the other one
but we mustn’t be greedy,” says
Ross, before they discuss whether
to fi nish Hanson off and dispose of
the bodies. If you have stuck with
Poldark this far, you have a fairly
high tolerance for such nonsense.
Ross and Demelza end the show
as equals. Quite why she puts up
with him is one of the enduring
mysteries of her character. Still,
it allows the tantalising prospect
that this isn’t the end. One last bit
of Poldark smouldering: “I swear
to you, my love, I will return.”
It’s silly , eye-roll-inducing and the
perfect farewell.
Emine SanerIsn’t life grand?! There you can be,
all mopey about Brexit and Trump
and the Amazon burning, then along
comes something like Carnival Row
and cheers you right up! First there’s
some portentous text to give us the
set-up for this steampunk fa irytale :
“For ages the homeland of the Fae
was a place of myth and legend.
Until the many empires of man
arrived and warred for control of its
riches ...” It goes on for a supremely
confi dent length of time. T he Burgue
and the Pact were at war in Fairyland
but seven years ago the Burgue
withdrew, leaving the Fae to their
enemy’s tender mercies. It only gets
better – or worse – from here.
The action fi nally begins in
Pact-occupied Anoun in Tirnanoc
( I told you!), where a horde of
actors with fairy wings stapled to
their backs and dreams of better
things in their heads are trying to
outrun the marauders. A tough Fae
descends to help. It is, I could not
be more delighted to tell you, Cara
Delevingne! With an Irish accent!
Her name is Vignette Stonem oss.
Vignette’s vocation is arranging
boats to take desperate refugees
to the relative safety of the
Burgue, whose industrio-Victorian
architecture and multi species
populace pitches it somewhere
between Total Recall’s Venusville
and a Dickensian fever dream.
The Burgue is reluctant to
take them in, and baldly scripted
arguments rage about how much
duty the republic has to the migrants
it helped create versus the needs
of the natives who feel their wages
are being undercut and jobs taken.
I likes my parallels served straight.
Cara’s ship goes down (“Storm
wrecks migrant vessel” shouts a
headline in the In Case You’ve Not
Got the Point Yet Times). Only she
and the photo she clutches of a
meeeesteeerious young soldier
survive. That reminds me –
Orlando Bloom’s in it! His name
is Philostrate Facelovely (I think)
and Vignotte Cheesemass thinks
he’s dead but he is not! He is an
eff ortfully gravel-voiced police
inspector investigating a series of
attacks on refugees.
Near the end of the fi rst episode,
Evocative Nounpair discovers Philo
Bloom is not dead and fl aps on over.
After that things really takes fl ight.
It’s great fun. Too crass to care
about, too serious to take seriously.
Still, for all that, it is a solidly crafted
creation with only the set designers
working harder than the leads.
Lucy ManganThe story starts with a radical
masterpiece – Paul Cézanne’s Study
of Trees still challenges today. Black
strands like fl uttering seaweed mark
the tracks of thin, twisting branches
in empty space while watery touches
of olive and orange hint at foliage.
There’s a melancholy undertow to
this exhibition , for it commemorates
the generosity of art dealer Karsten
Schubert who died in July. Before
his death he gifted the Whitworth
his collection of works on paper by
Cézanne. These are true treasures.
Subtle masterpieces of drawing
and printmaking, they pack more
thought and feeling into the merest
sketch than most artists have ever
been able to communicate in a
massive installation. Cézanne
once claimed his contemporary
Monet was “only an eye”. No one
This was the culmination of
Edinburgh international festival’s
four-year Ring cycle in concert and
it lived up to the hype. Andrew
Davis and the Royal Scottish
National Orchestra once again took
to the Usher Hall stage for the fi nal
instalment of Wagner’s epic.
No singer was more central to the
success of the performance than
soprano Christine Goerke. Having
scaled the heights of the complete
Ring cycle at the Metropolitan
Opera earlier this year , Goerke is
the Brünnhilde of the moment. Her
luminous soprano has the vocal
strength to surmount the mighty
Wagnerian orchestra without
sounding forced or harsh. AlliedLast night’s TV
Carnival Row
Amazon Prime
★★☆☆☆Orlando Bloom has it away
with the fairies in a laughably
serious and clangingly
allegorical fantasy rompWhat we learned
National Trust’s new project has legs
The National Trust has announced
one of its most ambitious restoration
projects to date: reinstating the
lower legs of a number of baroque
paintings 200 years after their owner
ordered them to be cut off. The limbs
of the “Petworth beauties” had been
removed by the owner of Petworth
House, West Sussex in the 1820s.Dancers make a pointe for George
Hundreds of dancers staged an ballet
class in New York’s Times Square in
support of Prince George, after the
six-year old royal was mocked by a
US breakfast show host for taking
lessons. Good Morning America host
Lara Spencer was forced to
apologise after laughing on air
about the six-year-old’s love of ballet.Campaigners pitch festival ‘tent tax’
Environmental campaigners have
called on Reading and Leeds to
introduce a “tent tax”, after images
of fi elds full of abandoned tents at
last weekend’s festivals went viral.
Clean Up Britain founder John Read
said festivalgoers should pay a
deposit that is only returned if they
take their tent home.▲ Modernist masterpiece ...
Cézanne’s The Bathers (Large Plate)
PHOTOGRAPH: WHITWORTH GALLERYellnt
is
ywith genuine dramatic capabilities,
hers is an all-too-human account
of the warrior goddess, a seductive
combination of pathos and power.
Goerke’s may have been the
standout performance but there
was plenty of interest elsewhere,
particularly Ain Anger ’s splendidly
world-weary, implacable Hagen and
Karen Cargill in the du al roles of
Waltraute and Second Norn. Greek
soprano Danae Kontora, who made
an impression as a last-minute
stand-in Woodbird in Siegfried ,
returned in her own right as an
equally fl irtatious Rhinemaiden.
Burkhard Fritz , a new addition to
the cast , was a solid although rather
soft-toned Siegfried.Wagner in the concert hall can
be as much symphony as opera but
Andrew Davis’s controlled approach
ensured the performance was never
static or self-indulgent. It may have
been a little restrained for those
who like their Wagner swooning and
swooping, but its elegant pacing
brought life to the light and shade of
the music; the ecstatic outpourings
sudden and exciting. A vibrant,
energised RSNO gave a burnished,
nuanced account of the score.
At the close of the EIF, it was
a timely reminder that at their
best festivals can foster artistic
partnerships to create something
truly outstanding.
Rowena Smithcould say that of the drawings here.
Cézanne is never just eye but a
complex brain, and an even more
complex soul. Everything he drew
is a silent, still explosion of insight
and passion. Two drawings portray
Cézanne’s young son, Paul junior:
all the tenderness, anxiety and
hopes of parenthood seem to fi ll
each pencil mark.
At the heart of this show are works
in which Cézanne tries to master
his sexuality. Crouching Venus is
a drawing of a broken statue. He
looks at it formally, mapping it with
apparent objectivity. Yet the marble
seems alive. Venus has a creased,
stomach. Is she stone or fl esh?
With The Bathers (Large Plate),
his attempt to transcend the pain
of desire produces a modernist
masterpiece. Four men who’ve been
bathing pose and cavort. Behind
them is an extinct volcano whose
fl at top is oddly truncated, maybe
suggesting impotence. Is this a
memory of the artist’s own youth in
this southern landscape? Cézanne
has taken care to hide every penis,
but one young man is gazing at
another who is pulling on his pants.
Cézanne was a confused and
troubled man whose anxieties
shudder through his Mediterranean
Arcadia. Not just the godfather of
modern art but one of the truest
chroniclers of modern anguish.
Jonathan JonesN T o p l p o o r H
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