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New Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of it
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
Kitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave
Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Sue Steward's rating
Reader rating
Shades of Van Gogh: Man On a Bridge from The Drawn Blank Series
Yellow girl: Woman in Red Lion Pub
Bob Dylan is neither a conventionally “great” singer nor a virtuoso guitarist but he is a brilliant poet and that intuitive factor makes the genius.
Transposing that to painting results in this irresistibly intriguing collection. The opening scenes of empty railroad tracks are reminders of the folk singer’s hobo lifestyle and his paintings chart the characters met along the way, ordinary, mostly anonymous people, who fuel his narratives.
In 1989-92, a collection of published pencil drawings opened up Dylan’s previously private life. Last year, he printed them on fine paper and filled in the black-outlined shapes with watercolours and gouache. The intense colours and the textural application of paint, changed meaning and mood, expression and character — as his hit songs have been re-worked for decades.
Anonymous hotel rooms with simple furnishings, figure heavily and suggest loneliness. But this is surely where Dylan is freed from pressures and draws — watching from windows and across rooms. His overview of “Bell Tower, Stockholm” in four versions, changes palettes like seasons, and employs short, bitty cold strokes and sharp, colour-drenched patterning evoking Matisse.
His experimental portraits of women (a favourite subject), where the minimal expressive flourishes of a pencil are dressed in paint, become something radically different. From his window — using a telescope like a voyeur in Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” — he draws two “Sisters” lying on a bed, one naked but for her bra. It forms the basis of four studies where mood and relationship change with shifting colours.
The accompanying text attempts to position Dylan on the Art historical spectrum. Although the ghost of Van Gogh hovers around the lost soul in Man on a Bridge, and Matisse’s dancing girls are evoked in a couple of poses, the painter is as impossible to pin down as is the uniquely original musician. A fascinating collection and surprisingly literal for a poet of such extreme surreal imagery.
Opens 14 June (0870 013 0661 www.halcyongallery.com).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
