Convenience Big Store: Why can’t art just be “beautiful and strange”?

23 October, 2022

Zeitgeist

Paul Cézanne, Sous-Bois, c 1894

Why can't art just be "beautiful and strange"?

Theatre in London has become an "embarrassment", says Zoe Strimpel in The Spectator. Not because the plays are boring, or badly acted, or any of the other problems that used to spoil productions, but because theatre-makers are now obsessed with "identity politics". Who Killed My Father at the Young Vic culminates in a "predictable rant" about political injustice. The Globe's take on Joan of Arc opens with a bizarre prologue stating Joan was a "them" and "trans". The other side are just as dull: Eureka Day, hailed as a "strike against wokeness", tackled the riveting topic of Covid vaccines. Creativity, grossness, hilarity – the stuff that used to "delight and provoke" – have been replaced by "one mean axis: right or wrong".

The same is happening with art, says James Marriott in The Times. Tate Modern's Cézanne exhibition earnestly ponders whether the Provençal artist's landscapes were a subtle reflection on the horrors of colonialism. Tate Britain highlights that a chair in a Hogarth self-portrait was made from timber that reached Britain along a route that also shipped slaves. The gallery's label-writer muses on whether it represents "all those unnamed black and brown people enabling the society that supports his vigorous creativity". We all know the curators only pump out this guff because they feel they have to. But "moral indignation is only thrilling when it is wielded by insurgents". When it is the establishment view, it just feels boring. Galleries should help us see why their pictures are "beautiful and strange", not obscure their specialness with "weary, irrelevant controversy".

Eating out

Tebay Services: "the gold standard"

I know there are more important things going on, says Judith Woods in The Daily Telegraph, but how on earth has Rugby Services just been voted Britain's best motorway service station? Everyone knows that Tebay, 190 miles further up the M6, is the gold standard: it has an "actual duck pond", the butcher's that supplied the Queen's coronation, and a farm shop "stocked by a former Harrods buyer". Tebay is a throwback to the 1960s and 1970s, when service stations were "ritzy destinations". Washington Birtley in County Durham boasted vending machines with microwavable duckling à l'orange; Trowell, in Nottinghamshire, had a Robin Hood-themed restaurant "decked out as a medieval banqueting hall". Jimi Hendrix heard so much about the "amazing" Blue Boar at Watford Gap that he assumed it was a "crazy London nightclub".

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Pietro Recchia/Getty

The Tories have squandered Brexit

"The odds of the UK ever getting Brexit done are now approaching zero," says Wolfgang Münchau in EuroIntelligence. For leaving the EU to be worth it, Britain would have needed "a strategy based on innovation", with regulations around data protection, financial services and technology torn up and rewritten. But "distracted by a pandemic and a war, the Tories ended up squandering their mandate". Boris Johnson didn't pay much attention to the issue, "because he was Boris", and Liz Truss self-immolated before she'd had a chance.

It means the much-heralded "Brexit transformation" of Britain's economy will probably never happen. The decision to leave the EU will eventually "be reversed in substance" under a Keir Starmer government – not necessarily by the UK rejoining, but by returning to the bloc's single market. And why not, given the Tories never bothered to move the country out of "EU membership mode"? I reckon we're only "two elections away" from this happening – by which point most people "will have forgotten why they left the EU in the first place".

Eating in

When it comes to pasta, don't trust an Italian

Fancy Italian cooks love looking down on the rest of us, says James McConnachie in The Sunday Times, but many of their finicky food myths "turn out to be a load of testicoli". Rather than serving pasta al dente, traditional cooking times ranged from 15 minutes to a "mush-inducing hour". As for the "great solecism" – adding cream to carbonara – Italian chefs used to do it routinely; in the 1980s, according to one food historian, many recommended almost equal parts cream and spaghetti. And while many fussy cooks maintain chicken and pasta should "never, ever be partnered", the white meat was an integral ingredient to tortellini as late as the 1970s.

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Xi Jinping: ruthless but inept. Feng Li/Getty

China's mediocre Mao

Chinese President Xi Jinping really isn't as "competent of a helmsman as he's made out to be", says Noah Smith in his Substack newsletter. Economic growth, already slowing before the pandemic, has now "basically halted", in large part because of Xi's "stubborn insistence" on Zero Covid. China's reputation abroad has been torn apart by his aggressive "wolf warrior" diplomacy, the crackdown on Hong Kong and the concentration camps in Xinjiang. And his nationalised industrial policy has prompted the US and others to "switch from engagement to outright economic warfare".

Ironically, these failures stem from the one area in which Xi has proven "incredibly adept": seizing control of the Chinese Communist Party. The 69-year-old has ruthlessly taken down rivals, crafted the country's "first cult of personality since Mao", and successfully changed the rules to make him de facto leader for life. But this centralisation of power has caused deep damage: loyalty is favoured over competence; the absence of competing factions "robs decisions of needed criticism and consensus". With no one brave or foolish enough to act against him, the CCP is stuck with a "mediocre" leader until he retires or dies. "It's almost as if democracy has something to recommend it after all."

Property

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The great escape

As part of Mohammed bin Salman's effort to turn Saudi Arabia into a tourist hot spot, says The Wall Street Journal, the cash-splashing Crown Prince has commissioned some truly wacky architectural projects. They include an airport fitted with mirrored roofs to look like a desert mirage; "an island shaped like a dolphin, with coral-reef buildings"; and an old oil rig renovated with a Ferris wheel, waterslides, roller coasters and bungee jumping. The power-mad autocrat gets "passionately involved" in the designs, micromanaging details as small as hotel furniture and street lamps.

Quoted

"It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much doing nothing."