James Metcalf on the fictionality of the latest archaeological page-turners
Stephen Puddicombe looks at the unusual appeal of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
Ciaran Rafferty investigates the science of book classification
Anne Mellar reveals the twisted side of Christmas tales for day 16 of the advent calendar
A special edition of the cultural news that hit the headlines and divided critics in 2011, with a look forwards to the bright new near.
The art world went loopy for Leonardo in November. The National Gallery’s exhibition was the first to feature almost all of the works painted during da Vinci’s time at the court of Milan - a herculean feat. Tickets are still selling for over a hundred pounds. The show-stopping exhibition of the year, it dazzled and disappointed critics in equal measure. In the same month, a cleaner delivered a damning critique of rather more modern art. Polishing a grubby looking bucket, what she hadn’t realised was that it was part of a work by Martin Kippenberger - a work valued at over half a million pounds.
2011 was also a year for criminal creativity across art and literature. Back in May, four people were convicted of forging over a thousand Giacometti sculptures. Astonishingly, another spectacular scandal would hit Germany again just five months later. A multi-millionaire had produced artistic counterfeits resembling lost works; works that had been snapped up by Sotheby’s and Christie’s. An author also left his readers shaken, but not stirred. Quentin Rowan’s novel was ‘inspired’ by writers from Robert Ludlum to John Gardner, Ian Fleming’s predecessor. But then it was revealed that his spy novel had imitated them almost word for word.
Book prizes shared in the literary limelight. The Booker’s quest for ‘readability’ led to its crowning its most literary shortlisted novel in October - Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending. The Orange Prize for Fiction found its youngest ever winner in June with Téa Obreht. Another debut writer was a pediatric nurse working at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Her Tiny Sunbirds Far Away won a Costa Book Award early in the New Year. Books of 2011 included Caitlin Moran’s funny and unflinching How To Be a Woman, and the often-overlooked The Stranger’s Child by Alan Hollinghurst. Kindles, meanwhile, continued to light fires, changing the way we read forever.
The New Year promises several blockbuster art exhibitions. David Hockney: A Bigger Picture opens on January 21st. Featuring over 150 works, the exhibition is one of the largest ever organised by the Royal Academy of Arts. Exploring the artist’s ongoing relationship with the Yorkshire landscape, some of the paintings will literally dwarf the viewer. Covering five decades of creativity, the exhibition will be brought up-to-the-minute by Hockney’s drawings on iPad.
In February is the National Portrait Gallery’s Lucian Freud: Portraits exhibition. Having been planned with the artist before his death last July, the exhibition will display 132 works. This showcase his frank and often unsettling portraits to their advantage. March sees Turner Inspired: In Light of Claude at the National Gallery. Inspiring the artist in his lifetime, this exhibition will frame his work through the work of the lesser known Claude Lorrain. Extending their creative partnership, it will allow their paintings to be seen in interaction with one another. Damien Hirst: Tate Modern is the next show-stopping exhibition that will lead us into April. From a shark floating in formaldehyde, through to diamond-encrusted skulls, the retrospective will feature over two decades of controversial creations.
Author Irvine Welsh will release the prequel to his bestselling Trainspotting in the same month. Almost twenty years after Mark Renton, Sickboy, Begbie and Spud chose drugs, Skagboys will investigate ‘how the main characters become junkies, the family dynamics, the anxieties of young men.’ Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel follows hot on its heels in May. Sequel to Wolf Hall, this book continues the narrative of Thomas Cromwell. Tangling Tudor history, religion and brutality in the telling of the three-week destruction of Anne Boleyn, the novel will also soon be joined by a third. Finally, John Banville’s Ancient Light will be published in July. Narrated by an actor, it’s a book about his affair as a teenager with a friend’s mother, and his own child’s suicide. ‘It’s a complicated book’ the author revealed in a 2011 reading of his novel here.
Stay tuned with The Yorker this year for weekly cultural highlights, and don't forget to follow us on Twitter! We are @YorkerArts.
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