Reviews – Page 2 – STUFF HAPPENS

Notes on ‘A Bigger Picture’ by David Hockney (Royal Academy)

“Making a very small subject big”. The resumption of a relationship with a landscape – uncovering it – a stare at a single landscape maintained – the seasonal rotation but the accent on SPRING, and on summer. Spring: – The urgency of capturing the white hawthorn in (transient) flower – “as if thick white cream had […]

by Alex Hickman

High Line

Yesterday we walked the High Line, a prettified length of elevated railway track that runs between the Meatpacking and Chelsea districts of West Manhattan. It offers a playful experience: stands of silver birch, wooden sun loungers that run for a little while on the rails of the old track, a lawn raised on a bed of […]

by Alex Hickman

“We think too much and feel too little”

Yesterday I went along to a showing of Deepak Verma’s Mumbai Charlie in Somerset House. A young businessman, uncomfortably thrust into a senior role in the family business, has a car crash en route to a make-or-break business meeting. Dazed and confused, he is rescued by a cult of Charlie Chaplin worshippers who help him find his […]

by Alex Hickman

What Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy tells us about today

It was always going to be tough to (i) follow the tv series and (ii) compress Smiley’s odyssey of detective work, Kremlinology and reminiscence into 130 minutes. In fact, as I walked out of the cinema my first sensation was a hunger pang for the BBC series starring Alec Guinness. This I will act on […]

by Alex Hickman

Read The Road

Cycling home from the station last night, I kept interrupting my journey to pick fat blackberries. They were delicious, and I was hungry. And the pleasure of foraging is intense – found food feels like a prize. It is fun feeling resourceful, and the food is good for you. I stood by a hazel tree, […]