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'Like witnessing my own funeral': Michael Landy on destroying everything he owned

The artist caused a sensation by shredding all his possessions – car, toothbrush, love letters, even his dad’s old sheepskin coat. Two decades on, does the former YBA have any regrets? Twenty years and an epoch ago, Michael Landy destroyed his worldly goods , all 2,277 of them, in the just-closed flagship branch of C&A on Oxford Street in London. It was a wildly theatrical event. The mise en scène involved a snaking conveyor belt bearing tubs full of carefully catalogued objects, with a team of blue-boilersuit-clad “operatives” painstakingly disassembling each item, and the artist himself standing atop a high platform flinging items into great bins according to their material, prior to their long funereal journey to recycling or landfill. In the centre of this tableau stood Landy’s red Saab 900, which gradually shrank as its doors, engine and electricals were removed. The whole thing took two weeks and his record collection was last to go: the team played Joy Division’s Love Will...
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Stephen Mangan: 'My kids have YouTube – I had cartoons made in a shed'

The actor and Landscape Artist of the Year presenter on the delights of Roobarb and Custard and Mr Benn – and how they compare with his children’s favourite shows I was born in 1968, and one of my enduring childhood TV memories is watching Roobarb when I was six or seven years old. It’s a five-minute cartoon from the mid-70s about an enthusiastic, hyper, bone-loving dog called Roobarb and a slightly machiavellian, sly, toothy-grinned cat called Custard, who was his nextdoor neighbour. It’s such a vivid memory – everything about it was kind of arresting. All of the voices were done by Richard Briers, who sounded like he was having a ball. Like most children, my sisters and I were brought up on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Jungle Book, Tom and Jerry and all those very slick American cartoons, whereas this was a deliberately rough-looking show that had a very particular style. I’ve done a bit of animation since and I learned it’s called “boiling”. All the pictures are drawn with...
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Murder in the Middle Ages: British Museum to tell story of Thomas Becket

London exhibition marks 850th anniversary of archbishop’s murder in crypt of Canterbury Cathedral One of the most shocking chapters of medieval history, embracing royalty, power, sacrilege and bloodshed, is to be told through the UK’s first major exhibition on the life, death and legacy of Thomas Becket, opening at the British Museum this spring. Its centrepiece is a stained glass window from Canterbury Cathedral, the scene of the priest’s brutal murder by four knights loyal to King Henry II in 1170. The 6-metre-high window, originally one of 12 ”miracle” windows created in the early 1200s, has never before left the cathedral nor been seen at eye level by the public. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2M3mguQ
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Bridgerton inspires rise in demand for classical pop song covers

Netflix drama’s use of string versions of Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande hits has tripled streaming figures for Vitamin String Quartet The success of Netflix’s Bridgerton has produced some unexpected trends, such as huge increases in people searching online for Regency fashion items including corsets. But the latest is a dramatic rise in the number of people streaming classical cover versions of contemporary pop songs. Vitamin String Quartet, the group that provide most of the classical versions of Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift songs in the modernised costume drama, have had a 350% increase in the number of people streaming their work since the show was released in December. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3qN5cYO
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