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| | | Smog, glorious smog: how Monet saw through London's poisonous wealth | | by Jonathan Jones May 30, 2022 | | The Frenchman was transfixed by the light he saw in the polluted city. But his misty painting of Waterloo Bridge, about to go under the hammer for an expected £24m, was anything but romantic Claude Monet’s Waterloo Bridge, Effet de Brume is going for a song. I’d say £24m, the minimum price Christie’s expect for this almost minimalist masterpiece, is cheap, at least by the standards of the nutty art market. If an Andy Warhol is worth more than £158m, and a Picasso nearly £103m, what makes a great Monet less valuable? It seems you need modernist edge to smash the market these days. Yet this work has it in spades, right down to Monet’s nod towards the climate crisis. Monet loved the dirty town that was Victorian and Edwardian London. One reason is in the title of his painting: “Effet de Brume” means “fog effect”. Or given the atmospheric problems of London at the time: smog effect. Coal fires, industrial chimneys and belching steamers on the Thames created that misty, weird light that kept Monet coming back to the Savoy Hotel, where he painted this view in 1904. Continue reading... | | | | | Borgen again! The most prescient show on TV is back – and still working its magic | | by Matt Charlton May 30, 2022 | | The stunning Danish political drama made many major predictions that ended up coming true. Ahead of its return, its stars and creator talk about their moody update – and why they seem more clairvoyant than ever Borgen snuck into the UK at the start of the last decade among the great wave of Scandi – or Nordic – noir, instigated by the likes of The Killing and Wallander. Only Borgen was nothing like these shows – no grisly murders, no unexpected deaths, minimal knitwear, and zero high-stakes shoot-outs. Instead, it was a deftly written, stunningly shot political drama, following Birgitte Nyborg – played beautifully by Sidse Babett Knudsen – who unexpectedly becomes Denmark’s first female Statsminister (prime minister). Focusing not only on the political machinations of Borgen (literally “the Castle”, the Danish nickname for Christiansborg Palace, where the government – run on a system of proportional representation – resides), but also the personal lives of the politicians and journalists in its orbit, it quickly became a firm favourite in the “golden age” of TV. This was a remarkable achievement, not only because it was Denmark’s first attempt at a political drama, but also because it focused on the minutiae of Dansk politik, such as pig farming and oil revenues, and somehow took international viewers along for the ride – with some excellent Danish interior design thrown in for good measure. Continue reading... | | | | | |
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