Culture Tiger

Upstairs at the Royal Academy, the pokey Sackler Wing bursts with a tremendous energy that encapsulates the despair, hope, fear and nostalgia that consumed 1930s America during a time of great uncertainty. This is an exhibition that, with its wild diversity, refuses to let you get comfortable. Visitors are thrown into a loud and bustling expressionist-led New York with Paul Cadmus’ rowdy drunk sailors and Philip Evergood’s dance marathon contestants edging closer to a brutal collapse as they desperately yet barely carry on. Away from the crowds, Edward Hopper’s lone usherette in New York Movie is bored waiting for the picture to finish for yet another night. Amidst the growing industry in the city, workers strive for empowerment. In Aaron Douglas’ Aspiration, the shackled arms of African American slaves wave underneath the defiant purple silhouettes of their descendents firmly grasping industrial tools and boldly pointing towards a towering city on a hill. Pat Whalen, an Irish-Amer...

Next week the Edinburgh Fringe kicks off with thousands of performers, established and new, giving it their all on one of many stages all over the city. There will be so much to see at Europe’s largest cultural festival so here’s a little tip from me - Whatever you do at the Fringe, go and see The Paper Cinema! Founded in 2004,The Paper Cinema creates live animation with elaborate ink and pen drawn paper puppets accompanied by live music and special effects. Earlier this week I rocked up to the Battersea Arts Centre to check out The Paper Cinema’s production of Homer’s ‘The Odyssey’. Projected onto a screen, there are individual puppets and settings for every single scene. The characters and their surroundings become multidimensional through the painstaking manoeuvres of the puppeteers. Scenes, such as Odysseus sailing away while Penelope watches in the foreground or Odysseus and his crew running from the Cyclops with the latter’s gigantic feet crashing around them and trees speedi...

Following the success of Hollywood Costume, the V&A brings us another box office smash hit with David Bowie Is. So far in 2013, David Bowie has reappeared at the forefront of the public conscious with the build up to this exhibition and the release of new album The Next Day following a refreshingly subtle marketing campaign. The V&A’s latest offering will undoubtedly attract masses of visitors even more eclectic than usual to a single exhibition - there is no such thing as a typical Bowie fan. My first memory of Bowie was his introduction in the TV production of Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman with butter yellow hair and patterned jumper. But for others, their first Bowie memory could be anything from a Top of the Pops appearance from one of several decades to one of many feature films.