No plans this weekend? Let us fix that for you. Welcome to The Independent’s Arts Agenda, our brand new guide to the very best culture to catch up with across your Saturday and Sunday.
Carefully curated by our critics and editors, this round-up will bring you our hot tips across art, film, TV, theatre, dance, comedy, opera, books and music. Whether it’s a must-see newly opened show, or a gem you might have missed, we hope our recommendations mean you’re never stuck for something to see or do.
This week, if you haven’t watched The Last of Us yet, our TV Editor Ellie Harrison says you’re in store for a treat, while our Arts Editor Jessie Thompson is very curious about Melanie C’s Sadler’s Wells dance show. Elsewhere, our Film Editor Adam White says you can now watch Damien Chazelle’s Babylon at the cinema (if you dare), our Chief Art Critic Mark Hudson points out you’ve only got two days to see the National Gallery Lucian Freud show, and our Music Editor Roisin O’Connor reckons Lewis Capaldi’s Newcastle show is not to be missed.
Lucian Freud: New Perspectives
It’s your last chance to see a nicely put-together exhibition that tries to look beyond Freud’s celebrity image, but struggles to find much new to say about this ever-popular, yet controversial artist. If you like Freud you’ll be delighted by a fine selection of works from all periods. If you don’t, you’re unlikely to be won over. National Gallery, until 22 January
Cezanne
Ignore the misfiring attempts at reframing the great post-Impressionist as a more political figure than we’ve hitherto assumed. It’s the ethereal glow on Cezanne’s final landscapes and the obsessive precision of his endless studies of apples that make this one of the essential exhibitions of last year and this. Tate Modern, until 12 March
Spain and the Hispanic World
A fantastic jumble of “treasures” covering 4,000 years of Spanish and Hispanic culture from Neolithic pottery to Impressionist painting via Velasquez and Goya. On loan from New York’s quirky Hispanic Society Museum & Library, a certain quaintness in the presentation all adds to the show’s charm. Royal Academy, until 10 April
Mark Hudson, Chief Art Critic
Sonnets for Albert by Anthony Joseph
This week Trinidad-born poet Anthony Joseph became the latest inductee to the roll call of TS Eliot Prize winners, whose illustrious line-up includes Ted Hughes, Sharon Olds and Seamus Heaney. Sonnets for Albert, which uses an autobiographical lens to explore life with an absent father, was described as “luminous” by the judges who awarded him the £25,000 award. Dip in this weekend for a perfect poetry hit.
Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey
Schitt’s Creek writer and all-round funny person Monica Heisey has penned one of the year’s most anticipated debut novels, inspired by her own experience of getting divorced in her twenties. Not before she’d had some time to process it all, though; she told The Independent that, “ I didn’t want to be writing as therapy. I wanted going to therapy to be therapy.” It’s been praised by Dolly Alderton and Marian Keyes, and hits bookshops this weekend.
The Year of the Cat by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
Margot Robbie and Diego Calva in ‘Babylon’
This tender memoir from columnist Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is one of the rare pieces of writing borne out of the pandemic that won’t make you want to run a mile. There’s something genuinely insightful and profound in Cosslett wrestling with her mental health history and her creative ambitions, as she decides whether or not to have a child – all while caring for her new kitten Mackerel. It’s full of hard-won wisdom, intimately told.
Jessie Thompson, Arts Editor
Babylon
What’s more exhausting: Damien Chazelle’s three-hour hedonistic epic, or just hearing about it? If you haven’t been put off by the endless headlines about its copious orgies, bodily fluids and snake fights, you can watch it at the cinema this weekend. Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Diego Calva lead an oddball cast (Olivia Wilde! Spike Jonze! Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers!) playing Hollywood stars and strivers caught up in the transition from silent film to talkies. Then doing lots and lots of blow. In cinemas now
Monica Heisey: ‘It’s hard to break up now – the temptation to go nuts on Instagram is strong’
‘Skinamarink’ is already the year’s buzziest horror movie
