It’s billed as a play not a musical but Stereophonic, the US hit now in London, has some of the best new songs played on a West End stage this decade. The tracks deepen the relationships within a rising yet imploding 70s band during coke-fuelled sessions for their new LP. But the songs become the source of much drama, too, not least when the group fight over which will make the final album. How could they cut Masquerade?! Happily it’s included on the original, sensational Broadway cast recording alongside Bright, a track catchy enough to warrant its trio of versions.
A Tupperware of Ashes
“Queen Lear” was playwright Tanika Gupta’s pitch for her 2024 drama about a British Bengali restaurateur and mother of three who is diagnosed with early onset dementia. Meera Syal plays the lead role. Available on National Theatre at Home from 8 July.
King Lear
A chance to look (or listen) to Lear itself. Richard Wilson as the king is reason enough to tune in but this Drama on 4 BBC radio production of Shakespeare’s towering tragedy also boasts David Tennant, Greta Scacchi, Tamsin Greig and Toby Jones.
Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story
“She had the thing that you can’t teach,” runs one accolade for Liza Minnelli in this documentary that takes in her illustrious lineage and the highs and lows of her personal life while also showcasing her electrifying performances. On BBC iPlayer.
Krista Apple in Jon Fosse’s A Summer Day. Photograph: Johanna Austin
A Summer Day
Jon Fosse won the Nobel prize in literature in 2023, praised by the committee for expressing “the most powerful human emotions of anxiety and powerlessness in the simplest everyday terms”. Philadelphia’s Wilma theatre presents A Summer Day, his meditation on memory, available 7-27 July.
A Night With Janis Joplin
A tribute to blazing singer-songwriter featuring her tracks, her influences and a piece of her heart. Mary Bridget Davies dons the round glasses for the musical, filmed at the Peacock theatre in London in 2024. On Marquee TV from 4 July.
In Praise of Love
In this 1973 play, Terence Rattigan “came as close as he ever did to exposing his own emotional defensiveness”, wrote Michael Billington. The Orange Tree’s revival runs at the theatre until 5 July and is then available on demand, 8-11 July.
The Classics ReFramed
From Sadler’s Wells, here is a trio of short films that reimagine classic works. Folu Odimayo’s The Lions are Coming draws on The Rite of Spring, Mythili Prakash’s Mollika is inspired by Rabindranath Tagore and Aṁṁonia, choreographed by Emma Farnell-Watson and Kieran Lai, pays homage to Pina Bausch.
The city of Bath does not fight shy of promoting its Jane Austen connections, tempting in visitors from around the world by organising tours, balls, afternoon teas and writing and embroidery workshops inspired by the author. If you have the inclination, you can buy souvenirs ranging from Jane Austen Top Trumps to a Mr Darcy rubber duck.
But in this, the 250th anniversary year of her birth, an exhibition is being launched daring to point out that in truth Austen wasn’t terribly happy during the five years she lived in the city.
Called The Most Tiresome Place in the World: Jane Austen & Bath, the exhibition at the museum and venue No 1 Royal Crescent highlights the rather miserable time she had in the Georgian city.
Although she disliked Bath, Jane Austen used the city extensively as backdrops in two of her novels, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA
Izzy Wall, the curator for the exhibition, said: “Bath is known for Jane Austen and I think just about every organisation in Bath, including us, use it. We benefit from the association. But she didn’t like living in the city. She’s got lots of not particularly pleasant things to say about it.”
When Austen was told the family were moving from Hampshire to Bath, she is said to have fainted. “How much that is exaggerated, we’ll never know, but it’s a good story,” Wall said. “She was pulled up from her lovely idyllic country life into a big smoky city.
“We look at Bath today as a beautiful, historic town but in Austen’s time it was still a building site in places. Every house had a smoking chimney and it was lacking in proper sewage. Parts of it, at least, wouldn’t have been the nicest place to be.”
A manuscript of Jane Austen’s unfinished novel The Watsons, which is going on display in Bath in an exhibition looking at her time in the city. Photograph: The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford,
Austen lived in Bath between 1801 and 1806. In a letter she wrote that features in the exhibition, she described her first view of Bath as “all vapour, shadow, smoke & confusion”.
There was grief in 1805 when Austen’s father caught a fever in Bath and died. “He was frail,” said Wall, “but it was out of the blue, a heartbreaking thing for Jane Austen. Her father was loving and kind and really supportive of her writing. It also meant financial insecurity for the family.”
Wall said Austen barely wrote when she was in Bath. “The only thing she wrote was the start of a novel called The Watsons. She had a go at writing but didn’t get very far.”
Visitors will see a segment of The Watsons manuscript, borrowed from the the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford. It is thought to be the first time it has returned to Bath since Austen wrote it.
Wall said that after the family left Bath for Chawton in Hampshire, Austen became productive again. A letter Austen wrote in 1808 that also appears in the show describes her “happy feelings of Escape!” after leaving Bath.
Though she didn’t like Bath, that doesn’t mean she wasn’t inspired by it. She had visited before the family moved and used the city extensively as backdrops in two of her novels, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey.
Wall said Bath was a key place for Austen. “She was absorbing everything, watching and weaving it into her narratives.” She said fans loved walking in the streets Austen knew. “But we want to lift the lid, scratch the surface and look into the complex relationship she had with the city.”
The title for the exhibition is taken from a conversation in Northanger Abbey between Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney when he says: “For six weeks, I allow Bath is pleasant enough; but beyond that, it is the most tiresome place in the world.”
As well as the exhibition, the house will be running tours, talks and events in a programme funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
A wave of big-name acts including Taylor Swift, Charli xcx and Bruce Springsteen helped to attract a record of more than 23 million live music fans in the UK last year, leading to an unprecedented £10bn of spending across the UK economy.
A report from the industry body UK Music estimates that 23.5 million “music tourists” attended concerts and festivals last year, up almost a quarter on the 19.2 million in 2023.
While the vast majority, 93%, were UK music fans, the number of overseas music tourists climbed to 1.6 million, a 62% annual increase.
The Hometown Glory report credited Swift’s Eras tour, the most commercially successful tour of all time, with helping to drive the figures to a “new high”, while festivals including Glastonbury, Download and Boardmasters also proved to be big draws.
Other major acts who played in the UK last year included Sam Fender, Olivia Rodrigo, Girls Aloud, Chappell Roan, the Killers and Foo Fighters.
Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, said: “These numbers show just how powerful the UK is as a home for live music, attracting the biggest acts, drawing millions of fans, and giving a real boost to local economies through tourism and jobs.”
Spending on music tourism hit a record £10bn last year, up by about 25% over the £8bn spent in 2023. The figure includes £5.1bn spent directly by music tourists on tickets, food and drink, merchandise, travel, parking and accommodation.
It also includes £4.9bn classified as indirect spending such as on fencing and security at concerts.
While the additional 4.3 million music tourists that attended gigs and concerts last year helped fuel the record £10bn spend, it has also been boosted by the impact of inflation on accommodation, travel and food and drink as well as soaring ticket prices.
This year, Oasis fans are expected to splash out more than £1bn on the reunion tour, more than £766 a person across the 17-date tour.
The report highlights the dominance of London, which is home to big arenas such as the O2 and Wembley, which drew 7.5 million music fans and accounted for £2.7bn of the total £10bn in revenues. The capital was followed by the north-west of England, with 3.3 million visitors and £1.2bn in revenues, and the south-west of England, with 2.5 million music tourists and £1.1bn.
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Overall, the live music industry supported 72,000 full-time equivalent jobs last year, up from 62,000 in 2023, according to UK Music.
However, the report also highlights the increasing pressure on the industry, with 250 festivals having ceased to operate between 2019 and June this year.
“While music generates huge benefits for our local areas, there remain a number of challenges facing our sector such as the rising cost of touring for artists and the threat of closure looming over venues, studios and other music spaces.”
Jason Aldean is taking his Full Throttle Tour global. The ACM Artist of the Decade and multi-time Entertainer of the Year announced the international extension of his current tour today (July 1), revealing a run of shows in Australia and New Zealand for early 2026.
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The newly announced dates will mark Aldean’s debut headline performance in New Zealand and his first time returning to Australia since 2016, when he became the first headliner to sell out CMC Rocks QLD. The 2026 leg kicks off February 19 at Spark Arena in Auckland, before heading to Australia for a mix of arena shows and festival appearances. Aldean is also set to headline the inaugural Sunburnt Country country music experience, which includes stops in Toowoomba, Hunter Valley and Canberra.
Corey Kent will join as a special guest on all dates, while Australian country star Brad Cox will open the Sunburnt Country festival dates.
Produced by Live Nation, the Full Throttle World Tour continues Aldean’s global touring legacy following a massive U.S. leg that launched in May 2025 and resumes July 17 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The 2026 extension marks his first time headlining in New Zealand and his long-awaited return to Australia since 2016, when he became the first artist to sell out CMC Rocks QLD as a headliner.
Aldean has racked up 30 No. 1 country radio hits across his career, along with over 20 million albums sold and nearly 20 billion global streams. His current single “Whiskey Drink” marks his 30th chart-topping hit, following previous anthems like “She’s Country,” “Amarillo Sky,” and “Big Green Tractor.”
Tickets for the newly announced Australia and New Zealand shows go on sale Monday, July 7 at 1 p.m. local time.
A range of presales begin Wednesday, July 2, including Mastercard, Live Nation, and One NZ offerings, with select early access also available for Face to Face Touring members. More information, including VIP packages, is available at livenation.com.au and livenation.co.nz.
AU/NZ 2026 TOUR DATES: Feb. 19 – Auckland, NZ – Spark Arena Feb. 21 – Toowoomba, QLD – Sunburnt Country Feb. 22 – Brisbane, QLD – Brisbane Entertainment Centre Feb. 25 – Melbourne, VIC – Rod Laver Arena Feb. 26 – Sydney, NSW – Qudos Bank Arena Feb. 28 – Hunter Valley, NSW – Sunburnt Country Mar. 1 – Canberra, ACT – Sunburnt Country
Picture early 20th-century France: dusty roads, fewer than 3,000 cars in total, and a country where hitting the highway was a daring adventure. Enter brothers André and Édouard Michelin – tire manufacturers with a dream.In 1900, they launched the Guide Michelin, a complimentary handbook packed with maps, repair tips, and places to rest or dine. It was a clever ploy to encourage travel and tire wear.However, to everyone’s surprise and delight – the guide quickly found a new purpose: enhancing gastronomic exploration.
In 1926, Michelin introduced a single star for “fine dining,” and by 1931, fleshed this out into the familiar one–two–three star system – laying the groundwork for culinary prestige.Here’s how the Michelin brothers transformed a humble tire company’s pamphlet into the global authority on culinary excellence.Let’s take a trip down that delicious journey!
From a motorist’s manual to a cultural icon: The becoming
What started as an unlikely venture of a tire company changed the course of how people tasted and praised meals. In 1889, the Michelin brothers founded their tire company in Clermont-Ferrand. As automobiles slowly began appearing on French roads – fewer than 3,000 nationwide – the brothers recognized a business opportunity. They created a guidebook with maps, garage listings, tire-repair advice, and hotel and restaurant suggestions to entice drivers to travel – and wear out tires faster.The inaugural edition appeared in 1900. Over 35,000 copies of this complimentary guide were distributed – fuel for the infant auto industry.
Legend has it that, somewhere along the line, guides were repurposed to support mechanics’ workbenches. Moved by this realization, Michelin began charging a modest seven francs in 1920. As the saying goes, “people truly respect what they pay for.”
From maps to meals: Emphasizing restaurants
Initially, restaurant listings played a minor role. But by the 1920s, Michelin noticed that diners prized culinary guidance the most. They decided to run the guide ad-free, add detailed restaurant categories, and recruit anonymous inspectors – paid diners tasked with assessing establishments impartially.
1920–1931: The stars were born
As the guide gained credibility, its restaurant section began to attract more attention. Michelin hired anonymous inspectors to dine incognito, providing impartial evaluations.In 1926, they introduced the first star: a single indication of “fine dining.” This simple star sent shockwaves through the culinary world – it wasn’t just a meal; it was recognition.Only five years later, in 1931, came the now-iconic three-tiered hierarchy:One star: “Very good restaurant in its category.”Two stars: “Excellent cooking, worth a detour.”Three stars: “Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey.” That year also saw the guide donning its signature red cover, emblematic of its transformation into a hallmark of luxury.
The secret sauce behind the shining stars
What makes a Michelin star so coveted?Inspection standards: Inspectors remain anonymous, pay their own bills, and return multiple times to ensure consistency. Judging hinges on five core factors: ingredient quality, cooking technique, chef’s personality, value, and consistency.Credibility through anonymity: This covert evaluation builds trust. Michelin’s unswerving standards – undeclared visits, tab payment, and no decor bias – promote fairness and respect, even among the elite chefs being reviewed.Influence and pressure: Stars carry enormous weight. Gaining one can make a chef overnight; losing it can devastate careers. The tragic case of Bernard Loiseau, who died amid rumors of losing a third star, sparked debate about the psychological toll of Michelin’s influence.
Going global, gastronomically
Beyond France: Global expansion and modern adaptationsPost-World War II, guide production resumed, helping rejuvenate travel and hospitality. From the 1950s onward, the Michelin Guide went global – Italy in 1956; from the 2000s, it jumped continents to New York (2005), Tokyo (2007), and Hong Kong (2009). Today, it spans over 40 countries and evaluates more than 30,000 establishments.Michelin also introduced the Bib Gourmand in 1997, recognizing restaurants that deliver excellent food without the indulgence of stars, making the guide more inclusive.
The dark side of the moon: The star’s shadow
With prestige came pressure. Michelin recognition can be transformative – reservations soar, global acclaim follows. Yet, it also comes with pressure. Stars opened doors – and shut them. Chefs felt immense stress to maintain standards. In 2003, tragic rumors linked the suicide of Bernard Loiseau to the fear of losing a third star. Some chefs even returned stars voluntarily, rejecting the intense scrutiny.Critics have also accused Michelin of promoting elitism and sidelining regional authenticity in favor of conformity.
The hall of fame
Eugénie Brazier – Six-Star Pioneer: In 1933, Lyonnaise chef Eugénie Brazier became the first person to hold six Michelin stars – three for each of her two restaurants – a feat that stood unparalleled until Alain Ducasse in 1998.Brazier and Marie Bourgeois became the first three-star female chefs, featured in the 1933 edition.The 1939 guide was even repurposed by Allied forces for its reliable maps during D-Day.The guide has embraced diverse talents. Vegan chef Claire Vallée earned her star, and Lung King Heen became the first Chinese restaurant to ever receive three stars.
From tires to tastemakers: The lasting (and tasty) legacy
What began as a marketing gimmick morphed into an authority in fine dining. The Michelin star system, born from a desire to prompt travel and rooted in delicious discovery, has reshaped global dining in the 20th and 21st centuries. Michelin’s guide restructured food culture, blending rigorous evaluation with the romance of travel. It launched restaurant empires, invented celebrity chefs, and extended gastronomic frontiers. Today, its stars guide diners across continents, inspire chefs to new heights, and maintain strict standards from invisible tables behind kitchen doors. To this day, the Michelin Star system remains a marvel of corporate creativity and cultural transformation. Alberto Pic’s 3-star valuation, Mère Brazier’s pioneering tenure, and Loiseau’s tragic story – all serve as testament to this fascinating pivot from industrial marketing to gastronomical reverence. From humble tire guides propping up mechanics’ benches to red books held by gourmands worldwide – the Michelin journey is a testament to transformation, taste, and tenacity in the pursuit of excellence.
On world food day, Vardhan Puri shares his biggest kitchen disaster
SEOUL – Shares in South Korean companies tied to the hit Netflix series Squid Game (2021 to 2025) slumped on June 30 following the release of the show’s final season, which debuted to a lukewarm audience reception despite topping global streaming charts.
Artist Company, an entertainment agency in which Squid Game’s main actor Lee Jung-jae is the largest shareholder, tanked by as much as 21 per cent. Artist Studio, a unit of Artist Company, also declined 24 per cent. South Korea-based Dexter Studios, a visual effects production firm that is a partner on the blockbuster production, fell 8.5 per cent.
“Much of the criticism stems from how the show ended – viewers whose interpretation of the show’s worldview doesn’t align with theirs,” said Mr Kim Hern-sik, a pop culture critic in Seoul. “It’s hard to top Season 1 – it was a global sensation.”
The third season of Netflix’s anti-capitalist parable, which premiered on June 27, was directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk and stars Lee, Lee Byung-hun and Im Si-wan, among other South Korean actors.
The television series topped the global TV show rankings on Netflix in all countries, according to FlixPatrol, which tracks viewing on streaming services. Season 3 earned an 83 per cent approval rating among professional critics and a 51 per cent approval rating from audiences, according to review-aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.
First released in 2021, Squid Game became a cultural phenomenon, igniting global conversations with its brutal social allegory and captivating visuals. It remains Netflix’s most-watched show of all time, drawing about 600 million views to date across the first two seasons.
The South Korean dystopian survival thriller has won six Emmy awards, including Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Lee Jung-jae and Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for Hwang, in 2022. Bloomberg
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A two-year study has mapped behavioural patterns and scent-marking preferences among India’s last wild lions, offering rare insights into how they communicate.
Among all observed behaviours, sniffing was the most common, accounting for nearly 40% of the recorded actions. This was followed by scratching and spraying.
As Gir’s lion population grows, knowing where and how they mark territory can guide conservation practices, from protecting key habitats and movement corridors to planning for coexistence in shared landscapes.
Mammals, most prominently carnivorous species, use scent-marking as a crucial form of communication. Lions, for example, use urine, faeces, and secretions from scent glands to leave behind long-lasting chemical signals on trees and trails. While these are invisible to the human eye, they carry a meaning for other lions in that area.
A study conducted in Gujarat’s Gir Forest focussed on decoding some of this hidden communication. “This is the first detailed scientific study of scent-marking in free-ranging Asiatic lions, and it reveals how scent is a powerful tool for territory defence, mate attraction, and social interaction,” says Mohan Ram, Divisional Forest Officer, Wildlife Division, Sasan-Gir, Gir National Park and Sanctuary, and one of the lead researchers.
Leaving a mark
Gir Forest, which includes a national park and sanctuary, is spread across nearly 1,900 square kilometres in Gujarat’s Saurashtra region. It is home to over 40 species of mammals, including leopards, hyenas, and jackals, but the lion is its undisputed icon. To understand how the big cats use scent to communicate, researchers collaborated with Gir’s seasoned field trackers. These experts helped identify trees that showed signs of regular scratching and are favoured spots for lion scent-marking.
At 36 such locations, the team installed motion-triggered infrared cameras between March 2022 and April 2024. “Across three seasons, we faced all kinds of challenges, from sensor triggers caused by birds or wind to monsoon rains that washed away scent marks. Reaching camera trap locations during heavy rain was a task in itself. Plus, the volume of data collected was enormous, and it took a lot of effort to sift through and sort out usable footage,” says Ram.
Each time a lion passed by the cameras captured a short video and a photograph. In total, they logged over 15,000 wildlife detections, of which 1,542 featured lions. Every lion video was carefully analysed for specific behaviours such as sniffing, scratching, spraying, rubbing, and even climbing. “Camera trapping helped us capture behaviour without disturbing the lions. We also kept the camera settings standard across sites and seasons to ensure consistency,” says Ram.
Researchers also documented tree characteristics such as species, height, girth, and proximity to roads or water to understand what made certain trees more likely to be used as scent posts.
The data was then grouped by season, time of day, the lion’s age and sex, and the traits of the marked trees. Using statistical tools, the team mapped out behavioural patterns and scent-marking preferences across the Gir landscape.
Marking scent part of daily routine
Among all observed behaviours, sniffing was the most common, accounting for nearly 40% of the recorded actions. This was followed by scratching (30%) and spraying (12%). Young lions were more likely to climb trees, possibly as playful behaviour or a way of learning.
Males were the more active scent-markers, often around pride territories. Females also left their mark, especially when they were in heat. “It’s a key part of territorial and reproductive strategy in a species with such a limited geographic range. Sub-adults were also seen using the same trees repeatedly, almost like they were learning how to mark territory,” says Ram.
Young lions were more likely to climb trees, possibly as playful behaviour or a way of learning, according to a study on Gir lions. Image by Mohan Ram.
Most of these behaviours occurred in the early morning hours, with scratching and spraying peaking at 3:44 a.m. and 4:17 a.m. respectively. This pattern suggests that scent-marking is a deliberate and well-timed part of the lions’ daily routines.
Winter turned out to be the busiest season for scent-marking. This aligns with the peak of lion mating season, highlighting the link between chemical communication and reproduction. “Cooler temperatures meant more lion movement, which led to more marking. Interestingly, lions often chose tilted trees (around 45 degrees) because the spray lands better and holds fragrance longer, especially in the monsoon,” says Ram.
Identifying a good marking spot
Lions also didn’t mark trees at random. They showed clear preferences for certain species, especially Butea monosperma and Syzygium cumini. “We noticed that the lions preferred trees with soft bark or gum, species with strong secondary metabolites, likely because the scent tends to linger longer. Teak trees were avoided; the bark is too hard to claw,” says Ram.
Location played a key role too. Most of the marked trees were near forest trails and water sources. Trails serve as lion highways, ideal places to advertise presence to rivals or potential mates. “The preferred trees were often near trails, indicating lions may be aligning marking behaviour with movement corridors, possibly even taking human presence into account,” explains Ram.
Moist environments may also help preserve chemical signals for longer durations. Scrub habitats, in particular, recorded more scent-marking activity. Their open structure likely makes scent-posts more visible and accessible.
Female lions left scent marks, especially when they were in heat, noted the study. Image by Mohan Ram.
Why studying behaviour matters
Asiatic lions differ from their African counterparts in many ways. They live in smaller groups, don’t breed in synchrony, and are confined to a single, limited landscape in western India. These unique conditions shape how they interact, compete, and survive.
By identifying where and when scent-marking takes place, this study offers valuable insights into lion behaviour. The findings can help conservationists refine strategies for habitat protection, water management, boundary marking, and lion monitoring ensuring the continued survival of India’s last wild lions. “Knowing which tree species lions prefer can guide habitat improvement efforts. It can even help prevent poaching by identifying high-use marking spots,” says Ram.
The researchers recommend that future studies combine scent-marking data with GPS collaring to track individual lions over time. This approach could reveal more details such as whether specific lions favour particular trees, and how their marking behaviours shift with seasons, age, or social status. All these insights could be particularly valuable as the lion population eventually grows and begins expanding into Gir’s neighbouring areas. “It can directly inform habitat planning beyond Gir, and support strategies for lion movement and coexistence with local communities,” Ram says.
Read more: Asiatic lion population has grown 172% in 25 years
Banner image: A study found that among all observed behaviours of Gir lions, sniffing was the most common, accounting for nearly 40% of the recorded actions. Image by Mohan Ram.
LONDON — The National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia’s largest and oldest public art gallery, plans to take a look at two groundbreaking female designers, Vivienne Westwood and Rei Kawakubo, whose careers evolved in parallel, and who both had a taste for provocation.
The show, “Westwood | Kawakubo,” will run from Dec. 7 until April 19 and marks the first time the designers’ fashion has been shown side by side, despite all they had in common.
“They were born within a year of each other, on different sides of the world, and were both self-taught. Both had groundbreaking moments in 1981, with Westwood showing in London, and Kawakubo in Paris,” said Katie Somerville, senior curator, fashion and textiles at the NGV, in an interview.
The similarities don’t end there. Westwood’s 1981 show, which she did with her then-husband and collaborator Malcolm McLaren, was called Pirate, while Kawakubo’s outing for her fledgling label Comme des Garçons was titled Pirates.
Although the women’s aesthetics were different, their mindset was often similar. Both pushed the limits of convention, examined the complex relationship between clothes and the body, and brought historical dress into their work.
“Their work has never been about going quietly — or presenting what’s expected,” Somerville said.
Comme des Garçons spring 2024
YANNIS VLAMOS
The show will feature more than 140 designs, most of them from the museum’s own collection, with the rest from private collections and institutions including London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, Palais Galliera in Paris and the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Somerville said that while they were organizing the show, the NGV received a “transformative” donation of more than 40 recent works from Comme des Garçons. They will also feature in the show.
The exhibition has been organized by theme, and looks at the designers’ embrace of provocation; menswear and tailoring; historical costume, and the female body. It also looks at both women’s ability to make statements about politics and the environment through their designs.
Exhibition highlights include Westwood’s punk ensembles from the late 1970s, popularized by London bands such as The Sex Pistols and Siousie Sioux; a romantic tartan gown from Westwood’s Anglomania collection worn by Kate Moss on the runway in the early 1990s, and the original version of the corseted wedding dress worn by Sarah Jessica Parker in “Sex and The City: The Movie.”
Kawakubo’s works include a sculptural petal ensemble worn by Rihanna on the red carpet and dramatic abstract works that challenge the relationship between the body and clothing. They include gingham sculptural designs from the Body Meets Dress — Dress Meets Body collection from spring 1997.
Looks from Vivienne Westwood‘s 1981 Pirate collection.
While the museum has a strong tradition of showcasing fashion, this is the first time it has put two designers side by side.
“At the NGV, we’ve carved out an innovative model of presenting shows where we pair artists,” said Somerville, adding that recent — and successful — shows have looked at Andy Warhol alongside Ai Wei Wei, and Keith Haring in tandem with Jean-Michel Basquiat.
“We’ve never done one focusing on fashion — or women — and we thought it was a brilliant way” to do both, she said.
“We’ve learned from doing those projects that if you pick two really significant, impactful [artists] and put them together, a whole other layer of things is revealed, other points of connection — and absolute divergence,” she added.
The NGV plans to mark the opening of the exhibition — its annual summer blockbuster show — with a gala on Dec. 6 at NGV International.
“No, no, no!” exclaims an affronted Monica Venturi at the idea that anybody might attempt to pass off spaghetti bolognese as an authentically Italian dish.
Her face is stricken at the thought of adding ragù (meat sauce) to spaghetti and then misnaming it, when, as everybody in her hometown of Bologna knows instinctively, “spaghetti alla bolognese does not exist”.
Monica, as a decades-long veteran pasta-maker along with her sister Daniela Venturi, does not invite argument on her specialist subject.
In fact, the sisters explain, the real spaghetti alla bolognese is made with tuna, tomato and onion, topped off with fresh parsley. And although tuna is a fish, and Italians generally shy away from cheese on seafood, they like to add parmesan. This is because, says Monica, “for Bolognesi people, tuna is not a fish”.
The pasta-making duo are in Dublin as part of a partnership with Birra Moretti which will see them host a two-night pop-up Nonna’s Kitchen at the end of July. At home in Bologna, they run a classic pasta shop, Le Sfogline, where they handmake as much as 60kg of fresh pasta on their busiest week. In the pasta business for almost 30 years and both having nonna (grandmother) status, the sisters know everything about how it should be cooked, eaten and enjoyed.
For the record, the authentic version of the food Irish people like to call spaghetti bolognese is tagliatelle al ragù, ribbon-shaped pasta with slow-cooked meat sauce. The sisters warn that even if you know this, it’s dangerously easy to fall down with the ingredients by using too much of the base mix of celery, carrots and onions.
“You must be aware of this because if you put in too much, it becomes very heavy. And you only taste the three vegetables. This is a mistake I’ve noticed,” says Monica.
Warming to the theme of non-expert pasta gaffes, Monica says the other area where we often tip ourselves into absolute failure is overcooking pasta.
Obeying the “al dente” (literally, to the tooth) rule, where pasta is cooked just to the point of firmness before veering into sogginess, is crucial, the sisters agree. This is especially true for their fresh pasta with eggs, says Daniela. “It cooks very fast.”
Monica (right) and Daniela Venturi in Drury Buildings, Dublin 1. The sisters, who run one of Bologna’s most successful pasta shops, have strong feelings on how it should be made and eaten. Photograph: Dan Dennison
And then we get to lasagne, or lasagna – the lasagna is a single layer of sheet pasta, while lasagne is the plural. There is disapproval on the sisters’ faces when they acknowledge that people in France sometimes eat the dish with a mixed salad, but sheer disbelief when they’re told it is generally served with chips in Ireland. News of garlic bread often being heaped on the side as well prompts such uncomfortable laughter that it seems wise to avoid talk of coleslaw.
Daily lasagne-maker Daniela, who says she still can’t resist sampling her wares after all these years, isn’t giving up on us though. She has a key tip on how to handle béchamel, the white sauce used between lasagna layers.
“You don’t see béchamel when lasagne is ready to eat,” she says, with Monica adding that the sauce is there “for keeping lasagne just a little bit softer”. In other words, a little white sauce goes a long way.
The bread and butter of their business though is tortellini, the small ring-shaped pasta filled with meat that was historically served by Bolognesi at Christmas but is now sold and eaten all year round. The main rule here is to avoid smothering the golden circles of deliciousness in heavy sauces. In fact, you should probably avoid the sauce altogether, and serve it simply “in brodo”, or broth.
This makes sense when you hear of the richness that goes into making the sisters’ top-end tortellini: “Pork loin cooked in butter, mortadella, Parma ham, Parmigiano 36 months old, eggs – it’s that rich that you cannot hide with a sauce,” says Monica.
However, she does admit to occasionally succumbing to a light sauce involving some grated parmesan, two or three spoons of the traditional broth that accompanies the tortellini and fresh cream, but says “just a little” is plenty. “Personally, I don’t like to cover something with sauce even if it’s good.”
She also likes to mop up sauces with bread, believing politeness has no place in such matters.
Despite being Bologna’s queens of home-made pasta, the Venturi sisters do not scoff at dried pasta, especially with fish, which they say does not combine well with the eggs in fresh pasta. Unsurprisingly though, not every dried pasta passes muster. Both recommend Pasta di Gragnano, which is made by mixing durum wheat grown at the Monti Lattari in southern Italy with the local waters. Where this isn’t available, a good rule of thumb, according to Monica, is to go with dried pasta with longer cooking times.
In general, she says she is fairly “straight” when it comes to Italian recipes, believing there’s no reason to mess around with them when they are already proven. She shudders at “terrible” innovations such as adding pineapple to pizza, while Daniela is ashen at the idea of “pizza with chips”.
So, after all these years of making pasta for the people of their native city, do the sisters still eat it every day?
“Oh, yeah,” they reply instantly, with the small qualification that they limit portion sizes to about 200g and avoid “a huge amount” of sauce. They like to try other foods when travelling however, singling out Ireland’s “wonderful meat” for praise but expressing dismay at paying €4 or more for a coffee in Dublin, when a good cup can still be found for … wait for it … €1.30 in Bologna.
Birra Moretti’s Nonna’s Kitchen will take place at Fumbally Stables, Dublin 8, on July 23rd and 24th. Tickets at €30 will be sold on Eventbrite from July 3rd
What sparked the ideal of peace, love and understanding of the 1960s? In The Last Great Dream, Dennis McNally, the longtime publicist of the Grateful Dead, explores the roots of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury hippies. It’s the “fourth and last instalment” of McNally’s work documenting the history of the counterculture, following books about Jack Kerouac and the Beats; the Grateful Dead; and the relationship between Black music and white culture.
McNally traces the precursors of hippie culture to 1942, and the first meeting between Bay area poets Robert Duncan and Kenneth Rexroth, who would “become the nucleus of a remarkably powerful gathering of poets over the next decade”. Artists began to question societal values during the war, prompted by the internment of Japanese Americans, the threat of atomic annihilation and the McCarthyism that followed. While the GI Bill’s provision of financial and educational benefits for veterans bolstered the pursuit of the American dream, the Beats espoused what McNally calls the “bohemian code”: that “a life of art and spirituality was preferable to money and the pursuit of power”.
The Last Great Dream is an encyclopedic survey, with music acting as the glue between various art forms. McNally does a good job of showing the web of connections between artists from different disciplines. Unfortunately, completism can come at the expense of readability. Although he conducted some 60 interviews for the project, the book reads more like a compendium of Wikipedia entries than first-person accounts of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll.
While bohemian scenes blossomed in tandem in New York, LA and London, “San Franciscans went further and deeper”, McNally argues. By 1967, a new vision of freedom and sexuality was in place but the “catalyst” of the counterculture, McNally writes, was LSD. At the Human Be-In, a gathering of 30,000 hippies in Golden Gate Park that year, Timothy Leary, the Harvard psychologist turned acid evangelist, led the crowd in chanting his mantra: “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”
Ample ink has been spilled on the megalomaniacal Leary but the story of his fourth wife and fellow fugitive Rosemary Woodruff tails off after their split. Susannah Cahalan, a journalist with an interest in altered states since being diagnosed with autoimmune encephalitis (the subject of her bestselling 2012 memoir, Brain on Fire), wrote The Acid Queen to prevent Woodruff from fading into a footnote in Leary’s legacy.
A high-school dropout, Woodruff arrived in New York from the Midwest in 1953. Twice divorced by 21, once from a jazz accordionist, she worked as a model and stewardess (an industry “harder to get into than Harvard”, writes Cahalan), until she aged out of the skies at 30. Fleeing an abusive relationship, she met Leary, 15 years her senior, at his psychedelic commune upstate in 1965.
Cahalan makes a case for Woodruff’s contribution to the psychedelic movement during her seven-year relationship with Leary. She spoke to the press, fundraised, edited his books and wrote his speeches, including for a failed gubernatorial run in California against Ronald Reagan. She also cared for his two children, who had lost their mother, Marianne Busch, to suicide. The well-worn phrase “if you can remember the 1960s, then you weren’t really there” luckily doesn’t apply to Woodruff, who at least took good notes. Her archives include diary entries, letters, trip reports and a posthumously published memoir, which Cahalan rounds out with interviews with those who knew her.
It’s a colourful story, involving love triangles, drug busts and the dramatic jailbreak of Leary, who was serving a 20-year sentence for marijuana possession. The couple fled to Algeria, became wards of the Black Panthers and were then sheltered by an arms dealer in Switzerland. Woodruff’s life underground — once Leary was caught in Afghanistan and returned to the US in 1973 — had her hiding in Italy, Colombia and the Caribbean before living under an assumed name in Cape Cod, unable to afford the “mouthful of fillings” she had needed since their escape.
Well researched, The Acid Queen paints an unflattering portrait of Leary. While Cahalan gives him credit for his contribution to the early days of psychedelic research, his lack of political engagement became increasingly dangerous as “dropping out” left young men susceptible to the draft. He was a neglectful father and didn’t visit Woodruff in jail when she served time for refusing to testify against him in a grand jury. His values were not particularly progressive: he treated women as free domestic labour and never accepted the bisexuality of his former colleague Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass).
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Leary was disavowed by the psychedelic community for co-operating with the Feds to reduce his sentence, after which he lived a life of debauched semi-celebrity until his death, aged 75, in 1996, with his ashes blasted into space. Woodruff, meanwhile, remained undercover for more than 20 years, until a judge threw out the charges against her in 1994. Despite Leary trying to entice her out of hiding to save himself, they reconciled: she was the executor of his estate. Woodruff died in 2002, at 66, of congestive heart failure.
Taken together, The Last Great Dream and The Acid Queen raise the question of the legacy of the 1960s. Despite the consciousness-raising potential of psychedelics, Cahalan warns that today’s renewed interest carries the same risks of “evangelism and hubris”. While hippies may not have succeeded in changing politics, they have had a lasting impact on the culture, McNally holds, including organic food, yoga, LGBTQ rights and computing. “The dream died,” he concludes, “but the dreaming continues.”
The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties by Dennis McNally Hachette £28, 461 pages
The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life of Rosemary Woodruff Leary by Susannah Cahalan Canongate £22, 384 pages
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