​Although the impact of the current pandemic is severe in many areas of society, the arts are certainly among the worst affected.  It is unfortunately in the nature of this sector that it involves crowds – and now, concerts, theatre and opera performances, dance festivals, exhibitions, and even book fairs have been cancelled and postponed indefinitely. Millions of artists, dancers, singers, producers and musicians are left in limbo, without an income and without a set date for the return of normality to comfort them.
 
Nevertheless, as everyone else, those working and creating in the arts are counting on a swift conclusion of the current situation, and for the meantime, they´re continuing to do what they do best – being creative. Yes, art requires to be seen, yet for a temporary timespan a surprising quantity of it can be experienced online or in more intimate formats than big concert halls or theatres. Musicians are livestreaming themselves performing – at home, of course – on Instagram or Facebook, sometimes even collaborating. Art galleries and museums are making their collections available online to take virtual tours. Opera singers are delighting their neighbourhoods with free concerts from their balconies, or, like Andrea Bocelli, from an eerily empty Duomo in Milan. Ballet companies around the world offer online streams of past performances, such as the Bolshoi Ballet from Moscow or the Ballet Opéra de Paris.
 
All these developments are both generous – many of them are for free to brighten everyday life for the millions of people quarantined or in strict lockdown situations – and important, as art is particularly necessary in times of uncertainty. It offers both refuge from the flood of tragic news and hope in this time of crisis, something that is perhaps shown by the popularity of reading among tips for surviving self-isolation and quarantine. Literature is currently presumably the only creative category that will not suffer as extensively as the rest; reading has always been a mostly solitary enjoyment.  
 
However, there will be a day when every past performance has been streamed and when artists and creators need to return to the less glamourous necessity of generating an income for themselves and their industry. This, however, can only be done the traditional way. Most areas of the arts rely on live audiences and on the rhythm of performance seasons that involve people coming together to create their art. One day, concerts and performances will have to take place again. When this day will be remains uncertain; until then, the sector can only rely on the support of governments and financial solidarity shown by the public. The Czech Republic for instance, is leading by example: people there are buying tickets for cancelled cultural events in order to support the arts scene and its institutions.
 
While this article does not intend to downplay the seriousness of the situation – the economic consequences of the pandemic are already predicted to be astronomically high, and will thus also affect the arts severely – it is important to remember that there is hope: this is not the first pandemic in the history of humanity that the arts have survived. Art, in some form, has accompanied us from almost the very beginning of our existence as a species, as is visible for instance in discoveries of pre-civilizational instruments and cave drawings in Lascaux or Altamira. Although we don´t often realize, art is as necessary to most of us as is a regular supply of food – or toilet paper. 

By Cristina Coellen

By Francesca Halliwell
 
Italy. The country of Raphael and Botticelli, Giotto and Veronese, da Vinci, Michelangelo, even the Galleria Borghese. Home to some of the Renaissance’s most important artists, not to mention a magnificent ancient civilisation, Europe’s ‘bel paese’ boasts a treasure trove of artistic masterpieces that many nations could only dream of possessing.
 
Owing to recent theft reports, however, the truth seems somewhat different.
 
Less than a fortnight ago, European police arrested 23 people on charges of trafficking tens of thousands of archaeological artefacts. The objects, which reportedly date back to the third and fourth centuries B.C., were looted from Calabria before being smuggled out of Italy and auctioned off across Europe.

 
This isn’t the first time Italian artefacts have been looted and sold off abroad. According to the Carabinieri’s most recent stolen artworks bulletin, 8,405 items have gone missing from Italy in the past year alone.
 
Nor is the phenomenon a recent one. It dates back as far as 1969, when a specialised police squad – the Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage – was created by the Italian government to track down stolen paintings and statues. Though this first-of-its-kind art corps has allegedly recovered over three million objects since its foundation, its mission is still far from complete: more than one million Italian artworks remain missing or stolen.
 
The scale of their task is quite monumental. In 2014, these so-called Monuments Men were tasked with tracking the theft of Sicilian treasures worth over 40 million euros. The ensuing investigation culminated in a series of Europe-wide arrests, in addition to the recovery of over 20,000 objects and the dismantling of a criminal organisation that had been set up solely to smuggle Sicilian archaeological goods.
 
Italy has fallen victim to art crime more often than any other country. Many of its missing artworks are now deemed untraceable, having been stolen long before the art squad was even established. Something of a miracle is required for their recovery, especially when owners don’t even recognise the importance of their artefacts. This was the case in October 2017, when a couple living in New York discovered they had been using a 2,000-year-old mosaic that once decorated Emperor Caligula’s ship as a coffee table in their apartment.
 
The thought that lingers? Italy’s artistic heritage is fading into obscurity. And in this newly globalised age where materialism is rife, many seem blinkered to the severity of the situation.
 
Some believe museum directors are too often blinded by the short-term financial benefits of selling Italian art abroad. Only eight of Leonardo da Vinci’s 24 major extant works remain in Italy, while the largest collections of Titian’s works and Raphael’s drawings are housed abroad: the former in Madrid, the latter in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum.
 
To make matters worse, an Italian court recently ruled that da Vinci’s drawing Vitruvian Man could be shown at an exhibition in Paris. The decision was a controversial one, not least vis-à-vis the possible implications for Italy’s cultural heritage. Specialists also contended it was too fragile to travel and risked being damaged by the lighting in the Louvre display. Upon hearing the ruling, heritage conservation group Italia Nostra released a statement saying, “today is not a good day for protection in Italy.”
 

When the Louvre announced plans to hold a da Vinci exhibition, Italian politicians instantly ramped up nationalist rhetoric. “Leonardo is Italian, he only died in France,” announced Lucia Borgonzoni, an undersecretary at Italy’s Ministry of Culture.
 
At least the whereabouts of the Vitruvian Man are being closely monitored. Plenty of prestigious Italian works have disappeared without a trace, including da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which was recently sold via an intermediary to the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Many believe the painting to have vanished, with speculation abounding that it is on display in his superyacht, which he bought for 500 million Euros in 2015.
 
The whereabouts of both Caravaggio’s Nativity with St Francis and St Lawrence and Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man also remain a mystery. While the former was stolen from an oratory in Palermo in 1969, the latter was snatched by the Nazis in Poland during World War II.
 
Natural disasters and climate change have brought another dimension to Italy’s cultural crisis. Geographical instability has long ravaged the peninsula, leaving nothing but damage and destruction in its wake. Hardly anything is spared, not least Italy’s cultural capital. When disaster strikes, basilicas are flooded, monuments are torn to the ground and paintings disintegrate beyond all recognition.
 
Take for example the Basilica of St. Benedict in Norcia, which was destroyed by an earthquake in 2016, as well as half the façade of the 15th-century church of Sant’Agostino in Amatrice. Quake-induced cracks have even appeared on the Colosseum in recent years.
 
Just under a month ago, the city of Venice – an artistic treasure in itself – was submerged by three major floods. Images of the inundated St. Mark’s Basilica sent shockwaves around the world, illustrating the damage caused to its tiling and mosaics. The floods are the worst to have hit Venice in more than half a century, and according to scientists, they are set to continue.
 
Damages incurred will take years to repair, and what is most frustrating is that they could have been avoided. In the 1980s, city authorities launched a project to build hydraulic barriers and improve sea defences, though delays and budget overruns impeded its progress. Had it been fully functioning by 13th November, the disaster described by Prime Minister Conte as “a blow to the art of Italy” would have been narrowly avoided. It seems there may be a grain of truth in Paul Lechat’s observation that “the Italian has no use for the long-term” after all.
 
Yet for the plethora of criticisms that have been levelled against Italians, it would be wholly unjust to view Italy’s cultural crisis as a product of their propensity for chaos and disorder.
 
Art crimes and natural disasters are gnawing away at Italy’s cultural identity, and the tragedy at stake here must not be undermined. To quote leading art historian Tomaso Montanari, “in Italy the stones, the buildings, the churches and the artworks are the backbone of the country. The loss of our roots means we have lost the future.” 

Is the image of French chic that abounds in popular culture nothing more than a misleading stereotype?

Picture a ‘French girl,’ and the image which inevitably springs to mind is that of Brigitte Bardot’s effortless beauty in Et Dieu créa la femme; Anna Karina’s mesmerising allure in Vivre sa Vie; Catherine Deneuve’s impeccable wardrobe in Belle de Jour. 
 
The ‘French girl’ is the epitome of cool; she exudes natural perfection and sophistication. She has infiltrated our wardrobe (I am wearing Breton stripes as I write this), she has Pinterest boards devoted to her: she has captivated us with her “je ne sais quoi.”  The media churns out articles on an almost daily basis instructing us how to wear our hair, which clothes to wear and what attitude to adopt in order to achieve ‘French girl style.’
Yet the ‘cool French girl’ maintains a sense of careless and effortless style while adhering to strict fashion rules. She is thin, but eats croissants for breakfast and is never seen without a baguette under her arm. She is elegant and casual, all at the same time.

The ‘cool French girl’ is a paradox.

This idea of effortless perfection poses problems: the pursuit of perfection is an all-consuming, and ultimately futile quest, and the stereotype of a thin, white woman does not represent today’s France. The image which we all recognise and idolise is not accommodating of other skin tones, body types or genders.
This is an issue fashion journalist Alice Pfeiffer has picked up on in her book Je ne suis pas Parisienne, in which she aims to deconstruct the myth of the ‘French girl.’ Through the book, Pfeiffer shares her experiences of being held to impossibly high standards, expected to maintain a simultaneous image of carefully cultivated perfection and insouciance. She shares insulting comments made about her weight and her style, and ultimately declares the society’s preconceived idea of the ‘French girl’ to be sexist, elitist and unachievable.

But, is the image of the French girl changing? Today, the body positivity movement is thriving, and more and more marginalised groups are taking to social media and using technology to create their own platforms through which they are able to take control of their own narratives.

Amandine Gay is a French-African filmmaker, journalist and activist based in Montreal. Through her directorial debut Ouvrir la voix (Speak Up), a documentary in which women of African descent discuss their identity as African women, Gay aims to "occupy public space and explain why the intersection of discriminations faced by black women in France and Belgium is as problematic as it is political."

Yet there still remain positive aspects of the image of ‘French chic’ that we can use as sources of inspiration. In 80s supermodel Ines de Fressange’s book Parisian Chic: A Style Guide, she writes that, to be a true Parisian, a woman must never neglect herself for the sake of adhering to convention or trends. This idea can be interpreted to promote the idea of self-acceptance, as can the trope of minimal makeup associated with the French, which appears to be making a resurgence today.

The ‘French girl,’ then, must be reclaimed. We do not need to abolish the image completely: it is an iconic souvenir of the history of French literature and visual culture, but the stereotype needs, however, to shift into accordance with modern-day French society. 

Isabelle Adams 
​

On October 2nd of this year, the aptly named campaign group BP or not BP?, whose mission was to end the oil firm BP’s sponsorship of the Royal Shakespeare Company, celebrated a hard-earned victory. After seven years of consistent campaigning, alongside a boycott of the company from high-profile individual actors such as Mark Rylance, the RSC decided to cut short their five-year contract with BP at the end of this year. In response, BP or not BP? issued this statement:
 
We’re over the moon to see the RSC understanding and acting on the reality of the climate emergency. Oil companies like BP have no place in our museums, galleries and theatres.
 
They are not the only activist group opposed to fossil-fuel companies’ continued sponsorship of the arts, nor is the RSC by any means the only cultural institution coming under fire from protestors for accepting such donations. The call for more ethical corporate sponsorship is being echoed throughout the arts world. The British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Opera House are just a handful of the prestigious bastions of the British art establishment under pressure to review their corporate sponsorship partnerships with oil and gas firms. In 2016, BP announced plans to invest £7.5 million in British art institutions from 2018, but in the era of Extinction Rebellion, these institutions could find that such partnerships leave them out of touch with the values of their visitors and facing a pressing moral dilemma.
 
The resistance to such sponsorship from British artists has been increasingly relentless, collaborative and, as expected, creative. One protest group with a particularly high-profile artistic output is Liberate Tate. Founded in 2010, the group of activists mobilised a spirit of ‘creative disobedience’ to complicate the Tate institution’s relationship with BP and push them into dropping the sponsorship agreement, which did in fact come to an end in May 2016. Their unsanctioned performances have seen the installation of a 16.5 metre wind turbine blade in the Tate Modern’s turbine gallery, and a simulated oil spill at the institution’s summer gala in response to the environmentally disastrous Deepwater Horizon Oil spill in 2010.
 
Such activist groups accuse oil companies of using cultural sponsorship to essentially purchase the ‘social licence to operate’. Stripping back the PR veneer of this phrase, this entails boosting their brand’s reputation through the association with cultural goods and the establishment of influential relationships, a practice which allows them free reign to legitimately expand environmentally damaging operations in a time of climate crisis. However, seen in another light the very nature of their controversial commercial activity prompts oil and gas companies to donate more generously to cultural institutions, since they perhaps serve to benefit more from such positive marketing than other ‘cleaner’ enterprises.
 
Indeed, the relationship between environmental sustainability and financial decision-making in the arts remains a vexed one. Government spending in the arts saw a cut of almost 30% between 2010 and 2016, and the question remains whether innovation in the arts can be sustained without this backing. Britain’s cultural institutions are renowned for their pioneering and creative stance, and the artistic output is second to none. If we remove oil and gas firms from the equation, are there alternative sources of sponsorship with the capacity or desire to replace these environmentally damaging corporations?
 
Examining these questions in light of the controversy around the National Portrait Gallery’s BP Portrait Award is revealing. Marketing itself as the most prestigious portrait award in the world, the sought-after accolade recently celebrated is 40th year at the Gallery and its 30th year of BP sponsorship. At his presentation of the 2019 award, the CEO of BP Bob Dudley addressed the current sponsorship controversy:
 
 “We respect different opinions and welcome discussion, even debate, about our involvement. But, let’s also remember there are many different points of view.” 
 
Yet these different points of view are becoming more polarised in tandem with increasing public awareness of the climate crisis. BP asserts that its financial support to the gallery has enabled five million people to enjoy the award free of charge since 1990 and has given artists the necessary support to pursue their passion. However, prior to BP taking up the sponsorship for this award, it was sponsored by none other than British American Tobacco. Obviously such a partnership would be unthinkable these days. In 2016, there was outcry from medical experts against the art establishment’s lingering ties with tobacco companies, and it seems that the same fate could await big oil firms.
 
Public opinion and government priorities can change dramatically over 30 years, and the day could be approaching where government policy regarding the promotion of oil and gas declares it to be morally unacceptable. Until that day however, cultural institutions that declare themselves in favour of environmental sustainability while accepting donations from companies whose practices actively harm the environment, face accusations of hypocrisy. In an age of global climate protest and social media activism, these accusations cannot be brushed away lightly. Many agree that the art arena is one in which the corporate world should not be at the forefront of the story. However, these protests against corporate sponsorship will most likely gain more mainstream attention, particularly from young visitors, a consideration that should be taken seriously by cultural entities if they wish to remain relevant and respected in the arts world and in today’s society. 
dit.

First, might I profess with dismay that I do not know what it is like to be a man, nor will I ever fully understand life as a man. However, what I can contribute to the ever-topical discussion of masculinity is an ode to the penis and a push to embrace the body you’ve been given, all from the mind of a feminist.
 
‘Penis’, a small segment from Robert Horrocks’ book Masculinity in Crisis, delves into the relationship between men and their ‘rhythm sticks’, emphasising the need for self-acceptance and pride. Big-headed or big-shafted, curved or straight, men we’ve seen them all. And, with about 40% of the male population with penises that don’t always function the way they should, it’s about time someone gave the little-man a lot of praise.
 
 
“The penis is the source of a man’s greatest vulnerability, and his greatest feeling of power. It is a place from where he expresses love, hate, fear, tenderness, contempt, friendship, disgust, and also a place where he can become completely expressionless, without feeling. It is used as a battering ram against women; as a weapon of revenge; as an expression of love and adoration; it is also a little boy’s willy, a dick, a shlong, the python, prick, rhythm stick, ding-a-ling. 
It can be anything. We might say: the penis is the man. One cannot talk about penises separate from their owners, just as we cannot talk about ‘sexuality’ in abstract, or talk about ‘sexual problems’ separate from the problems that people have in relationships. 
So men feel about their penises as they feel about themselves: proud, shy, afraid, disgusted, ignorant, loving, hating, angry – the whole gamut of human feeling is potentially found between a man and his penis.
Sexually a penis enables a man to penetrate deeply into a woman (or a man) and caress her (him) there. Thus the penis in this respect is bound up with relating to others: it is a means of contact. But as a baby or a boy, the male finds the penis as a source of comfort for himself, maybe a substitute for the breast, something he can manipulate at will. He discovers masturbation, which again can mean so many things to different men- comfort, company, desolation, lust, fear, love.
Thus the penis is, as it were, poised between narcissism and altruism. It can be used to relate to oneself, or to others. Quite often these two directions get confused, and one hears a woman angrily accuse a man of masturbating inside her during sex. So one can go through the motions of relating sexually but in fact remain completely in a world of one’s own. In that world, the penis may loom large as a kind of fantasy friend, or lover, or mother or father.
The penis is also concerned with performance. It gets erect, remains erect during sexual intercourse and then subsides. But what anxiety is aroused in men about this! The erection becomes a fetish, that measures one’s manhood, virility, athleticism, or whatever. How afraid many men are not to have an erection, when in fact that often signifies something emotionally important: I don’t want to make love, I don’t want to relate to you, I feel afraid, I feel childlike, and so on.
‘Keep your pecker up’ men say to each other – reflecting the desperate need to keen the damn thing erect. Never mind if you feel depressed or sad or lonely, or bored or angry or uninterested – keep the flag flying, make the python do its tricks, hoist the top-sail, expand the gland- what a mythology surrounds penis performance! Mae West celebrated and mocked it in her famous gibe: ‘Is that a six-gun in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?’”. 
 
Roger Horrocks Penis (162 – 166).
 
There is something majestic about the penis; a mix of adoration, fear and fascination that accompanies it. Indeed, Roger Horrocks recounts his own phallic experiences. From school P.E days where he and his comrades were forced to swim naked, where they’d spend the full hour comparing the circumcised with the uncircumcised (which ‘ding-a-ling’ was superior?)…to discovering a freckle on the foreskin of his penis and deciding there and then it was cancer: Embrace death now and enjoy masturbation whilst the penis is still there? 
 
The penis is “a trail blazing-experience”, a source of ready-made comfort. Though, the difficulty comes from claiming the grandeur of the penis; the fear that this in itself is sexist. Ludicrous as it might be because the act of sex is inherently at its best when enjoyed by both the man and woman. A so-called ‘animal beauty’, a power that our civilisation unrightfully shuns. After all, the penis is inescapably animal, primitive. Think with your head all day and wake up early morning and it’s hard. I bet you’re unable to think your way out of that one! 
 
Men today need to reclaim this sense of beauty and power about the penis. Accept the animal qualities within us. Freud says we all yearn for the sheer animal side of being alive, so let’s reclaim it.
 
 

Natasha Bradley

RSC’s most recent production of Troilus and Cressida has some brilliant moments but remains disappointing overall.

The main challenge of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, in my opinion, is continuity. The end of the play contains a bizarre sequence of events that the director must portray with clarity, as the audience doesn’t usually have prior knowledge of these confusing scenes. Gregory Doran’s production fails to do this. Past productions have depicted Pandarus as a syphilitic drag queen (Ian Judge, 1996), or with a giant dildo prop (Wing-Davey, 1995), emphasising his sexual obsession to make sense his final speech about ‘bequeath[ing]’ venereal ‘diseases’ to the audience. Doran’s play does not make sense of this; we see a weak, tedious old man, lacking an understanding of personal space, rather than a seedy voyeur. Why then, does he suddenly appear on stage to close the play with a rash around his mouth suggesting some sort of venereal disease, talking in such bawdy language? While the odd shade of lipstick Oliver Ford Davies’ Pandarus wears throughout does raise eyebrows, there is nothing to suggest the character’s intensely sexual interest, and thus the play lacks coherence.

Such continuity is also lacking in Andy Apollo’s Achilles due to the presentation of homosexuality. Shakespeare makes the sexual element of Achilles and Pandarus’ relationship evident as he transforms the Greeks into anti-heroes. This pandered to the contemporary audience’s opinions, as Britain in the Renaissance period favoured the Trojan side of the war, and were, of course, homophobic. Doran’s choice to set the play in a post-apocalyptic era, which the RSC seems to be doing for a fair few of its plays recently, takes out the historic homophobic dimension. Since there are no significant explicit homophobic comments in the play, the only perspective we have of homosexuality is our own 21st Century view. Modern society has started to accept and praise LGBTQ+ individuals, but that means that the dislike Shakespeare intended audiences to hold towards Achilles because of his homosexual relationship is lost. Doran does nothing to compensate for this. The ending, again, makes little sense. Throughout the play we see an Achilles presented to us in a neutral light – there is nothing that glorifies him, but equally nothing that condemns him – and then we are suddenly presented with a weak Achilles, who contradicts our every expectation. His killing of Hector, which in the play-text takes on homosexual implications, falls flat. An uninformed audience member with a basic knowledge of Homer’s version of the Trojan war would likely question why the killing had changed. In Doran’s play, we see a dramatic shift in Achilles’ character because of Doran’s inability to handle the conflicting ideas about homosexuality.

That said, the performances of Adjoa Andoh (Ulysses), Gavin Fowler (Troilus), and Amber James (Cressida) must be praised. Doran should have edited the play more drastically, cutting out the scenes that fell flat because of jokes that belong solely in Shakespeare’s age, but the dynamic acting of Andoh and the chemistry of the lovers kept the performance alive. Evelyn Glennie’s beautiful, though at times intrusive, music also breathes life into the play. Charlotte Arrowsmith as Cassandra was also striking. The first deaf actor employed to perform with the RSC, she performed incredibly and added an extra dimension to the character. Cassandra, whose prophecies of destruction are dismissed because she is female, keeps miming after her maid has stopped interpreting for her; her warnings mean nothing to them.