EXHIBITION

Manet: Portraying Life,  Royal Academy, Burlington House  Piccadilly, London W1, 26 Jan - 14 April
A retrospective devoted to the portraiture of Edouard Manet. Works from Europe Asia and the USA are brought together in this showcase of a prolific and influential painter. Despite the fact that around half of Manet's artistic output was made up of portraiture, this is the first ever retrospective of this kind. It includes depictions of the artist's  family and friends, as well as literary, political and artistic figures of Paris of the time. The over 50 works on display include portraits of Manet’s wife Suzanne Leenhoff, intellectuals of the period Antonin Proust, Émile Zola and Stéphane Mallarmé, and scenes from everyday life, revealing Manet’s forward-thinking, modern approach to portraiture.

FILM

Breakfast at Tiffany's, British Film Institute, cinemas across London, 14 Feb

The BFI is screening Breakfast at Tiffany's, a classical romantic comedy, at 14 cinemas across London on Valentine's Day. Breakfast at Tiffany's tells the story of aspiring writer Paul Varjak (George Peppard) and to his unconventional neighbour Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn). Holly is a stylish socialite with a hidden past and her unlikely pairing with Paul has become one of the most well-known of modern love stories on film. The movie will be screened at the following cinemas: Charlotte St. Hotel, Everyman Baker Street, Everyman Belsize Park, Everyman Maida Vale, Clapham Picturehouse, Gate Picturehouse, Greenwich Picturehouse, Hackney Picturehouse, Stratford East Picturehouse and Prince Charles Cinema.The movie will be screened at the following cinemas: Charlotte St. Hotel, Everyman Baker Street, Everyman Belsize Park, Everyman Maida Vale, Clapham Picturehouse, Gate Picturehouse, Greenwich Picturehouse, Hackney Picturehouse, Stratford East Picturehouse and Prince Charles.

EXHIBITION

Sylvia Sleigh, Tate Liverpool, Albert Dock  Liverpool Waterfront, Liverpool, 8 February – 3 May

Sylvia Sleigh was a realist painter in New York’s feminist art scene in the 1960s and beyond. Her explicit paintings of male nudes challenged the art historical tradition of male artists painting female subjects as objects of desire. This exhibition at Tate Liverpool will be Sleigh’s first UK retrospective. It is also the largest exhibition of her work to date. Sleigh’s portraits reject the idealisation of frmale bodies, painting details such as tan-lines and body hair. Her work highlights that there is beauty to be found in everyone, regardless of their imperfections. Tate Liverpool has invited LA-based artist Frances Stark to respond to the exhibition, offering an interpretation of Sleigh’s work and a contemporary consideration of her relevance and impact.

PHOTOGRAPHY

After the Fall - Hin Chua, Third Floor Gallery, 102 Bute Street, Cardiff, 2 Feb - 17 Mar
The photographs in After the Fall are taken at the edges of urban development, places where towns and cities dissolve in the surrounding countryside. These forgotten places - discarded fields, industrial hinterlands, geographical accidents – are described as “in a state of impermanence, their lifetime short compared to that of the man made sprawl that will take over them”. These images fix into photographic paper the unpredictable, often disturbing results of the collisions that are gradually and chaotically reshaping the spaces around us. Hin Chua uses satellite imagery to find locations; landing him in surprising and often deserted locations in unfamiliar countries. Taken over several years, After the Fall brings a global perspective on the process of urbanization, which is changing our landscapes.

THEATRE

The Captain of Köpenick, Olivier Theatre, National Theatre, South Bank, London, SE1, 5 Feb – 4 April

Released after fifteen years in prison, trapped in a bureaucratic maze, petty criminal Wilhelm Voight wanders 1910 Berlin in desperate, hazardous pursuit of identity papers. Luck changes when he picks up an abandoned military uniform in a fancy-dress shop and finds the city ready to obey his every command. At the head of six soldiers, he marches to the Mayor’s office, cites corruption and confiscates the treasury with ease. But still what he craves is official recognition that he exists. A nation heads blindly towards war as the misfit takes on the state in Ron Hutchinson’s savagely funny new version of Carl Zuckmayer’s The Captain of Köpenick, first staged in Germany in 1931. Antony Sher takes the title role.