The Design Museum explores the world of Stanley Kubrick in this major new exhibition. Love London Love Culture rounds up the reviews.
The Telegraph: **** “You enter the Design Museum’s Stanley Kubrick exhibition with no small fanfare. In the main foyer stands a bright orange Adams Probe 16 – the concept car which Alex (Malcom McDowell) and fellow Droogs used to go joyriding in A Clockwork Orange (1971). Beside it beckons a section of that infamous orange carpet from The Shining (1980), with its tessellated dead-end pattern, hypnotic and inescapable, serving as a perfect microcosm for the film.”
BBC.co.uk: ***** “But what it lacks in the way of a serious examination of an idiosyncratic, complex artist, it makes up for with a deeply researched documentary account of his working process.”
Time Out: ***** “It’s sheer heaven for Stan stans, but there’s loads here for design enthusiasts too. Kubrick’s pioneering collaborations with graphic designer Saul Bass, costumier Hardy Amies and set designer Ken Adam each get their due, as does his use of brutalist architecture in ‘A Clockwork Orange’.”
The Guardian: ***** “Perhaps the most striking thing that resurfaces throughout the show is how much of the immense trouble that Kubrick went to (and forced others to go through) was undertaken in order to avoid travelling.”
The Observer: *** “the pervading impression is still of an auction house preview of a mammoth disposal sale of Kubrickiana. Here’s an ape-man suit from 2001; over there, Ken Adam’s production sketches for Dr Strangelove; round the corner, the special three-wick candles used in Barry Lyndon. And blow me, if it isn’t the giant white phallus from A Clockwork Orange. “
Evening Standard: ***** “This exhibition does more than any book or talk could to reveal how he achieved that concentration, always exploring new techniques, bending collaborators to his will, making actors repeat scenes until they were essential.”
Culture Whisper: **** “Throughout the exhibition we get a real sense of Kubrick the director, of his eye for detail, and the painstaking control he exercised over his productions.”
The Times: ***** “This retrospective of the director’s work presents a cinematic odyssey that is out of this world.”
The Upcoming: ***** “Cinephile or no, Kubrick fan or no, this exhibition cannot fail to leave you in any doubt of the sheer genius, staggering dedication and astonishing legacy of this man and his supreme craft. Those who feel inspired to (re)watch is back catalogue through fresh eyes should get down to the BFI for their coinciding season of Kubrick films.”
Screen Daily: “What’s also surprising about ’Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition’ is that he’s very much there in person. He never really participated in the studio publicity machine and disliked having his photograph taken but Stanley Kubrick seems to be in almost every photo, his handwritten instructions (‘BAD!’) across every script and concept drawing. He’s behind every take, physically very close to his films.”
Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition is on display at the Design Museum until the 15th September. To book tickets visit See Tickets.