Arts feature
The dirty secrets of the Royal Festival Hall
The Festival of Britain – that much mythologised moment of national renewal – is wheeled out every time the country…
The genius of Zurbaran – and why he vanished
A pious Caravaggio JASPREET SINGH BOPARAI The Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbaran is sometimes thought of as a pious equivalent…
In defence of museum charges
It occurs to me only now that I might have spent far too much time in France. Indeed, so familiar…
The truth about artists’ optical aids
The first thing you see on entering this major new Viennese exhibition is not one of Canaletto and his nephew…
The art of Schiaparelli
It’s a great shame that Elsa Schiaparelli is less widely known than her rival Chanel. Perhaps that’s down to how…
Ovid puts today’s radicals to shame
It’s a crisp afternoon, and in a darkened room in central Amsterdam a woman is being smothered in snakes. Projected…
Meet the world’s finest string quartet
Once upon a time in communist Hungary – 1975, in fact – four students at the Liszt Academy decided to…
The art of ageing
More than 30 contemporary artists have contributed to the Wellcome Collection’s latest exhibition, which asks what it’s like to age…
‘I didn’t expect to love Wagner’
By the end of Siegfried, the third opera in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, the king of the gods is…
The genius of John Vanbrugh
Van’s genius, without Thought or Lecture, Is hugely turn’d to Architecture. Jonathan Swift’s dismissive jest has never been forgotten. It…
The art of conspiracy
If you lived anywhere near Kilburn half a decade ago, you might have noticed the messages one of our neighbours…
The problem with the new Shakers biopic
Ann Lee was a sharp-tongued woman from the back streets of 18th–century Manchester, celebrated for put-downs worthy of Coronation Street’s…
The alt-right are clueless about neoclassicism
The adherents of the American alt-right are not known for their delicate aesthetic sensibilities, but there is an exception. They…
In praise of French brothels
In the days of the Belle Époque and Jazz Age, a trip to Paris would have included, for the discerning…
What drama gets right and wrong about science
A few days after Tom Stoppard’s death last month, Michael Baum, a distinguished surgeon, wrote a letter to the Times.…
The art of the transatlantic liner
Some time in the next few weeks, a great ocean liner will be lost at sea. One of the greatest,…
The genius of Morton Feldman
To accompany an exhibition of paintings by Philip Guston at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2004, a…
Am I a useful idiot visiting Uzbekistan’s first art biennial?
In the ruins of a 16th-century mosque, in the heart of the ancient silk-road city of Bukhara, dozens of abstract…
Rescuing the Nativity from cliché
The Nativity. In ‘Over 2,000 Illustrations and a Complete Concordance’, Elizabeth Bishop ends her travelogue-poem – St Peter’s, Mexico, Dingle,…
A Spectator poll: What is the greatest artwork of the century so far?
Slavoj Zizek Hegel thought that, in the movement of history, the world spirit passes from one country to another, from…
Indian classical music’s rebellion against modernity
When Gurdain Ryatt, Ojas Adhiya, Milind Kulkarni and Murad Ali Khan take to the stage at Milton Court this Sunday…
‘Ballet is antiquated, and it works’: Royal Ballet principal Matthew Ball interviewed
The history of the male ballet dancer is a chequered one. In the early 19th century, he was the star…
Labour’s war on heritage
Britain’s heritage is slowly going up in smoke. Medlock Mill was Manchester’s oldest standing textile mill until it burnt down…
The melancholy genius of Joseph Wright of Derby
If you lived in the 1760s and were affluent enough – and curious enough – science could be a family…
There is little sadder than the death of a language
The last Yana-speaker in the world died in 1916. When Ishi was born, the Yana were still a small but…
