Arts feature
Pilferer, paedophile and true great: Gauguin Portraits at the National Gallery reviewed
On 25 November 1895, Camille Pissarro wrote to his son Lucien. He described how he had bumped into his erstwhile…
Sebastiao Salgado – master of monochrome, chronicler of the depths of human barbarity
Occasionally, we encounter an image that seems so ludicrously out of kilter with the modern world that we can only…
The poetry of sewers
‘Welcome,’ says our guide Stuart Bellehewe, with an imperious sweep of his arm, ‘to the cathedral of shit.’ Before us…
The untold story of Judy Garland
Judy Garland is now a myth, a paradigm and a warning: don’t let your daughter on the stage! It’s the…
The many faces of William ‘Slasher’ Blake
‘Imagination is my world.’ So wrote William Blake. His was a world of ‘historical inventions’. Nelson and Lucifer, Pitt and…
On photography, shrines and Maradona: Geoff Dyer’s Neapolitan pilgrimage
At the Villa Pignatelli in Naples there is an exhibition by Elisa Sighicelli: photographs of bits and pieces of antiquity…
Why did Mrs Lowry hate her son’s paintings?
‘I often wonder what artists are for nowadays, what with photography and a thousand and one processes by which you…
Why a whole new generation of young Europeans are turning to old-school reggae
Acamera sweeps across the verdant, shimmering beauty of Jamaica before descending on to a raffishly charming wooden house built into…
‘I’ll miss Brexit when it’s solved’: Frank Skinner interviewed
Only one thing makes Frank Skinner nervous. ‘Water. Water scares me. I don’t get nervous on stage. Just in swimming…
Woke gurus, capitalist communists and a future film star: Edinburgh Fringe roundup
The locals probably can’t bear the Edinburgh festival. Their solid, handsome streets are suddenly packed with needy thesps waving and…
Why haven’t we heard of the extraordinary Finnish artist Helene Schjerfbeck?
Last year I found myself giving a lecture in Helsinki. When I came to the end, I asked the audience…
Before Quentin Blake, there was Nancy Ekholm Burkert – Dahl’s forgotten illustrator
Bunnies were out. Beatrix Potter had the monopoly on rabbits, kittens, ducks and Mrs Tittlemouses. ‘I knew I had to…
From the NHS to Bayreuth: Norman Lebrecht talks to midwife-turned-opera singer Catherine Foster
Every summer for the past six years, Bayreuth has risen to its feet to acclaim an English Brünnhilde. Catherine Foster,…
‘It could be a disaster’: Jim Broadbent talks to Stuart Jeffries about his latest role
‘I live completely anonymously,’ whispers Jim Broadbent down the phone from Lincolnshire. Nonsense, I counter. You’re one of the most…
The women who invented collage – long before Picasso and co.
The art-history books will tell you that sometime around 1912, Picasso invented collage, or, actually, perhaps it was Braque. What…
Cindy Sherman – selfie queen
The selfie is, of course, a major, and to me mysterious, phenomenon of our age. The sheer indefatigability of selfie-takers,…
Geoff Dyer on the poetry of motels
It’s to be expected. You take photographs in order to document things — Paris in the case of Eugène Atget…
Why has British art had such a fascination with fire?
‘Playing God is indeed playing with fire,’ observed Ronald Dworkin. ‘But that is what we mortals have done since Prometheus,…
The miracle of Longborough – the company that broke the mould for summer opera
At Longborough Festival Opera, Richard Wagner is on the roof. Literally: his statue stands on top of the little pink…
Quentin Tarantino on how spaghetti westerns shaped modern cinema
The movie that made me consider filmmaking, the movie that showed me how a director does what he does, how…
The new treasures of Pompeii
One afternoon in AD 79 an unusual cloud appeared above Vesuvius in the Bay of Naples. ‘It was raised high…
From haunted to haunter: the afterlife of W.G. Sebald
East Anglia, the rump of the British Isles, has inspired a disproportionate number of writers: Robert Macfarlane, Daisy Johnson, Mark…
How film fell for caliphs and slave girls
Most of Hollywood’s Arabian Nights fantasies are, of course, unadulterated tosh. The Middle East, wrote the American film critic William…
The joy of jousting
Emperor Maximilian I liked to say he invented the joust of the exploding shields. When a knight charged and his…
What makes British art British?
There’s no avoiding the Britishness of British art. It hits me every time I walk outside and see dappled trees…
