Arts feature
Contours of the mind
In Australia, I have been told, the female pubic area is sometimes known as a ‘mapatasi’ because its triangular shape…
Shady past
David Hockney: It is a kind of joke, but I really mean it when I say Caravaggio invented Hollywood lighting.…
Shady past
David Hockney: It is a kind of joke, but I really mean it when I say Caravaggio invented Hollywood lighting.…
Muslim magic
In 1402, when the Turkic conqueror Temur, better known in the West as Tamerlane, was poised to do battle with…
Kids’ stuff
When a new TV channel calls its flagship food show Fuck, That’s Delicious, we might surmise that the Reithian ideals…
American beauty
‘At last,’ wrote Patrick Heron, a British painter, in 1956, ‘we can see for ourselves what it is to stand…
Root and branch
Eventually,’ said Michelangelo Pistoletto, ‘it became a movement. In fact, I believe that arte povera was the last true movement.…
On the money
Kublai Khan, said Marco Polo, had ‘a more extensive command of treasure than any other sovereign in the universe’. There…
On the money
Kublai Khan, said Marco Polo, had ‘a more extensive command of treasure than any other sovereign in the universe’. There…
Wet dream
Utopia dons some unlikely guises, crops up in some odd places. On the sea wall a couple in their teens…
Wet dream
Utopia dons some unlikely guises, crops up in some odd places. On the sea wall a couple in their teens…
House style
Last Sunday, I went to see two of the greatest paintings in Britain — at least in the estimation of…
House style
Last Sunday, I went to see two of the greatest paintings in Britain — at least in the estimation of…
Out – and not proud
‘Many people are mourning,’ said Sam West on a BBC panel show discussing the response of the arts world to…
Out – and not proud
‘Many people are mourning,’ said Sam West on a BBC panel show discussing the response of the arts world to…
Requiem for a designer dream
Threnody. Dirge. Lament. Epitaph. Elegy. Wake. There are so many English terms to describe the passing of people and things…
Requiem for a designer dream
Threnody. Dirge. Lament. Epitaph. Elegy. Wake. There are so many English terms to describe the passing of people and things…
Visions of suburbia
Art is aspiring; hungry; acutely aware of what it could become, and of what it could lack; longs for safety…
Visions of suburbia
Art is aspiring; hungry; acutely aware of what it could become, and of what it could lack; longs for safety…
Everything is illuminated
One could honour God with prayer, of course, and build cathedrals, amass treasuries, turn choirs into stained-glass jewel boxes, carve…
Everything is illuminated
One could honour God with prayer, of course, and build cathedrals, amass treasuries, turn choirs into stained-glass jewel boxes, carve…
Losing their religion
Scriabin once suggested that the audiences for his music should be segregated according to their degree of personal enlightenment, with…
Losing their religion
Scriabin once suggested that the audiences for his music should be segregated according to their degree of personal enlightenment, with…
Taking the pissoir
You have to imagine the lines that follow in separate fonts to get the full sense of the nonsense in…
Taking the pissoir
You have to imagine the lines that follow in separate fonts to get the full sense of the nonsense in…
