Arts feature
More Marx than Dante
Martin Gayford finds a few nice paintings amid the dead trees, old clothes and agitprop of the Venice Biennale
Funny business
What does it take to be a stand-up comic? Jackie Mason has absolutely no idea
Messy genius
Orson Welles would have been 100 this month. When he died in 1985, aged 70, the wonder was that he…
State of play
How has political theatre fared during the coalition? Not very well, writes Lloyd Evans
Mistress of modernism
What classical music really needs is more performers like Barbara Hannigan. Philip Clark meets theself-conducting soprano
Cathedrals on wheels
Stephen Bayley hails the automobile – a miracle of technical and artistic collaboration – and mourns its demise
Boris’s London legacy
Jack Wakefield on the Mayor’s ambitious, not to say whimsical, vision for the Olympic Park
The dreamer
Ian Thomson on the creative limbo that spawned Fellini’s modernist masterpiece, 8½
His remastered voice
Damian Thompson on the audio anoraks rescuing some of the greatest recordings ever made
Survivors
Martin Gayford visits two new surveys of Greek and Roman sculpture at the British Museum and Palazzo Strozzi. Reimagining what’s lost is as much of an inspiration as what remains
Independents’ day
Sometimes a guy feels abstracted from the world. He visits Europe’s finest galleries, but the paintings seem to hang like…
Artificial life
Mad Men looked great but, as the final season draws to a close, was there really anything to it, wonders James Delingpole
Shock and awe
Alexander McQueen may have been a prat but at least he was an interesting one, says Shura Slater
Back to the future
How Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, made 33 years ago, foresaw the way we live today, by William Cook
Public enemy
Stephen Bayley announces the launch of What’s That Thing?, The Spectator’s award for bad public art
Swan’s way
Ismene Brown unpicks the great enigma of ballet theatre
Christ of the coal mines
William Cook reports from the sooty netherworld that made an artist of Vincent Van Gogh
Pop icon
The Coca-Cola ‘contour’ bottle is 100 years old. Stephen Bayley salutes a design classic
Japanomania
Peter Hoskin on the island nation that has taken over popular culture
Cellulite factor
Are Rubens’s figures too fat for the British to appreciate them? Martin Gayford investigates
Depicting the Prophet
Two months ago I was sitting beside the tomb of a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, telling a story about…
Great Brittain
Jasper Rees talks to Shirley Williams about the forthcoming screen portrayal of her mother
Marx men
Ian Thomson celebrates the anarchic genius of Groucho and his brothers
Strokes of genius
The art on show over the coming year demonstrates that we still live in an age of mighty painters, says Martin Gayford
Bruegel’s Bethlehem
The world depicted by the Flemish master is not so different from our own, says Martin Gayford
