More from Arts
Has all the charisma of Chernobyl: Manchester’s Aviva Studios reviewed
There is a (possibly apocryphal) story about William Morris, where he spends most of his time in Paris inside the…
Why intellectuals love Disney
This month marks the 100th anniversary of Walt Disney’s company. The first cartoons it was founded to produce – the…
Why everyone should go to life-drawing classes: Claudette Johnson interviewed
While looking at Claudette Johnson’s splendid exhibition Presence at the Courtauld Gallery, I kept trying to pin down an elusive…
Gripping tale of Ireland’s most polite bank robber: I’m Not Here To Hurt You reviewed
There should really be a special word for it: that vicarious fragility you feel when hearing of a minor decision…
‘She had no neutral gear’: Lindy Dufferin remembered
In 1957, when my dear godmother, the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava (1941-2020), was 16, she began her diary. The…
Move fast to snap up one of Elizabeth Blackadder’s sleek cats at the Scottish Gallery
If there’s one thing the internet knows, it’s that cats sell. The Scottish painter Elizabeth Blackadder, who died in 2021…
Free, noisy, fun: Young V&A reviewed
One of the annoying things about too many contemporary museums is that, having ditched old-fashioned closely typed descriptive labels and…
Policed conviviality: Serpentine Pavilion 2023 reviewed
As I sat down at this year’s Serpentine Pavilion, I overheard a curious exchange. ‘You mustn’t create art within art,’…
‘I have uncancelled myself’: David Starkey interviewed
David Starkey’s commentary on the Queen’s funeral on GB News was generally agreed to be the best of all the…
Why do people in theatre hate their audiences?
Lloyd Evans bemoans theatre’s new hostility towards paying punters
The day I sold my destroyed piano to the Tate
One day in October 1966 I came home from school and found a large man stripped to the waist, attacking…
The puppetry renaissance
Advance ticket sales for My Neighbour Totoro, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s current production running till mid-January, beat all Barbican box-office…
Why do British galleries shun the humane, generous art of Ruskin Spear?
Where do you see paintings by Ruskin Spear (1911–90)? In the salerooms mostly, because his work in public collections is…
Brought to book
‘This is not a book,’ is the first line of Paul Gauguin’s final memoir, Avant et Après, written on Hiva…
How crazy was Louis Wain?
Before Tom Kitten, before Felix the Cat, before Thomas ‘Tom’ Cat, Sylvester James Pussycat Sr, Top Cat and Fat Freddy’s…
The supreme pictures of the Courtauld finally have a home of equal magnificence
When the Courtauld Gallery’s impressionist pictures were shown at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2019, the Parisian public…
The unseen Victoria Wood
For a few years now I have been living with Victoria Wood. That sounds all wrong, obviously, and yet no…