More from Arts
Bring me my 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…
Last post
It’s the thin end of the wedge, the slippery slope, the beginning of the end of a civilised Christmas. It…
Wain’s world
Before Tom Kitten, before Felix the Cat, before Thomas ‘Tom’ Cat, Sylvester James Pussycat Sr, Top Cat and Fat Freddy’s…
An honorary Frenchman
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…
The quiet Glaswegian
Robert Jackman talks to Robert Carlyle about Begbie, playing a Tory prime minister and the merits of keeping your head down
High Jencks
An editor once told me: always look at the loos. It was remarkable, she said, how many grand cultural projets,…
Sale of the century
In my bedroom there is a small lidded laundry basket. It was designed by Geoffrey Lusty for Lloyd Loom, a…
In search of lost time
Tanjil Rashid on the vivid memory-scapes of Hong Kong master Wong Kar Wai
Turner Prize shortlist
In 2019 I was asked to be on the jury for the Turner Prize. I was pretty happy about this.…
Bring me my spear
Manet’s ‘Botte d’asperges’ are probably the most famous asparagus in the world. The artist painted the delicious white- and lilac-tinged…
Great Scottie
On eBay I have an alert set for ‘Scottie Wilson’. Nine times out of ten, it’s a diamanté Scottie dog…
Pete the Street
‘I’ve been seeing the bare bones of London,’ explains the landscape artist Peter Brown, who is known affectionately as ‘Pete…
Selling out
Stuart Jeffries on the artists ensnared by the capitalist system they affect to despise
Not down with the kids
Some pictures are now so mediated that their actual physicality has long been dwarfed by a million reproductions. The ‘Mona…
Without borders
Community music-making is the unifying jewel in the British crown, says James MacMillan
Cross purposes
Two millennia ago, in the outer reaches of the empire, the Romans performed a routine execution of a Galilean rebel.…
The Oscars
Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland,predicted to win big at this year’s Oscars, is not a terrible film. It’s a slight, sentimental Grapes…
Twitter, but with actual screaming
For my 13th birthday in 1995 I requested — and got — my own ‘line’. This meant that I could…
The Regent Canaletto
Quite late in life Walter Sickert paid his first visit to Peckham Rye. He was excited, apparently, because he had…
From colander to bed of nails
I first became aware of the work of Marcelle Hanselaar in a mixed exhibition at the Millinery Works in Islington.…
Merry blooming Christmas
No one captures better than Raymond Briggs the ambivalence that many of us feel towards the festive season, says Daisy Dunn
Blessed be the fruit
Laura Freeman is transported by J.C. Volkamer’s astonishingly beautiful ode to the citrus
Poetry in motion
How did the universe begin? Did the great god Bumba vomit us up, as the Kuba believe? Or did we…
