Andy Warhol
Art and moralising don’t mix
Somewhat late in the day, Rosanna McLaughlin condemns the way art is now obliged to communicate clear and approvable messages, resulting in timid, defensive, rule-bound works
Modern master
Gossipy, amusing, a little vain, Albrecht Dürer was a 16th-century Andy Warhol, says Martin Gayford
A true bohemian
It is well established that artists are not always the nicest people. On the surface, the life of the model,…
The gay carousel
John Giorno, who died last year, was a natural acolyte: he needed a superior being to set him in motion.…
The great taboo-breaker
In 1983 I was sent to New York to interview Johnny Rotten and I took the opportunity to call on…
How capitalism killed sleep
What can you make a joke about these days? All the old butts of humour are off limits. No wonder…
My soulmate Brian Sewell
Romy Somerset is the sweetest, nicest young girl in London. She’s also my goddaughter and I remember, during her christening…
Make it a new year’s resolution to be less active
As a boy Josh Cohen was passive, dopey and given to daydreaming. Now a practising psychoanalyst and a professor of…
Comparing Peanuts to existentialism is an insult – to Peanuts
For the hundredth, possibly the thousandth, time, Lucy van Pelt offers to hold the football for Charlie Brown so he…
It’s the thought that counts
During a panel discussion in 1949, Frank Lloyd Wright made an undiplomatic comment about Marcel Duchamp’s celebrated picture of 1912,…
High life
As everyone who stands up when a lady enters the room knows, the once sacrosanct rules of civility throughout the…
The great pretenders
Can the beauty of Palmyra be reproduced by data-driven robots? Stephen Bayley on copies, fakes and forgeries
First Lady of Pop Art
In 1961 the Venezuelan-American sculptor Marisol Escobar made a startling appearance at the New York artists’ group known as the…
‘A good boy trying to be bad’
Robert Mapplethorpe made his reputation as a photographer in the period between the 1969 gay-bashing raid at the Stonewall Inn…
Fifty shades of blue
Like a lot of people, Olivia Laing came to New York to join a lover. Like a lot of people,…
I reshot Andy Warhol
Stephen Smith finally sees the point of Empire, one of the dullest films in cinema history
High life
OK. Magnanimity in victory is a sine qua non among civilised men and women, so let me not be the…
Fashion statement
Clothes with slogans on them are a sure sign of a bore
It was a wonderful town
I picked up this book with real enthusiasm. Who cannot be entranced by those 20 years after the second world…
Toenails and tadpoles
‘I don’t know what I think,’ says Lenny Henry, echoing what many of us who were listening were probably also…
