Dali

‘Oedipus and the Sphinx’, c.1826, by Ingres, a copy of which hung over Freud’s desk

Why was Sigmund Freud so obsessed with Egypt?

24 August 2019 9:00 am

Twenty years ago, I visited the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna with a party of American journalists. Even in those…

Scourge of puritans: Christian Dior with model Sylvie, c.1948

How an anarchist music student become of the fashion greats: the life of Christian Dior

9 February 2019 9:00 am

Strange to think when you visit the Christian Dior show at the V&A that his time as designer was so…

‘The First Days of Spring’, 1929, by Salvador Dalí

It’s the thought that counts

21 October 2017 9:00 am

During a panel discussion in 1949, Frank Lloyd Wright made an undiplomatic comment about Marcel Duchamp’s celebrated picture of 1912,…

Aubrey Beardsley’s ‘The Climax’ — an illustration for Oscar Wilde’s play Salome

Flights of fancy

12 August 2017 9:00 am

Levitation. We all know what it is: the ‘disregard for gravity’, as Peter Adey puts it in his new book,…

Lankily elegant and exquisitely dressed: Peter Watson (right) with Oliver Messel

The Mad Boy, Peter Watson, Cecil Beaton and the limo — by Sofka Zinovieff

23 May 2015 9:00 am

It would not have surprised their friends in the 1930s when Peter Watson had a fling with my grandfather, Robert…

The art of Coke

7 February 2015 9:00 am

The Coca-Cola ‘contour’ bottle is 100 years old. Stephen Bayley salutes a design classic

Chico, Harpo and Groucho Marx (left to right) enjoy a day at the races

What unites Churchill, Dali and T.S. Eliot? They all worshipped the Marx Brothers

10 January 2015 9:00 am

Ian Thomson celebrates the anarchic genius of Groucho and his brothers

Alan Beeton, ‘Reposing’, 1929

The secret world of the artist's mannequin

1 November 2014 9:00 am

A 19th-century London artists’ supplier named Charles Roberson offered imitation human beings for sale or rent, with papier-mâché heads, soft…