Exhibitions
Heads, shoulders, knees and toes
We need to talk about Eric. In Jennifer Packer’s portrait of her friend and fellow artist, Eric N. Mack sits…
Wildness and wit
Heads turn, strangers gawp, matrons tut or look in envy. A man doffs his bowler hat knowing when he is…
Grandeur and subtlety
The Victorian dictum ‘every picture tells a story’ is true of Paula Rego’s works, but it’s only part of the…
North star
Claudia Massie on the unjustly neglected artist Joan Eardley, who deserves to be ranked alongside Auerbach, Bacon and de Kooning
One of life’s irregulars
Artists’ estates can be a curse on a family. The painter dies, leaving the house stuffed with unsold canvases. What…
Bohemian rhapsody
Rosie Millard is transported to the Impasse Ronsin, a tiny, squalid cul de sac in Paris’s 15th arrondissement that was once the centre of the modern-art world
Queen of Bohemia
Nina Hamnett’s art has long been overshadowed by her wild, hedonistic life, but that is changing, says Hermione Eyre — and about time
When two become one
‘When pictures painted as companions are separated,’ John Constable wisely observed, ‘the purchaser of one, without being aware of it,…
Ai-Da Vinci
Stuart Jeffries discusses beauty, Yoko Ono and the world’s disappointments with the first robot artist
Touchy feely
Rodin’s studio at Meudon in the suburbs of Paris is huge and filled with light — a sort of combined…
Saint or sinner?
The verdict is still out on Thomas Becket, says Dan Hitchens, but there’s no doubting the brilliance of the art he inspired
The great unveiling
The way an object is stored can magnify its beauty and enhance expectation. Joanna Rossiter wonders whether the opening up of galleries will have the same effect on an art-starved public
It’s in the bag
‘Of course, I am obstinate in defending our liberties and our law — that is why I carry a big…
Poetry in motion
How did the universe begin? Did the great god Bumba vomit us up, as the Kuba believe? Or did we…
A salmagundi of tedium
The White Pube started life as an influential art blog, written by Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente. The…
Vital signs
Laura Gascoigne meets Margaret Calvert, the designer who dragged British signposting into the modern era
‘We’re all members of the Stasi now’
The arts are everywhere under attack from those who claim offence, writes Nina Power. Irvine Welsh steps into the fray with a documentary on the new censorship
Shiny blacks, fierce greys, strange whites
Alfred Wallis (1855-1942) should be an inspiration to all late starters. It was not until he had passed the age…
Of man’s first disobedience
Obviously, we’re living through an era of censorious puritanism. Granted, the contemporary creeds are different from those of the 16th…
Car-boot sale of the unconscious
In 1772 the 15-year-old Mozart wrote a one-act opera set, like The Magic Flute, in a dream world. Il sogno…
Home improvement
Squatting, gutting and retrofitting – and a lesson from India: Stuart Jeffries looks at the future of British architecture
Sex and corpses
A great temple of the goddess Tara can be found at Tarapith in West Bengal. But her true abode, in…
Spirited away
The mediumistic art of various cranks, crackpots and old dowagers is finally being taken seriously – and about time too, says Laura Gascoigne
Culture club
In Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, the protagonist, at the Venice Biennale, muses on installations. ‘Ideally, the perfect art installation…
Look at the paint!
The hand is one of the first images to appear in art. There are handprints on the walls of caves…
