V&a
Punk turns 40
There have been many punk exhibitions over the years so I can’t help but chuckle at the ‘experts’ who are…
Diary
With hindsight maybe it was silly for me to bleat, ‘As everyone knows, the Johnsons are neither posh nor rich’…
A trip down Mammary Lane
The V&A is selling £35 Agent Provocateur pants. This is, of course, a business deal because Agent Provocateur — along…
The counterfeiters
One day, in the autumn of 1960, a young Frenchman launched himself off a garden wall in a suburban street…
Topsy-turvy
When Tom Birkin, hero of J.L. Carr’s novel A Month in the Country, wakes from sleeping in the sun, it…
Eurovision
Before cheap flights, trains were the economical way to discover Europe and its foibles. Personally, I enjoyed the old fuss…
Best in show
Martin Gayford recommends the exhibitions to see — and to avoid — over the coming year
The rise and fall of Sony
Sony was the Apple of its day and more. Stephen Bayley charts its years of creativity unrivalled in the history of consumerism
Portrait of the week
Home The all-party Foreign Affairs Committee urged David Cameron, the Prime Minister, not to press ahead with a Commons vote…
Fancy dress parade
For his 75th birthday, Sir Roy Strong gave himself a personal trainer. For his 80th, he has commissioned a book…
Museum relic
Do we really need museums in the age of Wikipedia and Google? William Cook thinks we do but his children don’t agree
Designer fatigue
Different concepts of luxury may be inferred from a comparison of the wedding feast of Charles Bovary and Emma Rouault…
Boris’s London legacy
Jack Wakefield on the Mayor’s ambitious, not to say whimsical, vision for the Olympic Park
50 shades of beige
My moment of the week was stumbling into the shocking, fantastical Cabinet of Curiosities in the Alexander McQueen show at…
Shock and awe
Alexander McQueen may have been a prat but at least he was an interesting one, says Shura Slater
Strokes of genius
The art on show over the coming year demonstrates that we still live in an age of mighty painters, says Martin Gayford
Starry cast
The great municipal museums are products of the 19th-century imagination, evidence of lofty ambitions and cringe-making limitations. They are exact…
Curatorial wrongs
The world exists and then it disappears, piece by piece, the gaps widening until one age is replaced by another,…
Mis-en-Mars
You have to hand it to the Russians. They beat us into space, beat us to sexual equality, and a…
Small wonder
The V&A has an unparalleled collection of hundreds of works by John Constable (1776–1837), but hardly anyone seems to know…
The art of protest
Titles can be misleading, and in case you have visions of microwave ovens running amok or washing machines crunching up…
The gardens of Kent
How important is William Kent (1685–1748)? He’s not exactly a household name and yet this English painter and architect, apprenticed…
A hidden gem
One of the many charms of this book is its sheer unexpectedness, which makes it hard to review, for to…
Dress to impress
People will go to extraordinary lengths to get into a nightclub. Nowadays you must wear something tight, and look slinky.…
A connoisseur’s eye
Alec Cobbe is a designer, painter, musician, picture restorer and collector, and has recently donated drawings, photographs and other archives…
