In a revealing moment from Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 “nostalgia-noir” novel, hippy private eye Doc Sportello speaks to a client, Trillium Fortnight, who is able to diagnose the whereabouts of…
Kazimir Malevich unveiled his now iconic pared down painting of a black square on a white background in 1915. This was a moment that not only represented a turning point in art, but in politics too. This…
On Remembrance Sunday, while in my native Germany a wall of white balloons dissolved into the air to mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, I joined thousands at the Tower of London…
Note: this article has spoilers. In Interstellar’s near-ish future, our climate has failed catastrophically, crops die in vast blights and America is a barely-habitable dustbowl. Little education beyond…
Warning: this article contains spoilers. Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida has rightly garnered plaudits and acclaim wherever it has been shown: its black-and-white camerawork, empty spaces and unhurried pace create…
The recently released Obvious Child has been dubbed the first “abortion rom-com”. Donna, played by Jenny Slate, is a 20-something Brooklyn comedian pregnant after a post-breakup one-night-stand. She even…
The history of zoos is eccentric, erratic; spotted with the spectacular as well as the cruel. But one of the more interesting beginnings of a zoo has to be that of Chester Zoo. And this is the story that…
Mood Indigo has received a number of enthusiastic reviews. I’m not sure why. The film takes quirky to an all new extreme. And as the French literary and comic substance to it have been pretty much completely…
Art exhibitions that celebrate revolutions are hardly few and far between. After all, a revolution is a very sexy thing, and a surefire way to sell tickets. But those planning to visit the Barbican’s Digital…
Folk is fashionable. Its latest manifestation at Tate Britain is only the most recent of stirrings – it been on the up for a number of years. Perhaps most obviously is the resurgence of folk music, which…
Tate Liverpool’s latest exhibition, of which I am a co-curator, is of the work of Piet Mondrian, the Dutch painter and pioneer of modern abstract art who is probably best known today for his iconic grids…
Take one brooding hunk, enslaved as a gladiator after the brutal slaughter of his family, who seeks revenge against the evil Roman empire. Lay on plenty of set-piece spectacular arena battles through which…
There is currently something of a Kenneth Clark renaissance, with an exhibition devoted to him just opened at Tate Britain, and a new Civilisation planned by the BBC. If there is anything to be gained…
The run up to the release of Lenny Abrahamson’s latest film, Frank, was characterised by a certain amount of perplexity. Unsurprising, given the posters emblazoned with that enormous papier-mâché mask…
Rembrandt Duits, School of Advanced Study, University of London
A painting is often like theatre. There are actors, who give expression to a narrative. They are distributed across a stage floor and positioned against a scenic backdrop. The artist is both the stage…
The Tate Modern’s incredible new exhibition brings together more than 130 works by the French artist from public and private collections worldwide. It is a once in a lifetime show that focuses on Matisse’s…
The long-anticipated biblical epic, Noah, has been released to a tidal wave of reviews, comments and criticisms on the film’s “accuracy” in its adaptation of the flood narrative in Genesis. And granted…
Rowan Moore says in his 2012 book Why We Build: Void counts for more than solid. The effort, skill and force of design and structure go into making pregnant emptiness a space in which things can happen…
SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for Game of Thrones season four, episode one. When we first met Charles Dance’s Tywin Lannister back in season one he was gutting a stag – a none-too-subtle…