“... intention when he was practising Abstract Expressionism: he said he had in mind the late self-portraits of Rembrandt and hoped that a face might one day emerge from the brushstrokes. The day never came. Perhaps when handling the brush he should have held a photograph in his other hand. I’m sure Bacon wouldn’t like the word, but I don’t think it ...”

“... himself to our view. We should, I dare say, be grateful for a book that so determinedly eschews self-promotion. If, nonetheless, one were to attempt to infer what Tomlinson himself has learned from these now-classic figures, perhaps the best summary would be a certain perceptual rigour, that brings both eye and mind to bear with tenacity on the subject at ...”

“... they really were. Contributing to this quarterly can hardly have been quite as subversive of human self-esteem as Cockburn warns. When, in the course of the 19th century, secrecy was abolished for most areas of literary journalism, Jeffrey’s degree of dictatorial rewriting did not die out, and a folk wisdom has persisted to the effect that reviewers write to ...”

“... drops into dire neorealist gloom. Our hero is Ibrahima Dieng, played by Makuredia Guey, a pompous, self-regarding man who has been out of work for some time. His main activities are bossing his two wives about, ignoring his numerous children and devoutly uttering praise to Allah every five minutes. He also likes to take a walk in the streets of Dakar. For this ...”

“... to get rid of her patient, and recommends that Reynolds take a holiday, think of the different self he will be one day, and give up guns and bodyguarding. He’s willing to try, and it’s always amusing when a character in film or fiction shows such extraordinary ignorance of the kind of story he or she lives in. He’s scarcely had time to spread out his ...”

“... form a face in profile. It is recognisably the face of Marcel Duchamp, especially if you know his Self-Portrait in Profile, from 1957. Ai made Hanging Man in 1985, two years into a decade-long stay in New York, where he abandoned painting and fell under the spell of Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and of course Duchamp: ‘The most, if not the only, influential ...”

“... there are echoes of Repin’s Baroness von Hildenbandt: the tall, slender figure of the imposing, self-assured actress, the controlled and minimalist Whistlerian harmony in black and grey, with sparing highlights in muted gold. Serov was courted by Diaghilev and retained close ties with Mir iskusstva. His blend of insight and elegance, without seeking to ...”

“... their mutual distance collapses on the canvas. Bowling’s identity as an émigré, and his self-image as a young artist at a moment of transition, are dramatised in Mirror (1964-66). Exhibited alongside it at Tate Britain are the black and white photographs on which it was based, a disarming counterpoint. They show the spiralling ironwork staircase at ...”

“... that his victims are more gullible and needy than Power’s. Leaving out the money and the self-adulation, which game is more fun: deceiving the intelligent or deceiving the stupid? The figure of the geek (in the old sense of a freak-show performer) plays an important role in this story. In all the versions he is an addict who has become a star ...”

“... but their refusal to accept that they are in the presence of art minimises the debilitating self-importance a gallery exhibition tends to force on even the most subversive work. The new Tate Modern display does well, for example, by videos. In one, made by Gary Hill in 1994, you see his young daughter Anastasia reading from Wittgenstein’s Remarks on ...”

“... uranium fuel for those reactors will initially come from Russia, but Iran says it wishes to be self-reliant for its supply of fuel. Since 1985, Iran has been developing its own enrichment capability, importing centrifuge designs and components from Pakistan. Uranium centrifuges have a dual purpose: they can produce low-enriched (2 to 3 per cent) uranium ...”

“... over themselves to please Europeans whom they take to be nostalgic for the certainties of the self-contained nation state. The French government has cancelled plans to allow non-European residents to vote in local elections; Iain Duncan Smith is trying to drum up support for restricting freedom of movement within the EU. All over the continent, we are ...”

“... style of saying you’re doing the opposite of what you’re really doing. ‘He never complained. Self-pity is not in George Bush’s DNA,’ we read on the first page. We’re also told that Dad never brags. What follows is a litany of boasts and grievances. The first string of feats: the Phi Beta Kappa key and star turn on the baseball team at Yale and the ...”

“... film is a violence that is not only brutal and remorseless, but unnecessary, a sort of despotic self-indulgence. We could also read it more optimistically, as an expression not of strength but of panic, a sign that in Russia in 1905 as in many other places at later and still current times, authorities dreamed of force not as a pragmatic instrument of ...”

“... plants produce millions of SWU per year. To make present and future Iranian nuclear power plants self-sufficient would require a giant expansion of capacity. But here’s the problem. I’ve said that the critical mass of U-235 required to make a bomb is 52 kilograms. But with good design only about half this amount is actually needed. It takes about 232 SWU ...”