“... 23 January), but there are also sober faces and black coats that contrast crisply with white neckcloths and turned up collars to set off the male complexions. There are some tremendous pictures among the things gathered here. Pictures of ‘real genius’? Well ‘genius’ is not an easy word, but certainly vivid, appealing and, sometimes, as in ...”

“... They wanted textiles: silk from China and ‘fine muslin, printed chintz and palampores, plain white baftas, diapers and dungarees, striped allejaes, mixed cotton and silk ginghams and embroidered quilts’ from India (‘a definitive glossary of types has yet to be made’). From China they wanted porcelain and tea. Almost any product of the Asian world ...”

“... it, of what the uninformed eye misses. I had noticed that there are corners where the standard white-on-blue plaques overlie street names cut in the stone of the building. I would not, however, have known to look for the evidence they offer of a revolutionary edict which removed royal and religious epithets (no saints’ names allowed). That it was ...”

“... a moment or two to realise that they were moving at all – was as far from the blurred black and white videos produced in the 1960s and 1970s as Fox Talbot’s earliest photographs are from the detailed prints made by the likes of Beato a few decades later.The work exhibited in Video Acts: Single Channel Works from the Collections of Pamela and Richard ...”

“... Peter Redgrove had a secret. It was called ‘the Game’. Sexual in nature, this obsessive ritual ignited some of his most arresting poetry, and was vital to his personal mythology for sixty years. Known only to his lovers and a few in his inner circle, the Game has now been made public in Neil Roberts’s remarkable biography of the poet, published almost a decade after Redgrove’s death, along with a new Collected Poems ...”

“... 5.1 cm x 3.8 cm and is reproduced to that size: a small dark rectangle in the middle of a large white page. Other contact prints from the first quarter of the 20th century are treated in the same way. In the London catalogue, on the other hand, what are captioned as ‘vintage’ contact prints are slightly enlarged and grouped. Washington gave the contact ...”

“... and geologists use in the field. One magnifies by 10, the other by 20. The mites, glistening white blobs, could be seen moving slowly across the grey crust. I hope, but do not expect, to have recruited at least one of the girls to the pleasures of low magnification. Since I was a child I have hankered after optical instruments. The first was a 5x ...”

“... could be turned in his clay to the bung in a wine barrel. It is a trope that recurs repeatedly in Peter Redgrove’s recent work, You take turns to be food, Before you can grind wheat you have to be wheat, Before you can eat bread you are a nice new crust Eaten by Mary, who chooses a crust-you here, A mouthful of Shakespeare’s breath there, a glass Of ...”

“... reporter as American hero – Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam, Seymour Hersch, Jonathan Schell, Peter Arnett. They reported not only the war the government did not want its citizens to see, but also the government efforts to invent a war for domestic consumption. ‘Part of the Vietnamese Seventh Infantry Division was being assigned to make a ...”

“... type. Her jaw is rather square, her thin mouth is a little open, her lips drawn back showing white teeth – the faces of mummies shrink into similar smiles and grimaces. Her eyelids may droop heavily or be closed. She, and her less explicitly characterised sisters, are mostly skinny, but wide-hipped. When they are naked they are often standing in ...”

“... pieces won’t find much here to match the geometric designs in a few colours (red and white were particularly effective) of American examples. Those could be read as prefiguring the abstract painting of the 1950s and 1960s; the exhibition Abstract Design in American Quilts at the Whitney Museum in New York in 1971, organised by the collector ...”

“... eye (violent plots have marked him), immensely charismatic – six foot six with a wonderful white smile. He is able to match the heavies blow for blow, and, when his rage at man’s destruction of nature peaks, bring passing tourist’s cars to a halt with well aimed shots. Nick Nolte seems the man for the part. In Hiaasen’s plots good people are ...”

“... and interrogation cell as well as stage and studio: ‘I photograph my subject against a sheet of white paper about nine feet wide by seven feet long ... I work in the shade because sunshine creates shadows, highlights, accents on a surface that seem to tell you where to look.’ This explains the even, clinical light which bathes the portraits. Nothing is in ...”

“... and goings. They peck at the fruit. A pair of wood pigeons – soft grey backs, pink-buff breasts, white collars – land and cling unsteadily to twigs too fragile for their weight. They almost fall as they reach for cherries which they swallow whole. It is late on a warm afternoon. We watch the birds. The titles Howard Hodgkin gives his pictures – In a Hot ...”

“... of form’, a tendency which led to the notorious Black Square of 1915 and the even more notorious White Square on White of 1918. In his lively memoirs, published as My Futurist Years, Roman Jakobson, the great Russian linguist, vividly recalled his first encounter with Malevich, in 1913. ‘I am painting new ...”