“... dead man’s hand would make you invisible, a red-headed woman crossing your path on the first of May would bring bad luck. The deposition’s dark secret is the story of the villager who had sex with sheep. The revelation upset the people of wartime County Kerry – and some present-day reviewers – and the villagers were ‘scattered like the wind ...”

“... as humble as it was grandiose: works like these ‘have no back, no front, no up or down, they may be attached to the wall or spread out on the floor’. Such a version of sculpture, in other words, relies wholly on the room in which it is situated, not least because there it can enact its misbehaviours at will. Four of these 1960s cloth pieces are ...”

“... university, the court said, ‘to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that those whom it may control, that is to say its members, students and employees, do not prevent the exercise of freedom of speech within the law by other members, students and employees and by visiting speakers’. This wasn’t so much a moral duty as a legal obligation that ...”

“... got there by looking at pictures. The images that work as images – vile and violent though they may be – are those that acknowledge their jokes, and their precedents. Take Winter Timber, 2009, assembled from 15 canvases (below). There’s decoration in the bracken – a nod to William Morris. The stump, beneath its eyes, has a jagged jaw. There’s a ...”

“... had been filmed over the previous three years. Clark and his crew had found themselves in Paris in May 1968 in the thick of the événements. His producer, Michael Gill, recalls ‘riot police … just off-camera’, adding, laconically: ‘I was gassed.’ Despite being so apparently out of sympathy with the temper of ‘these days’, Civilisation was hugely ...”

“... assassination (‘A Nation Mourns’, 17 September 1966) is a star cover. Younger readers may prefer a ghoulish photo of Norman Tebbit, the Tories’ ‘New Caring Face’ in 1986, and his prince-of-darkness bubble: ‘I can’t speak to you now. The sun’s coming up.’ But if a long-lost favourite is not on view at the exhibition, it can be found ...”

“... picture was laid on top of earlier, thinner detail: even what appear to be the truest of accounts may need a helping hand.* The objective uninflected style of the oil sketch could be taken only so far. Pass on through the exhibition and you find two things happening to out-of-doors painting. The early pictures suggest that open-air sketching took place after ...”

“... that a single Higgs particle should be a bit smaller than an atom of gold. Incredible as it may sound, powerful microscopes can actually image individual atoms of gold. But unlike gold atoms, Higgs particles should be remarkably evanescent, with a lifetime of roughly a trillion-trillionth of a second: they simply won’t sit still long enough to be ...”

“... not have known for some time that oil is central to modern capitalist civilisation. His statement may just be intended, though, to provide a tidier point of origin for his oil project than the subject itself – ubiquitous, indissociable from our lives – can offer. Of course, oil’s omnipresence is one of the things that makes it hard to depict, and ...”

“... dress for themselves or for others was answered when the first shell turned into a brooch. It may be for status or sexual attraction, or to bribe the powers that be in the afterlife, but adornment always requires another’s eye, or the idea of another’s eye. Underwear, except in sexual circumstances when underwear is outerwear for the naked flesh, is ...”

“... of call still New Orleans.’ One answer to the question about the film’s lingering pace may be that Herzog really wanted to linger. He wanted to suspend Cage’s dreamy, manic or tormented face in front of us for so long it would become a landscape and a story in itself – and allow cineastes to get Harvey Keitel out of their minds. It’s an ...”

“... to one colleague, her attitude was ‘when are these idiots going to clear this up?’ – she may have understood how weak her case was. She hadn’t published anything in 2007 or 2008, and her last paper was co-signed not only by her husband but by three of their four children, none of them older than 18. That article appeared in the International ...”

“... First Deaf Anarcho-Landlord’, had finally installed some beer. 9. And while we may have toppled pylons, scuppered goods trains, marched and thrown neat Hamburg cobbles, occupied whole blocks of houses, what I think of’s more the drone of internecine mock-symposia, of splinter groups and endless blame; weekends lost to tossed-back ...”

“... well as for its art historical connection to the Venetian old masters). They are dated 4 May and 24 June 1728; in the first, Richardson, with his slouchy indoors cap, left eyebrow slightly raised and lips just parting, turns to his left; in the other, turning to his right, his eyes face out at us (or rather at himself), with lips pursed, brow ...”

“... departed dramatically from the kind of thing built in the 1880s. Materials and precise geometry may have changed, but not the basic structure. An 1888 Rover, introducing the exhibition’s urban cycling section, features a diamond frame with a more or less horizontal crossbar and a chain drive to the back wheel, which is the same size as the front. It turns ...”