“... to flummox that frequently harried personage, the ‘spectator’. Visitors to a Sehgal show may expect to be buttonholed, charmed, cajoled or ignored by the dozens of ‘interpreters’ – not quite actors, nor fully collaborators – whom he employs to perform or embody his work. In This progress, at the Guggenheim in 2010, museum-goers were greeted ...”

“... sake of talking while the occupation deepens and despair gains ground. The failure of Annapolis may well trigger the Third ...”

“... is appalled: where, it asks, is our victorious army? The people of Sderot are angry. The Qassams may have stopped, but that was supposed to happen after the army entered Gaza and wiped it out. The ceasefire is ‘fragile’, Ehud Olmert says: it can come to an end any minute. And Ehud Barak, who pushed for it, has an excuse: we have to go through the motions ...”

“... a classical, symbolic or biblical title. But the labels are not always firmly attached and you may be hard pressed to know just what a work represents: one group of two figures becomes The Earth and the Moon, another The Clouds, yet another The Death of Athens. A mother and child is Love that Passes. Working on The Gates of Hell, Rodin invented an ...”

“... and furniture, Alvar Aalto through the Eyes of Shigeru Ban, at the Barbican Art Gallery until 13 May. Although he designed nothing in Britain, much in the exhibition feels familiar. Materials (brick, tile, wood) and informal layouts bring to mind postwar English housing and town planning. In other English buildings the influence is direct. Colin St John ...”

“... nor useful. Kiefer’s work sticks to your imagination the way tar sticks to a shoe. You may not want it there, but you can’t scrape it off. You hear its zippy crackle follow as you try to walk away. It can make you seem to recall dreams you know you never had: dreams where you cross a clay field at the end of a grey day, your legs hardly able to ...”

“... order to get elected. Once in the White House, he will be himself again.’ I’m not so sure. It may well turn out that these things have a surprisingly strong grip on his mental ...”

“... what to make of the plate on page 69, ‘Fragment of leaf torn from the Sunday Times Magazine, 20 May 1973 (p.81)’? I mention it not so much in a nit-picking spirit (in fact it was p.74) as out of direct personal interest in a page so grievously tattered that the headline reads: ‘artime ances a trend flourished’. Originally (though Harrison and Daniels ...”

“... the site of what is now Mexico City. When Cortés arrived in November 1519 the island population may have numbered as many as 200,000. The city was rich, supplied with staples from surrounding territories and luxuries from more distant provinces: bird skins and feathers, cacao, cochineal, live eagles, salt, seashells, jaguar and deer ...”

“... up for HS2 will, they say, be called Curzon Street too, and so Hardwick’s handsome ticket hall may yet have a role, even if it’s largely symbolic. Curzon Street Station in a lithograph of 1838, shortly after its completion The story of Curzon Street Station is an extreme illustration of what can happen to a building when architectural quality plays ...”

“... Innocent is reported to have said, ‘an inexhaustible well from whose plenty many things may be extorted.’ (Paris went on to note that ‘the London merchants who dealt in these things were not displeased, and sold them at whatever price they chose.’) A detail from the Clare chasuble. In many ways opus anglicanum was not very English at ...”

“... than this Hollywood tale of Agustín’s romantic obsession. But the banality of the story, which may after all be Estrella’s invention, enhances rather than depletes the sadness of the whole film. Even if the story is true, it still serves only to remind us that when it comes to our obsessions we don’t exercise impeccable taste, and any sort of past can ...”

“... uninterpretable protrusions and bowling-ball shapes. According to the catalogue for the show, this may have been originally intended as a double portrait of Man Ray (‘Man’) and Duchamp; Man apparently switched the titles on the second set of prints, which he later sent to Jean Arp. It’s easy to love the visual and language play here: the photo of Tzara ...”

“... just make out that the windows on the bottom level have been opened. I have a copy of the seal. It may have lost some of its definition – it’s worn or has softened and if you hold it for more than a few seconds the black wax it’s made of becomes sticky – but the detail that remains is extensive: you can tell that the hundred-odd members represented are ...”

“... is open; he looks to his left out of the corners of his eyes at his target. Other photographs may say more about the game of cricket, but no other picture better conveys the intent of the fast bowler who at the moment of delivery has eyes only for the batsman at the other end of the wicket. He’s in for the ...”