“... Normal modern-art-space is unbounded and ungrounded, and once upon a time those qualities may have had some life – some danger – in them. Not any more: the shallows have become a paddling pool. It is as if viewers now go to visual art for reassurance about the endlessness (the harmlessness) of the ‘virtual’, as once they went to it for a model ...”

“... entirely comfortable, entirely at home. We know who the boss is here, whatever race and money may say. Foxx shoots both Jackson’s kneecaps to pieces and leaves him lying in the burning house before he proceeds to his iconic final pose. But what this man represents can’t be disposed of so readily. For a moment Tarantino asks us to consider the ...”

“... recommends Strindberg, Chekhov and Shaw as more wholesome fare. I can only conclude that he may not be very well acquainted with authors like Strindberg.’The replies are both funny and typical of the sort of thing that was said by those in charge of the arts and broadcasting to an interfering busybody who felt she was entitled to put her point of ...”

“... the Mughals or the Chinese. Harrison argues that differing ideas of political rights and duties may have mattered more than medical traditions. ‘Put simply, more was expected of European rulers,’ who felt obliged to do something when epidemics loomed, rather than simply offer charity once one had started. By the early 17th century, quarantine was ...”

“... this spring, which rent for $9.95 a day. When Anthony Weiner entered the New York mayoral race in May, everybody knew he was, by a new measure of techno-uxoriousness, no good. The former congressman’s saga has now taken the form of a trilogy: less Mailer, whose hero’s excesses are ever on display, than Roth, whose repressed outsiders climb to the top only ...”

“... the panther, the partridge, the whale and, at considerable length, the phoenix. The Latin version may well have been a set text for medieval schoolboys, and possibly also constituted a permissible entertainment for monastic refectories. Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae (c.610) expanded on the Physiologus by relating the Latin names of animals to any word ...”

“... barbarisms of apartheid. A small but suggestive show at the Morgan Library in New York (until 10 May), smartly curated by Sheelagh Bevan with well-chosen publications, prints and photos mostly from the recently donated Stillman Collection, examines his short life and long afterlife, along with his explosive writing.How do the Symbolist Jarry and the Ubu ...”

“... on display at the National Gallery’s small exhibition of his paintings (until 19 May), was previously catalogued as The Friends and Two Sisters, kidding absolutely nobody. These early works, heavy in innuendo and set in fashionable interiors, are far removed from the crowded Parisian street scenes that later became his stock in ...”

“... there are three more – will have something to do with walls and whether the volume’s title may be a larger clue than it looks. The answer is yes and no. There are walls in all the stories but one, but some are just walls, not metaphors or destinies. But then the wall in the last story, a place where a Jew is beaten up by eager French fascists, does ...”

“... unfinished estates watching films with the devotion of young people with nothing else to do. We may have been wearing American T-shirts and jeans, lip gloss promoted by models (the legacy of the boom was the awful homogenisation of everything), but we still recited lines from films with the same conviction that Barry and his friends, two decades ...”

“... with a flashlight making sure all was dim and curtains drawn. When Germany surrendered on 7 May 1945 people flocked to the streets cheering, car horns honked, neighbours embraced, and Mr Zank’s expression seemed to indicate that he had done his part for the war effort. Over the following months our men started coming home, some on crutches, some in ...”

“... more than thirty years. He is a modest figure, who has led a life according to his principles. He may well have been naive about some of the people he has met and platforms he has shared, but the idea that he is a communist agent is risible. I suppose we’re in for a lot of this as we get closer to another election. On polling day in 2017 an article appeared ...”

“... in the big new gallery space is Actions: The image of the world can be different (until 6 May). It takes its title from a letter written by Ede’s friend Naum Gabo to Herbert Read: ‘Any thing or action which enhances life, propels it and adds to it something in the direction of growth, expansion and development, is Constructive … I try to guard ...”

“... the caption reads: ‘The recent elder victim of an animal attack’. The Melody argues a society may be judged on its treatment of the disenfranchised, but the novel’s politics doesn’t distract from its portrayal of the protagonist. Busi’s is a commendable life, well-lived, and as a character he is conscious of his own flaws and shortcomings (he cannot ...”

“... a remark Each brisk spanked cloud that scuds A brief out from the invulnerable sun The sea in May The barking ivory spray. Just as she never succumbs to the clichés of city poetry (romantic solitude, ironic flânerie, alienated singularity), she bypasses the clichés of nature poems. What makes ‘Spring’ so enjoyable is the way she takes the ...”