A black-Hispanic graffiti artist, Basquiat acted the outsider with brio. His career opened in 1981; he became famous overnight; and died of an overdose in 1988 at the age of 27. In between, he painted...
Whether the General Election takes place at the end of this year or the beginning of next, the Conservative Party’s campaign will focus on three issues: taxation, crime and Europe. In this...
The screen shows a flat, empty road from a very low angle, a torn tyre lying on it like a piece of junk sculpture. Then the towers of a city in the distance; then a set of ramshackle houses; a...
Star Trek is a phenomenon, no doubt about it. Since 1966 we’ve had the original series, the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine (now in its fourth year) and Voyager (now in its second). There...
There he stands, mounted on a pedestal, booted, spurred and bigger than life, his enormous, holstered six-shooter set just below the eye-level of passers-by, welcoming travellers to Orange...
Some art is distinguishable from non-art only by the kind of attention it gets. In a museum of modern art anything which is not already an item in the collection, from the light bulbs to the...
To what degree is our experience of modern – let’s say rather, contemporary – architecture mediated through photography? To what degree, in other words, is that experience...
Russian high culture has failed to flourish since the Soviet Union’s collapse. Though there are now signs of recovery, and though its magnificent base has not been destroyed, it is clear...
The violin does a nightingale, the clarinet a blackbird. The movement does not develop in any way; the isorhythmic sequences continue for a time, the birds chatter and gurgle. Then it stops. It is as...
For years, all that passed across our TV screen was a series of grins. Harpo, Chico, Groucho, wide-eyed and cheesy, and, over and over again, Gene Kelly. There must have been other videos,...
By ironic circumstance, I spent an evening recently at the home of a major collector of contemporary art, where the topic arose of the house which Bill Gates, the legendarily successful head of...
One of the many things that separate the movies of Hollywood’s classic era from those of today is their indulgent attitude to alcohol and drunkenness. So many famous scenes from studio...
‘Refaire Poussin sur nature’. Why did Cézanne single out Poussin when Rubens was his hero – his avowed and his manifest hero? One thing that Cézanne and Poussin have...
It’s always risky to think of films as signs of the times, when they are mainly signs of what someone thought would sell. It’s particularly risky when the films manifestly see...
Movies tend not to age gracefully. If they’re not still fresh, they look decrepit, or just dead. It’s hard to distinguish between the damage done to the old Frankenstein by Young...
Good journalism often has a guising element in it, in which the voice of the journalist seems to come from an unexpected direction. The best journalism transcends this. But it is still true that...
For years – since boyhood, really – I’ve seen myself as an above-average soccer bore. At my peak, I would happily hold forth for hours about the rugged terrace-time I’d...
Evening newspapers are an endangered species. When I started out as a journalist in 1958, there were not only three in London but three in New York as well. Today each of these cities can boast...