Reviewing the first Impressionist Exhibition in 1874, Alfred Wolff began his article in Le Figaro: ‘Five or six lunatics, one of whom is a woman.’
Despite being the most imaginative Spanish painter of the 15th century, and the only one to master the illusionistic techniques pioneered by Jan Van Eyck, Bartolomé Bermejo’s small...
It was so quiet that night, we learn in Helter Skelter, Vincent Bugliosi’s book about the Manson murders of 1969, that you could hear the ice rattling in cocktail shakers all the way...
‘My art is formalist,’ Frank Bowling wrote in 1988, ‘and my experience is that of a black artist.’ What might appear an opposition between formalist concerns and lived...
The Lee Krasner retrospective at the Barbican (until 1 September) is not to be missed. It is rare these days to be given a chance to assess the seriousness and beauty of the best Abstract...
Tom Wolfe lived round the corner from the Metropolitan Museum, at 21 East 79th Street, between Fifth and Madison. A mahogany elevator went to the sitting room of his 14th-floor apartment, much...
When the Australian cricketers Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were exposed tampering with the ball during last year’s test series in South Africa there was, along with...
The sculptor David Nash has lived and worked in Snowdonia for half a century, and the exhibition of his work currently on view at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff (until 1 September) is...
This month marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Woodstock festival. Michael Lang, the tenacious 24-year-old who made Woodstock happen, has a habit of surfacing at Woodstock birthdays: one...
Miners in the Snow (1880) was Vincent van Gogh’s first pictorial declaration of intent. Unable to hold down work in the family picture trade or as a preacher, he was persuaded by his...
Comics emerged in Japan ‘at least a century earlier than in Europe or the Americas’, according to the catalogue for the Manga exhibition at the British Museum (until 26 August)....
A recurring effect in the films of Agnès Varda, especially her documentaries, is a kind of hesitation between photography and moving pictures. A shot looks like a still – the...
You enter Mike Nelson’s installation The Asset Strippers, Tate Britain’s latest commission for its Duveen Galleries (until 6 October), through a pair of wooden swing doors salvaged...
A voiceover on the CBS evening news of 20 October 1982 described the American artist Keith Haring: ‘He stalks the New York City subways waiting for his chance to strike. When the...
Next door to the London Review Bookshop is a firm of architects, Rodić Davidson, who often have interesting displays in their windows. Usually these relate to the tools and forms of their...
In 1972, the architects Alison and Peter Smithson completed Robin Hood Gardens, their only council estate. The couple were famous for projects such as the Mies van der Rohe-inspired Hunstanton...
Robert Hamer’s Kind Hearts and Coronets was first released in 1949, and the current celebratory showings in various London cinemas are more than welcome. There is something a little...
I’ve never met anybody who hated as many people as Lillian Ross did. She would count their names off on her fingers, regularly within spitting distance of them, and her voice wasn’t quiet...