if i thought you were listening, i'd never say a word

I bought a paperback on Van Gogh's Sunflower paintings recently, thinking that it would be another easy art-market oriented read. I'...

(We are now working in European Equal Temperament.) A scale is any sequence of intervals (notice: not notes) that adds up to 12 semitones...

There's a scene in a wonderful movie called Dinner Rush...    (Not this scene, but it gives you an idea how good a film this is) ...wh...

Dear Editor, My subscription to Art News ran out recently and I am not renewing. I thought I would tell you why. I made a mistake subscr...

So I quote from Anish Kapoor's editorial in the January 2022 Art Newspaper: There is no question that the arts and an education in the...

I don't usually link to someone else's work, but in this case, it's just so apposite to the recent Tate Modern post about BS com...

I read David Stubbs' Fear of Music and Mars by 1980 recently. The second is a history of electronic music in the West, focussing heavi...

I went to the Tate Modern recently. I had to book, but I don't mind. It stops me changing my mind when I wake up and the weather is c**p...

Yep. My cleaned-out, throw-away-the-stuff-I-haven't-used-for-a-year utensil draw. Left to right: cheese-slicer, grater, hand whisk,...

Anonymous asked me what I got out of the Basquiat exhibition, Boom For Real, at the Barbican. And when I started this, I had read a bit of t...

I saw Julian Schnabel’s movie Basquiat when it came out in the UK, and it lifted my spirits something wonderful. I was intrigued by the Bas...

It seems that Marvel Comics is going to make Iron Man a black female in the next series, and she’s modelled on and will be played by Rianna ...

The Trustees of Penrhyn Castle recently sold a Rembrandt portrait for £35m to a foreign buyer. The export license has been temporarily with...

Towards the end of January this happened An artwork depicting high-heeled shoes on Islamic prayer mats has been removed from an exhibition...

Sundays I go to the gym, have breakfast at Balans on Old Compton Street and then spend some time in the National Gallery looking at one pain...

I have been for a long time as convinced as I am of anything that Damien Hirst's art is a fraud. I have no idea about his sincerity, I ...

I don't really do poetry. T S Eliot, of course, he's like Beethoven, even if you don't do classical music you like Beethoven, a...

The other Sunday I had one of my days in town: the Glasgow Boys exhibition at the Royal Academy, lunch in Soho, Slackistan  at the ICA, and ...

I was on holiday last week. I didn't go away, in fact, because the sky was grey, the air full of some fungus that set off histamines in ...

I bought a DVD of Ben Lewes' 2009 documentary on the Great Art Bubble while visiting the Tate Modern last Tuesday. I watched it a couple...