Somerset House
Charismatic, powerful and raw: Patti Smith, at Somerset House, reviewed
There are certain long-established rules for describing Patti Smith. Google her name and the words ‘shaman’ and ‘priestess’ and you’ll…
It’s time to free art from being ‘interactive’ and ‘immersive’
The American artist and critic Brad Troemel once pointed out that art galleries have all turned into a kind of…
An honorary Frenchman
When the Courtauld Gallery’s impressionist pictures were shown at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2019, the Parisian public…
Beano rules
Stuart Jeffries on the cultural influence of the comic that said it was good to be bad
Earthly powers
Exhibitions about fungi, bugs and trees illustrate the depth, range and vitality of a growing field of art, says Mark Cocker
Meet Congo, the Leonardo of chimps, whose paintings sell for £14,500
Three million years ago one of our ancestors, Australopithecus africanus, picked up a pebble and took it home to its…
How capitalism killed sleep
What can you make a joke about these days? All the old butts of humour are off limits. No wonder…
Comparing Peanuts to existentialism is an insult – to Peanuts
For the hundredth, possibly the thousandth, time, Lucy van Pelt offers to hold the football for Charlie Brown so he…
Public offence
Bad public art pollutes our townscapes. Stephen Bayley names and shames the worst offenders as he unveils the winner of The Spectator’s inaugural What’s That Thing? Award
Lessons from Utopia
Thomas More’s 1516 classic is a textbook for our troubled times, says William Cook
Center Parcs Longleat – a stealth socialist utopia on Lord Bath’s estate
Center Parcs Longleat is a holiday village in a forest in Wiltshire, on Lord Bath’s estate, so you can never…
‘Paint goes on living’
Maggi Hambling on Rembrandt, Twombly and the power of art
Art of noise
The album is not what it was. It still exists, in record collections, as part of the torrential streaming of…
Smock and awe
Somerset House, a handsome Georgian palace on the Thames, was once the office of the Inland Revenue, and the courtyard was…
