The complaint that cynics often make about modern art is that most of it looks as though it were made by children. (If your 10-year-old is pulling out crumpled Kandinskys from their... Read more »
According to Isaiah Berlin’s formulation, inspired by Archilochus’s aphorism that “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing,” one set of thinkers dig into a single topic all... Read more »
What if the protagonist of a novel was not a single person but a couple? Damian Barr takes on this challenge, and he’s found a historic couple who make the ideal source material.... Read more »
Some of us will go to an art gallery this weekend. Maybe it will help us reflect or inspire us. Isn’t that part of a life well lived? And if you don’t... Read more »
“The Secret Painter” here is Joe Tucker’s uncle Eric, apparently the most unaesthetic of men, inhabiting the most unaesthetic of places, the industrial town of Warrington, Lancashire. He kept his trousers up... Read more »
âMy dream is that peopleâs eyes will be opened instinctively to their surroundings,â says Simon Jenkins at the end of his new book. âI want people to point at buildings, laugh, cry... Read more »
Art, of course, brings pleasure. Now there is evidence that paintings can also help alleviate medical conditions, as well as boosting NHS staff. A new book produced by the charity Paintings in... Read more »
In 2011, the psychologist (and Nobel laureate) Daniel Kahneman proposed that we humans are bimodal animals capable only of two modes of thought. One (which he called âSystem 1â) is fast, instinctive... Read more »
The Art of Cloying A book can be loved to death and not die.Look at how this one refuses to close. Place the weightof the world on it and it may stop... Read more »