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After the flood: From Haiti to Britain, one man has captured the devastation of our increasingly deluged lands

Sat, 25 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

How do you produce art about climate change? Everyone from writers to painters to film-makers itch to grapple with this question – but often struggle, getting bogged down in the complicated science, or the worthiness of the subject. It's the same for photographers: "There's a real problem with the image of climate change; it's either evidence – 'the water was up to here, and now it's there' – or it's cute polar bears," says Gideon Mendel.

Great Works: Fra Teodoro of Urbino as Saint Dominic (1515), 63.9 x 49.5 cms by Giovanni Bellini

Fri, 24 May 2013 19:00:23 +0100

This likeness of an elderly Venetian friar who may have lived in a convent near Giovanni Bellini's own home in the sestiere of Castello was the last portrait that the great Venetian painter was known to have executed.

LS Lowry and his legacy: The matchstick man is back in vogue at last as Tate Britain showcases first retrospective of Manchester’s controversial painter

Fri, 24 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

What is the problem with the painter LS Lowry? To the public there is none at all. Well recognised in his lifetime, the Royal Academy retrospective a few months after his death in 1976, aged 88, drew record crowds. If the prices fetched at auction and the number of postcards are anything to go by, his stock has remained high ever since. There is something about his urban landscapes of smokestacks and hurrying crowds that people, even in an age when the factories are gone, readily relate to. Nor is there really any problem with Lowry as an artist. Long gone are the days when his so-called "matchstick" men were regarded as naive and his technique that of a "Sunday painter".

In The Studio: Des Hughes, artist

Fri, 24 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

Des Hughes is an artist whose sculpture is subversive and light-fingered, made in materials and techniques a long way from the bronze and marble of traditional sculptors. He has had his share of success, having recently been on the long-list for the fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square with a proposed sculpture based on the effigy figures found in many British churches, although, he shrugs self-deprecatingly, "I knew a more famous artist would win".

Art by Damon Albarn's father is anything but Blurry

Fri, 24 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

The scene is ostensibly retro: Colchester's Minories Gallery packed with artists and liggers, jigsaw-puzzle pieces being exchanged for free drinks, the walls and floors covered with Op Art and trippy digital prints. And centre-stage is a tallish man in a mustard-yellow corduroy suit.

Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life at Tate Britain: exclusive reader evening

Fri, 24 May 2013 12:32:37 +0100

This summer, Tate Britain presents a major exhibition of landscapes by the much-loved British painter LS Lowry (1887-1976). This is the first show held by a public institution in London since the artist’s death. Bringing together around eighty works, the show aims to re-assess Lowry’s contribution as part of a wider art history and to argue for his achievement as Britain’s pre-eminent painter of the industrial city.

Amazon in the frame for a chunk of the Big Apple's art market; Middle March? More like Middle-earth...

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:51:40 +0100

Amazon appears to be entering the world of fine art. The global online retailer sent a round-robin email to gallerists in New York last week inviting them to a launch event for its Fine Art Gallery.

Arterial motive? Visitors to artist Andrei Molodkin's new show asked to contribute their own blood

Thu, 23 May 2013 15:47:36 +0100

It makes a change from warm white wine and waffle about the artist. Visitors to the opening night of Andrei Molodkin’s new show at Void Gallery in Derry last week were invited to give blood, and thus become part of his latest artwork.

Archaeologists uncover nearly 5,000 cave paintings in Burgos, Mexico

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:55:05 +0100

Nearly 5,000 ancient cave paintings have been discovered in Burgos, Mexico.

John Constable’s cathedral masterpiece saved for the nation after £23m Tate deal

Thu, 23 May 2013 10:04:43 +0100

One of the great masterpieces of British art will remain in Britain and be displayed in five galleries across the country after the Tate secured Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows in a £23.1m deal.

Still pushing the boat out: The Venice Art Biennale is the wackiest cultural show in the world

Thu, 23 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Remember the paradise island of Tuvalu, the small Commonwealth territory where the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge danced in native costumes during the Jubilee tour last year? Tavalu's entry for the Venice Art Biennale next week will see artist Vincent J F Huang raising awareness of the climate crisis engulfing the island with his massive oil pump interactive/slaughter machine. People fill up for "petrol" while simultaneously "guillotining" Barack Obama's head.

Tacky or just plain weird? Gallery in Hamburg holds exhibition dedicated to bad taste

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:34:07 +0100

From jewel encrusted mobile phones to USB sticks shaped like human fingers, a new exhibition at a gallery in Hamburg is exposing crimes against design.

Art review: Subodh Gupta, What does the vessel contain, that the river does not, Hauser & Wirth, London

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:20:09 +0100

I recently returned from the Keralan coast, South India, where the storms and power-cuts at night made the sea and sky appear as black as each other, and the lights of the fishing boats floated on the horizon like a distant city. The monsoon months are coming.

Art review: Dieter Roth, Diaries, Camden Arts Centre, London

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:06:08 +0100

In the early 1980s, German-Swiss artist Dieter Roth was close to death due to his excessive drinking and eating. He spent time in a health clinic in Switzerland, and emerged 30 kilos lighter. His life was saved but he had another problem: his exquisitely tailored Viennese suits no longer fitted him.

Art review: Anish Kapoor, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:02:32 +0100

Some of Anish Kapoor's ventures into gigantism have been questionable successes.

Ashmolean Museum acquires Millais portrait of John Ruskin which led to the end of his marriage to Effie Gray

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:59:51 +0100

A painting of John Ruskin which led to the end of the art critic's marriage has been acquired by the Ashmolean Museum.

Heavenly Bodies: Michael Landy's artistic marriage made in heaven... and hell

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:01:17 +0100

The master of destruction meets the martyrs of Faith.

Polly Morgan: The taxidermy artist talks llama rides, eyeball scarves and how to deal with despair

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Taxidermy is part butchery, part sculpture Once you peel back the skin and see the body beneath, there lies a whole new world. By knowing animals, I now know myself, how I am put together, and understand the lumps and bumps under my own skin. It's frightening to realise how fragile we are: it'd be so easy to chop a hand off now I know where to aim for.

Portfolio: Jan Brykczynski

Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Two hundred miles north of Reykjavik lies Arnes, an isolated region in Iceland's Western Fjords. It is populated by more than 2,700 sheep – and just 38 people.

Charles Darwent on visual Houghton Revisited: There's much to learn by taking a dim view of art

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:15:00 +0100

As it did 250 years ago, Velázquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X peers into the gloom at Houghton Hall. It is an extraordinary image in an extraordinary space.

The Venice Biennale preview: Let the art games commence

Sat, 18 May 2013 20:14:22 +0100

Ah, the Venice Biennale: the pop of prosecco corks, glittering light on water, beautiful people sailing down the Grand Canal. It happens every two years, right?

The Saturday miscellany: Feminist classics; Anna Wintour; Clerkenwell Design Week; Curiosity: Art and the Pleasures of Knowing; Louis Vuitton

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Culture clash: Feminist classics

The Fall: Same old Mark E Smith. But different...

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:51 +0100

Mark E Smith and The Fall are one of the constant, cryptic undercurrents of English music. From Live at the Witch Trials, in 1978, through ballet with Michael Clark and Leigh Bowery in the Eighties to pioneering rock and electronica in the Nineties, near-collapse and rebirth in the 2000s, and now, with Re-Mit, the group's 30th studio release some 35 years later, no other band has reinvented itself along the same lines, album after album, and remained as fresh and challenging as The Fall. John Peel's famous dictum, “always different, always the same”, holds true. Re-Mit is a brilliant and essential album, as essential as pain relief in surgery. The word “different” runs through it like Brighton through rock. It is also the same.

Barfly offers a chance to catch new acts for nothing

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:50 +0100

At London's Barfly, the indie-folk duo Slow Club played an intimate show to a crowd of ticket-winning fans. Next month, Kate Nash will take to the same stage for a similar free show. This is Beck's Live, a new monthly series of intimate gigs aiming to give a platform to up-and-coming UK acts to perform alongside more established names – and the tickets are free through the Facebook page.

Pussy Riot: Putin-bashing, punk rock and politics make for a riotous mix

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:47 +0100

It is more than a year since five members of feminist punk group Pussy Riot wearing brightly coloured balaclava masks staged a short and cacophonous performance in front of the altar of Moscow's Christ The Saviour Cathedral. Their impromptu gig (in February 2012) caused immediate outrage while becoming a worldwide media sensation in the process.

Saoirse Ronan: Interview with the vampire

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:46 +0100

Saoirse Ronan is stifling a giggle. The recording device has broken mid-interview, and Ronan, the Irish teen star of Atonement and The Lovely Bones, is merrily finding an alternative on my iPad, as she tries to suppress the smile of a teenager faced with the technological ineptitude of an older generation. “There you go,” she announces triumphantly in the Dublin drawl she has rarely used on screen. “That's grand.”

La Donna del Lago at the Royal Opera House: Starry cast all set to make waves

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:33 +0100

Gioachino Rossini's La Donna del Lago (“The Lady of the Lake”), which has just opened at the Royal Opera House, is an operatic rarity of the first order – hardly ever performed, according to its director, John Fulljames, because its leading roles are so demanding. “You have to have the right constellation of stars to pull it off,” he says. “That only happens once in a generation.”

Great Works: The White Horse (2013) Life-size by Mark Wallinger

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:28 +0100

Are you aware that the piazza in front of the British Council's Spring Garden headquarters at the eastern end of the Mall is a temporary exhibition space for public art? It currently displays Mark Wallinger's White Horse, a life-size reproduction of a race horse in marble and resin that stands close to one corner of a large, low, rectangular plinth.

Daft Punk: Together in electric dreams

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:23 +0100

Giorgio Moroder (vocals)

Soap Opera: People of Peckham take centre stage

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:20 +0100

For sixty-three years listeners to The Archers have switched on their radio sets in order to keep abreast of the everyday stories about the lives, loves and livestock of folk. Will an experimental radio soap set in cow-free Peckham see the fictional village of Ambridge meet its real-life urban match?

One to watch: Laurretta Summerscales, Ballerina, 22

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:20 +0100

She may not be a lead principal yet – but she has certainly bypassed the 60 swans. This Surrey-born ballerina, who joined her mum's ballet school aged three, dances Odette/Odile in the English National Ballet's Swan Lake at the Royal Albert Hall next month, on Tamara Rojo's nights off.

Fantasy band: M Ward, She & Him

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:19 +0100

Vocals: Tony Bennett

Cultural life: Jared Leto, actor and musician

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:15 +0100

Film

Sound moves from bright young thing Haroon Mirza

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:13 +0100

The British artist Haroon Mirza has transformed a space at London's Lisson Gallery into a gleaming symphony of light, reverberation and echo with his newest installation, /o/o/o/o/. Its centrepiece, a reverberation chamber created by Mirza and his architect brother, Omar, will be lit by small, flashing LEDs that correspond to noise from speakers rigged in and about the chamber. The combination of constant, clanging noise and flashing light is set to offer a unique, otherworldly gallery-going experience.

In The Studio: Nicholas Pope, artist

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

Nicholas Pope was a successful artist; in 1980 he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, making sculptures that "filled the space".

Exhibition of the week: Houghton Revisited, Houghton Hall, Norfolk

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

Once sold to Catherine the Great of Russia by his grandson, 70 paintings from Sir Robert Walpole's art collection have returned to the positions they occupied in the great Palladian house built to house them.

Nature calls at the Museum Of Bad Art: Latest exhibition will feature images of wildlife - realistic, imaginary (and often unidentifiable)

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:25:24 +0100

The French artist Edgar Degas famously wrote 'painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.'

Ai Weiwei unveils milk tin map of China in new protest piece against baby formula scandal

Fri, 17 May 2013 12:17:18 +0100

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has unveiled his latest work, a map of China made from baby formula tins, in response to fears surrounding milk safety in China.

Dan Stevens after Downton Abbey: The erstwhile Matthew Crawley is back in period costume

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:55:00 +0100

The pavement in front of the Athenaeum gentlemen's club in Pall Mall is scattered with dirt and gravel, a horse and carriage is parked at the entrance and sophisticated ladies and gentlemen attired in Edwardian finery mill about, occasionally posing for photos at the behest of passing tourists. “Ooh, is it Downton Abbey that they're filming?” one excited passer-by inquires to a trio of costumed young women, who giggle in unison and reply in the negative. But the actor who's sprung from that series's stuffy parlours to become a fully-formed member of the global fame academy is close at hand for this Sunday morning shoot of period drama Summer in February. Dan Stevens is in the house.

I might have been on LSD, says artist Peter Doig, but I definitely didn’t paint THAT

Thu, 16 May 2013 19:44:17 +0100

By his own admission, Peter Doig led an unusual lifestyle when as a teenager he left home to wander the Canadian prairies. The Scottish-born artist and one of Europe’s most sought-after living painters worked with a gas drilling crew. He also occasionally took LSD.

Rankin honours parents with pictures of life before death

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:52:14 +0100

Rankin, the celebrated photographer, is on a mission to bring death to life in an exhibition inspired by the trauma he suffered after his parents died within weeks of each other.

Revealed: Eerie new images show forgotten French apartment that was abandoned at the outbreak of World War II and left untouched for 70 years

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:23:21 +0100

Eerie new images have emerged of a French apartment abandoned at the outbreak of World War II and left untouched in the seven decades since.

Auctions: The art of making a celebrity bidding war wildly lucrative

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Going, going, gone – to my billionaire best friend in the fifth row. It takes years to train as an auctioneer and a couple of decades on top to smooth one's salesroom patter and gavel-banging. If you're Leonardo DiCaprio, though, a few pals in high places are all you need. At an auction at Christie's New York on Monday, the actor raised $38.8m (£25.5m) for his Foundation, which works to protect endangered species and wildlife habitats.

Gerhard Richter painting sells for $37m setting new record for a work by a living artist

Wed, 15 May 2013 10:32:44 +0100

A 1968 oil painting by German artist Gerhard Richter sold for $37 million (£24 million) at Sotheby's contemporary art auction - a new record for a work by a living artist.

Leonardo DiCaprio's art auction raises $39m for environmental charities

Tue, 14 May 2013 16:43:16 +0100

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio and Christie's auction house raised $38.8 million (£25 million) through a charity art auction and donations with proceeds to benefit environmental and conservation causes.

Art review: Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition, The Mall Galleries, London

Tue, 14 May 2013 16:32:43 +0100

There is something curiously lacklustre about much of this show. Why? It is not that the majority of these representational portraits – there are more than 200 of them in all - are not good examples of their kind.

Art review: Leon Kossoff – London Landscapes, Annely Juda Fine Art, London

Tue, 14 May 2013 16:19:35 +0100

A small correction. Kossoff does not paint landscapes. He paints and draws the cityscapes of London, and he has been doing so for the last sixty years or so.

Tattoos, piercings and contortionists: inside Matilda Temperley's Human Zoo

Tue, 14 May 2013 16:07:14 +0100

Self-styled "exploratory photographer" Matilda Temperley has hunted down some unorthodox types to fill her Human Zoo.

Come and Holy See it: The Vatican sticks to a biblical theme for its first Venice Biennale

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:47:43 +0100

The Vatican is getting back into its centuries-old tradition of arts patronage with its first-ever exhibit at the Venice Biennale, commissioning a biblically inspired show about creation, destruction and renewal for one of the world's most prestigious contemporary arts festivals.

Tate Britain's triumphant new hang

Tue, 14 May 2013 08:53:00 +0100

Over the past few months, Tate Britain has been undergoing slow but highly significant changes. Two long corridors of rooms – to the left and right of the Duveen Galleries – have been entirely refurbished and re-hung. And this week, with the opening of the south-east quadrant – the galleries that house works from 1930 to the present day (the date of each room is written in gold, on the floor) – the job will be complete.

Britain's first female professional painter Mary Beale celebrated in radical Tate Britain rehang

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:49:27 +0100

Tate Britain has put on show two newly discovered works by Britain’s earliest professional female painter for the first time, as part of a radical rehang of its collection.

Art review: Richard Patterson, Timothy Taylor Gallery, London

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:10:24 +0100

This survey of YBA Richard Patterson’s career so far is bold, sensuous, and feels fresh rather than old hat recycled from the Freeze/Sensation years.

The £20,000 drinks were on Hirst – not that he remembered having forgotten where he left his Turner Prize winnings

Mon, 13 May 2013 07:50:49 +0100

Damien Hirst thought he had lost his £20,000 winnings from the Turner Prize when he couldn’t find the cheque on him the following morning – but it turned out he had put the whole lot behind the bar at a London members’ club, he revealed on Sunday.

Honeysuckle Weeks: A new battle for a Shining star

Sun, 12 May 2013 19:00:51 +0100

With the names Honeysuckle Weeks and Charity Wakefield starring in the UK premiere production of These Shining Lives directed by Loveday Ingram, you can only imagine what rehearsals are like. It sounds as if they should all be in a Jilly Cooper novel – not a hard-hitting play about employees' rights in the workplace. The American playwright Melanie Marnich's moving play about a group of women who get radium poisoning at work in the Roaring Twenties is the inaugural production at the newly built Park Theatre in north London, a former vacant office building in Finsbury Park, with two auditoriums, a café-bar and gallery.

The films that have changed our lives

Sun, 12 May 2013 18:55:22 +0100

Audiences have a very complex and emotional and response to film. That is the main conclusion to be drawn from a poll that has just been published by Universal UK, asking participants from across Britain to "create their own movie time-lines, chronicling their lives through the movies that matter the most".

Portfolio: Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Rarely has a dying regime seemed quite so alive. In early-20th-century Russia, in what were to be the last years of Tsarist rule, Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii was commissioned by Nicolas II to journey throughout the empire and document the daily life and environs of its diverse population.

Charles Darwent on Uncommon Ground, Land Art in Britain: It may not be big, but it is clever

Sat, 11 May 2013 19:10:00 +0100

I have had one piece of hate-mail as art critic for this paper, in 2003, from a land artist currently in a show called Uncommon Ground at the Southampton City Gallery. "You just don't get it, which is your perogative [sic]," hissed the letter. "You are both, but it is worse to be an amateur than a cynic." Ouch.

Heads Up: Chagall, Modern Master

Sat, 11 May 2013 18:30:00 +0100

What are we talking about? A major exhibition at Tate Liverpool of the work of Russian painter Marc Chagall.

The Saturday Miscellany: Long-running musicals; Alan Sugar; How the Light Gets In; Roger Kasparian; Cathy Azria

Sat, 11 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

CULTURE CLASH: LONG-RUNNING MUSICALS

Ilana Halperin: The world as a game of stones

Fri, 10 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

The noted American sculptor Ilana Halperin, who is based in Glasgow, dates her love of rocks back to a childhood spent "scrambling all over them" in Riverside Park in her native New York.

Vinyl meets Victorian London to become Op Art

Fri, 10 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

How do you turn an art school into a work of art? You call in the Swiss artist Felice Varini, give him a vast amount of weatherproof silver adhesive vinyl, and let him do his thing. And that's why the surfaces of the buildings at Central St Martins new campus at Granary Square, King's Cross, are glinting with a 542-metre- long artwork.

In The Studio: Lucy Gunning, artist

Fri, 10 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

Lucy Gunning is finally coming to terms with being in a studio belonging to another artist – in this case a dead one, Kenneth Armitage. She admits that it has taken time but she is learning to negotiate the space both physically and mentally.

Great works: Grande Mannequinerie (1951) by Jean Hélion

Fri, 10 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

In the years of his maturity, Jean Hélion became a great painter of pumpkins, umbrellas and hat stands – to name but a trio of his favourite subjects. He painted them joyously, skippingly even, with crisp graphic fervour, as if he and his subjects were engaged in a kind of dance or romp.

The hot spot of the Venice Biennale comes all the way from Peckham; Festivals suffer identity crisis

Thu, 09 May 2013 14:02:11 +0100

Forget the Giardini, the hippest hang-out at the Venice Biennale is likely to be Palazzo Peckham, a fringe event in an old shipyard five minutes walk away from the pavilions proper.

Piles of stolen Ai Weiwei sunflower seeds grow as Couriers of Taste exhibition idea succeeds

Thu, 09 May 2013 13:34:22 +0100

Back in February, the Arts Diary wrote about Couriers of Taste at Danson House in Bexleyheath. The curators were looking for anyone who had pocketed one of the millions of porcelain sunflower seeds that made up Ai Weiwei’s artwork at Tate Modern in 2010 to lend them their souvenirs for the show.

Art review: Sir Robert Walpole collection, Houghton Hall, Norfolk

Wed, 08 May 2013 15:59:14 +0100

This is a story about making amends for cultural asset-stripping in the grand style. A little over three hundred years ago, the debt-ridden grandson of Sir Robert Walpole, England's first Prime Minister, sold off to Catherine the Great of Russia the great art collection amassed by his grandfather.

Unknown portrait of Elizabeth I uncovered in house clearance acquired by National Portrait Gallery

Wed, 08 May 2013 14:24:10 +0100

A previously unknown postcard-size painting of Elizabeth I which turned up in a house clearance sale has been attributed to famous miniaturist Isaac Oliver and acquired by the National Portrait Gallery.

Sir Robert Walpole's 'magnificent' art collection to return home to Britain - temporarily

Tue, 07 May 2013 18:50:24 +0100

A “magnificent” art collection built up by Britain's first Prime Minister that was later sold to Catherine the Great of Russia is to return home, temporarily, for the first time in over 230 years.

Fantasy coffins: Meet the man who puts the 'fun' into funereal

Tue, 07 May 2013 13:04:58 +0100

His creations are highly intricate and take months of intensive work to produce, yet when they are finished they are buried six feet in the ground, never to be seen again.

Portrait of 'relaxed' Oscar Pistorius without running blades goes on show in new exhibition

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:47:30 +0100

A portrait of Oscar Pistorius is among 200 paintings to go on show at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in London this week.

Badass Benedict Cumberbatch swaps Sherlock for outer space in Star Trek: Into Darkness

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:01:25 +0100

At the end of last year, as it prepared to launch the marketing campaign for its latest tent-pole summer sequel, Paramount Pictures decided to boldly go where no Hollywood studio had gone before. Rather than build the pre-release buzz for Star Trek Into Darkness around the franchise's iconic protagonists, Kirk and Spock, or its celebrated director J J Abrams, the studio and Abrams' production company Bad Robot led instead with the film's anonymous villain, played by an actor with a minimal Hollywood résumé.

Gavin Turk: a YBA up to his old tricks

Sun, 05 May 2013 19:31:11 +0100

The YBAs, those edgily aggressive provokers of outrage of the early 1990s, seem thoroughly tamed by now. Tracey votes blue and wears hats. Damien's stock, once so high, is on the gentle slide. And what of Gavin – Turk, that is? Although he didn't go to Goldsmiths, he was among them, wasn't he, with his posturing waxwork of a gun-totin' Sid Vicious in the Elvis pose? Now, 20 years on, and with the support of a respectable and beautifully appointed gallery in a quiet Mayfair mews, the script has been polished and redrafted, and we are calmly being invited to look back at 20 years of his development as a serious artist. Prestel has just published the very first monograph of his work – 400 pages of it, for a cool £45. Turk, it seems, was always quietly cerebral and slightly set apart from the rest, keen to be investigating serious issues of process, identity, art-historical authenticity.

Genius of Lancashire's 'matchstick' master: This summer's biggest exhibition reassesses the merits of LS Lowry

Sun, 05 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Contrary to the stereotype, Laurence Stephen Lowry was of middle-class, not proletarian, stock. A Tory voter, brought up in a home straining towards gentility, he collected the paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and painted with the arias of Donizetti and Bellini ringing in his ears.

Portfolio: Yann Arthus-bertrand

Sun, 05 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

Whether it's to Brighton, Bognor or Blackpool, we cannot help ourselves when it comes to the Bank Holiday, as thousands of us pack up our towels and brollies and head to the beach.

Charles Darwent on Ellen Gallagher: AxME - The dog ate my homework, Miss Gallagher

Sat, 04 May 2013 14:08:25 +0100

Last week I spoke to a gifted young painter, a Jerwood Fellow, about his work. The conversation went like this. Me: “The two small pictures are particularly strong. I really like them.”

One to watch: Joey L, photographer, 23

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:00:57 +0100

Championed by Gert Elfering, one of the world's top photo collectors, Joey Lawrence merges photojournalism with fine art.

The Playlist: Iggy and the Stooges / Childhood / Ty Segall

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:00:54 +0100

Iggy and the Stooges

Cultural life: Ralf Little, actor

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:00:37 +0100

Television

Roger Morlidge says Full Monty is a serious scream

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:00:34 +0100

“It's amazing, coming out on stage and having 1,000 women screaming at you,” says the actor Roger Morlidge. “It's the closest I'll ever get to being a rock star.”

Posters of the Monaco Grand Prix: the poster boys of speed on the Riviera

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:00:33 +0100

The posters promoting the Monaco Grand Prix were always much more than disposable advertisements. The organisers of the Monaco race employed top-of-the-range, fashionable artists of the time, and every poster was a work of art designed to capture the glamour and pace of the race for the year it represented. Those vintage works of art are now being exhibited in The Art of Speed on the weekend of the Grand Prix itself.

Seasons in the sun at the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:00:21 +0100

It's a tribute to the power, variety and sheer quantity of music from the 17th and 18th centuries that the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music has not featured Vivaldi's The Four Seasons since 1990. The event, probably London's best-loved annual celebration of early music, has had plenty of other choices. This year, though, its artistic director, the music critic Lindsay Kemp, settled on the theme of “nature's voice” as the unifying strand. That opened the floodgates.

Talks and tigers are a natural attraction

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:00:20 +0100

My book on migration, The Mara Crossing, took seven years. I put the birds and animals first, so their dangerous journeys could show that the drive to find better living conditions is universal and that human migration, a burning political topic everywhere today, is as natural as that of animals. Both are done to survive, both are part of the self-renewing nature of all life.

All that Jazz: The Great Gatsby

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:00:02 +0100

THE FILM

Exhibition of the Week: Souzou: Outsider Art from Japan, Wellcome Collection, London NW1

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

Showcasing work from 46 artists living in or attending social welfare establishments across Japan, the curator Shamita Sharmacharja's exhibition highlights the pleasure that creativity gives the patients.

In The Studio: Bedwyr Williams, painter

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

Bedwyr Williams demonstrates the strength he had to muster to load up the three floor sections of his studio on to his van. His eyes bulge, and he looks like Britain's Strongest Man – certainly a formidable performance artist: "I had to pull these with superhuman strength."

Great Works: New York (1911) by George Bellows

Fri, 03 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

Here, flung directly into your face, is mid-town Manhattan early in the 20th century, a kettle forever on the boil, painted by a young man from Columbus, Ohio called George Bellows. He didn't always paint New York like this. He often preferred its quieter margins: Riverside Drive with its genteel strollers; the Palisades... Yes, he often seemed to enjoy inserting a hint of the natural into the urban scene. Here almost everything is aggressively man-made, a great interlocking of forces at war with each other.

Dutch masterpiece stolen by Nazis could fetch $2m at New York auction

Fri, 03 May 2013 13:05:15 +0100

A 17th century Dutch masterpiece that once graced the collections of Catherine the Great's art adviser and Russia's Hermitage Museum before being seized by the Nazis could fetch more than $2 million at auction, Christie's said on Friday.

Artist Dan Llywelyn Hall defends his 'Spitting Image' portrait of the Queen against critics

Fri, 03 May 2013 12:51:44 +0100

The artist whose portrait of the Queen has been criticised as looking like a Spitting Image puppet has defended his work, saying he "wouldn't change a thing".

How Warhol become one of the undead who haunts the ark market; and Brighton hosts Kate Bush ambush

Thu, 02 May 2013 09:42:19 +0100

Where does art go to die? Frieze New York, apparently.

A homage to Kaspar the friendly cat checks in at the Savoy's new eatery

Thu, 02 May 2013 09:32:32 +0100

It’s a tough job but someone has to do it. For the last six weeks, artist Jonty Hurwitz has been living at The Savoy as he creates a new artwork for Kaspar’s, the hotel’s new seafood bar and grill, which opens next week.

Historical hipsters: Shakespeare and Elizabeth I get makeovers from modern artists

Thu, 02 May 2013 00:00:23 +0100

Shakespeare is an east London hipster; Horatio Nelson a chubby, desk-bound admiral with a prosthetic arm and Henry VIII is now a Cuban-heeled lothario: several of the world’s most historic figures have been given a 21st century make-over via a new art project.

Van Gogh Museum reopens in Amsterdam after seven month renovation

Wed, 01 May 2013 18:01:15 +0100

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has reopened after a seven-month renovation.

'Expressionist' painting of the Queen unveiled in Wales

Wed, 01 May 2013 17:36:38 +0100

A new "expressionist-style" portrait of the Queen commissioned by the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) to mark the 60th anniversary of the Coronation has been unveiled.

In pictures: Visions of the Universe

Wed, 01 May 2013 16:58:46 +0100

This summer Royal Museums Greenwich brings together over one hundred beautiful and awe-inspiring images of space for a major new exhibition looking at the development of telescopy, photography, and our understanding of our place in the cosmos.

Can 'mystery woman' in Stephen Ward sketch shed light on Profumo affair?

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:44:32 +0100

She has dark eyes, full lips and short hair in one of the favourite styles of London in the "swinging 60s" but who is she?

Travels with Van Gogh

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 +0100

What's the attraction?

Controversy and a cock-up on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:16:46 +0100

Plans to install a giant blue cockerel in Trafalgar Square are being opposed by a conservation group headed by one of the country’s most senior judges.

'World's largest jigsaw' collapses into 40,000 pieces days before it was due to go on show at Sandringham

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:37:30 +0100

A 40 thousand piece jigsaw commemorating the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee crashed to the floor and broke leaving its assembler, who had spent more than 200 hours putting it together, heartbroken just days before it was due to go on display at Sandringham.

British Museum to display largest Viking ship ever discovered following £135m building revamp

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:38:28 +0100

Senior figures at the British Museum will next year realise a dream when they display the largest Viking ship ever discovered as part of a major new blockbuster exhibition.

Side Effects director Steven Soderbergh publishes novella over Twitter

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:05:26 +0100

The filmmaker Steven Soderbergh appears to be writing a novella composed entirely of tweets.