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In pictures: Static - layered art from London's East End

Tue, 22 May 2012 12:47:35 +0100

The idea that visual art is only what can be spread flat across a canvas is one that has long since been abandoned. With sculpture and large-scale installations, the 2D print has become not so much outdated, but rather had to give up its monopoly over the art world and make way for more innovative uses of space.

Leonardo da Vinci and the body beautiful

Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

We've had Leonardo the painter at the National Gallery.

Thomas Heatherwick: The Master of Design

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

To say Thomas Heatherwick has an enquiring mind would be an understatement. In conversation, the designer, 42, flits so fast between subjects that the effect is dizzying; one minute he is talking about the impact of the industrial revolution, the next about the tiny motor that drives the lens of a digital camera. He is every inch the mad inventor of popular imagination, his hair a riot of curls that stand up wherever he pushes them, his body alive with gestures, his floor-length red scarf sweeping along as if trying to keep up with him.

Tom Sutcliffe: Space, the final frontier for what to say about art when we are lost for words

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:27 +0100

"I'd suggest you walk around and explore the space," said the usher at the door to dreamthinkspeak's excellent remix of Hamlet at the Brighton Festival.

The evolution of Tracey Emin

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:06 +0100

The work on the wall is what we can see. Self-evident. We're here to look. We're here to look because we aren't good at looking. We see what we need to see for information and interest, for safety, for certainty, but our observational powers are limited. Human beings are not microscopes or telescopes. We see what is within our range and miss the rest.

Ryan McGinley: Pictures of youth

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Ryan McGinley is hoarse. He had a bit of a party last night to launch his new shows at Team galleries in New York. The last time the photographer held a private view, in 2010, so many people turned up, there were police, sirens and threats of water cannons. This time, he thought ahead and had the road closed off, but a concert on the roof by his pal, Bradford Cox, lead singer of psychedelic rockers Deerhunter, annoyed the neighbours and along came the sirens again. Block party over.

My Secret Life: Polly Morgan, 32, artist

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

My parents were... My mum was a grafter and my dad very imaginative. I hope I've inherited both those qualities.

Chilling photographs expose the aftermath of the Srebrenica massacre

Fri, 18 May 2012 13:50:49 +0100

Endless rows of coffins, skeletal remains clothed in rags, and women in mourning, these are just some of the images that confront visitors to the Srebrenica – genocide 11/07/95 exhibition at the War Photo Limited gallery in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Frederick Wilfred: London Photographs 1957-62

Fri, 18 May 2012 13:03:24 +0100

A selection of previously unseen images of London taken by unsung photographic talent Frederick Wilfred go on display at the Museum of London next month.

Picture preview: Paul Spencer's celebration of British sub-cultures

Thu, 17 May 2012 12:28:53 +0100

In 1977 as the London punk scene came kicking and screaming from the darkest of London's back street pubs, a young teenager, Paul Spencer, was slipping through the back door to steal snaps of the dirty and the dangerous.

Justin de Villeneuve photographs: Faces of the Sixties

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:37:48 +0100

Photographer Justin de Villeneuve is best known for having launched the career of iconic supermodel Twiggy. An exhibition of his work opening at Proud Galleries tomorrow includes some of the best examples from his portfolio and is an album of faces of the Sixties.

Picture preview: Other Worlds

Tue, 15 May 2012 12:48:37 +0100

A new art exhibition at the gallery at Flannels department store in Leeds explores the landscape of Russia and former Communist satellites in the post-peristroika era.

Tiksi: A Siberian fairy tale in pictures

Mon, 14 May 2012 10:46:46 +0100

A modern-day fairy tale from the small Siberian town of Tiksi, told through the lens of Evgenia Arbugaeva, is one of the highlights of the upcoming London Festival of Photography.

Tom Sutcliffe: Perhaps the dreaded interval is good for more than just selling ice cream

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:57 +0100

I'm not easily alarmed at the door of a theatre, even in these days of litigation-wary admonition. A threat of strobe-lighting, or fog-effects or gunshots won't even make me break step.

What To Do, See & Buy: The Midcentury Show; Alexander McQueen; Clifford Richards; Blank London; Tamara Taichman

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Hot desk

In The Studio: Fiona Rae, artist

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Fiona Rae is what some would probably consider an old-fashioned artist, a "mere" painter. Her studio, in London's East End, showcases everything you might expect: rows of brushes, tubes of paint and canvases. I am surprised, however, to enter first a clean and tidy space, and find a large computer on a sleek glass table and the biggest printer I have ever seen. On the facing wall, shelves contain pots of glitter labelled with seductive names; "river green" catches my eye.

Exhibition of the week: Michael Kenny: Spirit And Matter, Quest Gallery, Bath

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

On Michael Kenny's gravestone in Highgate Cemetery is the title of one of his sculptures, More Loved Than Known. The legend has been prophetic.

Ron Mueck: Sensational sculptor who's branching out

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The real sensation of the Sensation show of Young British Artists at the Royal Academy in 1997 was Ron Mueck. Most of the artists presented statements or concepts. Mueck showed a fact. The fact was an almost perfect plastic model, two-thirds scale, of a naked man lying dead on the floor and called simply Dead Dad. You could see even from a distance that rigor mortis was setting in. Looking more closely to examine just how realistic it was, you found yourself uncomfortably aware of the morbidity of your eye and the intrusion of your presence. That the body, made of silicon, polyurethane and styrene, was not actually life size only made its nakedness more glaring and your gaze more gruesome.

Serpentine Gallery reveals plans for Pavilion

Tue, 08 May 2012 13:33:36 +0100

This year's Serpentine pavilion is designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

The art of staying sane

Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Philippa Perry lives in a tall old townhouse in a leafy square near London's King's Cross, with her husband Grayson, their daughter Flo, Grayson's teddy bear, Alan Measles, and a large and terrifying Maine Coon cat called Baddie. Like the rest of the house, the sitting room is filled with art: Grayson's glazed ceramic pots line the shelves, one commemorating the couple's wedding in 1992; propped against the sofa is a series of small canvases, on which Philippa has copied the dot paintings of Yayoi Kusama in felt-tip; and on the wall is a vast portrait of Grayson in a wedding dress. He's a Turner Prize-winning artist and Britain's best-known transvestite. She's a psychotherapist.

Frieze: London's finest art fair goes stateside

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Adamp, murky day in New York, and I'm on Randall's Island, fresh off the boat, after a lightly choppy crossing over the East River from 35th Street. Frieze Art Fair, London's frosty-yet-fun, moneyed-yet-curatorially-edgy contemporary art fair, which takes place every October in Regent's Park, is now making its New York debut. And, despite the weather, anticipation is high. On the eve of the fair's opening, at Sotheby's in New York a rare version of Edvard Munch's The Scream (1895) sold for just under $120 million, making it the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction (even in these straitened times, those headlines just keep on coming) indicating some froth at the art-buying end of the economy. On the same evening, at photographer Ryan McGinley's opening at Team Gallery on Wooster Street in Soho, Deerhunter played a rooftop gig on top of the gallery, something that I couldn't picture happening in London, while across town, at PS1 – MoMA's Long Island City outpost – Martha Wainwright played a concert in a Kraftwerk installation, which was followed by a DJ set by Mark Ronson, at MoMA's "welcome party" for Frieze.

Frieze: London's finest art fair goes stateside

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

A damp, murky day in New York, and I'm on Randall's Island, fresh off the boat, after a lightly choppy crossing over the East River from 35th Street. Frieze Art Fair, London's frosty-yet-fun, moneyed-yet-curatorially-edgy contemporary art fair, which takes place every October in Regent's Park, is now making its New York debut. And, despite the weather, anticipation is high. On the eve of the fair's opening, at Sotheby's in New York a rare version of Edvard Munch's The Scream (1895) sold for just under $120 million, making it the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction (even in these straitened times, those headlines just keep on coming) indicating some froth at the art-buying end of the economy. On the same evening, at photographer Ryan McGinley's opening at Team Gallery on Wooster Street in Soho, Deerhunter played a rooftop gig on top of the gallery, something that I couldn't picture happening in London, while across town, at PS1 – MoMA's Long Island City outpost – Martha Wainwright played a concert in a Kraftwerk installation, which was followed by a DJ set by Mark Ronson, at MoMA's "welcome party" for Frieze.

Portfolio: John Carder Bush

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

I started photographing my sister Kate in my early twenties, when she was eight. We used soft, afternoon light, clothes from jumble sales as costumes, props from anything we could find, and we took the photos in the atmospheric, shadowy corners of the old farm in Kent where we lived.

Heads up: Yoko Ono – To the Light

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

What are we talking about? A new exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, and online, this summer.

Tom Sutcliffe: A really great title sequence will make me salivate like Pavlov's dog

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:14 +0100

I've honestly tried my hardest with Game of Thrones. My wife loves it, as does my oldest son. It's been recommended by friends who are high of brow and severe of judgement.

Alice Jones' Arts Diary: Expletives deleted as a comedian's songs become a serious business

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:12 +0100

Tim Minchin is getting serious. Next Tuesday, the comedian will play a gig but the set list will include none of the comedy songs he is famed for.

In The Studio: Mark Wallinger

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

"Those are aluminum foil balls scanned on the office scanner," says Mark Wallinger, pointing to the in-scale set of the ballet he has designed. In the middle of Wallinger's set rises a large mirror that will "reverse expectations". Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 is composed of three ballets by different artists. Part of the Cultural Olympiad, it will have its world premiere at the Royal Opera House in July.

Top 10 art auction record-breakers

Thu, 03 May 2012 18:47:10 +0100

A version of Edvard Munch's classic masterpiece The Scream has fetched a record-breaking $119.9 million (£74 million), making it the most expensive work of art to be sold at auction.

Picture preview: Gideon Mendel – Drowning World

Thu, 03 May 2012 13:09:39 +0100

In an attempt to search for ways to show the world the effects of climate change through a Drowning World, Gideon Mendel's only other camera on his journey was, alongside the lives affected, paralysed by flood waters.

In pictures: The iPad Picasso

Wed, 02 May 2012 12:09:18 +0100

With their chunky, textured brush strokes, Roz Hall's artworks wouldn't be out of place hanging alongside some of the great Impressionists at one of the world's esteemed galleries.

Bauhaus: Culture shock

Wed, 02 May 2012 00:00:01 +0100

First thing in the morning, I stepped outside my bedroom on to a vertiginous balcony that is embedded in architectural history, before descending four storeys to the canteen. Indulging in a sunny breakfast sitting outside was a treat in itself, but in this case my enjoyment was doubled by having just slept inside the world's first Modernist building: experimental, utopian yet ultimately doomed by the vagaries of German history.

Picture preview: 'Famous' artists exhibit in Secret Art Show

Tue, 01 May 2012 16:44:18 +0100

On Friday the charity Multiple Sclerosis Trust will be selling over 250 pieces of original artwork for £45 each online - but the names of the artists who made them won't be revealed until after the sale.

Always Greener: Views from the contemporary countryside

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:52:41 +0100

An exploration of the reality that exists behind dreams of ‘a place in the country’ opens this week in West London.

Matisse: An Old Master who loved to learn new tricks

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

It would be almost impossible to produce a bad exhibition of Matisse.

Portfolio: Laura Pannack

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The word naturism may conjure up images of middle-aged, overweight Europeans, but it's a stereotype that English photographer Laura Pannack is keen to dispel. Her Young British Naturists series, of which two images can be seen above, is a product of a year of browsing online naturist blogs and websites and tracking down and photographing some of their users. "I brought these strangers together and organised trips for them at naturist clubs around the UK," explains Pannack, "but I didn't want the nakedness to become the main focus. It's more about the social and leisure side of naturism."

Observations: The trebuchet: the best way to get in touch with the past

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:54 +0100

The artist Matt Baker and partner TS Beall have devised one of the most attention-grabbing events in this year's Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art. Today, an afternoon community experiment entitled "Nothing about Us without Us Is for Us" will see various local groups and organisations attempt to communicate from one side of the river to the other using medieval methods.

Observations: Sculptors in full swing as they tee up a crazy course

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:46 +0100

Would you like to whack a sculpture with a golf ball? The first bespoke fine art mini-golf course in the UK has nine holes, each being designed by well-known artists, including Jake Chapman and David Shrigley.

Observations: Words make a lot of scent: poetry in the form of perfume

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:17 +0100

A dozen poets were given anonymous scents from which they had to write a poem. Meanwhile, six perfumers were asked to come up with a new fragrance inspired by a poem.

Arifa Akbar: We're desperate to know everything we can about Banksy - except who exactly he is

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:06 +0100

There's a flurry of new books on Banksy. The loquaciously named Banksy: You Are an Acceptable Level of Threat and if You Were Not You Would Know About It is published in June but in the meantime, you can read the one his friend's just published, or the one a former journalist's bringing out next month.

Art exhibition of the week: Bauhaus: Art as Life, Barbican Art Gallery, London EC2

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Prince Charles might decry it, art and architecture may have moved beyond it, but today's world was made by modernism – and the Bauhaus School in pre-war Germany was its hard core.

Anthony Caro: 'I am playing all day, doing what I love...I want to try it all!'

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The first time I visited Anthony Caro's studio was some 20 years ago. I remark to him that his assistant, Patrick Cunningham, is still the same. Caro laughs and says, "Yes, he has been with me for 40 years!"

Face of a nation: Iain McKell challenges our notions of beauty with his evocative pictures of the British

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Iain McKell has documented the tribes of gritty modern Britain – the skinheads, punks, Blitz Kids and rockabillies – with understated ease. Yet when I go to meet him, I find the photographer in the incongruously leafy environs of Kensington. His house, despite the polite suburban setting, is a seething archive of his work of over 30 years, in which time he has contributed to influential magazines such as Italian Vogue, The Face and i-D.

What To Do, See & Buy: Draw Me a House; Chewton Glen; Edward Burtynsky's OIL; Sonia Rykiel; Frédéric Malle; On Plate, Still Hungry

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

New build

The 50 Best festivals

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:00:24 +0100

The experts:

Elisa Bray is Music Editor of the Independent. She has been a festival-goer since 16 and has judged the prestigious Mercury Prize. This summer she is especially looking forward to Wilco at Wilderness.

Jenny Stevens is Deputy News Editor of NME magazine (nme.co.uk) and has written for the Independent and The Quietus. The first festival she ever attended was Electric Picnic in Ireland.

Blek le Rat: Streetwriting man

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Blek le Rat is known to many as the godfather of street art and to the French as its grandfather. But having honed his craft for more than 30 years, the spry 61-year-old, whose real name is Xavier Prou, has no intention of retiring. Despite being France's graffiti art pioneer (he says he was the second to make street art in Paris, after Zloty Kamien), he is most famous for being the artist whose style the pseudonymous Banksy "stole". Blek's spray-painted stencils of rats first appeared on the banks of Seine when Banksy, who is thought to be nearly 40, was still at primary school. In his unauthorised biography Banksy said: "Every time I think I've painted something slightly original, I find out that Blek le Rat has done it as well, only 20 years earlier."

Hans-Peter Feldman: Serpentine Gallery meets anarchic conceptual art

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The British have long avoided German art.

Portfolio: Alex Prager

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The tragedies captured on camera here may appear real – a timber home ravaged by fire, a woman lying inert over the strut of a power pylon – but in fact these dramatic sights have been constructed by the American photographer Alex Prager as part of her series "Compulsion", with which she aims to explore our responses to tragedy.

What To Do, See & Buy: The Ralph Steadman Book of Cats; Mugaritz; Gavin Turk; Kirath Ghundoo's geometric wallpapers

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Meow meow

The Diary: Damien Hirst; Cate Blanchett; Granta magazine; Assassination Diaries; Bram Stoker

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Stop making an exhibition of yourself

Maidstone Museum and Bentlif Art Gallery's new extension is a modern classic

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

What on earth is that goldy-looking thing in the middle of Maidstone, that supersized Benson & Hedges fag packet pretending to be a building? Ah, it must be one of those World-Class Places that the government is promoting – as in "iconic" architecture. Not so. The new extension of Maidstone Museum and Bentlif Art Gallery, designed by Hugh Broughton, is a counter-blow to the government's witless, developer-friendly assumption that places, and lives, can be transformed by blinged-up buildings marketed as world class.

Worldly Wolfgang Tillmans sees the big picture

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Wolfgang Tillmans is waiting in the departure lounge at Santiago airport, preparing to return home following the opening of his first South American exhibition at the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art and a visit to the European Southern Observatory in Chile (astronomy, he says, was "the first love of my life as a child").

Mona Lisa meets Mario: Is the Nintendo 3DS set to be the Louvre's latest big-name attraction?

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

There are certain famous faces that you expect to see at the Louvre. The Mona Lisa, of course, the Venus de Milo and Napoleon. Liberty, perhaps, manning the barricades. The chap who dreamt up Mario and Zelda, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto? Not so much. But then you might not expect to see hordes of the museum's 8.8 million annual visitors using Nintendo 3DS consoles to guide themselves round the historic museum, examining The Winged Victory of Samothrace in three dimensions. Because, despite first becoming a gallery in 1793, the Louvre is keen to explain the importance of its art using 21st-century gadgets.

Robert Holman: The quiet man worth shouting about

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Michael Grandage was universally recognised to be a tough act to follow as head honcho of the Donmar Warehouse. His successor, Josie Rourke, had, of course, been a smash hit at the Bush, where she proved that she possessed a sharp eye for smart, up-and-coming writing talent (Nick Payne, Tom Wells, Penelope Skinner et al). But how would she fare at the Donmar, where, with the whole of the world theatre repertoire to choose from, the taste of the artistic director is even more exposed and on the line? Rourke's selection for her first season was consequently subjected to keen scrutiny.

Bright minds and Broken Fingaz

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:12:43 +0100

Unga, Kip, and Tant are slouched over some sketches in a cafe in Shoreditch, with their hoods pulled over their heads. They look more like a bunch of surly teenagers, thrown out of class for misbehaviour than a successful arts collective from Israel about to launch their first major UK exhibition.

Picture preview: The Electric Sky

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:34:14 +0100

Paul Fryer, and artist who is known for working with electricity, is exhibiting work at the Pertwee Anderson & Gold gallery for the first time.

In pictures: Google Photography Prize Finalists

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:33:27 +0100

The ten finalists of the Google Photography Prize, chosen from among 20,000 entries by students from 146 countries, were announced this week.

Karla Black: Her bright materials

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

In Tate Britain, visitor assistants have been told to be on the look out for toddlers and small children approaching the gallery where artist Karla Black has just installed her sculpture, At Fault. Pink, blue, yellow and green powder is spread over the floor, extending from a central piece that looks like a huge boulder made of coloured rock. The colours and textures make me want to touch it, roll on it, eat it. I know that this is not allowed but children do not, and they love Karla Black's work.

Picture preview: Resistance: Subverting the Camera

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:27:32 +0100

An exhibition of artworks made by "circumnavigating" traditional camera techniques to produce images outside the normal parameters of the photographic medium opens at the The Fine Art Society tomorrow.

Carry on, your majesty: Charles II and his court ladies

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Following 50 years of marketing Hampton Court as an outing for children, the Royal Palaces have decided to do something more adult. And what does that mean in Britain today? Lots of bosoms and plenty of cleavage, of course. Carry On lives on in the Royal Palaces in the form of a new exhibition devoted to Charles II and his court ladies, mistresses and all.

Portfolio: Jacek Kusz

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

For years, Jacek Kusz found his mind was elsewhere: in his past, reminiscing; or in the future, planning his next project. Until, that is, a sickly monkey changed his perspective.

Who needs a bus pass? Meet the silver sportsmen and women still going for gold...

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Helmut Wirz loves to bungee-jump. The former pharmacist from Germany has chalked up at least 100 dives over 13 years. But what's most remarkable about Wirz is his age: he's 87 – and impressively fit.

Harriet Bridgeman: The first lady of fine art

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

History's record of great librarians is an eye-opener; so many became librarians on their way to becoming something else: Benjamin Franklin, Mao Zedong, J Edgar Hoover, Lewis Carroll, Jorge Luis Borges and Pope Pius XI all put in the hours of collating, taxonomising and lending before going on to conquer worlds. Some came to it late: Giacomo Casanova forsook his life of spying, swigging and shagging to run the Duke of Waldstein's library in Bohemia, Marcel Duchamp gave up Cubism and art subversion to be curator at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Genevieve. There aren't, you'll notice, many women in the list of librarian superstars; but one woman's name will surely be inscribed in future curatorial history: Harriet Bridgeman.

On top of the world: Aerial photographer Alex MacLean uncovers the secrets of New York's skyline

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Well, yes. It is a plane, perched at the end of a bright green Astroturf landing strip up on the roof of 77 Water Street, in the heart of Manhattan's financial district. When the William Kaufman Organisation built the 26-storey tower in 1970, its owner requested something more interesting than air-conditioning units to top it off, to amuse his taller neighbours as they looked down on his rooftop from their skyscrapers. And so a rusty replica of a 1916 British Sopwith Camel biplane was lowered into place by a crane and has remained there ever since.

What To Do, See & Buy: James Franco; Mystery Jets; Bauhaus: Art as Life; Topshop; Calligaris; Elderflower Fields Festival

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Note to self

Animal artist Shauna Richardson has roar talent

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

"When I tell people I crotchet animals they immediately lose interest," says Leicestershire-based artist Shauna Richardson. But in her hands, the quaint and grannyish technique of crochet is in no way dull. She calls her craft "crochetdermy", a mashing of words that neatly describes the knitting of life-size animal heads that can be mounted on walls.

Tom Sutcliffe: When the object is to collect objects

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

I found myself wondering about sets appeal the other day, walking round the Serpentine's new exhibition of the work of Hans-Peter Feldmann. What I mean by that is the seductive lure of collections – a human instinct which runs the full gamut from psychological obsession to high-minded reflection. Feldmann, an artist who is very big in Europe but not quite as well-known here, loves collections and has even made a living out of them, trading in collectibles and antique toys. He once issued a magazine for thimble collectors (he was trading in thimbles at the time) – a tiny-format publication that is itself, no doubt, now the subject of some collector's completist fever.

A YBA who's still causing a big sensation

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The Continental curators may not love us but here in Britain our galleries have been producing a rare succession of major shows of our contemporary artists.

Portfolio: Will Sanders

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The seaside resort of Berck-sur-Mer, in northern France, has one particular resource in abundance: wind. The same sea breeze that made the town a centre for aeronautical experiments in the early 20th century is also the driving force behind the town's annual international kite festival. Along with the competitive elements, including world-championship kite-racing and synchronisation, a long stretch of beach fills with a colourful array of more than 50 inflatable animals: 40m giant squid, tigers and floppy-eared dogs.

Local hero: Bruce Davidson's photographs captured Harlem street life in the 1960s

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

In 1956, Bruce Davidson, who'd taken his first pictures at the age of 10, was drafted into the US Army. Stationed near Paris, he sought out Henri Cartier-Bresson – by then a pivotal figure in contemporary photography – and so a stellar career began. By 1958, Davidson had become a full member of the Magnum photography co-operative, which was co-founded by Cartier-Bresson in 1947 as a network for a new generation of independent and politicised photographers. The ethos of Magnum is tangible in Davidson's work, with its narration of real lives and events well beyond the constraints of a magazine's page layout, or the stylisation of a newspaper's front-page image.

What To Do, See & Buy: Kyoto's Hotel Mexico; Warwick 100 Bike Ride; Andy Hope; YMC; Tom Dixon; Unbound

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Sound wave

The Diary: Matthew Weiner; Damien Hirst; M-J Delaney; Dr Dee; Mia Wasikowska

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Still mad for the idea

Ron Athey: The masochist who puts writers under his spell

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:00:47 +0100

American performance artist Ron Athey is famous for masochism. It is impossible to describe his work without it sounding sensationalist. He pierces himself with spikes and needles, cuts himself with scalpels, allowing blood to spurt wildly forth from his head. He quite literally rubs his open wounds with salt. Not having braved an Athey performance myself, but having read the reviews, it is clear that his terrifying self-violence is so compelling that the audience doesn’t cover their eyes from the spectacle, as you might expect, but are transfixed.

From Winehouse to Westwood: Sgt Pepper mk II

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:48:31 +0100

It is one of the most distinctive album covers in British pop music history, featuring some of the most iconic faces of its day.

Growing up: The Vertical Garden

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 12:05:41 +0100

It's common knowledge that plants grow upwards, following a path to the nearest sunlight.

Damien Hirst: The maestro of the macabre

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

"Like no other artist of his generation, Damien Hirst has permeated the cultural consciousness of our times," declares the curator, Ann Gallagher, introducing the retrospective of the artist in Britain at the Tate. Well, confining it to "his generation", Hirst certainly has the notoriety with his dead sharks in formaldehyde and diamond-encrusted skull, although Tracey Emin with her My Bed (1998) and confessional installations could probably give him a run for his money (not literally, of course, given Hirst's reputation as the richest artist in the world today).

Portfolio: Andrew Hayes-Watkins

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Forget Ainsley, Nigella and the like: the 12 chefs pictured here are some of the nation's top culinary talents – and they've no time for an easy smile to camera. "I wanted them to be hot, sweaty, red around the eyes," says the food photographer Andrew Hayes-Watkins of his subjects. His ongoing project, In the Kitchen, began with this dirty dozen, participants in the BBC's Great British Menu over the past three years – although he has since snapped 75 candid shots of chefs from around the country, documenting those making a living out of toiling away in restaurants, rather than simpering away on TV.

The art of staying alive: Tom Lubbock's moving memoir explores language, love and living with death at hand

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Tom was my husband. Writing was his life and work. But in September 2008 he was diagnosed with a 'grade four' brain tumour, situated in the left temporal lobe, the area responsible for speech and language. During his last year, articulate speech became an effort. He willed words into being as they vanished again. It was a transcendent time, volatile and strange; full of danger. Tom's work was to keep his illness and his life in clear sight. His task was, in his own words, "a lesson in imagination, in self-imagination". The incredible thing was that he could write this down.

Anarchy in the UK: The Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977 was also the year that punk hit

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Punk lasted in the UK for little more than 14 months, between 1976 and the Jubilee Summer of 1977. Thirty-five years later, in another Jubilee year, how might we regard the intense, chaotic, moody, surreal, futuristic-yet-Victorian aesthetics of the movement? In answer to this question, photographs taken at the time by Simon Barker, also known as Six, go a long way to articulating the ways in which a phase of youth culture attained the impact of a manifesto – while never quite losing the cool allure and faintly slapstick temperament of its confrontational amateurism.

What To Do, See & Buy: Circusfest; Platter app; Acne; Aram Store; Bluebell Walks

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Roll up, roll up

Preview: Remote Control

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 16:07:57 +0100

To coincide with the digital switchover in London, the Institute of Contemporary Arts will be holding an exhibition entitled ‘Remote Control’ which explores the impact of television upon contemporary culture.

My pupil Damien Hirst: Michael Craig-Martin on the making of art's wunderkind

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

In 1987 I was at an opening at the Anthony d'Offay Gallery, when to my surprise I recognised the waiter serving me champagne – it was Damien Hirst. Still a first-year student at Goldsmiths, where I was one of his tutors, he had got himself a parttime stockroom job at the most important contemporary gallery in London.

Patrick Lichfield: Lord and master of the celebrity snap

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

Four decades of photo shoots with royalty and film stars, musicians and, well, everyday people left Patrick Lichfield with a wealth of stories as well as a pile of Polaroids. Visitors to Nunnington Hall in North Yorkshire can now catch a glimpse of those shoots with the first exhibition of the behind-the-scenes shots that formed part of his personal collection. It records every major shoot the celebrated photographer worked on from the early 1970s to 2004.

Young guns in charge at Back to Front Weekend

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

When I was made a Fellow of London's Foundling Museum, I had to present a project. Back to Front Weekend was my idea, in which children take over the running of the museum. The museum was first established as the Foundling Hospital in 1739, Britain's first home for abandoned children.

Iconic Diana dresses on display at Kensington Palace

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:13:33 +0100

From today members of the public will be able to glimpse five of the most famous dresses worn by Princess Diana on display at the newly reopened Kensington Palace.

A pioneering Modernist who's in the frame again

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0100

The glaring omission from Tate Britain's current show on Picasso's impact on British artists is any representation of Keith Vaughan.

Bright sparks: The colourful pageantry (and burnt effigies) of Valencia's St Joseph's Day

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Those dresses – frilly, corseted, handmade confections that are impossible for the girls to wrestle themselves into without help – can cost up to €8,000. Then there are the side orders of elaborate jewellery, sashes and Princess Leia-style hairdos. They are worn during Falles, a centuries-old traditional celebration in the Spanish region of Valencia. The other main attractions of the festivities are enormous wooden structures that cartoonishly mock society's ills, which are burnt in the streets. These constructions – also termed falles – can be 30m high and take a year to build. Yet they go up in smoke in a matter of minutes.

Portfolio: Jason Lee

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Wang Gengxiang was five when he fell into a pile of burning straw in a courtyard at his home village of Mijiazhuang on the outskirts of Fenyang, Shanxi province, in north China. Most of the skin on his head was burnt off, meaning he has to wear a full surgical mask to prevent infection of the scarring.

Preview: British Design 1948-2012

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

To get into character for writing this piece, I shaved with my Milward Courier (battery-powered) razor, stepped into my bracingly synthetic Irvine Sellars flares, and, slotting Ziggy Stardust into the Super-8 tape player, drove my liver-brown Austin Allegro, the one with the "innovative and progressive" square steering wheel, to London's South Bank. (Square wheel? They called it "Quartic"! Were hallucinogens widely used at Longbridge?).

When it comes to art, the Brazilians know what they like... lots of it

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Forget the cultural hotspots of New York, London or Paris. The most popular art exhibition in the world last year was in a gallery in Rio de Janeiro, where 9,700 people flocking through the doors each day to see works by Max Escher.

Jerwood Gallery: A new battle of Hastings

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

The glimmering darkness of the building's facades may give the new Jerwood Gallery in Hastings a faintly disappointing air of mute architectural stealth. Its form – a dark podium facing Rock-a-Nore Road, from which an oblong first storey rises on the beach side – doesn't signal the building's purpose. But the inside story is something else entirely.

Picture preview: Sweethearts - Artistic couples

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:39:33 +0000

Ten artist couples, including Antony Gormley and Vicken Parsons, have collaborated to produce work for an exhibition at the Pippy Houldsworth Gallery.

Graphic design, ahead of its time

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 10:00:01 +0000

From the ancient Roman calendar to Facebook's brain-melting new "Timeline" profile layout, most of us are accustomed to visualising history as linear; a middle, book-ended by arbitrary beginnings and ends. And yet, timelines designed as a single straight axis, with a regular and measured distribution of dates, have only existed in such a form for around 250 years. So write historians Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton, the authors of Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline.

Picture preview: The Body Adorned - Dressing London

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 11:30:58 +0000

Why do we wear what we wear? Does the way we dress have deeper meaning or is dress superficial? What influences our choice of dress?

Duffy: The Lost Portraits

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:34:07 +0000

Brian Duffy, one third of the "Terrible Trio" along with David Bailey and Terence Donovan, who revolutionised 1960s British fashion photography, has a surprisingly limited archive.

Claude and Turner: Light show that fails to illuminate

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

One reason behind the National Gallery's new exhibition of Turner and Claude Lorrain is to reclaim the British artist for the Gallery. It's easily forgotten, if many people knew anyhow, that the Turner bequest to the nation was put with the NG long before the Tate was hived off, taking it with them. And it is in Trafalgar Square not Millbank that two of his works are shown, as he had wished, side by side with the French 17th-century landscape artist whom he so worshipped.

Picture preview - Raw Energy: YPA Mentoring 2011

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 12:12:43 +0000

A group of young photographers mentored by the Independent on Sunday's picture editor are exhibiting their work for the first time this week.

Portfolio: Patrick Lindblom

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Zooey Deschanel, Emma Watson, Eva Mendes... Flick through the average fashion magazine and it's hard to miss the industry's yen for using film stars in advertising.

What To Do, See & Buy: The Pirate Project; Franco Manca pizzeria; Juan Muñoz; Percival; K3 kettle

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 00:00:01 +0000

Play fight