Can a large, cork-lined hole in the ground in London's Hyde Park – with a steel disc floating above it, mind – be architecture? It can if it's designed by Herzog & de Meuron, and Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist considered a threat to cultural order by his country's political apparatchiks.
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The body beautiful
Monday 21 May 2012
Leonardo da Vinci's pioneering anatomical studies are now on show at the Queen's Gallery. Genius is the only word for them, says Adrian Hamilton
Virgin Atlantic passengers will be able to make and receive phone calls while in the air
Monday 14 May 2012
Passengers on Sir Richard Branson's airline, Virgin Atlantic, will be able to make and receive phone calls while in the air, it was announced today.
Cultural Life: Gavin Bryars, composer
Friday 13 April 2012
Music: In the car I'm listening to Tom Waits's 'Bad as Me' (I'm releasing an album of his songs with Opera North Projects), Carla Bley's 'Carla's Christmas Carols' (unseasonably) – especially her gospel version of "O Holy Night" – and my daughter's Count Basie albums (with virtuosic rhythm guitarist Freddie Green). Late at night, the jazz pianist Tony Genge, as well as Michael Chance singing "Erbaum dicht" from the St Matthew Passion.
Forget chocolate – why not try a book this Easter?
Sunday 01 April 2012
Susan Elkin reviews the best children's and young-adult fiction to help keep your darlings entertained over the spring holidays
News to get in a flap about
Thursday 22 March 2012
It was a shaky video of such an astonishing feat that it was hard to imagine it wasn’t an act of computer-generated viral marketing. In a clip that had been viewed more than a million times by last night, a Dutch hobbyist appeared to have succeeded where Da Vinci and generations of dreamers had failed – and flown like a bird.
Picture preview: Lucian Freud drawings
Monday 13 February 2012
This week an exhibition of British painter Lucian Freud's drawings opens at the Blain|Southern gallery in London, staged to coincide with the major exhibition of his work at the National Portrait Gallery.
Michael Glover: Nostalgia as mundane as this doesn't come cheap
Monday 06 February 2012
It reeks of a kind of nostalgia, opening a scruffy, squeaky door to an entire gone world
Emma Richardson: "My paintings are like a Rorschach ink test"
Thursday 02 February 2012
Band of Skulls singer, Emma Richardson, takes on the art world
Ronald Searle, creator of St Trinians, dies at 91
Wednesday 04 January 2012
The man who gave the world St Trinian's and St Custard's, who depicted the anarchy that lay beneath the English school system, and whose satirical pen skewered a throng of national stereotypes is no more.
Cartoonist Ronald Searle dies at 91
Tuesday 03 January 2012
St Trinian's cartoonist Ronald Searle has died aged 91, his family said today.
Are these Bacon artworks really kosher?
Friday 30 December 2011
Experts split over supposed lover's claim that hoard of drawings is work of revered artist
Hugh Burnett: Television producer who created the legendary series 'Face to Face'
Saturday 24 December 2011
As the creator of the legendary interview series Face to Face for the BBC in 1959, in which public figures were subjected to a stark interview by the relentless John Freeman, Hugh Burnett's place in television history is secured.
One Minute With: Frank Cottrell Boyce, novelist
Friday 09 December 2011
Where are you now and what can you see?
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