Heart of darkness
Alexander Adams encounters an unflinching master of sex and death in Vienna
Prosthetic, pathetic, human
Angela de la Cruz’s playful and ghastly art touches a raw nerve
The artist, naked and alone
I wrote a novel to expose the shallowness of the gallery system, but my biggest target was myself
Extinction Rebellion, handmaiden of technocracy
There’s nothing natural about the environmentalism of modern eco activists
The decaying master of shock
Damien Hirst’s jokes fall flat, but he still asks for his art to be taken seriously
Crumbling is not an instant’s act
A new exhibition revels in the intricacies and drama of architectural drawings — and the ruins of buildings they leave behind
Buccaneer of the Antarctic
The heroic age of polar exploration ended with Shackleton’s death
To critique the critic
Harold Rosenberg’s mixed legacy counterbalanced both Communism and formalism
Dante, 700 years on
We, too, are exiled from Florence
Rumours of a crime
Louis-Ferdinand Céline was a flawed man, but he should be allowed to be condemned by his words
Most Read
The establishment is still living in an immigration fantasy land
It is influential left-wingers, not the broader public, who have deluded themselves on mass migration
American strategy in Iran is wiser than it seems
President Trump’s intervention will leave the world safer than it was
Saint Nicola
Nicola Sturgeon wants sympathy for her husband’s crimes—but after years spent avoiding awkward questions, her latest reinvention may be the hardest sell yet.
On Britain as a capitalist command economy
It is neither neoliberal nor socialist but a secret third thing
Rewatching the English
English identity has become too surreal and discomfiting to define
Information rage
Jacob Siegel’s new book The Information State is profound and troubling
Why 1776 matters to modern Britain
The American founding is a case study in peaceful regime change
Manic and messianic
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Royal Shakespeare Company
Boriswave denialism
Britain’s ruling class has used dependence on cheap labour as an economic strategy, and cannot see any other option
The forlorn hope of growth
Voters are struggling economically but wrongly believe the country to be rich
The great creative course illusion
How universities mistook access to courses for access to creative life
Crisis? Watt crisis?
Renewable energy promises the gold at the end of a rainbow
Fond portrait of an odd couple
Two irascible, elderly artists and two beautiful younger women in unusual relationships
Zurbarán on Freud’s couch
An acclaimed new exhibition is full of overwrought symbolism and compositional failures
Mass hysteria
Sancta, Flanders Opera, Antwerp
Denial or confession?
Mandelson is a true prince of the logocracy, whose greatest skill was, and still is, the emptying of language of fixed meaning