book reviews and features
Book extract: Nativity by Jean Frémon, with drawings by Louise BourgeoisMonday, 16 November 2020
How should one paint the baby Jesus? This deceptively innocent question runs the length of Jean Frémon's Nativity, a fictional work that takes as its subject the first painter to... Read more... |
Ben Wilson: Metropolis - A History of Humankind's Greatest Invention review - urban resilience throughout the ages
Tuesday, 10 November 2020
Like the novel, painting and God, the city has long been pronounced dead – along with a few other things, like civil politics, society and the art of conversation that were said to have thrived... Read more... |
Gigantic Cinema: A Weather Anthology review - wild writing to stimulate the senses
Wednesday, 28 October 2020
Among the French composer Claude Debussy’s greatest and characteristically subtle innovations was to put the titles at the end of his pieces. He did this in his piano collection Preludes... Read more... |
Judith Herrin: Ravenna review - flashes of order and beauty in a chaotic world
Monday, 26 October 2020
Anyone mesmerized by the mosaics in seven of Ravenna’s eight Unesco world heritage sites may be surprised by the... Read more... |
Jenny Hval: Girls Against God review - a sticky dance through space and time
Wednesday, 21 October 2020
Jenny Hval’s Girls Against God covers every angsty young woman’s favourite subjects. Witchcraft, heavy... Read more... |
10 Questions for Poet and Critic Rebecca Tamás
Tuesday, 20 October 2020
Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman is a powerful invitation to rethink, to doubt and to engage. Beginning among the Diggers’ tilled earth in 1649 and the eco-socialist "... Read more... |
The Secret History of My Library: Essay by Daniel Saldaña París
Wednesday, 14 October 2020
Books lost, left in houses I never returned to; dictionaries mislaid during a move; seven boxes sold to a second-hand bookstore… The history of my library is the history of loss and an impossible... Read more... |
Dolly Alderton: Ghosts review - a love story beyond romance
Tuesday, 13 October 2020
There’s something simultaneously cringey and also addictive about Dolly Alderton’s prose. Ghosts is definitely... Read more... |
Richard J Evans: The Hitler Conspiracies review – Nazi myths debunked
Monday, 12 October 2020
In the days when crowds still thronged airport bookshops, any work entitled The Hitler Conspiracies would surely leap off the shelves. This one ought to flourish in our more immobile... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Sally Anne Gross and Dr George Musgrave, authors of 'Can Music Make You Sick?'
Saturday, 10 October 2020
Today is World Mental Health Day and of course that means an awful lot of hugs and homilies, thoughts and prayers, deep-breathing exercises and it’s-good-to-talk platitudes from people speaking... Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
The Inseparables, Finborough Theatre review - uneven portrai...
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Album: Jenny Hval - Iris Silver Mist
Had I read the contextual blurb about Jenny Hval's latest album first, I might have assumed it was a perfume company collaboration. The album is...
April review - powerfully acted portrait of a conflicted doc...
It’s easy to see metaphors about the status of modern Georgia, once again threatened by the Russian boot, in its recent artistic output...
theartsdesk Q&A: filmmaker Miguel Gomes on his latest ex...
It doesn't take much to get lost in a film by Miguel Gomes. In fact, it's required. Multiple layers, timelines, and perspectives unfold in his...
Album: Billy Idol - Dream Into It
There’s always been a goofy charm about Billy Idol. As an implausibly chiselled Adonis shining out from the deliberate ugliness of the original...
Greg Davies, Brighton Dome review - chocolate bars and erran...
Greg Davies doesn’t spare himself in his new show, Full Fat Legend, his first tour in seven years after having been busy being...
Bach St John Passion, Academy of Ancient Music, Cummings, Ba...
In a programme note for the St John Passion at the Barbican, the Academy of Ancient Music’s chief executive called their Easter performances of...