Metal figures on the foreshore of Crosby Beach, Liverpool, set against a sunset, signify the preoccupations of Antony Gormley. The sculptor has been concerned consistently with the human figure, manifested in metal – lead or iron – casts of his own body.We were shown his career from work to work, interspersed with questions and answers between Gormley and Alan Yentob (pictured below, with Gormley), the presenter here diffident and attentive. Tim Marlowe, once connected with Gormley’s gallery White Cube (not referred to – the business of art did not get a look in, although we were told that Read more ...

Here comes the President, and with him a timely reminder about what the Chinese have been digging up over the past 40 years or so to further demonstrate their exceptional imperial history over the past two millennia. Treasures of the Jade Empire rather breathlessly told us of revelatory excavations of the tombs of the Han Emperors, and the regional kings they nominated to act as surrogate rulers over their gigantic empire – its boundaries closely related to China today. The parallel argument to the archaeology was the achievements of the Han in unifying a vast landmass, in which Han Chinese Read more ...

Ai Weiwei’s first major survey in the UK is a better looking exhibition than I had anticipated, but what it gains in looks it sadly lacks in substance – backstory and information not being quite the same. It’s visually satisfying, since Ai initially impresses with the sheer scale and elegance of some of his larger pieces – a  combination of readymade and crafted materials which include chandeliers incorporating wheel and bicycle frames, rusted steel rods spread out like gently lapping waves in the Royal Academy’s spacious central hall, and a grove of petrified-looking trees rising up to Read more ...

Pop went the easel, and more, as we were offered a worldwide tour – New York, LA, London, Paris, Shanghai – of the art phenomenon of the past 50 years (still going strong worldwide). We were led by a wide-eyed interlocutor, the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Alastair Sooke, to the throbbing beat of – what else? – pop music, Elvis and much else besides.Sooke protested a bit too much, doing down the previous big deal in modern art, Abstract Expressionism, in order to enhance the revolutionary nature of Pop in its fascination and appropriation of the tropes of advertising and consumerism. He Read more ...

How do you live a good life? Is wealth a good thing? How do you create a just society? The United Kingdom's electorate recently pondered such questions in the polling booth, and made their decision. The Labour Party is agonising over them as it chooses its next leader. And yet while these anxieties may feel very now, they have deep roots. According to the historian and broadcaster Bettany Hughes, such questions first crystallised in the minds of three thinkers, born within a century of one another 2,500 years ago, who are the subject of her new series. Across three episodes, Genius of the Read more ...

A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Winston Churchill’s famous words on Russia serve as a very apt verdict on Black Coal, Thin Ice (Bai ri yan huo), the third film from Chinese director Diao Yinan. Its noir detective style pays homage to classic Hollywood tropes, but this is an unapologetically arthouse piece that impresses most for its gloriously dark visuals: it certainly captivated last year’s Berlinale jury, winning the Golden Bear there over Richard Linklater's Boyhood and other more approachable fare.Viewers may well need more than one watch to even attempt to explicate Read more ...

Taiwanese director Chienn Hsiang has given his lead actress Chen Shiang-chyi a role of rare complexity in Exit, and she dominates this bleakly naturalistic slice-of-life film completely. Chen’s character, Ling, is a seamstress approaching middle age, living an isolated, alienated life with rare distractions – hardly dramatic material in itself, you might think, but the film’s accretion of small everyday events, seemingly insignificant in themselves, comes together to capture a slowly compelling sense of character and milieu.Though Taiwanese cinema in recent years hasn’t received the Read more ...

The release of pent-up desire in a movie drains it of interest. Its withholding keeps the plot boiling, especially if moral considerations come into play. In Fei Mu’s Spring in a Small Town, the passion of former teenage sweethearts Zhou Yuwen (Wei Wei) and Zhang Zhichen (Li Wei), thrown together ten years after they parted, is extra-torturous because Yuwen’s hypochondriacal husband, Dai Liyan (Shi Yu), is Dr Zhang’s close friend and host.Though Liyan is initially unaware of the animal need the thwarted lovers suppress, the three of them do a dance of looks and glances in the strange Read more ...

From Michael Mann, the director of the monumental crime epic Heat and the original and best Hannibal Lecter movie Manhunter, this lumbering saga of cyberhacking is really rather disappointing. Not that it doesn't include several torrid action sequences in exotic locations, while the basic theme is at least urgently topical. It's just that there's little evidence that the project fired Mann's imagination, or inspired him to breathe plausible life into his characters.The set-up is as widescreen as you could wish. A nuclear plant in China is sabotaged by an unknown hacker (Mann makes sure we get Read more ...

While there is, of course, safety in numbers, but five premieres on four continents is, perhaps, a little novel. Tan Dun’s new Concerto for Double-Bass, subtitled Wolf Totem, is a co-commission by five orchestras: the Royal Concertgebouw, St Louis Symphony, the Taiwan Philharmonic, the Tasmanian Symphony and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic.The principal bass player in each orchestra is to be soloist and the piece received its world première last month in Amsterdam.So to Liverpool for its second outing, where the soloist was Marcel Becker. The composer, who has been commissioned by many of Read more ...

Hong Kong master Wong Kar Wai has ventured into new territory with The Grandmaster. Many years in the making, his new film is a remarkable portrayal of martial-arts traditions, specifically the story of kung fu master Ip Man from his early life in mainland China on the eve of World War II, through to post-war exile in Hong Kong. It was there that he set up his own Wing Chun school, which would with time achieve huge international popularity; Ip went on to train future kung fu stars, most notably Bruce Lee.Fans of the heightened aesthetics of Wong’s early arthouse masterpieces like 2000’s In Read more ...

In China there are more than 100 million fans of Manchester United. At least that’s what I’m told when I get to the the city's National Football Museum. And in a sartorial decision unusual in the art world, we are greeted by artist Chen Wenbo wearing an Arsenal football scarf. In sport, as in contemporary art, the Chinese are often playing the same game as us.The Asia Triennial Manchester hosts the UK’s largest exhibition of contemporary art from south of the Great Wall. Harmonious Society, who make up the bulk of the triennial, has a display co-ordinated by the Centre for Chinese and Read more ...