This is the first is a new series of ‘What I’ve been looking at…’ columns by Claudia Massie. CultureKicks also has a ‘What I’ve been reading…’ column by Emily Rhodes, a ‘What I’ve been watching…’ column by Peter Hoskin, and will soon add a ‘What I’ve been listening to…’ one [...]
A dozen teenagers hover around easels, taping up cartridge paper, fumbling sticks of charcoal, blethering. A teacher—me, as it happens—directs two heaters towards an empty stool at the centre of the studio in opposition to the Winter chill. A small woman with long hair enters, naked beneath a dressing gown. [...]
When Georges Simenon visited Edinburgh and saw the great gothic monument to Sir Walter Scott that rises from Princes Street Gardens, he is reputed to have said in astonishment, ‘They built that to a writer — to one of us!’ But Edinburgh, which has a fair claim to being the cradle [...]
On December 29th, a painting by American artist Clyfford Still was subjected toan unusual assault in a Denver museum. The target, ‘1957-J-No. 2’, is a typical example of Still’s abstract expressionism, a blocky patchwork of flat colour and punchy brushwork. What motivated Carmen Tisch to tear it from the wall, [...]
Taki Mita was a Japanese kid at my school. We were good friends and spent a lot of time hanging around the school art room, listening to Bob Marley and Naughty By Nature, drawing (me) and settingfire to spray adhesive (him). He taught me the Japanese alphabet, how to write [...]
Steven Spielberg is currently working on a new Tintin film, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, adapted from the book of the same name. Jamie Bell will play the boy reporter and Andy Serkis Captain Haddock. It’s going to be a motion-capture film, with a CGI Snowy, [...]