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Spectator Culture

@CultureHouse

Books and arts coverage from The @Spectator. Image: 'A Great Indian Fruit Bat' (c.1778-1782) by Bhawani Das

 London, SW1
spectator.co.uk/the-critics
Joined March 2013
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Photo by Spectator Culture (@CultureHouse)Photo by Spectator Culture (@CultureHouse)Photo by Spectator Culture (@CultureHouse)Photo by Spectator Culture (@CultureHouse)Photo by Spectator Culture (@CultureHouse)Photo by Spectator Culture (@CultureHouse)Photo by Spectator Culture (@CultureHouse)Photo by Spectator Culture (@CultureHouse)Photo by Spectator Culture (@CultureHouse)Photo by Spectator Culture (@CultureHouse)
Geoff Dyer, Camille Paglia, Slavoj Zizek, Sam Kriss, @deankissick, Rowan Williams, @laurenoyler, @tanjil_rashid_, @jjcharlesworth_, Lynn Barber, Martin Gayford, @holysmoke, Simon Heffer, @GraemeAThomson, Craig Raine, @RichardBratby, Nicky Haslam... spectator.co.uk/article/a-sp…
A Spectator poll: What is the greatest artwork of the century so far?

A Spectator poll: What is the greatest artwork of the century so far?

Slavoj Zizek        Hegel thought that, in the movement of history, the world spirit passes from one country to another, from the East to the West. Something similar happened at the beginning of the...

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... @rorysutherland, @Nina_Power_, @DeborahRoss, @QuestinVole, Jonathan Meades, Julie Burchill, @BeardyHowse +++
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Tate’s finances are on the skids – @jjcharlesworth_ thinks he know why spectator.co.uk/article/tate…
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Spectator Culture retweeted
Tanjil Rashid (@tanjil_rashid_) profile picture
Tanjil Rashid@tanjil_rashid_14 Nov 2024
William Morris's designs are said to reflect a 'very British take on pattern'. But how British were they really? I wrote about the Victorian designer's Islamic inspirations for The @Spectator – at Walthamstow, London
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What keeps World of Warcraft going after 20 years is its communities, and those communities strike me as not only companionable but in some respect as a new sort of thing in the world spectator.co.uk/article/much…
Much more than just a game: World of Warcraft at 20

Much more than just a game: World of Warcraft at 20

On 23 November, the video game World of Warcraft celebrates its 20th anniversary. That’s no small thing. By most metrics, it is the most successful video game of its type in history. At its peak, it...

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Books of the year: Jonathan Sumption, Antony Beevor, A.N. Wilson, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Sam Leith, Frances Wilson, Clare Mulley and Julie Burchill spectator.co.uk/article/book…
Books of the Year I

Books of the Year I

Jonathan Sumption Barbara Emerson’s The First Cold War: Anglo-Russian Relations in the 19th Century (Hurst, £35) is an outstanding account of Britain’s relations with Russia at a time when ambassad...

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How Arnold Schoenberg became the poster boy for the Viennese cultural-heritage industrial complex spectator.co.uk/article/how-…
How Arnold Schoenberg became the poster boy for the Viennese cultural-heritage industrial complex

How Arnold Schoenberg became the poster boy for the Viennese cultural-heritage industrial complex

Despite its prestige, Vienna can seem parochial. This is as true today as it was during its turn-of-the-century golden age, when it incubated a generous welfare state – that is still with us – and...

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Some of the most celebrated works ever created sprung from the fierce rivalry that existed in Florence between Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael spectator.co.uk/article/how-…
How a single year in Florence changed art forever

How a single year in Florence changed art forever

The story goes that one day early in the 16th century Leonardo da Vinci was strolling through Florence with a friend. Near the Ponte Santa Trinita they came across a group of gentlemen disputing a...

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Meet the founders of a company in Stoke-on-Trent using AI technology to mass-produce uncannily authentic Delftware tiles @notquitepast spectator.co.uk/article/coul…
Could AI lead to a revival of decorative beauty?

Could AI lead to a revival of decorative beauty?

In front of me is what appears to be an authentic Delft tile. The surface of the tile is mottled, and painted on to it is a picture of a man. The blue tones blur and fade into the edges. Delicate...

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The use of pretty policemen to entrap homosexuals was always denied, but seems indisputable spectator.co.uk/article/the-…
The demonising of homosexuals in postwar Britain

The demonising of homosexuals in postwar Britain

Not every human culture leaves clear and legible accounts of itself. Here we have a comparatively recent way of life which we know thousands of men led. It was proscribed, and those who lived within...

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Paul Keegan celebrates the 100th anniversary of one of the most successful –isms of all spectator.co.uk/article/the-…
The triumph of surrealism

The triumph of surrealism

When Max Ernst was asked by an American artist to define surrealism at a New York gathering of exiles in the early 1940s, he pointed across the room at André Breton and said: ‘That is surrealism.’...

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Evangelists of the Sphere see it as a revolutionary new way of experiencing music, film and sport alike – critics see a glorified screensaver spectator.co.uk/article/at-l…
At Las Vegas's Sphere I saw the future of live arts

At Las Vegas's Sphere I saw the future of live arts

Does Elon Musk have a good eye for the aesthetic? Earlier this month, the Tesla magnate took a break from his incessant political posting to praise something he described as a ‘work of art’ – the Las...

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In the maelstrom of 17th-century Europe, Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, bobbed around helplessly like a plastic duck spectator.co.uk/article/few-…
Few rulers can have rejoiced in a less appropriate sobriquet than Augustus the Strong

Few rulers can have rejoiced in a less appropriate sobriquet than Augustus the Strong

Augustus the Strong (1670-1733), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, is often labelled one of the worst monarchs in European history. His reign is billed by Tim Blanning’s publishers as ‘a study in...

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Vikingur Olafsson explains the secret to his pianissimos, his love of metronomes and why he is no cheat spectator.co.uk/article/some…
'Some pianists make me shake with anger': Vikingur Olafsson interviewed

'Some pianists make me shake with anger': Vikingur Olafsson interviewed

At the BBC Proms this year, an Icelandic pianist dressed like a Wall Street broker played a slow movement from a Bach organ sonata that had the audience first gasping and then stamping their feet....

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Lesley Downer (@LesleyDowner) profile picture
Lesley Downer@LesleyDowner5 Sep 2024
The terrible story of what happened to @northernballet's #Geisha which you would all love and should see. @Tindallkenny @AlexharwoodMuso Gwyneth Hughes David Nixon. My piece @spectator. #culturalappropriation #Japan #ballet @GBSasakawa @TheJapanSociety spectator.co.uk/article/how-…
How claims of cultural appropriation scuppered an acclaimed new ballet

How claims of cultural appropriation scuppered an acclaimed new ballet

On 14 March 2020 I was at Leeds Grand Theatre for the première of Northern Ballet’s Geisha. The curtains swung open on fishermen flinging out their nets, geisha, samurai, 19th-century Japanese...

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Lukas Degutis (@LukasDegutis) profile picture
Lukas Degutis
@LukasDegutis29 Aug 2024
A great review by @GraemeAThomson of Lana Del Rey’s set at Leeds in this week’s issue. ‘She is the Ava Gardner of the ketamine age. A dozen David Lynch films in sound’ spectator.co.uk/article/the-…
The Ava Gardner of the ketamine age: Lana Del Rey, at Leeds Festival, reviewed

The Ava Gardner of the ketamine age: Lana Del Rey, at Leeds Festival, reviewed

As the American superstar starts singing another slow, sad, rather beautiful song, my mind begins to drift. I’m thinking that our appreciation of music is so much about the who, the when and perhaps...

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Something of the viscerally direct communication at the heart of the theatrical experience is being sacrificed to the ingenuity of sound designers spectator.co.uk/article/the-…
The unstoppable rise of stage amplification

The unstoppable rise of stage amplification

Recent acquisition of some insanely expensive hearing aids aimed at helping me out in cacophonous restaurants has set me thinking about the extent that modern life allows us to filter our intake of...

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How did we ever come to accept the inhumane excesses of neoliberalism? spectator.co.uk/article/how-…
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Compared with Mars or any of the known planets, Earth’s surface is a riot spectator.co.uk/article/whoe…
Whoever imagined that geology was a lifeless subject?

Whoever imagined that geology was a lifeless subject?

Rocks are still and lifeless things, and geologists are men with beards whose emotional bandwidth is taken up with an unnatural attachment to cherts and clasts and the chill beauty of the subducted...

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