Nige reflects on the power and meaning of still life painting, in the light of a book by American poet Mark Doty... Still Life with Oysters and Lemon is the title of a painting by Jan Davidsz de Heem (above) that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum in New York - or ... Read More...
Art
‘One adult for The Hobbit in 3D, please,” I said, thus setting the bar pretty high for the Saddest Thing Uttered in 2014 contest. It can’t be helped: a residue of youthful Tolkein geekdom means that a part of me will always yearn for the world of dragons and pointy-eared ... Read More...
An audio-visual treat for you this Sunday, as Mahlerman brings you three pieces of music inspired by great paintings... Musical inspiration is, like mercury, almost impossible to grasp. It can arrive, as many believe it did to a certain WA Mozart, in a 'lightbulb moment' as if from God, and the ... Read More...
An eerily perfect etching casts a chilly spell over Jonathan Law. Winter in the cathedral city – somewhere in the north of England, some time (we might guess) in the earlier 1500s. Gothic structures rise from the earth, rear ponderously skyward, and lose themselves in the glistening, frosty light. Snow on ... Read More...
Do you ever feel oppressed by the grinding circularity of the week? I mean the relentless Mondaytuesdaywednesdayness of it. Snags you at the age of four and it’s got you forever, with only a little time off at Christmas when there is a disorienting flurry of bank holidays and you ... Read More...
The Dies Irae is one of the most-used themes in western music. Mahlerman selects some fine examples... Scholars are split, but to put the four note descending motive (and the bars that follow) into some sort of context, I will give the palm to the 13th Century Franciscan Thomas of Celano for conjuring-up ... Read More...
At lunchtime on the day before the Sunday People published pictures of Charles Saatchi engaging in ‘a playful tiff’ with his wife, I was standing at a market stall outside his magnificent art gallery in Chelsea, slurping down oysters laced with Tabasco. They were horribly delicious. I ate half a ... Read More...
Dabbler Showcase is a new feature aiming to promote contemporary visual art. Our first featured artist is the Liverpool-based photographer Andrew G Fisher... Bleak, ghostly British seaside resorts feature fairly regularly on The Dabbler, they're our sort of places. Canadian commenter extraordinaire Peter Burnet once remarked: Over here, we love beaches, but we know what ... Read More...
At a quarter past one on Monday afternoon I descended into the crypt. The heavy door closed behind me and I was alone, facing a long pool of water in which the low grey-green ceiling arches were reflected to create an optical illusion of a tubular tunnel. In the middle ... Read More...
An old university friend once told me of an unusual habit his grandfather (an otherwise outwardly ordinary man) had when sitting down to Sunday lunch. If there was pork crackling in the offing, he would take a decent length of it, recline in his chair with head thrust back and, ... Read More...
