Overanalysing art, as opposed to intuitively rating it, is fraught with peril
Some of you ask why reviewers (or this reviewer) are always just saying what’s good and what’s bad, what we like or don’t like. According to critics of the critic, this is typical of, well – typical of me. …

Best known for his violent arthouse films, Takeshi Kitano is also an accomplished comic, prankster and painter. It’s all fuel for his big new show in Paris, he tells Steve Rose
There’s plenty of evidence that artists can make decent movies – Steve McQueen, Sam Taylor Wood, Julian Schnabel to name …

Take a stroll through the Louvre’s awe-inspiring Grande Galerie and its magnificent history paintings will make you rethink art
There are many places on Earth where art lovers feel they have to go. Cairo to see the face of King Tut, maybe, or New York’s MoMa to see Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. …

One of my earliest memories involves a soldier’s kitbag. I can’t remember whose it was. I can only remember what was in it. The war in the Pacific had just ended, and every day saw soldiers coming home, their baggage stuffed with what Australians call momentoes. Out of the kitbag …

The savage “exemplary” sentences handed out to young Muslims (Sent to jail for throwing a single bottle, 13 March) need to be viewed in the broader context of the “war on terror”, which itself has turned out to be a euphemism for a more shadowy war on Islam. While the …

Actor and dancer abandoned by her father, Diego Rivera
The actor and dancer Marika Rivera, who has died aged 90, shared with her father, the muralist Diego Rivera, an imposing physique and determined character. However, it was to her mother, Marie Vorobieff Stebelska – better known as Marevna and generally regarded …

My parents Jeffery and Miquette Roberts, who have both died aged 66, within 10 days of each other, shared passions for the arts and languages, and had broad-ranging, inquiring minds. In April 2009, Jeffery was diagnosed with cancer. He faced this with amazing fortitude, and the unending support of Miquette, …

Baltic, Gateshead
You ride the lift up the high glass tower of Baltic to the viewing box at the top. The work of art scrolls out in long lines of glowing letters across the entire floor of the gallery below. The lights are gold, the darkness is soothing, the words are …

The V&A exhibition on medieval sacred art set me thinking about what my own idea of hell is
The V&A has, at the moment, a quite captivating show on medieval sacred art. I know, I know, I had thought the likelihood of my writing that sentence was up there with the …

Legend says the greatest Victorian was put off sex by the sight of his wife’s naked body. A new film will try to establish the truth
The secret at the heart of the short-lived, notoriously unconsummated marriage of John Ruskin, the great artist, architect, poet and political thinker of the Victorian …