Ithell Colquhoun’s fecund, fleshy paintings were soaked in mysticism. But was she running my life from beyond the grave?I am a travelling entertainer. I spent decades in secondhand bookshops in shabby sidestreets, filling the sick-stomach void between …
Artist Sutapa Biswas: ‘I wanted viewers to work hard and feel uncomfortable’
A new exhibition showcases an artist who has spent four decades shattering Asian stereotypes and highlighting women’s untold storiesThe artist Sutapa Biswas’s father was a legendary figure in her family: a Marxist agronomist who stood up to the governm…
Send us to Coventry! How the Turner Prize and a touring bin put the city on the map
It started with lockdown and a broken angel, but Coventry’s year as city of culture is highlighting its reputation for resilience Shortly before midnight on 23 January 2020, security cameras outside Coventry Cathedral picked up two ghostly figures smas…
Louis Wain’s anthropomorphic cats to go on display at Bethlem museum
Eccentric artist was famed for outlandish drawings produced while a patient at ‘Bedlam’ psychiatric hospital“He has made the cat his own,” HG Wells once said of Louis Wain. “English cats that do not look and live like Louis Wain cats are ashamed of the…
Watch out! Contemporary artists take on the Beano – in pictures
“It’s strange,” says Andy Holden, curator of new Somerset House exhibition, Beano: The Art of Breaking the Rules, “that a formula from 1938 still resonates today. That it survived the birth of children’s TV, computer games and a changing world.” The co…
Poussin and the Dance review – the greatest frozen ballet in all art
National Gallery, LondonBacchus and his cavorting retinue of centaurs, satyrs and naked nymphs are in constant motion and yet spellbindingly still in the precision-engineered art of Nicolas PoussinThe scene: a chain of dancers in a glade, Roman tunics …
Statue of pioneering MP Barbara Castle joins recent memorials to prominent British women
Depiction of veteran Labour MP latest in series of sculptures of significant women, including Diana Princess of WalesBarbara Castle, the pioneering British female politician and prominent national figure from the 1950s to the 70s, has been commemorated…
On my radar: Edmund de Waal’s cultural highlights
The ceramicist and writer on the poetry of Louise Glück, the music of Max Richter and the best secret meeting spot in LondonBorn in Nottingham in 1964, Edmund de Waal is an artist, master potter and the author of The Hare with Amber Eyes, which won the…
From The Addams Family 2 to Andy Warhol: a complete guide to this week’s entertainment
Whether it is a live gig, a new film or a game to play at home, our critics have your plans for this week coveredThe Addams Family 2Out nowHaving started life as a comic strip, the Addamses have come full circle with their latest incarnation in an anim…
Little pieces of energy, magnified
From her Nairobi studio, artist Wangechi Mutu considers her relationship with the natural world and the ways in which it has influenced her variegated artistic practice. A self-described “city girl with a nature brain,” Mutu recounts her upbringing in …