“They lived in squares, painted in circles, and loved in triangles.” In the genteel drawing rooms of early 20th-century London, respectability was still the reigning order. But in a cluster of shabby houses around Gordon Square in Bloomsbury, a group of young intellectuals tore down the rules. They questioned the empire, mocked Victorian morality, experimentedContinue reading “The Bloomsbury Group: Rebels in Cambric Shirts”
Category Archives: Art
Dada: The Art of Unreason
In the wreckage of World War I, amid the disillusionment of a generation, a radical new art movement was born: Dada. Emerging in Zürich in 1916, Dada rejected logic, tradition, and aesthetic convention in favor of absurdity, spontaneity, and provocation. Its practitioners — poets, painters, performers — sought not to create beauty but to explodeContinue reading “Dada: The Art of Unreason”
Roxy Music: Glamour, Experiment, and the Art of Seduction
When Roxy Music appeared in 1972, they seemed less like a band than a cultural apparition. Emerging from Britain’s art school ferment, they fused glam rock’s theatricality with avant-garde experimentation, crafting a vision of music as both spectacle and intellectual provocation. Bryan Ferry, the band’s frontman, did not simply sing—he crooned with a studied detachment,Continue reading “Roxy Music: Glamour, Experiment, and the Art of Seduction”
Billie Holiday: The Voice of Sorrow and Flame
Billie Holiday’s voice was unlike any other. Smoky, fragile, and impossibly intimate, it carried the weight of joy and pain in every phrase. To listen to her sing is to feel as if she is confiding directly in you — not performing, but revealing. More than a jazz singer, Holiday (1915–1959) became a cultural icon:Continue reading “Billie Holiday: The Voice of Sorrow and Flame”
Elsa Schiaparelli: The Surrealist Couturière
In the history of twentieth-century fashion, few figures embody the dialogue between art and clothing as vividly as Elsa Schiaparelli (1890–1973). A Roman aristocrat turned Parisian visionary, she transformed couture into Surrealist theatre, collaborating with artists like Salvador Dalí, Jean Cocteau, and Man Ray. To wear Schiaparelli was not simply to be dressed — itContinue reading “Elsa Schiaparelli: The Surrealist Couturière”
Ernst Barlach: The Sculptor Who Carved the Soul
In an art world often obsessed with surface, Ernst Barlach stands apart as a sculptor of interiors — not of rooms, but of human beings. His figures are bent, weighty, contemplative; their silence is the first thing you notice. Then their gravity. Then, slowly, the emotional truth they carry. To encounter Barlach is not toContinue reading “Ernst Barlach: The Sculptor Who Carved the Soul”
Güstrow: Ernst Barlach Territory
On the map, Güstrow looks like a gentle pause — a modest Mecklenburg town tucked between lakes and flat winter fields, an hour south of the Baltic coast. But anyone who walks its crooked lanes or slips into the cool hush of its churches discovers a place vibrating with an unexpected intensity. Güstrow is notContinue reading “Güstrow: Ernst Barlach Territory”
The Soundtrack of the Season – Santa Claus is Back in Town
Every December, as fairy lights twinkle across frosted windows and champagne glasses clink at candlelit parties, the same question arises: what is the definitive Christmas soundtrack? Music, after all, is the invisible garland that binds together the rituals of the season — from midnight masses to after-dinner slow dances. Some songs are frothy, sequined confectionsContinue reading “The Soundtrack of the Season – Santa Claus is Back in Town”
Martin Parr, photographer who transformed the everyday into cultural testimony, dies aged 73
Martin Parr, the British photographer whose saturated colours, wry humour and unflinching eye reshaped documentary photography, has died aged 73 at his home in Bristol on 6 December 2025. Born in Epsom, Surrey, in 1952, Parr’s interest in photography was encouraged early by his grandfather, himself a keen amateur. He studied at Manchester Polytechnic inContinue reading “Martin Parr, photographer who transformed the everyday into cultural testimony, dies aged 73”
SHE, WHO IS MOTHER: BJÖRK
For more than four decades, Björk Guðmundsdóttir has moved through genres, art forms, and technologies with the elemental force of Iceland’s geology: eruptive, unpredictable, deeply rooted in nature, and yet astonishingly futuristic. To speak of Björk is to speak of sound as sculpture, voice as topography, emotion as a form of design. Hers is notContinue reading “SHE, WHO IS MOTHER: BJÖRK”
My World of Interiors 