Category Archives: Art

The Sugarcubes: Iceland’s Beautiful Shock to the System

In the late 1980s, at the faint edge of Europe’s cultural radar, a strange and electrifying sound drifted out of Reykjavik. It came from The Sugarcubes, a band whose brief but incandescent life changed the trajectory of Icelandic music — and launched one of the most singular voices of the 20th and 21st centuries, BjörkContinue reading “The Sugarcubes: Iceland’s Beautiful Shock to the System”

Proust & Bergotte

Marcel Proust on the Death of the Writer Bergotte The circumstances of his death were as follows. A fairly mild attack of uraemia had led to his being ordered to rest. But, an art critic having written somewhere that in Vermeer’s View of Delft (lent by the Gallery at The Hague for an exhibition of Dutch painting),Continue reading “Proust & Bergotte”

Tracey Emin: From Cool Britannia to Enduring Voice

Tracey Emin has always been more than the enfant terrible of the Young British Artists. Emerging in the 1990s as one of the central figures of Cool Britannia, she became a cultural lightning rod: provocative, confessional, uncompromising. Her work — from the notorious My Bed (1998) to her searing neon texts — has often beenContinue reading “Tracey Emin: From Cool Britannia to Enduring Voice”

Marina Abramović: The Body as Threshold, the Artist as Medium

It is Marina Abramović’s birthday today, so to celebrate we wrote a feature on her. Few contemporary artists have so thoroughly reshaped the very idea of performance as Marina Abramović. For five decades, she has pushed the limits of endurance, intimacy, vulnerability, and the porous border between artist and audience. Her work is at onceContinue reading “Marina Abramović: The Body as Threshold, the Artist as Medium”

Monthly Picks: The Track Star Podcast

Why You Should Be Listening to The Track Star Podcast If you love music, stories behind songs, or simply want a podcast that blends insight with entertainment, The Track Star Podcast deserves a place in your rotation. I listen to it religiously. I learn something new about music every week, and it has opened myContinue reading “Monthly Picks: The Track Star Podcast”

An Ode to Rosalía

There are artists who sing, and then there are artists who shift the air around them. Rosalía belongs firmly to the latter. She moves through sound the way a dancer moves through space—boldly, incandescently, with that exquisite balance of rigour and risk that marks a true original. To listen to her is to feel aContinue reading “An Ode to Rosalía”

Jimmy Cliff (1944–2025)

A titan of reggae, a voice of resilience, and the man who carried Jamaica to the world. Jimmy Cliff — singer, songwriter, actor, activist, and one of the towering architects of reggae — has died at the age of 81 after a seizure and complications from pneumonia. His wife, Latifa Chambers, announced his passing onContinue reading “Jimmy Cliff (1944–2025)”

Light in Color: The History of Stained Glass

For over a thousand years, stained glass has transformed light into story. From the vast rose windows of Gothic cathedrals to the jewel-like panels of Art Nouveau townhouses, it is a medium that is both art and architecture, both sacred and secular. Its history is a chronicle of craftsmanship, theology, and design — a historyContinue reading “Light in Color: The History of Stained Glass”

Vincenzo de Cotiis: Patina and Poetry

Inside the Milanese world of Vincenzo de Cotiis, nothing is ever quite new — and that is precisely the point. The architect and designer has made a career out of listening to surfaces, coaxing stories from stone, plaster, and metal, and reminding us that time itself is the ultimate collaborator. Step into a Vincenzo deContinue reading “Vincenzo de Cotiis: Patina and Poetry”