Tarot reading is a culturally marginalised activity, yet it is an experience that still attracts educated secular intellectuals. So what’s the appeal? Continue reading »
Category Archives: Visual Culture
The Trouble with Living Artists
Ritual hazings, sauna parties and missed appointments – how much of an advantage is it to be an art historian researching contemporary artists? Continue reading »
Tabloid Academia
When it comes to discussing art in newspapers, does the media’s emphasis on provocation merely reduce issues into straightforward oppositions, and at the cost of developed argument and consistency? Continue reading »
Answering Bakhtin
Because creativity is so complex, multivalent, and difficult to define, should we, like Mikhail Bakhtin, abandon attempts to theorise these processes? Continue reading »
Adolf Loos, Art & Artlessness
Affirming authentic tradition as well as utility, even comfort, while attacking the Vienna Sucession as indulgently decorative, Adolf Loos is no simple anti-architect. Continue reading »
WTF Art Thou?
It may seem controversial, but as Alana Jelinek argues, shouldn’t we start accepting that art history and art practice are, in many ways, incompatible? Continue reading »
Why Mamma Mia! Matters
This month sees the release of our book on the much maligned, but also much loved Mamma Mia! The Movie, so it seems a good time for Melanie Williams to revisit the film with specific reference to female authorship. Continue reading »
Cindy Sherman’s Theatres of Perversity
Maria Walsh on how Cindy Sherman’s ‘Doll’ sculptures of the 1990s reveal a dynamic relationship between art and psychoanalysis. Continue reading »
Why I Wrote ‘My So-Called Secret Identity’
You know what’s annoying? The unrealistic proportions and gender stereotyping of women in comics. That’s why Will Brooker has created a new superheroine who – hold on to your capes – is fully clothed. Continue reading »
Radical Frontiers in the Spaghetti Western
Tarantino’s Django Unchained has renewed interest in Italy’s westerns of the 1960s. But what are these films about? Austin Fisher argues that labelling them as ‘political’ overlooks their complexity of engagement. Continue reading »
