Arts news

• Even if France’s budget doesn’t tackle the public deficit, let’s give thanks it exists | Agnès Poirer

  08-02-2025 17:00
  
  Politics have sunk so low since Emmanuel Macron’s snap election, we’re just grateful when foretold catastrophes don’t materialiseHoura! Or rather, hurrah! On Monday, the French government, led by François Bayrou, our fourth prime minister in a year, did not fall. Our expectations have sunk so low since the July 2024 snap elections derailed our politics that we are grateful when catastrophes foretold don’t materialise. When Michel Barnier’s government fell bef
  
  Read more

• Don’t throw Salford’s groundbreaking Centenary Building in the bin | Rowan Moore

  08-02-2025 17:00
  
  The first winner of the Stirling Prize is a moment of ambition and distinctiveness in what might otherwise be an ocean of blandness. Let’s not demolish it, says the Observer’s architecture criticWhen the Stirling prize was launched nearly 30 years ago, the Royal Institute of British Architects wanted to create an award that would match the high level of media attention that the Turner prize for art and the Booker prize for fiction then attracted. It could hardly have expected that it
  
  Read more

• Matisse’s muse: new exhibition dedicated to the illegitimate daughter he spent a lifetime painting

  08-02-2025 16:00
  
  Marguerite, who survived diphtheria and torture by the Gestapo, is the focus of Musée d’Art Moderne showcaseThroughout his career, Henri Matisse would return repeatedly to paint his favourite model: his illegitimate daughter, Marguerite.In what is considered his most famous portrait, she is depicted holding a black cat. In others, she is reading, relaxing and sleeping, most often with a high-neck blouse, a ribbon or a scarf covering a tracheotomy scar. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• How an outsider captured the intimacy of Gullah Geechee life in 13 portraits

  08-02-2025 13:00
  
  Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe’s exhibit at the Whitney Museum depicts the rich culture of Daufuskie IslandIn Boiling Crab, Daufuskie Island, South Carolina, a photograph by Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, a lanky Black boy stares squarely at the camera.The child, wearing a trucker hat and summer clothes, holds a canister of salt and stands over a pot brimming with crabs. Two older gentlemen on opposite sides of the vat tend to the upcoming meal, possibly uncles, a father and grandfather, or cousins. Co
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• ‘I was amazed by how beautiful the flowers were’: Diderot Yap’s best phone picture

  08-02-2025 11:00
  
  The Amsterdam-based artist on an image that captures colourful memories of his hometown in CameroonDiderot Yap had often seen the dainty red flowers of the Ixora coccinea shrub and the larger yellow flowers of the Allamanda plant in his home town of Douala, Cameroon. Heading home from an early morning errand, he took a moment to appreciate that day’s idyllic weather and these vibrant pockets of colour framing his walk. An idea for a photograph was blossom
  
  Read more

• ‘Let it rot’: artist says Stroud’s ‘racist’ blackboy clock should be destroyed

  08-02-2025 07:00
  
  Most in Gloucestershire town agree 240-year-old statue should be taken down, but Dan Guthrie argues against preserving it at allThe Stroud-raised artist Dan Guthrie had just come out of a meeting about what to do with the “racist” blackboy clock that has been present in his home town for 240 years, when he had a thought. Why not just destroy it?The clock that sits on the side of a former school has been at the centre of a culture war in Stroud since 2021, when Guthrie asked the local
  
  Read more

• From Dog Man to Cyndi Lauper: a complete guide to this week’s entertainment in the UK

  08-02-2025 07:00
  
  There’s a new kids’ animation with distinctly Cronenbergian undertones, and the fun-having pop legend embark upon her farewell tourDog Man
  Out nowRemember The Fly, where Jeff Goldblum’s scientist becomes fused with a fly? OK, imagine that, but with a dog and a police officer. Together they are Dog Man, who must defeat an evil orange cat voiced by Pete Davidson, in this family animation based on the graphic novel of the same name. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

Follow @ArtsUK1 on Twitter!