sat 17/05/2025

architecture

Design Gallery: The Art Nouveau Dacha

Vladimir Story's 1917 brochure for patterns for building Russia's traditional wooden country houses - called dachas - has been rescued from oblivion by the chance discovery of an ancient copy of it in Georgia. Now reprinted, The Art Nouveau Dacha:...

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theartsdesk in Abu Dhabi: Doing Things by the Book

One of the most serious crises facing the Arabic-speaking world in recent years - but which has received precious little comment both in the Middle East and internationally - has been the serious decline in literacy and the art of reading. A United...

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Requiem for Detroit?, BBC Two

The only time I've ever been to Detroit was in 2004, in pursuit of assorted rock stars on the Vote for Change tour. Reader, it was weird. The atmosphere in the deserted streets was deathly, as if an invading army had swarmed into town, committed...

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The Lure of Las Vegas, BBC Two

“The Mob made Vegas,” says its mayor since 1999, Oscar B Goodman. And he should know, having defended plenty of mobsters in his time when - he and I are equally quick to point out - he was a defence attorney and didn’t know what they were really up...

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theartsdesk in Berlin: The 60th Berlinale

The Palme d'Or at Cannes makes headlines. The Golden Bear in Berlin tends not to, and few films that win in competition at the German capital's annual film festival, the Berlinale, go on to command global clout, though that's no general reflection...

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Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde: Constructing a New World, Tate Modern

Modernist art movements are a lot like totalitarian regimes. They produce their declaratory manifestos, send forth their declamatory edicts, and, before you know it, a Year Zero mentality prevails: the past must be declared null and void. Seeking to...

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theartsdesk in Rome: Building the Future, Slowly

The rapturous reception for Zaha Hadid’s groundbreaking, breathtaking new confection in Rome, Il Museo dell’Arte del XXIesimo Secolo - the 21st-Century Art Museum (MAXXI for short) - has reopened for the umpteenth time one of Italy’s favourite...

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What Is Beauty?, BBC Two

As questions go, "What is beauty?" is quite possibly only second to "What do women want?" in the frequency of its asking and in the difficulty of its answer. As the first programme in BBC Two and BBC Four’s Modern Beauty season, What Is Beauty?...

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