art & design
-
Dead grasshopper discovered in Vincent van Gogh paintingA conservator came across a grasshopper submerged in paint while looking at Van Gogh’s Olive Trees with a microscope -
Ken Currie: Rictus review – grisly art games with a serious moral purposeTrue shock value is rare these days, but these gruesome yet skilled paintings of Hiroshima victims and macabre medical experiments will give you the shudders
-
Warm welcomes: your art on the theme of xenophiliaFor last month’s readers’ art assignment Cynthia Corbett invited you to share your art on the theme of xenophilia. Here are some of her favourites, with captions by the artists themselvesClick here to contribute to this month’s assignment: Y is for y -
Y is for yearning: share your artwork nowFor this month’s project, The Store’s creative director Alex Eagle takes inspiration from French artist Yves Klein, and invites you to share your art on the theme of yearning
-
Matjaž Tančič's best photograph: a pink-hatted woman in Pyongyang Folklore Park‘She looked back, saw the rulers’ portraits on the house, and knelt down. “I cannot be higher than the leaders,” she explained’
talking points
-
Alan Turing is decoded, Hastings bags a prize and Gilbert & George go wild – the week in artA new way to crack Turing’s genius, a mighty pier in Hastings, and Scotland rewinds to 1540 – all in your weekly dispatch
-
Walking tall: Hastings pier wins the Stirling architecture prizeNicknamed the Plank, de Rijke Marsh Morgan’s stark wooden wonder – using timber reclaimed from previous fires – was praised for changing ‘the idea of what architecture is’
-
reviews
-
Louvre Abu Dhabi: Jean Nouvel's spectacular palace of culture shimmers in the desertWith its cosmic dome and starry latticework, the French architect’s water-lapped Gulf outpost shuns the petrodollar glitz of its neighbours. But there’s no whitewashing the appalling treatment of the labourers who built its light-filled halls
-
Living With Gods review – 40,000 years of religious art, and this is it?Heavenly objects in a sterile limbo: the British Museum’s collection of faith-based artworks fails to convince – perhaps it works better on Radio 4
-
Impressionists in London; Monochrome: Painting in Black and White – reviewOne glowing gallery of the artist’s Thames paintings is the sole highlight of Tate Britain’s latest show. Elsewhere, things aren’t as colourless as they seem…
-
Giant blobs and floating parks: Seoul's first architecture biennale shakes up the cityFrom Zaha Hadid’s bulbous plaza to a ‘library’ of flora planted across a skygarden, the South Korean capital is using its architecture festival to look to the future – and atone for the costly sins of the past
-
Monochrome review – white stripes, shocking yellow and 500 shades of greyThis peculiar exhibition shirks black-and-white certainties in examining monochromatic art and painting, but why is there no room for Yves Klein, Robert Ryman or Chinese mastery?
-
Impressionists in London review – how not to tell the origin story of modern artThis pea souper of a show nearly achieves the impossible feat of making Monet seem dull, while illuminating little about British links to impressionism
-
Abstract art or drone photo? – in picturesBrothers Mike and JP Andrews bought a drone camera, flew to Australia, and embarked on Abstract Aerial Art, a 70,000-mile global photographic odyssey
-
The Dalton Highway: America's loneliest road – in picturesBuilt as a supply route for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, the Dalton Highway is one of America’s northernmost roads, and only opened for public use in 1981
-
Original Observer photographyKathy Burke, Philip Pullman and Natalie Dormer and a rat in the kitchen all feature in this month’s showcase of the best photography commissioned by the Observer in October 2017.
-
Euston Arch begins to fall - archive, 19617 November 1961 The destruction of Euston station’s doric arch station does not elicit much sympathy
-
Hitler's holiday camp: how the sprawling resort of Prora met a truly modern fateHaving stood for decades as a relic of Nazi hubris, the immense site of the ‘Strength Through Joy’ camp at Prora is being redeveloped and will soon serve its original purpose – housing holidaymakers
-
Me and my pencil: famous creatives on their tools – in picturesIn the book The Secret Life of the Pencil, 70 artists, designers, musicians and architects talk about their relationship with their drawing implement
-
Find a better site for Holocaust memorial in LondonLetters: Plans for a Holocaust memorial close to the Thames in central London are criticised by Patricia Hollis, Michael Daley and Quetta Kaye and Alice Roberts, while Michael Madden suggests a simpler form of memorial
the big picture
-
Children of the colour-blind islandPingelap, an island of Micronesia, has an unusually high percentage of inhabitants who see the world in black and white – due to a rare genetic condition called achromatopsia. Sanne De Wilde experimented with black and white and infrared photography to envisage how they see the world.
you may have missed
-
Alternative election posters: from psychic love waves to Chicken Cottage pledgesDoes your vote go to Cornelia Parker’s right-sniffing dogs, Bedwyr Williams’ comic-book villains or Corbyn’s manifesto rebranded as a fashion choice?
-
Judy Chicago on the Beatles: 'They represent things we have lost – hope and freedom'For Sgt Pepper’s 50th anniversary, the great psychedelic visionary of feminist art has created a giant mop-top mural inspired by Fixing a Hole – a song that sums up what she has spent her entire career doing
-
Flat caps and bowler hats: Neil Libbert's bygone Britain – in picturesFor six decades, the celebrated Guardian photojournalist has chronicled everyday British life. Here, he trains his lens on postwar austerity – and flying cats
-
Warriors in weaponised kilts: where Outlander creator Diana Gabaldon gets her ideas fromThe author of the cult Highland time travel series transports our writer back to the era of tartan onesies and exploding sporrans
video
-
Patricia Piccinini on how to undercut reality: 'My ideas are just normal to me' – videoContemporary visual artist Patricia Piccinini talks to Guardian Australia’s Van Badham ahead of the opening of the National Gallery of Australia’s latest exhibition, Hyper Real.
Sidney Nolan auction: selections from the 118 paintings – in pictures