In this fascinating and illuminating episode, sex historian and Whores of Yore creator Dr. Kate Lister explores the subject of her book ‘Harlots, Whores & Hackabouts’, centring the voices of sex workers in a history too often laden with myth, stereotype and stigma.
Legendary illustrator Quentin Blake sits down with House of Illustration Deputy Chair Claudia Zeff to chat ‘Quentin Blake: A Year of Drawings’, an uplifting portfolio of previously unpublished work and a powerful testament to pandemic creativity.
Naomi Parry, close friend and stylist of Amy Winehouse and curator of ‘Amy Winehouse: Beyond Black’ sits down with Associate Editor Phoebe Lindsley to discuss the ‘Amy worlds’ brought to life for the book – special sets celebrating Amy’s iconic fashion and punk attitude.
In this extract from ‘Artrage!’, author Elizabeth Fullerton revisits an explosive period in the 1990s when the Young British Artists’ attention-grabbing art exploded conventions with brazen disdain.
Capturing and distributing pictures of oneself is hardly unique to ‘generation selfie’. Here we explore self-portraiture across the ages – including 16th-century influencers.
In this extract from ‘Vivienne Westwood Catwalk’, Alexander Fury offers a glimpse inside the world of the epoch-defining designer. From her catwalk debut in 1981, Westwood smashed conventions and brought counter-cultural fashion to the world stage. Right up until her death in 2022, she continued to wield her endless curiosity and punk sensibilities in a ‘crusade against the expected’.
In this unmissable extract from ‘Peter Blake: Collage’ curator Natalie Rudd speaks to legendary collage artist Peter Blake – creator of the iconic Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – about ‘artistic retirement’, the beauty of Google, and what The Spice Girls have to do with Duchamp.
Step into a world of printmaking at the much-loved Finnish design house and discover the perks of a ‘colour kitchen’, the simple pleasure of a coffee cup, and why Marimekko might have been an ice cream shop instead.
Hypnotic, hallucinogenic, with the power to raise the dead. Since the nineteenth century, films have continually proven their powerful effects on our psyche. Here, ‘The Mysteries of Cinema’ author Peter Conrad explores five iconic movies that have changed our view of reality.
In this episode, ‘The Art Museum in Modern Times’ author Charles Saumarez Smith takes us inside the world’s leading galleries, exploring the ‘Disneyfication’ of the art museum, how architecture influences art, the uniquely contemporary role of the museum café, and why COVID might have lasting impacts on curatorial creativity.