There are rules around present-opening, and that's only right. No one likes the spoil-sport who tip-toes down the day before a major celebration to ravenously rent open their gifts with gluttony and glee. Mostly on Art 2010, I've exercised a great deal of restraint in waiting patiently until the decreed and agreed day when I could unveil a painted or sculpted thing to you: saints stuck fast to their official feasts days, festivals were fused to the correct calendar mark. It wasn't always easy, I'll grant you that (patience is not one of my most easy virtues), but there's no point pinpointing a year with higgledy-piggledy highlights. more ›

For all the hijinks and jolliness of this time of year, late December can be tension territory. Fun friends or family get-togethers can get altogether less fun when your cousin comments on something she shouldn't, or brother and sister start bickering about a thing over the brandy butter and mince pies. Putting lots of people into a space and filling them up on food and booze can sometimes add fuel to the fire of seasonal stress, and tips for taking the testiness down a notch are appearing everywhere right about now. The salient point to stick to, I suppose, is that a picture-perfect holiday gathering is a cheesy movie myth, and nothing more. And anyway, it seems that sometimes a little knife-edge tension can actually come out looking rather lovely: Knife Edge Mirror Two Piece (1976-1978) by Sir Henry Moore stands serene and shimming at the National Gallery of Art East entrance, and what an enveloping and evolving work it is. more ›

It's that time of year, when sniffles and sneezes and snorts and wheezes are all around as people succumb to seasonal coughs and colds. If the passenger on the bus beside you isn't honking into a hankie, then your colleagues at work will be chugging hot tea with honey for their throats. It's a big job, battling to keep at bay all those bugs and bacteria being airborne as everyone is eventually felled by a fat bout of flu. Well, worry not, because to boost your immune systems today I've a peachy picture to make you feel all better. more ›

Extensive travel is just one of the perks of art. During the course of this year, I've been to places I'm not sure I'll see again before I expire. Painted pictures at the National Gallery of Art have broadened my horizons, and I still have a few more pit-stops on the traveling train before my year profiling 365 works of art screeches to a halt on December 31. Today, we travel into the heart of America, with two artists who capture the charm of this country with disarming visions. Both Grant Wood (1891 - 1942) and Thomas Hart Benton (1889 - 1975) resisted the trend towards abstraction that dominated American art in the 1920s and 30s; instead, they stuck to the figurative convention, reflecting life in more realistic terms. more ›

I'm attached to the saint we're talking about today: St. Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland and gave his name to that fantastic place in Fife (legend says that relics were conveyed there from Constantinople in the 10th century). Andrew was a brother of Saint Peter and, like him, a disciple of Christ. Andrew's attribute is an X-shaped cross, following the method of his martyrdom: he requested not to die on a Latin cross, deeming himself unworthy to be crucified in the same way as Jesus. St Andrew's Cross is still on the national flag of Scotland. more ›

I once read that the key to the power of people-persuasion is the curveball. As in, when faced with a person who isn't receptive to what you're saying, going on a tangent or offering some unique unexpected angle on a situation can be the way through a communication impasse. I adore art that persuades with a visual curveball, jolting us upright and making us take proper sustained notice in the process. In the case of Daybreak - A Time to Rest (1967), it's an enormous pair of hugely disproportioned feet, sitting padded and fat, flush with the picture plane. more ›

It's time to bust out the bunting, Britain: William has popped that all important question! In fact, he and Kate got engaged in Kenya last month in a move that ended a marathon eight-year courtship. Prime Minister David Cameron was among the first to congratulate them, stepping outside No. 10 to state that William is "extremely excited" and "thrilled." more ›

During the year I lived in Milan, I learned a few things about Mediterranean mealtimes. Breakfast is bolted on the hop, but lunches are long and dinners drawn-out. Even in the middle of an overbooked day at the office, colleagues would collect up bags and blackberries at midday and march out for a repast done right. And right means your primo pasto, secondo and perhaps a light little something for dessert (some scoops of tiramisu or a creme caramel). The point is there's ritual, and a regular order to things in Italian eating -- and what I was most struck by when I first got there was seeing the cigarette slot into the sequence right after the sweet, with the short sharp shot of espresso ingested to expedite the afternoon's work. more ›

If you thought you were safe from harassment by ghouls, gremlins and hobgoblins after Halloween, think again. November 2 is, by tradition, the Day of All Souls -- on which (it has been believed) the unhappy souls of the dead return to their former homes. In the past, people were so superstitious about unsolicited and unsavory visits to their homes on All Souls, that they’d keep the kitchen warm and leave food on the table overnight to appease passing spirits and specters. more ›

Death and the Miser is by Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450 - 1516) a Netherlandish painter whose work was popular and influential during the 16th century but then long forgotten. But since his rediscovery at the start of the 20th century, Bosch’s art has both engrossed and grossed-out viewers with its compellingly strange character. more ›

I'm reading a collection of short stories at the moment that I'm having a hard time putting down. In some part, that's down to the genre: bite-sized morsels of natty narrative are easily snatched between breakfast, lunch and dinner. But it's more to do with the lurid, lucid and crazy-laced quality of these stories. At first, I was plain put off by the tales, finding them steeped a little too deep in horror or fantasy or oddness. But then it hit me: things that appear even a little surreal do a good job of illuminating our lives. Granted, fantasy can distort, mask or even hide reality, but it can also show us the world we (think) we know in a way that makes us realize we've never really looked at it at close quarters.

This is a revelation that I brought to bear when considering this crazy painting at the National Gallery of Art. more ›

Most of us are in the habit of counting up messages, cards, deliveries and so forth on our birthdays. Even as the ages slide by and we profess to wanting to forget yet another year notched on our life-post, there's still that sneaking bit of us that loves a bit of attention, and can't help but gauge popularity and importance by the barometer of birthday communications. more ›

This is Lucretia (1664), as painted by Rembrandt van Rijn, housed at the National Gallery of Art. It is, in short, a belter of an oil. more ›

Fashion and art have long been BFFs, and the relationship won’t be cooling anytime soon. Hot off the catwalk at London’s Fashion Week in September stalked some tremendous “art-dipped” designs for Spring/Summer 2011. Mary Katrantzou offered a baroque, gilded and glittering aesthetic that’d give any portrait of an 18th century aristocrat a run for its money. Felicity Brown bundled voluminous, hand-painted dresses down the runway, inspired (she says) by Toulouse-Lautrec’s women. And Holly Fulton packed some serious art-fashion punch with obvious Art Deco, Bauhaus and Cubism input. more ›

Horoscopes: I fall fickle on either side of the fence on this one. But we are about to enter my sign, Libra, so it's only right that the emblem (the scales or a balance, the only symbol of the zodiac that's represented by an inanimate object) should take center stage today. more ›

I hope you've been practicing your stitches, readers, since September is National Sewing Month! Observance of the month began in 1982 with a proclamation from President Ronald Reagan declaring it "in recognition of the importance of home sewing to our Nation." To help along all our industrious, craftiness urges is today's artist Diego Velázquez (1599 - 1660) who's right up there as the greatest figure of Spain's golden age of the arts (which reached its peak during the reign -- from 1621 to 1665 -- of his major patron, Kind Philip IV). more ›

I like to look on as female politicians plan particular strategies for gaining women’s support. Often, they turn to criticizing size-zero models, as if a remark that digs into the skinny ribs of undernourished actress-model-whatevers will secure solidarity in the female voting ranks. In England, one woman now wading into the weight debate is Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone, who recently announced a "body-confidence summit" to discuss "skinny celebrities." Hers is a familiar refrain: skin-tight stars make us sad and hack at our self-esteem, so Featherstone feels us women need more curvy role models. She picks out and praises Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks as ‘absolutely fabulous’. more ›

I was just in London and found time for Trafalgar Square, to see what was sitting on top of the famous Fourth Plinth. In recent years, this erstwhile empty pedestal (it was made in the 1840s to exhibit an equestrian statue that was never completed) has played host to works by Marc Quinn (Alison Lapper Pregnant, 2005), Thomas Schütte (Model for a Hotel, 2007) and Anthony Gormley (One and Other, 2009, in which members of the public "became" the art work by booking hour-long sessions on the Plinth). more ›

As you know from the byline at the end of every Tuesday's Permanent Collection post, I'm profiling 365 masterworks at the National Gallery of Art this year for my project Art 2010, which appears on my website Head for Art. It may be madness to inspect and dissect so many pieces in the NGA, so let's take moment to see the big picture -- at high speed, of course! more ›

Tonight at Politics & Prose, writer and angler Paul Greenberg will read from his new book Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food. It's a book that's swum into stores at just the right time, as people turn their minds more to the repercussions of our consumption. Farmed versus wild salmon; rising mercury levels in tuna; sustainability and ethics: there's a lot to weigh up before we batter a bit of plaice and stick it next to some chips. more ›

The author Edward Verrall Lucas once wrote “there is more refreshment and stimulation in a nap, even of the briefest, than in all the alcohol ever distilled.” So that’s some serious refreshment, then. more ›

Imagine that sweatshirt you gave to Pops for his birthday or the cookbook you selected for your sister at Christmas getting as much airtime and attention as the Cameron-Obama gift exchange that happened in July. For the Prime Minister's first official visit to the White House, much was made of the of the gifts that were exchanged between the two leaders. more ›

At the cinema last week, the trailer for a new film Countdown to Zero blasted into the auditorium. Written and directed by acclaimed documentarian Lucy Walker, it traces the history of the atomic bomb, from origins to the present state of global affairs. Walker makes a compelling case for worldwide nuclear disarmament, an issue more topical than ever with President Barack Obama aiming to revive the goal today. more ›

Flicking through a magazine last week, my eye alighted on an Oreo ad: "Milk's Favorite Summer Dip" read the slogan near the top, while the image splashed cool blue and white across the page. There's an up-close Oreo drifting in a mug of milk and two blue straws bending over the edge, looking just like the side-bars of a swimming pool step-ladder. It's a clever image, designed to dip into the milk-dunking thing but also conjuring up cool connections with summer fun and snacking. more ›

My most churning church experience was a feast for Saint Gennaro in Naples one year, where a cardinal from Rome rocked two vials of a 3rd century saint's be-crusted blood before a congregation of avid believers. After 18 minutes, he said the blood was flowing freely, and a din of cheers arose: this meant a good year ahead for Naples. In the same city, countless street-corner shrines cluster, all to Diego Maradona (who played for Napoli for years), stuffed with his hair strands and sweat. All in all, I must have seen at least ten thumbs and pinkies once-belonging to John the Baptist in chapels and churches across Europe: either he was a many-fingered man, or something else is going on. more ›

I'm stumped as to how to introduce Michelangelo: where does one start with a titan like this, whose career lasted three-quarters of a century, for which time he was unchallenged as the biggest and best artist in Europe? He's now known the world over (pop star style) by his first name and his Adam, David and other icons are etched on the eyes of so many minds. Michelangelo (1475 - 1564) thought of himself as a sculptor first, but painting, drawing and architecture, he had it all covered. There's a sprinkling of his scintillating brilliance sitting in the National Gallery of Art, in the form or a few small drawings. And that's cause for a serious sit-up-and-listen, since even the didiest of doodles by this man can and do fetch millions on the art market. We'll look at two Male Nude sketches today. more ›

Today is the feast of saints Peter and Paul, princes of the apostles who stood as early leaders for their faith, so this Apostle Paul (c. 1657) by Rembrandt is up for discussion here. It's an incredible image (whether you're Christian or not) by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 - 1669), that most-glowing master among golden age Dutch painters. more ›

Has anyone been watching Work of Art: The Next Great Artist on Bravo? Rapid recap: it started June 9 and has 14 aspiring artists compete in weekly art-themed challenges for a prize of a solo show and $100,000. I missed the first one but tuned in for the second, in which the artists were asked to make sculptures from materials plucked from an appliance dump. more ›

With the World Cup picking up pace in South Africa and fans flooding into stadiums or lining up in front of screens, I thought we’d take a little taste of another world tour today, in the company of the artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008). more ›

"It’s too soon to be optimistic," said President Obama during his most recent trip to the oil-hit Gulf of Mexico coast. As the disaster deepens (beaches in the tourist area of northwest Florida just saw the first sure signs of oil), I’m turning to Sea Battle at the National Gallery of Art. Not because there are grounds for any level of literal comparison, but rather because this picture’s ripping sense of rupture and effluence evoke the natural and political fall-out from the spill. more ›