Celebrities are known to be conceited and always wanting it to be all about them, but an artist has taken this a step further by even utilising their trash and making portraits out of them. San Francisco-based artist Jason Mecier has convinced numerous celebrities to donate their personal rubbish to him – all in the name of art. He then turns the individual contributions into portraits which have become so popular now that some well-known figures are actually approaching him to commission artwork of their cast away items. Lady Gaga’s portrait was from her 2009 Hello Kitty shoot but ... Jump to full article >>

National socialism, with its ritual humiliation of Jews and other ‘asocials’, remains the defining moment in the history of the German people. Never before had a European government planned the annihilation of an entire people. When Hitler said ‘exterminate all Jews’, he meant all of them, even newborns (for they, too, were potential enemies of the Third Reich). In Nazi Berlin, Jew-baiting was made a civic virtue and thus a German city departed from the community of civilised human beings. In Berlin at War, Roger Moorhouse provides a painstakingly detailed account of everyday ... Jump to full article >>

Critics say the images of happy soldiers and peasants, presented without commentary, only sell Kim Jong Il’s ideology. The Vienna museum defends the exhibit as a glimpse into an isolated art scene. More than 100 oils, watercolors, traditional Korean ink paintings and posters from the Korean Art Gallery in Pyongyang have been drawing a blurry line here between art and propaganda. Does the show at Vienna’s MAK: Austrian Museum for Applied Arts/Contemporary Art offer a rare glimpse into an isolated and largely unknown North Korean art scene, or is it merely a stage for a regime that u ... Jump to full article >>

An indefinable fusion of DJ, techno-nerd, entertainment wizard and brand, Joel Zimmerman (aka deadmau5) is shaping music’s future. As the world changes, beyond recognition even as we still recognise a lot of what goes on, the disc jockey is among those adapting the best. Not necessarily the kind of disc jockey we think of when we think of someone such as Tony Blackburn, even though as a mischievous combination of music-bringer, loud mouth, holy fool, larger-than-life personality and single-minded careerist he was among those who helped invent the basic DJ template. We’re now talkin ... Jump to full article >>

Martin Amis on why the BBC dramatisation of his novel Money is great television Watching an adaptation of your novel can be a violent experience: seeing your old jokes suddenly thrust at you can be alarming. But I started to enjoy Money very quickly, and then I relaxed. It’s a voice novel, and they’re the hardest to film – you’ve got to use some voiceover to get the voice. But I think the BBC adaptation was really pretty close to my voice – just the feel of it, the slightly hysterical feel of it, which I like. It’s a pity one line wasn’t used. Speculating abou ... Jump to full article >>

The troupe takes its improvisational hijinks into pulp territory with results that don’t always satisfy but are still fun to watch. While filming “The Big Sleep,” Howard Hawks asked author Raymond Chandler who killed a certain victim. Chandler’s famous response: He had no idea. Hard-boiled plots can get lost in their own fog, a danger that bedevils “LA Noir Unscripted,” the latest improvisational hijinks from Impro Theatre. The deadpan troupe, which has created original comic plays nightly in the style of Jane Austen, Tennessee Williams and Shakespeare, now ... Jump to full article >>

Porn-loving, junk-food guzzling, pill-popping John Self is a monster from another era, right? Sadly, 25 years after its first publication, Martin Amis’s satire on 80s excess is still spot on, argues Thomas Jones. For a while there – say, for 25 years or so – it was looking like a good time for capitalism: the early 1980s seemed a turning point in history, the beginning of a victorious endgame for the forces of neoliberalism, the crusaders of money. The governments of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher oversaw the beginning of an apparently unstoppable period of financial deregulatio ... Jump to full article >>

It’s July 1954 and our scene is Sherwood Forest. Enter Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise. Morecambe: “My name is mud. Sorry, Hood. Robin Hood. I’m the swashbuckling type, but there’s only one trouble.” Wise: “What’s that?” Morecambe: “I swash when I should buckle and I buckle when I should swash.” Wise: “How did you fall in with the outlaws?” Morecambe: “I fell out with the inlaws.” Welcome to Morecambe & Wise: the Garage Tapes – an extraordinary archive of early material from the beloved duo, including long-lost sketches that haven’t been heard for nearly 60 ye ... Jump to full article >>

An intimate but imposing portrait of the Queen by the youngest artist to paint members of the Royal Family in modern times has been unveiled in London. The work is the last in a series of royal portraits by Rupert Alexander, now 35, who first produced paintings of the Prince of Wales and Duke of Edinburgh at the age of 23. Born in London and trained the Florence Academy of Art, Mr Alexander had three sittings with the Queen during which they discussed topics including his great-uncle, Alan Campbell-Johnson, who served as an aide to Earl Mountbatten, the Duke of Edinburgh’s uncle, during ... Jump to full article >>

You may not play poker yourself but for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, the fate of the free world has been determined by men who do. So this recommendation is not for those who already play the game – if you do, you needn’t bother reading the rest of this review, just go off and buy the book – as to persuade the non-player that this is seriously worth their attention. Although it began as poque, a French game that evolved in New Orleans and headed up the Mississippi steamboats, by the mid-19th century poker was pretty much the pervasive American pastime; the national game, in ... Jump to full article >>

White Star Line’s 1911 brochure features sketches of Titanic’s grand staircase, dining rooms and a half-open porthole The most poignant view in the 1911 brochure boasting of the splendour of the Titanic is not the sketch of the bronze, balustraded grand staircase, the verandah cafe with its colonial rattan armchairs, the smoking room, the swimming pool or the opulent dining rooms. The rare postcard-sized booklet, soon to be auctioned and expected to fetch up to £15,000, includes a tiny sketch of a half-open porthole, showing the kind of view passengers could expect if they were fo ... Jump to full article >>