Gombrich Explains Katsushika Hokusai

Some good reasons to catch the Grand Palais show - the last time many prints will be seen outside Japan

Katsushika Hokusai, Behind the Waves at Kanagawa Bay (c.1830-1832)

Think you know about Nobuyoshi Araki?

There's more to the photographer than bondage and sex says Zippora Elders, curator of a new show

qARADISE, 2014 © Courtesy Nobuyoshi Araki in collaboration with Galerie Alex Daniëls – Reflex Amsterdam

How was 2014 for Bob Nickas?

The great New York critic and curator delighted in the Optical Unconscious but despaired in Cooper Union

Bob Nickas beside Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, Utah. Photograph by Jason Metcalf

Gombrich Explains Edvard Munch

The Norwegian painter, born today, 12 December, in 1863, detached fine art from its conventions, to great effect

The Scream (1895) Pastel on board, by Edvard Munch

How was 2014 for Alex Katz?

How wraparound landscapes, billboards and regular gallery going all inspired the New York painter this year

Alex Katz

Is this the smartest railway ticket office ever?

Designed to look like a jewel, the greenest building in Sweden breaks ground in the new year

Juvelen, Uppsala, Sweden - Utopia Arkitekter

Reviewers love Phaidon's Christmas crackers

In the run up to the festive season, we’d like to share some of the praise our titles have garnered across the world

Just some of our seasonal press

How was 2014 for Martin Parr?

A beach in Benidorm, the film Leviathan and the City of London all inspired the photographer and Phaidon author

Martin Parr

Gary Nader's Latin American Art Museum unveiled

FR-EE's irregularly stacked floor plates will each accommodate around 25 of the collector's sculptures

Latin American Art Museum (LAAM),  Miami - FR-EE

How was 2014 for Stephen Shore?

The legendary New York photographer on Instagram, Anselm Kiefer and what's coming next


One thing not to miss in Berlin

The city is finding fresh, refined ways to engage with its past according to our new Wallpaper* City Guide app

Pauly Saal, Berlin - photograph by Michael Franke

Photographer commissions 'Dracula castle' in Seoul

Does Seoul's SangSang Museum capture the spirit of the famous vampire, as Moon Hoon architects intended?

SangSang Museum by Moon Hoon

How was 2014 for Tomi Ungerer?

The octogenarian artist, illustrator and author takes a look back at this and reveals what's happening next

Tomi Ungerer

What did Éric Kayser bake for Cambodia?

When he opened his Phnom Penh branch, the baker and Phaidon author added a hot, local surprise to menu

Éric Kayser with his kampot pepper bread at the launch of his Phnom Penh branch

Jockum Nordström's Muse Music

The Swedish artist on the punk, classical, gypsy and blues music that inspired his new David Zwirner show

Jockum Nordström photographed by Curtis Jodell

John Pawson’s pared-back furniture range

It might look modern, but the noted British designer says his new table and bench collection is, in a sense, medieval

John Pawson's Trestle collection for Viccarbe

Oh Ettore, put it away!

What drove Sottsass to create a vase shaped like this, and why has BD reissued a gold version of it?

Sottsass with his Shiva Vase, 2005

The 2015 Serpentine Pavilion architects in 3 works

Want to know about SelgasCano, who'll be doing next year's Serpentine Pavilion? Let the Phaidon Atlas guide you

Studio in the Woods by SelgasCano. Photograph by Iwan Baan. As featured in the Phaidon Atlas

How Danny Lyon spent New Year's Eve 1966

Great photos, all shot on one night, go on show at Atlantic Avenue subway station later this week

Subway Man - Danny Lyon

What else is happening at Art Basel Miami Beach?

Leo DiCaprio, Miley Cyrus, $3 billion-worth of art, and a pop-up sanitarium: it's looking like a vintage year. . .

Miley Cyrus performing at The Raleigh, Miami Beach, on Wednesday. Image courtesy of Cyrus's Twitter account.

Dive into Warhol in Miami

Your chance to buy an Andy Warhol that's only had one previous owner - Andy himself!

La Plata River Dolphin, silkscreen inks on colored paper collage, 12 x 18 in. (30.5 x 45.7 cm.), Executed in 1986 - Andy Warhol

Would you live in this Japanese underwater city?

The Shimizu Corporation believes its Ocean Spiral proposal could overcome key urban challenges


Memo to art forgers - don’t flaunt it in a submarine

John Re could face 20 years in jail after allegedly pimping out his sub on forged Pollocks and de Koonings

John Re pictured on his submarine Deep Quest in 2007 - photo courtesy New York Times/Corey Kilgannon

How Renoir captured the countryside in the city

The painter, who died 95 years ago today, used new paint technology to depict Paris as it changed

Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (1876) by Auguste Renoir, as reproduced in Art and Time

How to understand this year’s Turner Prize winner

Duncan Campbell’s film essay It for Others is complex, but you can get your head round it via these Phaidon books

Still from It For Others (2013) by Duncan Campbell

Martin Parr's Italian roadtrip

What happened when the Magnum and Phaidon photographer visited the Amalfi coast?

Napoli 2013, from Martin Parr's series, The Amalfi Coast, courtesy of Studio Trisorio

Gombrich Explains the Death of Marat

Lady Gaga recreates the French Revolution work at Art Basel, what does our legendary art historian think of it?

Detail from The Death of Marat (1793) by Jacques-Louis David

Olga Chernysheva's spheres of influence

Contemporary Russia as seen through the eyes of one of the last generation of artists to grow up in the Soviet Union

Waiting for a Miracle - Olga Chernysheva, Courtesy Pace London

Andean volcano gets high tech viewing platform

Smart architectural intervention gives viewers the sensation of flight

The Quilotoa Lake Lookout. Photo by Lorena Darquea

Have you seen Cornell's bright new Gates Hall?

Take a look at this - another beautiful academic building from Morphosis, the firm behind 41 Cooper Square

Bill & Melinda Gates Hall by Morphosis

Phaidon Outtakes #4 Massimo Bottura and poetry

Spend a little time in contemplation, and “the 25 cent glass can become a piece of art" says our skinny Italian chef

Massimo Bottura with his Carlo Benvenuto bicchieri sculptures

Gratuitous sex, death and Guy Bourdin

Why did the photographer only find true fame after his death? Our iBook author Alison Gingeras has the answer

Guy Bourdin, Roland Pierre advertisement (1982-1983)

Gombrich Explains Michelangelo

As the V&A prepares its cast of David for display, we look at why the human form held no secrets for the sculptor

Conservator Johanna Puisto unveils the cast of Michelangelo's David post conservation, Nov 2014 in the Weston Cast Court

Three things not to miss at Design Miami

A virtual coral reef, a celebration of Sottsass and Le Corbusier’s student digs all feature at next month’s fair

Coral images - Coral Morphologic

Jane Hornby’s failsafe Pumpkin Pie recipe

Our What To Bake expert offers a Brit view of Thanksgiving and remembers previous celebrations

What To Bake & How to Bake It author Jane Hornby. Photo by Matt Russell

Phaidon Outtakes #3 Massimo and the mozzarella

Our Skinny Chef has reinvented Italian cuisine, but he still delights in the arrival of some simple produce

Massimo Bottura

War's effect on peace is examined in new Tate show

Tate Modern curator Shoair Mavlian talks us through the new exhibition Conflict, Time, Photography

Shomei Tomatsu Steel Helmet with Skull Bone Fused by Atomic Bomb, Nagasaki 1963 © Shomei Tomatsu - interface. Courtesy of Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo

Luisa Lambri opens a window into her soul

Shooting Space photographer makes herself comfortable in other people's homes - then photographs the results

Palacio dos Arcos - Luisa Lambri

The quiet rise of the photo fair photographer

The Photography Book author Ian Jeffrey on the artists who get ahead by working the circuit

Extreme Tourism: Lava Surfing No. 1 (2011) by Thomas Mailaender, as reproduced in The Photography Book

One thing not to miss in Amsterdam

Set in a 20's greenhouse De Kas is one of many highlights in our newly released Wallpaper* City Guide app

De Kas, Amsterdam, as featured in our new downloadable Wallpaper* City Guide

How Toulouse-Lautrec mixed high art and low life

On the painter's birthday, learn how he made cabaret girls and prostitutes a worthy subject for fine art

The Salon in the Rue des Moulins (1894) by Toulouse-Lautrec, as reproduced in our monograph

Desert Modern Style celebrated in Palm Springs

New Architecture and Design Center housed in Marmol Radziner-restored E. Stewart Williams building

Palm Springs Art Museum Architecture and Design Center - E. Stewart Williams/ Marmol Radziner (photo Daniel Chavkin courtesy of Palm Springs Art Museum

Gombrich Explains René Magritte

The surrealist, born on this day in 1898, didn’t break with artistic techniques, he employed them on his dreams

Detail from Not to be Reproduced (1937) by René Magritte

More than one Margarita at the ambassador's house

We launched Mexico The Cookbook at a select food and drinks party last night, here's what happened

Mexico The Cookbook author Margarita Carrillo Arronte

Like clear answers? Then don't look at abstract art

A new Italian study suggests that a desire for ‘cognitive closure’ might limit our appreciation of abstract works

Warsaw Thirds (1986) by Harvey Quaytman as featured in our Harvey Quaytman monograph

Rem Koolhaas building remade as a wardrobe

Naihan Li recreates iconic Beijing CCTV building as 1:100-scale rosewood cupboard - peak irony reached

CCTV wardrobe, from Naihan Li’s I Am Monument series

Baz Luhrmann’s Art Basel Miami Beach booth

Why has the director teamed up with British music producer Nellee Hooper to host a stand at next month’s art fair?

Painting for the Ballet Jeux D'Enfant (1932) by Joan Miro

Baby it's (really) cold outside!

How Emilio Pucci, born 100 years ago today, brought style to the slopes - and the city

Astrid Heeren in Pucci Ski Jacket photographed by Peter Beard, American Vogue 1964 as featured in Phaidon's The Fashion Book

Phaidon Outtakes #2 Bottura and the beautiful game

Could our skinny Italian chef have found fame on the football pitch, rather than in the 50 Best Restaurants list?

Massimo Bottura, chef and author of Never Trust a Skinny Italian Chef

The Anatomy of an Album

Graphic designer Duane Dalton's pet project sees him reducing over 75 albums to their core elements

Album Anatomy - Duane Dalton © 2014 Duane Dalton

Ed Ruscha's road rage

Does this new set of paintings signal the end of the great American painter's love of the open road?

Ed Ruscha Inner-City Make Scream 2014 Acrylic on canvas 40 x 50 inches; 100 x 127 cm ©Ed Ruscha Photo by Paul Ruscha Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian Gallery

An Athens Modernist icon is reborn

Having languished for years, Greece's Doxiadis Building gets a sympathetic makeover and a new name

OneAthens - photo courtesy of oneathens.gr

Phaidon Outtakes #1 Massimo Bottura on Picasso

Our Skinny Italian Chef tells a strange tale involving the painter, hare blood and Gertrude Stein

Massimo Bottura by Paolo Terzi

Photos that changed the world #8 Louis-Jacques Mandé Daguerre's Boulevard du Temple, Paris

On the anniversary of his birth, a look at how Daguerre took the first picture to feature a human

Boulevard du Temple 1838 - Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre

The coolest architectural drawings are in The Atlas

Online architectural resource focuses on architectural drawings changing the nature of building today

The Interlace Vertical Village - Buro Ole Scheeren, Office for Metropolitan Architecture

Dexter Dalwood's Muse Music

How artists as diverse as Lou Reed, Kanye West and Bach influence and inspire the painter's work

Dexter Dalwood (top left), Half Moon Street (20140 Dexter Dalwood (top right), Andy Warhol and Lou Reed (bottom left)

One thing not to miss in Riga

The National Library of Latvia is one of many highlights in our newly released Wallpaper* City Guide app

The National Library of Latvia, as featured in our newly released Wallpaper* City Guide

How Noguchi put eastern beauty into western design

On the anniversary of his birth, learn how the designer introduced Zen-like simplicity to western living rooms

The IN50 table by Isamu Noguchi

Claude Monet and the birth of Impressionism

On the anniversary of his birth a reassessment of the public reaction to impressionism and the artist's role in it

Impression, Sunrise (1872) - Claude Monet

Tadao Ando's thatched art retreat

The Pritzker laureate pairs Mexican vernacular building techniques with his signature concrete castings

Casa Wabi by Tadao Ando

The FT’s new font is on the money

New Zealand’s Klim Type Foundry overcomes traditional newsprint typography problems with new font Financier

The printed type and the digital outlines for the FT's new Financier font. Image courtesy of Klim Type Foundry

Who to catch where at Paris Photo

The fair previews today, here's where to see Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore, Roger Ballen, Martin Parr, et al

Joel Meyerowitz and Simon Baker, photo curator at Tate Modern discuss Joel's work at the Howard Greenberg Gallery booth

Watch Ferran Adrià at the FT dinner in New York

Last month Ferran hosted an FT dinner at Daniel Hum's Eleven Madison Park, here are the highlights

Ferran talking to Time's Belinda Luscombe

Introducing the new breed of photo manipulators

Our Photography Book author Ian Jeffrey on why he admires those who do more than just release the shutter

Go your own road, 2008 by Erik Johansson - As featured in The Photography Book - Image courtesy of erikjohanssonphoto.com

Our Design Classics App is back!

And to celebrate we focus on one of the 1000 timeless designs in it - Dieter Rams' 606 Universal Shelving System

606 Universal Shelving System - Dieter Rams and Vitsoe

Auguste Rodin’s battle with Balzac

On the anniversary of the sculptor’s birth we look at the botched commission that became a great work

Rodin in His Studio in Meduon, 1902. As reproduced in our Rodin monograph

Massimo Bottura drops the lemon tart on the BBC

For his Saturday Kitchen appearance the chef and Phaidon author prepared his infamous, deconstructed dessert

Saturday Kitchen, from left: Massimo Bottura, Atul Kochhar and James Martin

Ice cube refuge proposed for Slovak mountains

Atelier 8000 joins the likes of Hadid, Zumthor and Fantastic Norway in proposing eye-popping mountain retreat

Mountain Hostel - Atelier 8000

What happened when Brazil took on Modernism

How a naïve, colourful, art movement created a counterpoint to the prevailing style of the military dictatorship


Photos that changed the world #7 Telephone Booth

Lee Friedlander's 1963 photo characterised the present as a mere staging point thus capturing the flux of the 1960s

Telephone Booth, New York (1963) - Lee Friedlander

Herzog & de Meuron design Israel’s national library

Sweeping curve of stone above four subterranean floors will nestle alongside the 1960s Knesset building

National Library of Israel - Herzog & de Meuron

Can Dagarslani's search for identity

Istanbul-based architect says latest photo series is not about the people but the architectural spaces they're in

Identities - Can Dagarslani

One Thing Not To Miss In Manila

The tetrahedral Church of the Gesù is one of many highlights in our Wallpaper* City Guide app released today

Church of the Gesù, Manila as featured in the new Wallpaper* City Guide

Piet Oudolf on The High Line and restoring prairies

The New Perennial Movement cultivator and discerning gallerist's go to gardener talks us through his life and times


Gombrich Explains Hogarth

On the anniversary of his birth we find out about the 'A Rake’s Progress' creator's appeal to Puritans

A Rake's Progress: 1 The Heir (1733) by William Hogarth

Massimo Bottura takes over Shake Shack London

Famous chefs, food critics and a rescue dog named Ginger brave a chilly Covent Garden to try The Emilia Burger

Chef Nigel Haworth, Shake Shack Culinary Director Mark Rosati, chef Angela Hartnett and Massimo Bottura - photo Mat Smith

Paris Photo's Thomas Zander on this year's fair

The gallerist and committee member on picking the right edition and why everyone's mad for Garry Winogrand

Thomas Zander

5 young UK architects adapting to their environment

A Phaidon Atlas Focus on a group of projects that use local features to develop a subtle, contemporary language


Libeskind's cement chair for Marina Abramović

Not sure for how long the artist will be present if she has to sit on this - but we do admire the design

Counting the Rice - Daniel Libeskind for Moroso

René Redzepi scoops another award!

And it's another big one. He's just been named WSJ Magazine Food Innovator at a star-studded MoMA ceremony

René Redzepi - another night, another award

Gombrich Explains Manet

As the Getty buys Le Printemps for $65 million Gombrich explains why we still value this French master

Detail from Le Printemps (1881) by Edouard Manet

What to expect from Art Basel Miami Beach

A ballet about The Internet, extra VIP days and a new art-historical strand are all part of the fun of the 2014 fair

Art Basel Miami Beach

World's tallest twin towers will go up in Dubai

But the architect for the The Dubai Creek Harbour at The Lagoons remains a mystery. Could it be SOM?

The Dubai Creek Harbour at The Lagoons

'I always go for places no one’s been before' Alex Katz

'You want to go there and see whether it’s possible, and adjust the technique to your ideas,' he tells Phaidon

Paul Taylor Dance Company, 1963-64 - Alex Katz, Collection Bayerische Museum Munich

The Picasso, the Thief, His Wife & Her Cousin

Could so-called friends of Picasso have conspired against him? The prosecution in a new case alleges so

Pablo Picasso (1957), Villa La Californie, Cannes, France, by René Burri

MAD unveil their George 'Star Wars' Lucas museum

Mies van der Rohe-inspired Chicago building peaks in a ‘floating’ disc with a 360-degree observation deck

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Lake Michigan - MAD

David Bowie's Mustique garden and other tales

Gardener's Garden designer Made Wijaya on working with the Thin White Duke, why 'anal architects' are ruining landscape gardening, his love of Bali and why he thinks the current craze for zen gardens is a bit 'tragic'

Garden designer Made Wijaya. Photo by Tim Street-Porter

Milk bar is transformed for Warsaw’s bourgeoisie

Sojka & Wojciechowski rework an Eastern European Socialist staple for a 21st-century audience

Bar Prasowy, Warsaw - Sojka & Wojciechowski

Calling America! It's Margarita time!

We catch up with Margarita Carrillo Arronte, the acclaimed chef of Mexico The Cookbook, as she wows the US

Margarita Carrillo Arronte pictured with Luke Wade (left) and drummer Blaine Crews (right)

Tropical Modernism is back in Puerto Rico

Fuster + Architects' new hotel in Puerto Rico leans on the work of Henry Klumb in the region

El Blok Hotel - Fuster + Architects

How Henry Moore inspired de Kooning’s Clamdigger

And why the abstract expressionist painter wore oversized workman's gloves to produce his life-size figure

Clamdigger detail (1972) by Willem de Kooning

Jean-Michel Basquiat's 80s notebooks revealed

Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks at the Brooklyn Museum includes 160 unseen sketch pages from 1980-87

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled, 1986. Photo: Collection of Larry Warsh. Copyright © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat.  Licensed by Artestar, New York. By Gavin Ashworth, Brooklyn Museum

Three new museums for major South China city

Guangzhou urban planners attempt to multiply the Bilbao effect by three with new cultural proposal

Guangzhou Museum, Guangzhou Art Museum and Guangzhou Science Museum - Christian Kerez

Photos that changed the world #6 Self-Portrait

How Gunter Brus and the Vienna Actionists responded to atrocity and remade photography as a result

Self-Portrait, 1964 by Günter Brus. As featured in The Photography Book

Gombrich Explains Goya

A look at why the great painter of the Spanish court also depicted witches, giants and demons

Detail from Linda Maestra (1799) from Los Caprichos by Francisco Goya

How Bas Princen explains architecture in images

The Shooting Space photographer on recording places where urban expansion meets nature's contraction

Ringroad (Houston), 2005 Texas, USA - Bas Princen from Shooting Space

Massimo Bottura's Emilia Burger heads to London

The skinny Italian chef brings his gourmet burger to Shake Shack in Covent Garden next month


What Ai Weiwei told The New Yorker

Why he thinks Warhol was 50 years ahead of his time and how Lego is the perfect tool for dissent

Ai Weiwei, 2014. From his Instagram feed.

Watch the Magnus Nilsson Mind Of A Chef trailer!

New PBS clip outlines his 3 rules for life: Don't play it safe, don't try to control everything and limitation is good!

Magnus Nilsson

We love The Rijksmuseum’s new 3D visitors’ map!

Graphic designer conquers cartographical conundrum navigating 80 galleries 8,000 objects and 800 years of art

Marijn van Oosten’s Paper Pathfinder