Encounters with great art can be absorbing, unsettling and even painful. How has this been tamed into ‘reading for pleasure’, asks Charlotte Higgins, the Guardian’s chief culture writer ...

How does art represent the world and influence the people who observe it? Artists and philosophers have thought about these ...

The University of Northern Iowa won, for now, a big one. No, it was not a three-point shot at the buzzer by the women’s basketball team or a two-point conversion on a trick play to secure a victory ...

Discover the practical origins of romantic clichés like roses, chocolate, and candlelight, and how they evolved into symbolic love gestures worldwide.

Kindness seems to me to be a bit of a lonely virtue these days. Easily overlooked amidst more flashy and marketable ones like wealth, audacity, and fame.

Pente Grammai was a popular Ancient Greek game of strategy during which players relied on tactics and foresight to control ...

She extracts something new from steel, dispelling its aura of brawn. Her signature form is a rumpled ribbon of metal painted to look as soft as suede.

T he American left is a pretty cerebral lot: It contains a lot of grad students, underemployed humanities majors and hyperliterate autodidacts, and this educational glut is often grounds for criticism ...

Stand-up comedy is a tough old game. There can be no lonelier or scarier scenario. Standing alone under the spotlight, having ...

Dear Reader, I was greatly chuffed to chance upon the work of the graphic novelist, musician, illustrator, and cartoonist ...

"So, ok, you're probably going, 'Is this like a Noxzema commercial, or what?!' But I seriously have a way normal life for a teenage girl." Cher might be clueless in many ways, but she knows just what ...