tristram shandy

Essays
“Alas, Poor YORICK!”: The Death and Life of Laurence Sterne

“Alas, Poor YORICK!”: The Death and Life of Laurence Sterne

On the 250th anniversary of Laurence Sterne’s death, Ian Campbell Ross looks at the engagement with mortality so important to the novelist’s groundbreaking work. more

Precedents of the Unprecedented: Black Squares Before Malevich

Precedents of the Unprecedented: Black Squares Before Malevich

Described by Kasimir Malevich as the “first step of pure creation in art”, his Black Square of 1915 has been cast as a total break from all that came before it. Yet searching across more than five hundred years of images related to mourning, humour, politics, and philosophy, Andrew Spira uncovers a slew of unlikely foreshadows to Malevich's radical abstraction. more