A Poem For Erdoğan

The Spectator, a weekly UK news magazine, has launched a "President Erdoğan Insulting Poetry Competition", with a £1,000 prize for the most offensive poem written about President Erdoğan of Turkey. According to the rules, drawn up by Douglas Murray, "all entries must be (a) wholly defamatory and (b) utterly obscene."

The competition, announced in the magazine's current issue (dated 23rd April), was inspired by recent attempts to prosecute German comedian Jan Boehmermann, who recited a poem mocking Erdoğan on 31st March. The deadline for entries is 23rd June, timed to coincide with the UK's referendum on its membership of the European Union.

Shunga

Shunga: Sex & Pleasure In Japanese Art opened in 2013 at the British Museum in London, and was the world's largest exhibition of shunga works. The 500-page exhibition catalogue, edited by Timothy Clark, C Andrew Gerstle, Aki Ishigami, and Akiko Yano, is the most comprehensive book on shunga. ('Shunga' literally translates as 'Spring pictures', a euphemistic description for this genre of erotic and pornographic Japanese illustrations produced throughout the Edo period.)

The catalogue begins with a detailed introduction by Timothy Clark and C Andrew Gerstle, who compare the fantasies depicted in shunga to the "pornotopia" described by Steven Marcus in The Other Victorians. Edo Japan and Victorian Britain were both seemingly conservative societies, though they were also prolific producers of pornography. (Even in contemporary Japan, there is a separation between public reserve and private consumption of sometimes extreme imagery.)

Shunga was produced as emaki (scrolls) and illustrated books, and even as shikake-e (early examples of paper engineering), though it was most often associated with ukiyo-e (woodblock prints, known as 'images of the floating world'). An essay by Ishigami Aki demonstrates that shunga was influenced by the Chinese 'chunhua' genre of sex-education manuals. (Thus, like origami and bonsai, shunga is another apparently Japanese tradition that actually originated in China.)

Katsushika Hokusai, whose Great Wave is the most celebrated ukiyo-e print, also produced "perhaps the most famous of all shunga images", Kinoe No Komatsu (1814). (This illustration of a woman being pleasured by an octopus was also included in the Barbican's Seduced exhibition.)

In the introduction, Kitagawa Utamaro is described as "arguably the greatest shunga artist of all," and an essay by Kobayashi Tadashi cites Utamaro and Torii Kiyonaga as "two artists who were the most remarkable in the whole history of shunga". Tadashi writes that Utamaro's Utamakura (1788) and Kiyonaga's Sode No Maki (1785) "vie for the title of greatest shunga masterpiece" though Kiyonaga's work "should surely be placed at the summit of achievement among all Japanese shunga."

Jennifer Preston discusses the censorship of shunga in the Edo period. Nishikawa Sukenobu's Fufu Narabi No Oka (1714) was the first shunga to be suppressed: "the courtly references in the work, such as details of the imperial palace, came to the attention of the authorities and Sukenobu was severely punished." Sukenobu's Hyakunin Joro Shinasadame (1723) was also banned. Later, the illustrated book Ehon Taikoki and Utamaro's Taiko Gosai Rakuto Yukan No Zu were both banned in 1804. Novelists Santo Kyoden and Tamenaga Shunsui were manacled for fifty days (in 1791 and 1842 respectively).

Censorship of shunga began again in the twentieth century. Ishigami Aki recounts the 1960 obscenity charges against Hayashi Yoshikazu's book Ehon Kenkyu, Kunisada (a historical study of shunga). Yoshikazu was convicted after a thirteen-year trial, though when he updated the book in 1989, as Edo Makura-eshi Shusei, it was published uncensored.

The catalogue features more than 400 illustrations, with some fold-out pages. It also includes biographies of shunga artists, with names and titles printed in Japanese kanji, and an extensive bibliography. Timon Screech, author of the first academic study of shunga (Sex & The Floating World, 1999), also contributes an essay to the catalogue. Richard Lane's Images From The Floating World (1978), the classic study of ukiyo-e prints, includes several examples of shunga.

Inside Obama's White House

Inside Obama's White House, a series of four hour-long documentaries examining the Barack Obama presidency, was broadcast on BBC2 recently. It began with Obama's economic stimulus and his bailouts of the banking and automotive industries following the global economic crisis.

The Affordable Care Act, the killing of Osama bin Laden, and the consequences of the Arab Spring were also covered. The final episode dealt with major social issues such as gun control and race relations (the latter of which is the subject of Michael Eric Dyson's new book, The Black Presidency).

Obama's economic negotiations with the Republicans and his Afghan policy were not included, perhaps because they have been previously documented elsewhere (in two books by Bob Woodward). Similarly, his relations with Vladimir Putin were not discussed, though they were the subject of an earlier series by the same production company (Putin, Russia & The West).

The programmes were remarkable for their level of access to almost all of the key White House and Senate figures (with the exception of Vice President Joe Biden). Excerpts from two recent interview sessions with Obama himself were included throughout.

The four episodes are: 100 Days (broadast on 15th March), Obamacare (22nd March), Don't Screw It Up! (29th March; a milder form of Obama's foreign policy "don't do stupid shit"), and The Arc Of History (5th April). The episodes were directed by Paul Mitchell, Sarah Wallis, Delphine Jaudeau, and Mick Gold.

Arish

Arish: Palm-Leaf Architecture, by Sandra Piesik, is "the first comprehensive publication dedicated to recording the special place of date palm-leaf architecture in the UAE's cultural heritage." 'Arish' traditionally refers to summer houses constructed from palm leaves, though Piesik adopts it as an umbrella term for all palm-leaf buildings.

Piesik's account of historical palm-leaf architecture is limited to a collection of black-and-white photographs from the middle of the twentieth century. The book then highlights examples of palm-leaf buildings from each area of the United Arab Emirates, including 'mogassas' (summer houses), 'cayady' (winter houses), 'barasti' (with flat roofs), 'khaimah' (with pitched roofs), and 'kada' (with stone walls). These regional chapters have colour photographs and additional historical context.

Arish is one of several recent books on architectural materials. Others include Glass In Architecture (by Michael Wigginton), Brick (by James WP Campbell), Architecture In Wood (by Will Pryce), Concrete (by William Hall), and Corrugated Iron (by Simon Holloway and Adam Mornement).

Mother-Of-Pearl

Mother-Of-Pearl: Antiques & Collectibles was written by Michael Meyer, Dawn Meyer, and Patricia Martin. Its main appeal is its photographs of more than 5,000 mother-of-pearl objects. It's the first extensive survey of mother-of-pearl, as the dust jacket explains: "For the first time in the English language, a thorough, well-researched book has been written on the history, collection, and craft of carved mother-of-pearl."

The book begins with a brief history of mother-of-pearl production. It covers most regions of the world, though each country is summarised in only a few paragraphs. Unfortunately, the items illustrated are all from the authors' collections: "The scope of this book is confined to material we have personally accumulated over the past ten years. It does not encompass museum collections or other private collections."

Most of the pieces are trinkets and accessories. A lengthy chapter on mother-of-pearl carvings is of more interest, as are related chapters on decorative arts and religious ornaments. One of the most notable examples is a model of the al-Aqsa mosque presented to King Hussein of Jordan.

Pietre Dure

Pietre Dure & The Art Of Florentine Inlay is one of several books on pietre dure by Annamaria Giusti, who is arguably the world's leading authority on the subject. (She has also written Pietre Dure: Hardstone In Furniture & Decorations, and she co-wrote the Art Of The Royal Court exhibition catalogue.)

Pietre dure is a form of polychrome inlay, similar to intarsia or marquetry though utilising gemstones rather than wood. (The Penguin Dictionary Of Decorative Arts has a useful entry on the subject.) The technique is also related to mosaics, and Giusti discusses the Cosmatesque geometric mosaic style.

The book's main focus is on the Italian Renaissance revival of pietre dure, and its subsequent popularity among European royalty. Giusti is chief curator of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, which established Florence as the centre of pietre dure production: "Florentine commesso work achieved a notable refinement in the well-established techniques of inlay, and the opus sectile of the Roman era."

This is a superb introduction to the art of pietre dure, and it's one of the few English-language books on the subject. Its glossy, colour illustrations of inlaid tabletops and cabinets are lavishly reproduced, with many stunning full-page, full-bleed photographs.

It was originally published in Italian, as L'arte Delle Pietre Dure (2005). It was then translated into French, as La Marqueterie De Pierres Dures, before its English translation was published the following year. The title of the American edition is Pietre Dure: The Art Of Semiprecious Stonework.

Neo Magazin Royale

The Turkish government has registered a formal complaint against German comedian Jan Boehmermann, accusing him of insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. On his late-night satirical programme Neo Magazin Royale, broadcast on 31st March by ZDF Neo, Boehmermann recited a poem (with Turkish subtitles) mocking Erdoğan, as a demonstration of the limits of freedom of expression.

Boehmermann's poem was gratuitously offensive, though it was clearly intended to be comical rather than libellous. Boehmermann read it in response to the controversy surrounding the song Erdowie, Erdowo, Erdoğan, broadcast by NDR on 17th March. The song, from the comedy show Extra 3, also criticised Erdoğan, and the German ambassador to Turkey was summoned by the Turkish government to apologise for it.

The video of Boehmermann's poem has been removed from ZDF's website, and the broadcaster has also identified and deleted all copies of it from YouTube. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, telephoned Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu to apologise, and German prosecutors are investigating Boehmermann for the crime of insulting a foreign leader.

Ironically, Erdoğan himself was imprisoned in 1999 for reciting a poem. In a 1997 speech, he had quoted lines from a poem by Ziya Gokalp: "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the believers our soldiers." He was sentenced to ten months in jail as a result.

Erdoğan is notoriously intolerant of criticism and satire. He filed lawsuits against cartoonists from Cumhuriyet in 2004 and Penguen in 2005, against Cumhuriyet again in 2014, and against Penguen again last year. Artist Matthew Dickinson was charged with insulting Erdoğan in 2006, and charged again soon afterwards. Last year, Nokta magazine was shut down due to a Photoshopped image of Erdoğan. (In 2008, Cumhuriyet was charged with defamation due to two caricatures of Erdoğan's predecessor, Abdullah Gul.)

Marie Claire

Thai police have confirmed an order banning the distribution of a back issue of Marie Claire magazine. The order was issued on 8th March, though it was published in the Royal Gazette today.

In November 2015, Marie Claire's French edition printed a four-page article by Emmanuel Mortagne about Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn. The magazine has been banned on grounds of lèse-majesté, and police are authorised to confiscate or destroy any copies already in the country.

Referendum Act

A referendum will be held on 7th August, giving Thais the chance to accept or reject the military’s proposed new constitution. The final draft of the charter was published by the Constitution Drafting Committee last week, and an earlier draft was released in February.

The vote will take place in line with the 2016 Referendum Act, which will take effect on 22nd April. Commentators and former politicians have criticised the Act’s restrictive conditions and harsh penalties, though its terms are actually similar to those of the 2007 Referendum Act.

The 2016 Act states that “anyone who publishes text, images or sound... that is either untruthful, harsh, offensive, rude, inciting or threatening, with the intention that voters will either not exercise their right to vote, or vote in a certain way” will face up to ten years in jail (article 61). The 2007 Act also stipulated a ten-year maximum sentence for those who “deceive, coerce, threaten, or influence eligible voters not to exercise their voting rights, to vote one way or another” (article 10).

The main difference is not the wordings of the two laws, but the political circumstances of the votes. Although the 2007 referendum was held during a military coup, the country was not under martial law or its equivalent. (Martial law had been lifted in most provinces on 26th January 2007.) This time, however, martial law was replaced by article 44 of the interim constitution, which outlaws any criticism of the junta.

A Life Of PicassoThe Triumphant Years, 1917-1932

John Richardson's multi-volume biography of Picasso is not only the definitive work on Picasso, it's perhaps the most comprehensive biography of any artist. In 2013, the Financial Times called it "the greatest, most compelling biography of an artist ever written". Three volumes have been published so far: The Early Years, 1881-1906; The Cubist Rebel, 1907-1916; and The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932.

Volume III, which is the first volume to include colour illustrations, begins shortly before Picasso's first marriage (to ballerina Olga Khokhova) and his Neo-Classical period. Khokhova is the (presumed) subject of La Danse (1925), "one of Picasso's most profound and mysterious paintings." Indeed, Picasso regarded this as one of his masterpieces: while his mural Guernica is more famous, he "attached more importance to Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and La Danse".

Richardson, a close friend of Picasso's, also wrote and presented the Channel 4 documentary Picasso: Magic, Sex, & Death (2001). He has curated several major Picasso exhibitions, including Picasso: The Mediterranean Years (2010); his essay for the Mediterranean Years exhibition catalogue is effectively a preview of the forthcoming volume IV of his Picasso biography.

Hundreds of books have been written about Picasso. Three monographs stand out as authoritative surveys of his entire oeuvre: Picasso (by Wilhelm Boeck and Jaime Sabartes; with original cover illustrations by Picasso himself), Pablo Picasso (by Carsten-Peter Warncke; originally published in two volumes), and The Ultimate Picasso (by Brigitte Leal, Christine Piot, and Marie-Laure Bernadac; reissued as Picasso: The Monograph, 1881-1973).

"แม้สถานการณ์จะร้อนขอให้พี่น้องได้รับความเย็นผ่านขันใบนี้"

In a joint police and military operation yesterday, more than 10,000 red water bowls were seized from former Pheu Thai politicians in Nan, a province in northern Thailand. 8,862 bowls were taken from one former MP, and 1,500 from another.

The bowls include a message from former prime ministers Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra: "แม้สถานการณ์จะร้อน ขอให้พี่น้องได้รับความเย็นผ่านขันใบนี้" ('although the situation is hot, everyone can keep cool with water'). They were due to be distributed to Pheu Thai supporters before the Songkran water festival later this month.

In a similar case earlier this year, officials in Roi Et province banned distribution of Thaksin and Yingluck calendars. Yingluck herself is currently on trial at the Supreme Court following her impeachment in January.

Concrete

Concrete, edited by William Hall and published by Phaidon, is a collection of large (full-page and double-page) photographs of concrete architecture. It's a visual portfolio of almost 200 buildings rather than a narrative history of concrete, though it includes an introductory essay by Leonard Korne.

Hall writes in his preface: "Many of the best and most influential buildings of the last century are constructed with concrete". The book includes plenty of stunning examples, such as Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye ("perhaps the quintessential modernist structure"), Oscar Niemeyer's Palacio do Congresso Nacional, Kisho Kurokawa's Metabolist Nakagin Kapuseru Tawa, and the 2,000-year-old Roman Pantheon.

Concrete has been maligned due to its associations with post-War Brutalist architecture, a trend first identified by Rayner Banham in his 1955 Architectural Review article The New Brutalism. In his essay, Leonard Koren argues that Brutalism was a mere blip in concrete's long history as a versatile building material.

Concrete: The Vision Of A New Architecture (by Peter Collins) was the first history of concrete architecture (though it places too much emphasis on a single architect, Auguste Perret). Several histories of other building materials have been published recently, including Glass In Architecture (by Michael Wigginton), Brick (by James WP Campbell), Architecture In Wood (by Will Pryce), and Corrugated Iron (by Simon Holloway and Adam Mornement).

“We reject the draft charter...”

The Constitutional Drafting Committee this week published the final draft of its proposed new constitution. Pheu Thai released a statement criticising the proposal: “We reject the draft charter that will regress the country... Pheu Thai Party requests that the people come out and vote to “reject” the draft charter that does not recognize the people’s power and lacks democratic principles.” (Similarly, when an initial draft was released in February, former prime minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said: “The draft charter is retrogressive”.)

The new draft stipulates that 244 members of the Senate will be selected by a panel chosen by the junta, with the remaining six Senate seats reserved for the leaders of the armed services. A referendum on the charter will take place on 7th August; unlike the referendum on the previous constitution, campaigns against the charter will be illegal, with a penalty of up to ten years in jail.

Through The Lens Of Prime Minister

An exhibition of photographs by Dmitry Medvedev, Russian Prime Minister (and former president, when Medvedev and Vladimir Putin switched roles to avoid presidential term limits) opened on 23rd March. The exhibition, Through The Lens Of Prime Minister [sic] at Siam Paragon in Bangkok, will close on 3rd April. Around 100 photographs are included, mostly aerial shots of landscapes in Russia and elsewhere.

Medvedev visited Thailand last April, and in the exhibition booklet he writes: "I saw Thailand not only through the eyes of a Head of Government of a friendly country, but also through the eyes of a traveler." Despite the coup, Thailand and Russia have indeed remained "friendly" allies, and Medvedev's comment is presumably a reference to America distancing itself from the Thai military junta.

Sazigyo

Sazigyo: Burmese Manuscript Binding Tapes - Woven Miniatures Of Buddhist Art, by Ralph Isaacs, is the first book on the art and craft of sazigyo, decorative cotton tapes made by Burmese weavers. As Isaacs says in his preface, his scope is as narrow as the tapes themselves: "This book aims to introduce art lovers and textile enthusiasts to a little-known but fascinating textile art form."

Sazigyo are functional objects, used to tie Buddhist manuscripts into bundles, though they are also textual and visual artworks: "Sazigyo are much more than a length of narrow cotton tape: their woven messages and pictorial symbols carry a wealth of information about Burmese Buddhist beliefs and practice". Almost 1,000 colour images of sazigyo are included (reproduced either at 1:1 scale or enlarged) and there is even an authentic sazigyo bookmark instead of a standard ribbon.

The book is divided into five sections. Part one is mostly superfluous, giving general background on Burmese culture and Buddhism (a "brief introduction, inevitably oversimplified"). After an explanation of the craft of sazigyo in part two, parts three and four provide a unique and detailed study of sazigyo texts and imagery. According to Isaacs, "The miniature pictorial images have instant appeal and are perhaps the chief charm of the sazigyo." His taxonomy and interpretation of sazigyo pictures are fascinating. (Part five is a guide to sazigyo weaving techniques by Peter Collingwood.)

"You cowardly bastards..."

More archive material from the making of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey has been published online. Cinematographer Bruce Logan, who began his career working on 2001, wrote an article for Zacuto that reproduced two of Kubrick's memos from 1967.

One memo to the special-effects unit began: "You cowardly bastards ran away last night without facing the music on the mask and other ancillary nightmares connected with the Jupiter shot." The other, a note to Logan, apologises for not giving him an increase in salary.

Earlier this year, the Smithsonian published a Kubrick letter from the Arthur C Clarke archive, and a Kubrick memo is currently included in an exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image. In 2014, the BFI published several other Kubrick letters related to 2001.

The Independent

Today, The Independent published its final print edition, thirty years after it was launched in 1986. (Its sister paper, The Independent On Sunday, ceased publication last week.) UK newspapers are traditionally owned by press barons with political agendas, though The Independent was (as its editorial reminds us today on page two), "free from both proprietorial interference and party allegiance."

Today's final edition has a wrap-around cover with the headline "STOP PRESS" and a double-page spread of notable Independent front pages. It also includes a souvenir supplement featuring valedictory columns by former editors and correspondents. Founding editor Andreas Whittam Smith reflects on "this sad occasion, the publication of the last print edition of The Independent". Current editor Amol Rajan looks to the digital future: "when it comes to general interest, printed weekday news, in the long run we are all dead." (Editors of other newspapers, with more financial resources and higher circulations, might not necessarily agree.)

In 1992, The Independent's circulation briefly overtook that of The Times, and Times proprietor Rupert Murdoch launched a price war that spread to the tabloids. (Ironically, the price war's only casualty was Murdoch's own Today. The Independent survived, though its circulation declined.) It was sold in 2010 for the nominal sum of £1 to Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev, who later launched the i. The i was so successful that, according to the latest ABC sales figures, its circulation is now five times higher than The Independent's.

The Independent was a truly innovative newspaper. It devoted more space to international news than the other broadsheet titles. It was the first national UK paper to appoint a female editor (Rosie Boycott, in 1998). Its radical decision to switch from broadsheet to tabloid size (publishing in both formats in 2003, and fully converting in 2004) prompted The Times and The Guardian to follow suit. It was arguably even more liberal than The Guardian, consistent in its lack of royal coverage and unequivocal in its opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It was also notable for its poster-style front pages dominated by full-page images, such as last year's tragic photograph of Alan Kurdi that other newspapers were not brave enough to print on page one.

Tattoo

In 2014, Anne and Julien curated the exhibition Tatoueurs, Tatoues, the first museum survey of the history of tattooing. The exhibition catalogue, Tattoo, is arguably the only book featuring equal coverage of ancient tattoos, twentieth-century tattoo culture, and contemporary tattooing.

Like Decorated Skin (by Karl Groning) and The World Of Tattoo, Tattoo discusses tribal tattooing from around the world. Tattoo covers Japan, Native America, Europe, Polynesia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, and China, with essays by experts on regional tattooing such as Lars Krutak, Luc Renaut, Joe Cummings, Michael McCabe, and Jerome Pierrat. The World Of Tattoo and Decorated Skin have additional chapters on Africa, India, and South America. Like The World Of Tattoo, Tattoo has an extensive bibliography.

The catalogue also covers tattooing in the modern era, with chapters on sideshows, prison tattoos, and tattooing in the military. The tattoo renaissance in San Francisco and New York (first documented by Arnold Rubin in Marks Of Civilization) is represented by interviews with Don Ed Hardy (from Modern Primitives, by Andrea Juno and V Vale) and Lyle Tuttle, and correspondence from Sailor Jerry.

Tattoo's illustrations are similarly wide-ranging, "retracing the ancient nature, ubiquity and diversity of forms of tattooing as well as the wealth and aesthetic quality of contemporary works." Antique decorated skulls and tattooed skin fragments are followed by contemporary tattoo designs rendered on realistic silicone replicas of human body parts. (The History Of Tattooing was the first historical study of the subject, and 100 Years Of Tattoos is a visual history of modern tattooing.)

Postmodernism

The Victoria & Albert Museum's Postmodernism: Style & Subversion 1970-1990, curated by Glenn Adamson and Jane Pavitt in 2011 and 2012, was the first major exhibition of postmodern popular culture, design, and architecture. The exhibition catalogue, edited by Adamson and Pavitt, "follows several other major V&A exhibitions that have tackled the 'grand narratives' of twentieth-century style: Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Modernism amongst them."

The catalogue begins with a long essay surveying the postmodern landscape, followed by forty short chapters, each concentrating on a particular and specific aspect of postmodern culture. The editors note the "kaleidoscopic structure of this book - our own single narrative, accompanied by a 'heap of fragments', essays that are multi-vocal and wide-ranging, addressing the particular, episodic and personal".

This reflects the cultural fragmentation associated with postmodernism, as illustrated in Four Post-Modern Streams, an infographic by Charles Jencks (author of the influential The Language Of Post-Modern Architecture). The Anti-Aesthetic, edited by Hal Foster, was the first anthology of postmodern theory, and remains a key text.

Modernism

The Victoria & Albert Museum's exhibition Modernism: Designing A New World 1914-1939, curated by Christopher Wilk, opened in London in 2006 and was later shown in Germany and the US (where it was retitled Essential Modernism). The catalogue, edited by Wilk, contains eleven broad essays, and extended captions describing each of the 300 exhibits. The essays are organised into themes, ranging from conventional Modernist concepts (such as mechanisation and utopianism) to more surprising topics (nature and athleticism).

The catalogue has comprehensive coverage of design, architecture, and mass culture, including an essay on Modernist cinema. It defines Modernism as: "an espousal of the new and, often, an equally vociferous rejection of history and tradition; a utopian desire to create a better world, to reinvent the world from scratch; an almost messianic belief in the power and potential of the machine and industrial technology; a rejection of applied ornament and decoration; an embrace of abstraction; and a belief in the unity of all the arts".

There have been previous surveys of Modernism, most famously Nikolaus Pevsner's essential Pioneers Of The Modern Movement (reissued as Pioneers Of Modern Design). There are also numerous histories of Modernism's influence on art (Art Since 1900, by Hal Foster et al.), design (History Of Modern Design, by David Raizman), architecture (Space, Time & Architecture, by Sigfried Giedion; and Architecture Since 1900, by William JR Curtis), typography (Pioneers Of Modern Typography, by Herbert Spencer), and sculpture (Modern Plastic Art, by Carola Giedion-Welcker; reissued as Contemporary Sculpture).

The key Modernist manifestos were Le Corbusier's Vers Une Architecture (translated as Towards A New Architecture, and later as Toward An Architecture) and Jan Tschichold's Die Neue Typographie (The New Typography). The International Style, by Henry Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, defined Modernist architecture. Foto-Auge (Photo-Eye), by Tschichold and Franz Roh, was a portfolio of 'new vision' photography. Die Kunstismen (The Isms Of Art), by Hans Arp and El Lissitzky, was a guide to Modernist art movements from 1914 to 1924.

The Modernism exhibition was one of several V&A surveys of major periods in art history, including Baroque 1620-1800, International Arts & Crafts, Art Nouveau 1890-1914, and Art Deco 1910-1939. It was followed by Postmodernism: Style & Subversion 1970-1990.

Design: The Definitive Visual History

Design: The Definitive Visual History claims to be "the most comprehensive, inspiring, and accessible history of design ever." It features industrial design, ceramics, glass, furniture, jewellery, metalwork, textiles, and graphics, so it's comprehensive in that sense, though its coverage is broad rather than deep. Accessible often means simplified, which is the case with this and other DK books: the captions are largely descriptive, and the body text is limited to one or two paragraphs per page.

The book (written by Alexandra Black, RG Grant, Ann Kay, Philip Wilkinson, Iain Zaczek) is probably unrivalled for the quantity of its photographs: there are thousands of them, all in colour, though most are quite small. Its format is similar to Decorative Arts and the more concise The Look Of The Century (by Michael Tambini). Phaidon Design Classics has larger photographs, and profiles 999 objects.

Design covers the history of its subject from 1850 until today, and it's surprisingly up-to-date, including products from 2015. Each double-page spread covers a different aspect of design, and the most interesting are those that show the evolution of various product categories, including writing machines (from typewriters to computers) and telephones (from rotary dials to smartphones). It has no bibliography, though History Of Modern Design (by David Raizman), The Story Of Design, and the superb History Of Design are the most comprehensive narrative histories of design.

The Independent On Sunday

Today, The Independent On Sunday published its final print edition. Its masthead was changed to read "THE INDEPENDENT", and its supplement The New Review was devoted entirely to reprints of some of its best articles and a centre-page spread of memorable covers. Editor Lisa Markwell, writing on page three of The New Review, pointed out that "we are Fleet Street's smallest team," a recognition of her newspaper's lack of resources.

The Independent On Sunday was launched on 28th January 1990. It is now the first UK national newspaper to convert to a digital-only news brand. Its sister paper, The Independent, will publish its final print edition on 26th March. Ironically, the Independent titles were eclipsed by the i, which currently has a circulation five times higher than The Independent's.

Thailand Eye

Thailand Eye (ไทยเนตร), an exhibition of Thai contemporary art, opened at BACC in Bangkok on 18th March. The extensive exhibition catalogue features profiles of seventy-five artists, though only twenty-four are featured in the exhibition itself. (The participating artists were ultimately approved by the Ministry of Culture as the exhibition is part of the Ministry's Totally Thai project.)

Thailand Eye was curated by Serenella Ciclitira (who also edited the catalogue), Nigel Hurst (director of the Saatchi Gallery, where the exhibition was shown last year) and Apinan Poshyananda (Permanent Secretary for Culture). Apinan has curated many previous exhibitions, notably the large-scale survey Traces Of Siamese Smile, and one of his videos was shown in From Message To Media.

Kosit Juntaratip, the most interesting of the selected artists, is represented by photographs and video of Lily Ovary, a performance in which he married a blow-up doll. An installation by Sakarin Krue-On, previously shown at Imply Reply, is also included, as are some of Manit Sriwanichpoom's Pink Man photographs. A sculpture by Rolf von Bueren, with an intricate wooden body and a crocodile's skull, is similar to his crocodile sculpture from the 2012 exhibition Thai Trends. Thailand Eye will close on 7th August.

Visual Project: Very Thai

Every day this month, Bangkok's TCDC will screen three vintage Thai films as part of its Visual Project series. The screenings, titled Very Thai, include Wisit Sasanatieng's Thai New Wave cult classic Tears Of The Black Tiger. (Previous Visual Project seasons have included Woody Allen films, Picasso documentaries, and Creativities Unfold highlights.)

Wisit's film is a combination of 'spaghetti western' and melodramatic Thai lakorn elements, and it has a uniquely over-saturated colour palette. It has previously been shown at the Thai Film Archive in 2009 and 2010, and at BACC in 2012. Tears Of The Black Tiger was his debut feature, and his subsequent films are Citizen Dog, The Unseeable, The Red Eagle, and รุ่นพี่.

The Story Of De Stijl

The Story Of De Stijl: Mondrian To Van Doesburg, by Hans Janssen and Michael White, accompanies Mondrian & De Stijl (2011), a permanent exhibition at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague. The book, published by Abrams, discusses geometric abstraction and the magazine that gave the movement its name (De Stijl, edited by Theo Van Doesburg), though it also highlights the wide range of activities of the De Stijl group. These include furniture design (such as Gerrit Rietveld's famous Red & Blue Chair), architecture, urban planning, fashion, and advertising.

The book is organised in "a fragmentary narrative style" with short chapters each discussing a specific event, theme, or artefact. As the Gemeentemuseum director explains in his foreword: "Telling a chronological story might contribute to a linear understanding of De Stijl, which is not emphasised here, but could not do justice to the movement's many facets". HLC Jaffe's De Stijl 1917-1931: The Dutch Contribution To Modern Art (1956) is a more conventional linear history of the movement.

100 Years Of Tattoos

100 Years Of Tattoos, by David McComb (a former editor of Bizarre magazine) is a history of tattooing since World War I. The book, published by Laurence King, includes hundreds of vintage photographs of tattoos from various countries, principally Britain, America, and Japan.

McComb describes the link between tattoos and the armed forces: "From the beginning of World War I until the end of World War II, Western tattoos - which for centuries had been intrinsically linked with seafaring and the military - were largely regarded as a sign of patriotism or a symbol of freedom." In the inter-war years, tattoos were novelty attractions: "Heavily tattooed sideshow performers... helped to popularise body art in the early- to mid-twentieth century".

After World War II, tattoos became socially unacceptable: "The reputation of tattoos took a beating in the mid-1940s, when photographs from Nazi concentration camps... showed emaciated prisoners tattooed with crude identification numbers". They were also associated with criminals - "Today's most popular tattoo style, black and grey, was born in the US penal system" - and Hells Angels: "the confrontational ink won by outlaw bikers and urban gangs also helped law-abiding middle-class citizens regard tattoos as a mark of deviance."

A tattoo renaissance began in the 1970s in San Francisco: "tattoos were adopted by a variety of subcultures... to show mainstream society that ink was no longer the preserve of bikers and criminals." Charles Gatewood documented this tattoo subculture in books such as Forbidden Photographs (1981; reissued in 1995 with a graphic cover), and the Re/Search book Modern Primitives (1989) was the first comprehensive guide to contemporary body art. The term 'Tattoo Renaissance' was coined by Arnold Rubin in his book Marks Of Civilization (1988).

100 Years Of Tattoos does not include a bibliography. Wilfred Dyson Hambly's The History Of Tattooing (1925; reissued in 2009 with additional illustrations) was the first anthropological study of global tattoo practices. Karl Groning's Decorated Skin (1997) is a heavily illustrated guide to tribal body decoration. Maarten Hesselt van Dinter's The World Of Tattoo (2005) is the most comprehensive account of historical tattooing, and Tatouers, Tatoues (2014) was the first major exhibition devoted to the history of tattoos. (The exhibition catalogue, Tattoo, was edited by Anne and Julien.)

Tears Of A Clown

Tears Of A Clown, the cabaret show Madonna performed last night at the Forum theatre in Melbourne, was the complete antithesis of a Madonna concert. Usually, every second of her live performances is meticulously choreographed, resulting in theatrical events with plenty of spectacle but little spontaneity. In contrast, Tears Of A Clown had no dance routines, costume changes, or choreography, and Madonna described it as "this work in progress, this rough rehearsal".

Madonna made her entrance on a child's tricycle, wearing a pink wig (like the one she wore while performing Like A Virgin on Top Of The Pops in 1984) and a clown costume. She began by announcing: "First of all, I wanna make a disclaimer, because if anyone thinks they came here to see a finished, final show, there's the door." (The audience - 1,500 Australian members of her fan club - had been waiting outside the theatre for four hours, so they were unlikely to leave.)

The show was an incongruous combination of corny jokes and melancholy. One song, Intervention, was dedicated to her son, over whom she's currently fighting a custody battle: "Everybody knows the saga of me and my son Rocco. It's not a fun story to tell or think about." Introspective moments like this felt awkward, with the crowd regularly shouting reassurance, and the concert was intimate though fairly shambolic.

Madonna seemed relaxed during the show, drinking cocktails between songs (most of which were ballads). She performed two cover versions (Send In The Clowns and Between The Bars), and the only song from the current Rebel Heart Tour was her traditional encore, Holiday. The full set list was: Send In The Clowns, Drowned World/Substitute For Love, X-Static Process, Between The Bars, Nobody's Perfect, Easy Ride, Intervention, I'm So Stupid, Paradise (Not For Me), Joan Of Arc, Don't Tell me, Mer Girl, Borderline, Take A Bow, and Holiday.

The Story Of Emoji

Art Of The Royal Court

Art Of The Royal Court: Treasures In Pietre Dure From The Palaces Of Europe, curated by Wolfram Koeppe, Ian Wardropper, and Annamaria Giusti, was "the most comprehensive presentation ever dedicated to the subject of pietre dure", bringing together almost 150 objects from Italy and other European countries. The exhibition, at New York's Metropolitan Museum in 2008, was accompanied by a catalogue edited by Koeppe. Giusti, who co-wrote the catalogue, is the author of the only other English-language studies of pietre dure (published in 1992 and 2006).

The catalogue's first 100 pages consist of eight essays on the history of pietre dure, followed by more than 300 pages of plates and detailed accounts of each item in the exhibition. The exhibits include decorative objects and pieces of furniture, notably the Farnese Table (decorated by Giovanni Mynardo, circa 1565-1573), described as "one of the most superbly executed and evocative pietre dure objects in existence".

The Sun

David Dinsmore, former editor of The Sun, has been found guilty of breaching the sexual offences act, in a case related to footballer Adam Johnson's conviction for sexual activity with a child. Dinsmore, who is now Chief Operating Officer of The Sun's publisher, News UK, was order to pay £1,000 in damages. The publisher was not prosecuted, as police mistakenly filed charges against News Corp, which is not liable.

The Sun published a photograph of Johnson and his fifteen-year-old victim on 4th March last year, two days after Johnson was arrested. The photo was taken from the teenager's Facebook page; her face was pixelated, though the court ruled that anyone who had seen the image on Facebook could have recognised it when it appeared in The Sun.

The photograph was heavily edited before it was printed, to the extent that it could plausibly be called a photomontage rather than a single image. Apart from the pixelation, the victim's face was airbrushed, her hair was artificially shortened and coloured, the lower portion was cropped, and the background was completely replaced. (The new background was taken from a photograph of Irish President Michael Higgins at a park in Dublin.)

The Sun labelled the photo a "PICTURE EXCLUSIVE", with a headline inaccurately describing the girl as someone Johnson had "bedded". The Sun's sensationalising of the photograph was inappropriate, and the newspaper removed the article and photo from its website following complaints from readers.

The day after Johnson was convicted, The Daily Telegraph also printed the photograph (3rd March, on page eight), almost exactly a year after The Sun did so. The Telegraph pixelated the victim's face and hair, though their photo was otherwise unaltered, with none of the changes made by The Sun. The Telegraph is not facing prosecution, despite publishing the photo after charges were brought against The Sun. Like The Sun, The Telegraph has also removed the image from its website.