Spirit of the age?
From the Turner Prize nominees to the Tate Tanks - everyone's talking about performance art again

Edvard Munch's The Scream: a few facts and theories
Why the painting John Boulton called a 'unique visual image of panic' is one of the most picked over in art history

Ai Weiwei's Fragments in the US for the first time
Tradition and 21st century Chinese life come together at the Sackler Gallery, Washington

Warhol before his 15 minutes
New York's Site/109 gallery exhibits John Kennedy's portraits of Andy Warhol on the cusp of fame

Turner Prize 2012 nominees announced
Spartacus Chetwynd, Paul Noble, Luke Fowler and Elizabeth Price are this year's nominees

Norse mythology inspires zero energy sauna
Italian-Swedish architect’s zero energy sauna borrows elements from folklore

The genius of Noma (by the genius of elBulli)
Ferran Adrià on why René Redzepi's Noma scored a third win at the World's 50 Best Restaurant Awards last night

Phaidon at the 50 Best Restaurant Awards
Noma top again, Magnus Nilsson's Fäviken is fast riser, Mugaritz at number three

Todd Saunders' ultimate artist studio
Canadian architect's studio on remote island of Fogo looks like a great place to create

Dior Homme showcases Robert Montgomery
Creative Director Kris Van Assche picks phaidon.com-featured artist for new pop up Dior Homme store

Zaha Hadid’s frozen water table
Hadid explores the dynamics of water with latest design - no need to worry about spilling something hot on it

Stephen Shore The five things that changed my life
The legendary American photographer in conversation at SF Moma

Jamie Shovlin's Muse Music
The painter and conceptual artist on the music that gets him in a creative mood

Weegee - vintage paparazzo
See the work of the sensationalist New York snapper who inspired Stan Douglas

Bruno Zhu's big look at the ordinary
The Portugese photographer's constructed images are printed big to give the normal a sense of grandeur

Haw-lin's online gallery makes first step into offline
Nathan Cohen and Jacob Klein's internet mood board gets its first gallery show in London

The Phaidon guide to art speak - Performance Art
Decoding the language of art criticism - or, how to speak 'art'

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry - first look at the film
Alison Klayman's movie opens this summer. Watch the trailer here and find out how to win tickets to the premiere

The Jekyll and Hyde of furniture
Design brand La Change presents light and dark versions of each of its pieces at the Milan Furniture Fair

Concrete - the rehabilitation starts here
Urban Architecture Office's concrete FKI House in Japan is part of a growing trend - Phaidon has it covered

Richard Weston’s crystal patterns
How an architecture professor became Vogue’s “most unexpected new design star”

A very chilled out building
The Social Services Building by Dosmasuno architects in Spain takes green to a completely new level

The first step towards grow-your-own furniture?
Maarten De Ceulaer’s Mutations series At Milan Furniture Fair imagines what we might be sitting on in the future

J Mayer H's strangely shaped buildings
German architecture practice builds asymmetric police station and justice house in Georgian town

Vancouver tower channels spirit of the Flatiron
BIG architects' Beach & Howe building 'swerves' away from the noise and exhaust of the nearby Granville bridge

Pierre Dinand's incredible Salvador Dali stories
The legendary perfume bottle designer talks to Phaidon about his secret collaboration with the surrealist painter

Better Buy Design - The SodaStream
Swiss designer Yves Béhar updates a Seventies household icon (that was actually designed in 1903)

Lauren Hillebrandt - 'boredom inspires me'
The Dutch photographer rebels against the repetitiveness of daily life in her new series The Day

John Pawson's stylish book launch
Calvin Klein's Madison Avenue store plays host to the architect's A Visual Inventory launch party

Hirst and Turner - more alike than you'd think
Artistic showmanship didn't start with bisecting bovines - Turner too was criticised for his 'soapsuds and whitewash'

Jack Kerouac by Elliott Erwitt
The Magnum photographer shot the On The Road author the year he joined the renowned photo agency

Wiener Schnitzel – the remake
Wiener Schnitzel’s new restaurant in the Austrian capital mixes modern and medieval – to great effect

Allison Cortson - the woman who paints with dust
Santa Monica artist photographs subjects at home then asks them for three months worth of vacuum cleaner bags

The thought-provoking illustrations of Sara Fanelli
Her work hangs in the Tate and appears in the New Yorker - now she's created an innovative children’s book

How the art market became a luxury goods business
Artist Andrea Fraser highlights uncomfortable truths and shocking statistics in her essay L’1% C’est Moi

A new architectural landmark for downtown LA
Diller Scofidio + Renfro's Broad Museum takes its place alongside buildings by Frank Gehry and Arata Isozaki

Everyday Icon #7 The banjo
In memory of Earl Scruggs we take a look at the design origins of the instrument he made famous

The 'Lynchian menace' of Anne Kathrin Greiner
The Berlin-based photographer on her fascination with how architectural spaces affect human behaviour

Why a chair is like a pop song
The Bouroullec Brothers have a theory why the chair keeps being reinvented - we think it's a good one

Mies van der Rohe star of the Google doodle
Crown Hall is featured on the Google doodle as we look at how Mies van der Rohe changed architecture teaching

The beauty of the golden ratio
Artist Jo Niemeyer's obsession with the magic number 1.61803399, that's influenced art for thousands of years

Looking back at the future of architecture
Jean-Louis Cohen's The Future Of Architecture 'expands architectural history's perspective' says Hans Ibelings

Mark Ronson's musical architecture
Visitors will use architecture to remix the producer's Olympic music at London 2012 games

Tino Sehgal is coming to the Tate
The phrase "you really had to be there" will take on new meaning at the most unpredictable show of 2012

The perfectly designed world of Gary Card
The man who made Lady Gaga's bone mask ponders the fine line between art, design and commerce

Nika Neelova's salvaged memories
The big hit of the Crisis Commission opens up on her Paris and Moscow childhood and how it still affects her work

Urbanus create high tech Marriage Center in China
Chinese architects add to the fun of the big day with floating pathways, elevated entrances and spiral hallways

Everyday Icon #6 The paperclip
11 billion were sold last year in America alone last year but controversy surrounds the origins of this everyday icon

Mad Men reunite at George Lois launch
Jerry della Femina, Tony Palladino and Massimo Vignelli join George Lois at New York Art Directors Club party

Thomas Ruff’s Heavenly Bodies
"Helmut Newton's view on female bodies is so 19th century" photographer tells Phaidon at Gagosian opening

John Chamberlain's Choices at the Guggenheim
Retrospective spanning sculptor's half-century career includes Plexiglas, urethane and colourful car part pieces

The untold story of Jay DeFeo's The Rose
Designer sisters Rodarte present the incredible journey of a beat painter's seminal work

Comic book legend Jean 'Moebius' Giraud 1938-2012
Artist responsible for the look of Tron and Alien and the inspiration behind Bladerunner dies after long illness

Wulf Architekten make beautiful music
Architects add another storey to continue the story of a 1970s cube-shaped music school in Hamm, Germany

Andrea Galvani’s Invisible Sculptures
The Italian artist explores the meaning of experience in his New York Meulensteen Gallery show

Inside the mind of Carmen Herrera
Exploring the creative processes of artists featured in Vitamin P2

How to be a stylish audiophile
From the packaging to the design of its products Scandanavian company AIAIAI makes any audiophile look good

Wolfgang Tschapller's Viennese fancy
Wolfgang Tschapller wins the competition to transform the university where he studied architecture as a student

Michael Heizer's rock begins to roll
Land artist Michael Heizer's Levitated Mass begins its slow journey to LACMA 42 years after he conceived the idea

How Buckminster Fuller inspired Mad Max
The Thunderdome is the evil twin of Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes according to Tom Morton

Architects :mlzd create perforated bronze museum
Switzerland-based :mlzd's striking museum slots into the 13th century fortified town of Rapperswil-Jona seamlessly

Martin Creed 'redesigns' London restaurant
Turner Prize winner creates zigzagging marble floorpiece to mark Sketch in Mayfair's tenth birthday

Craig Garrett's Muse Music
Phaidon's Commissioning Editor for Contemporary Art on the music that gets him in a creative mood

Better Buy Design - The PH Artichoke
Poul Henningsen's 1958 design is not only a stunning statement but also a study in how to light a room correctly

Anders Krisár's unusual body of work
Battered by drugs or maimed by acts of violence, the Swedish artist's heads and torsos evoke human frailty

It was 25 years ago today
Andy Warhol died on February 22, 1987 but his influence on high art and popular culture is as strong as ever

Katie Scott's underwater world
Anatomical accuracy meets scientific fantasy in the illustrations for Fish: Recipes from the sea

Ministry of Design gets to the point
Singapore-based architects' beach-side gallery space in China seeks to question, disturb and redefine

How Disasters Of War made Goya a 'modern' artist
The artist's 200-year-old macabre depiction of the effects of conflict on civilian and soldier is still relevant today

All eyes turn to Australian architecture
Mark Loughnan, principle architect of HASSELL says now is a great time to be in the Southern Hemisphere

Edward Barber's Muse Music
Designer of the London 2012 Olympic torch on the music that gets him in a creative mood

Vivian Maier - the woman unknown
The phenomenon of the photographer's lifetime of work found in a Chicago warehouse continues

Sharp new talent wins MoMA PS1 competition
HWKN's mist-blasting water-expelling design due to open this summer

Inside the mind of Nina Chanel Abney
Exploring the creative processes of artists featured in Vitamin P2

John Pawson's Muse Music
The acclaimed minimalist architect on the music that gets him in a creative mood

Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art gets new look
Architect Sam Marshall on how the city itself inspired his dramatic MCA renovation

Tallest residential building in Manhattan takes shape
Towering a thousand feet over Central Park, Christian de Portzamparc's One 57 is New York's newest des res

Marc Newson makes the compact camera cool again
The London-based Australian designer creates a camera you'll never forget to take with you

Inside the mind of Stephen Bush
Exploring the creative process of an Australian artist featured in Vitamin P2

A closer look at the new Design Museum
Deyan Sudjic takes us through the building proposal by architect John Pawson

Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei join forces again
Following the success of the Bird's Nest at the 2008 Beijing Olympics the trio will design the Serpentine Pavilion

Kusama: 'I promised myself I'd conquer the world'
A rare video interview with Yayoi Kusama and part two of our chat with Tate Modern curator Frances Morris

The Australian beach house with a twist (or two)
McBride Charles Ryan's Klein House is based on 'the Klein bottle' - a structure with only one definable surface

United Visual Artists' Muse Music
The art and design collective on the music that gets them in a creative mood

How a Sydney gallery became a focus for Chinese art
The White Rabbit Gallery in Chippendale boasts a more comprehensive collection than any in China

Inside the mind of Glenn Sorensen
Exploring the creative process of an Australian artist featured in Vitamin P2

Phaidon's focus on Australia
This month we're looking at all the things going on in art, architecture, photography and design down under

Park Associati ascend new heights
New project from Milan architecture firm behind The Cube Restaurant boasts biggest climbing wall in Italy

José Luis López de Zubiria wins award for Mugaritz
Spanish photographer's pictures of chef Andoni Aduriz's dishes are awarded prestigious Lux de Oro

Gioni named Artistic Director of Venice Biennale
Curator of New Museum's record-breaking Carsten Höller show lands art world's biggest job

Artists clown around in LA mansion
Flash mobs, light displays, plate spinning and a macabre twist bring a close to Pacific Standard Time party
