Pierre d’Alancaisez (is) Verdurin

INVERSION, Gay Life After the Homosexual Out now in paperback and eBook. Order at buff.ly/jbCZT9e With Blake Smith, Roger Lancaster, David Moulton, Stephen Adubato, Amir Naaman, Ran Heilbrunn, Pierre d’Alancaisez, Travis Jeppesen, @oliverjdavis.bsky.social, Yotam Feldman, Marcas Lancaster.

On doormats today and on news stands soon: the November issue of The Critic, with my thoughts on Tate's revision of Pictorialism — the movement that turned photography into an art — and the pitfalls of art historicism.

Coming up at Verdurin: Room Tone with @scannerdot.com A critical listening session with Robin Rimbaud and Tim Rutherford-Johnson @purlis.bsky.social. 📅 20 November, 7pm 📍 Verdurin, Hoxton 🎟️ buff.ly/Kqyoyks

notes and notices: The 90s: Art and Fashion at Tate Britain ★★★☆☆ When Barthes proposed in 1980 that everyone depicted in a photograph was already dead, his words fell on deaf ears. A decade on, the image would be proof of raw life. Read on: buff.ly/RkZATKM

Something Ghostly: Quentin S. Crisp will be speaking on ‘The Supernatural Function of Literature’ on JF Martel’s Weirdosphere on Halloween. buff.ly/iFwmsXY

Next week at Verdurin: Disenchantment, or the Liturgy of Lack A discussion on religious experience with Peter Rollins.  📅 28 October, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/l7Y0nDC

Shakespeare weighs heavily on the British political imagination. The ‘living tradition’ has seen his plays adapted to contradictory ideas. He is construed as a proto-liberal and plays are taken to be the foundation of an English concern with the social order. Listen: buff.ly/Q2Dm1Zn

Coming up at Verdurin: After Therapy Suffering in the age of Big Mental Health What is the space for genuine illness in ‘mental health’ discourse? A symposium with Mark Vernon, Ashley Frawley, and James Mumford 📅 14 November, 2-6pm 🎟️ buff.ly/yXT2tWz

Exiting the art world is one thing. But an exodus of artists from art itself would be quite another. Successive generations of artists are opting out of making art, citing aesthetic, existential, and political fatigue. I wrote about depression-era aesthetics for The Critic. buff.ly/bOR3OjF

Next week at Verdurin: Disenchantment, or the Liturgy of Lack A discussion on religious experience with Peter Rollins.  📅 28 October, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/l7Y0nDC What if the embrace of alienation gave rise to religious conversion? The route to spiritual salvation already involves doubt and anxiety.

notes and notices: Katherine Hubbard: The Great Room at Studio Voltaire ★★★☆☆ How should we judge the aesthetic products of art therapy? What if, as it must, the art fails to heal? Read on: buff.ly/lK5jAek

What determines whether the ideas of progress give rise to, well, progress, or merely the substitution of the old? In 2025, Verdurin convened a conversation between author of "The Progress Trap" Ben Cobley, Spiked’s Fraser Myers, and environmental philosopher Rupert Read. Listen: buff.ly/hLPlWuc

Tonight at Verdurin: Trauma Fiction A conversation on the literature of collective anguish with Jaspreet Singh-Boparai, Edward McLaren, and Joshua Knapp. 📅 13 October, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/tzAFa4m

Last week at Verdurin, screening and discussing "The Blue Express" with Zinovy Zinik.

Coming up at Verdurin: Disenchantment, or the Liturgy of Lack A discussion on religious experience with Peter Rollins.  📅 28 October, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/uObHIRQ

Recent arrivals at the store. buff.ly/Bx0iNpL

"If I were not 77 and ill, I would gladly offer myself as a stud — if accepted by the women." Why Žižek endorsed Liam Blackford's "The Stud" buff.ly/PA776X8

Next week at Verdurin: Trauma Fiction A conversation on the literature of collective anguish with Jaspreet Singh-Boparai, Edward McLaren, and Joshua Knapp. 📅 13 October, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/tzAFa4m Jaspreet Singh Boparai is a Senior Fellow of the Pharos Foundation and contributing editor at The Lamp.

The anxieties around the decline of reading and literacy paradoxically give rise to outsized fantasies of the power of reading. Edmund King reflects on bibliotherapy and some of the highlights in "Out of Print". Listen: buff.ly/xAayKCi

Does the devaluing of literacy coincide with a devaluing of human minds, experience, and relations, a devaluing expressed in the dominant culture of technicist materialism? Audio now online: buff.ly/xAayKCi

Next week at Verdurin: Trauma Fiction A conversation on the literature of collective anguish with Jaspreet Singh-Boparai, Edward McLaren, and Joshua Knapp. 📅 13 October, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/tzAFa4m Joshua Knapp @havingaknapp is the author of "The Haxton Review".

What if the problem of literacy is not its decline, but rather our hyper-literate state? The written word has become a bulwark against experience, with the reading of social media posts or Substack essays is at best a distraction. Audio now online: buff.ly/xAayKCi

Next week at Verdurin: Trauma Fiction A conversation on the literature of collective anguish with Jaspreet Singh-Boparai, Edward McLaren, and Joshua Knapp. 📅 13 October, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/tzAFa4m Edward McLaren is the author of Bothelford’s Gone, a novel about the grooming gangs in Britain.

Concerns about the technologically fuelled decline of literacy overlook that reading and writing have always been technological. Alison Brady extends Vilém Flusser challenge in this second part of "Out of Print". Now online: buff.ly/xAayKCi

Just wait for "Inversion 2"

Last weekend at Verdurin: The Instant of My Death With Maya Pettersen, Jacob Phillips, David Roden, organised with Rose Lyddon.

The art world maintains that Middle Eastern art has always been “contemporary”. Perhaps. But does it follow that contemporary art itself is a natural vehicle for Islamic thought? I wrote about the making of the contemporary in the Gulf for The Critic. buff.ly/6r6U8SF

Is writing under threat from AI? Is reading a lost art? Could Homer have imagined these questions at the dawn of literacy? Daniel Hadas's talk at "Out of Print", Verdurin's symposium on literacy, held in June 2026 and organised with Edmund King is now online. buff.ly/xAayKCi

TONIGHT: Nitrate Film: The Blue Express Screening and discussion with Zinovy Zinik If rolling or film stock can collapse social strata, could they also couple nations and cultures in ideology? 📅 5 October, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/zMl5kst

Monday at Verdurin: Nitrate Film: The Blue Express Screening and discussion with Zinovy Zinik If rolling or film stock can collapse social strata, could they also couple nations and cultures in ideology? 📅 5 October, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/zMl5kst

Monday in Nitrate Film: The Blue Express Screening and discussion with Zinovy Zinik If rolling or film stock can collapse social strata, could they also couple nations and cultures in ideology? 📅 5 October, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/zMl5kst

Monday in Nitrate Film: The Blue Express Screening and discussion with Zinovy Zinik If rolling or film stock can collapse social strata, could they also couple nations and cultures in ideology? 📅 5 October, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/zMl5kst

Coming up at Verdurin: Trauma Fiction A conversation on the literature of collective anguish with Jaspreet Singh-Boparai, Edward McLaren, and Joshua Knapp. and Joshua Knapp. 📅 13 October, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/rWC6h3y

The full programme for 'The Instant of My Death' — a symposium with Maya Pettersen, Jacob Phillips, David Roden, organised with Rose Lyddon — is now online. (Sold out, alas.) 🎟️ buff.ly/RKDm63f

Next Monday: Nitrate Film: The Blue Express Screening and discussion with Zinovy Zinik If rolling or film stock can collapse social strata, could they also couple nations and cultures in ideology? 📅 5 October, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/zMl5kst

On doormats today and on news stands soon, the October issue of The Critic, with me on "Middle-Eastern contemporary art" — a compound noun that is the opposite of what it seems — and the great refusal, or resignations, of artists too wary to keep making art. buff.ly/NFY0lTu

Fun fact from the Turner Prize press junket on Thursday: more than half of my esteemed colleagues attending didn't bother watching Simon Barclay's video 'The Ruin' for more than a few minutes (the work is much longer). Because lunch was being served.

We get the intellectuals we deserve. I went on BBC's 'Free Thinking' to talk about the problem with a bunch of.. intellectuals. buff.ly/91YIE6m

This kind of "irony" is evident in the Prize selection itself, at the very level of aesthetics. Maybe art is the world, after all. buff.ly/LBatY1S

This year’s Turner Prize catches contemporary art distracted, pulling in multiple directions at once, and blindly misinterpreting the images it makes. In this, it is more “Britain in 2026” than Britain cares to admit. I reviewed the exhibition for The Critic. buff.ly/LBatY1S

There are some forms of vigilantism that I appreciate. (Although sad to have outlived Schiele by such a margin.)

Just announced: Disenchantment, or the Liturgy of Lack A discussion on religious experience with Peter Rollins.  What if the embrace of alienation gave rise to religious conversion? 📅 28 October, 7pm 📍 Verdurin, London 🎟️ buff.ly/gPB42Tk

Going on Radio 4's 'Free Thinking' tonight to talk about.. intellectuals with.. intellectuals.

You can now read the first chapters of Liam Blackford's 'The Stud' — and preorder the ebook — on Apple Books! buff.ly/nzisvvZ

"Check your facts" — the politicisation of art has turned even cultural venue toilet graffiti incredibly dull.

notes and notices: Emma Reyes at White Cube ★★★☆☆   The paintings of the late Colombian Emma Reyes — abstracts of lines, spots, and colours that only occasionally amount to nature or the human...  Read on: buff.ly/8QN1h49

Coming up in Nitrate Film: The Blue Express Screening and discussion with Zinovy Zinik If rolling or film stock can collapse social strata, could they also couple nations and cultures in ideology? 📅 5 October, 7pm 🎟️ buff.ly/v8j4j4F