If you know me well, you may well be aware that I like chairs. An awful lot. And if you don’t know me well at all – hello, I’m Emilia, and chairs are very much my thing. I don’t want this column to become the usual spiel you’d find on design websites, inside beautiful Phaidon publications, or buried in dense old essays dedicated to mid-century furniture. Chairs are really intriguing objects to me, ones which ignite my passion for modern interiors, and I want nothing more than to spark that interest in others. This is only possible if you regard Chair of the Week as a personal exchange – I can’t claim to be an expert in modern design, nor am I any good as a writer per se. I do, however,

Wandering around the Other Art Fair in early October, I am drawn to the macabre sculptures of Svetlana Kuznetsova. Delicate gems and jewellery adorn the orifices of sheep’s skulls surrounded by the dead bodies of insects. This mysterious juxtaposition of riches and harrowing images of death seems fitting in light of the artist’s experience growing up in the USSR. Svelana Kuznetsova, Solid Reminder of the Void, 2017 (Photo: Courtesy of Svetlana Kuznetsova) Warm and welcoming, Kuznetsova presents each detail under the sarcophagus-shaped glass in the Savage World of Powers. Three skulls wear crowns representative of their wearer’s high profession: one head is crowned by the golden Monomakh Cap

Dear reader, welcome to the first of what will hopefully be many weekly columns here at the Courtauldian. I am Morgan Haigh, a second-year undergraduate here at the Institute we all call home. My intention with this hebdomadal missive is hesitantly to enter the murky waters of ‘current affairs’ and pull out what I believe to be its pearls, no doubt with much meandering as well. The danger with the news is that it tends to be full of contentious issues, and therefore I will at times express opinions on certain matters. I would like to make clear that these are my own, and not necessarily the views of the Courtauldian or the Courtauld Institute of Art. I would also like to underscore that

The time has come – we are now accepting submissions for the first printed issue of the Courtauldian of the 2018/2019 academic year! As with the previous three issues (Boundaries, Technology, and Heritage), this issue will again be loosely centred on a theme. With the temporary loss of the Courtauld’s collection to various institutions across the world, a gallery sitting empty and ready for renovation, and the imminent departure of Courtauld students from Somerset House, the theme of ABSENCE seems apt to explore. With this in mind we invite students to meditate on the theme in any manner they desire, through features, interviews, reviews, illustrations, artworks, poetry and short stories. Pl

Laurie Anderson, Frieze Talks, Frieze London 2018 (Photo by Linda Nylind) Frieze London 2018 has been labelled the ‘#MeToo art fair’ for featuring more female artists, particularly in the new Social Work section devoted to ‘80s and ‘90s women who challenged the art market. Taken as a whole, Frieze 2018 may have contained the usual art-fair fare, with its an array of loud formalist pieces (splatter canvases, mirrors with elaborate aluminium prints, neon signs and the like) targeted at typical first-tier art collectors. Yet the pieces that stood out were indeed, regardless of the gender of the artist, united by their resignation and profound disillusionment with monumentality. This year’s t