Culture | ALCYNE

Culture

What Do I Like?

Find a thing you like now — a restaurant, an artwork, a hotel, a coat — and you barely have the thought before the phone is out. Who knows about it? Has it already been written up, discovered, done to death? Should you have known about it six months ago? The phone is very good at answering all of this. Less useful on the more basic question: what do I like? Taste used to have a little more privacy. You saw somewhere, liked the look of it and went in. Somebody sent you to a bar, or a waiter per

Kate Moss photographed by Juergen Teller

Culture

London Before the Algorithm

As Tate Britain prepares to revisit the decade when fashion, art, photography and nightlife occupied the same rooms, the clothes are the easy part to copy. Juergen Teller photographed Kate Moss in 1998 with pink hair, little apparent production and none of the polish that would later become standard around a model of her stature. David Sims was making fashion pictures that could look almost hostile to fashion. Alexander McQueen turned runway shows into events people still describe from memory.

Culture

The Art Calendar: September–December 2026

The exhibitions, fairs and openings to keep track of before the year closes. The autumn art calendar has a fairly dependable geography. New York begins in September, London reaches full volume around Frieze, Paris takes over the following week, and Miami provides the slightly overheated conclusion in December. There is considerably more happening than anyone reasonably needs to see. These are the dates to file. New York Arthur Jafa: I Am Tony New Museum New Museum 24 September 2026 – 31 J

David Lynch, Untitled (Nudes and Smoke), c. 1994

Culture

David Lynch Liked Instructions

At Pace Los Angeles, the artist's photographs show how many of his strangest ideas came with instructions. David Lynch once bought a fish in London, took it home, cut it into pieces and photographed the parts as though they belonged to a model aeroplane. He called it Fish Kit and supplied instructions for putting the fish back together. In Mexico, he made a chicken version. The duck was less successful. There were too many small parts for the photograph to record clearly. It is a useful detail

Culture

The Advantage of Being Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton understood something that increasingly feels difficult to explain: you can take your life seriously without taking yourself particularly seriously. The hair was huge. The nails were impractical. The clothes were knowingly excessive. She spent decades making jokes about all of it, leaving very little for anybody hoping to expose her. She had usually got there first. Algorithms classify our taste. Apps quantify our bodies. Artificial intelligence can analyse a message received at 11