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 Sunday nights are a time of regrouping, of wandering, of staring into the abyss. The fundamental loneliness of a Sunday night, particularly one in winter, is beautifully captured by Peter Kindersley in our brand new slideshow. These are images of poetic desolation.

Scene: ground floor of the Royal Exchange, London, 1983, 8:30 am. The bell sounds, prompting a roar from hundreds of men wearing orange, red and blue jackets, shouting orders for all manner of financial contracts. Phones ring, clerks scribble instructions from clients and rush into the pits shouting the order and dealer's name. By noon, thousands of trades have been made; millions of dollars have been won or lost.

When outsiders observed the London Futures Exchange (LIFFE) from the balcony above, they likened the scene to a gladiator's pit or a bullring. It was a roiling, sweating, shouting and laughing manifestation of global capitalism, the market made flesh. All eyes—hundreds of them—were glued to the ticking movements of prices on the screen above the floor. Nicknamed "Maggie's boys", these traders thrived in Margaret Thatcher's England, a time when a certain rough-and-tumble entrepreneurial spirit challenged the City’s elitist status quo. They are the subject of "Day One Trader", John Sussex’s colourful book about life in the pits of the exchange in the 1980s and 1990s, before electronic trading put these men out of business. A former trader himself, Sussex was on the floor when LIFFE started in 1982, and continued on 20 years later, when the exchange was sold to Euronext and the open outcry method gave way to computerised trading. The result is a somewhat wistful account (with help from Joe Morgan, a journalist) about an era and a group of men who now seem anachronistic. On March 1st Frankfurt's stock exchange—Germany's largest—announced it would also end its traditional floor trading and move to an electronic system.  read more »

Every image is essentially an illusion—a representation of a thing, never the thing itself. For many artists the illusion is itself the art. From early trompe l’oeil paintings to Juan Munoz's close-up photographs of sleight-of-hand card tricks, artists have long shown an affinity for the ploys of grandstanding stage magicians.

"Magic Show", a newly published catalogue to accompany a travelling exhibition of the same name, explores the relationship between art and magic. Written by Jonathan Allen and Sally O'Reilly, who co-curated the show for London's Hayward Gallery, the book discerns the connection between "lowbrow" trickery and loftier manipulations.

Many of the 24 contemporary artists featured (in both the show and the book) borrow directly from iconic magic tricks. Sinta Werner's "Disjunction" plays on the idea of a disappearing act, but in this case it is the viewer who vanishes; the site-specific installation creates the effect of approaching a mirror without a reflection. Susan Hiller's "Homage to Yves Klein" is a more upbeat take on his rather dark photo-montage, "Leap into the Void" (1960). The result is a charming play on the trick of levitation.  read more »

Terry O’Neill, a British photographer, is renowned for his images of stars such as Audrey Hepburn and Frank Sinatra. His work, recognisable for its candid informality, has appeared in magazines such as Life, Vogue, and Rolling Stone, and his access to high-profile subjects led him to become one of the most published photographers of the 1960s and '70s.

Now 71, O’Neill made his name when London was a swinging, creative and altogether chummier place. Evenings at Soho’s Ad Lib Club, a popular haunt for actors, models, musicians and photographers, brought him close to his subjects, and he became friends with the likes of Richard Burton, Michael Caine and David Bowie. His photographs reveal the conflicts, contradictions, desires and dreams that lurked beneath groomed surfaces. He amassed a vast collection of negatives over the years, but as with many photographers of the time, archiving and cataloguing went by the wayside.

Thanks to Getty Images, O'Neill's archive has been properly assessed, and over 40 previously unseen photographs have just gone on show at the Chris Beetles gallery in central London. They are a revelation. O’Neill has an eye for the moment when his subjects are comfortable enough to give something away. The relaxed feel of these images is a world away from those we see of celebrities today, either airbrushed to perfection or snapped on the run.  read more »

Legendary design, drivers from central casting, opposing seats and easy wheelchair access—London’s taxis may be the world’s best. But only if someone else is paying. After seven years here, I’m still shocked by the fares.

Not that one minds paying for quality. Before London I lived in Boston, where the average cabbie seems to be re-enacting a ”Speed”-inspired, gasoline-fuelled death wish. The questionable driving is matched by suitably depraved manners. Cabbies in Mexico City may have a nasty habit of kidnapping their passengers, but at least they seem to understand the value of human life.

In taxis, as in finance and theatre, London’s only real rival may be New York. A yellow cab is nearly as iconic as a black one, but cheaper. Paddington to the Museum of London’s taxi exhibit costs the same as Penn Station to Brooklyn’s Transit Museum (60% further). And in New York it’s easy to pay by credit card, many taxis are energy-efficient hybrids and drivers (sometimes) help with luggage.

New York drivers are occasionally as crazy as their Beantown colleagues. Once I noticed my Manhattan cabbie drifting between lanes. He was relieving himself into a Snapple bottle. But, I got where I was going without delay. In New York the crazy is mostly deployed to your benefit.

Surely, somewhere manages both British sanity and American-style service? For taxis as for everything else, the answer is Canada. Vancouver’s taxis are perfect. But drivers are so careful and friendly it’s like being given a ride by an elderly relative. I forgot I was in a city.  read more »

In November Art Review magazine named Hans Ulrich Obrist the number-one most influential person in the art world. But according to Obrist, the excitement hasn’t interrupted activities at London’s Serpentine Gallery, where he is co-director of exhibitions and programmes and director of international projects. For decades, Obrist has authored analytical commentaries on contemporary art, while simultaneously redefining its presentation at renowned institutions such as the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Obrist also conducts interviews. In the past few years he has released two 1,000-page volumes of his collected conversations with the most talented artists, architects, scientists, engineers and thinkers living today. Most recently he interviewed Jeff Koons for the artist's new book "Hulk Elvis", which features works from the series of the same name. 

It could be intimidating to interview someone with a C.V. like Obrist's, but the man at the other end of the telephone line is disarming and reassuringly self-possessed. He draws his interlocutor into a cocoon of seemingly all-encompassing knowledge about everything involving aesthetics. Obrist speaks incredibly fast, and crams in so many snippets of insight that it would be impossible to relay them all in one pass. Here we present the highlights, including his thoughts on the trouble with meetings, the world's most exciting new art scene and why it is vital to consider posterity.

More Intelligent Life: What did you eat for breakfast this morning?  read more »

For all its epic Kensingtonian splendour, the Victoria & Albert Museum can sometimes seem like a vast curiosity shop. Its eclectic collections have few gaps and, as with New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, wandering without purpose can be a bit overwhelming. It is excusable not to have noticed anything was missing, but for the past ten years the Medieval and Renaissance galleries have been closed for a comprehensive £30m restoration. This reinvigorated wing reopened in November as ten refurbished galleries, and the result is splendid.

Two vast central rooms with cathedral-high ceilings elegantly and accessibly showcase a collection that could easily merit a museum of its own. The Santa Chiara chapel, moved from Florence, sits near a Thomas Becket casket from Limoges. Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Forster is exhibited with Donatello’s "Lamentation over the Dead Christ"–I could go on all day, or for a whole lifetime, without doing the riches of these rooms justice.  read more »

Introducing is a talented, Oxford-based nine-piece band with a very specific goal. Every show they perform is essentially the same. With the exception of slight variations in their encores, the set never changes. Their mission? To perform DJ Shadow's first LP, "Endtroducing", in its entirety, from start to finish.

If their recent sold-out show at London's Jazz Café is any indication, there is clearly an audience for what could seem like a totally random idea for a band.

Released 13 years ago, "Endtroducing" was created almost entirely from samples. It is melancholy, dark, funky and jazzy, and it shifts–sometimes smoothly, sometimes not–from hip hop to electro to jungle to breakbeat. Island Records re-released the album in 2005, and in 2006 Time magazine named it one of the best 100 albums of all time. The album's raw, eerie-but-funky style even spawned some short, interpretive films.

Witnessing Introducing perform the album is like watching a film with a fan who knows every single line; you can't imagine why they would want to watch it again, but they do, and they relish in their ability to recite all the dialogue. The band's commitment to the album is impressive and fun to watch. Mike Reed's ability to duplicate the album's specific, aggressive, funky drum beats is truly impressive. Andy Leung's keyboard mimicry is immaculate, and the turntable scratching is spot-on.  read more »

Gladys Perint Palmer, or GPP as she is often known, started sketching fashion in the 1960s. Soon her irreverent and instantly recognisable style catapulted her into the industry’s elite. Now executive director of fashion at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University, she has illustrated international catwalk shows for publications such as Elle, the New Yorker and Vogue, and has drawn for fashion houses including Dior, Missoni and Versace. Such is her reputation that in 1998, “The Fashion Book”, an encyclopaedia of fashion, named her one of the 500 most influential people in fashion since 1860.

The only child of a dentist father and dressmaker mother, Perint Palmer was born in Budapest (she keeps her age a secret) and moved to London when she was a toddler. She trained in fashion design at St Martin’s College of Art under Muriel Pemberton—a painter who took fashion training out of the strictures of the couturier system—and Elizabeth Suter, an illustrator and lecturer, and continued her education at the Parsons School of Design in New York.  read more »

In the realm of industrial design, Dieter Rams is Yoda. The foundations were laid during a 40-year tenure as design director of Braun, a German electronics manufacturer. Rams helped to usher a functional modernist agenda into households the world over.

Elevating audio speakers from the carpet and removing the record player from its heavy wooden tomb, Rams ignited a design revolution with a philosophy of “less but better”. He took a functional and aesthetically streamlined approach to everything from alarm clocks to cigarette lighters, and then to arm chairs and shelving units while at Vitsoe, an international furniture manufacturer.

His Ten Principles of Design are routinely referred to as “commandments” in the field. Designers such as Jonathan Ive, Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa hew closely to Rams's precepts, such as “design is consequent to the last detail” and “design is as little design as possible.”  read more »