Apollo's wandering eye on the art world. Look out for regular posts taking a rakish perspective on art and museum stories. Got a story for Rakewell? Email rakewell@apollomag.com. Follow @Rakewelltweets.

The leaning fir tree of Southampton

Britain is bedecked with Christmas trees once more – and this year’s surprise hit is a tilting trunk in Southampton

9 Dec 2018

Fishy fragrances and Flemish still lifes

Plus: Lucian Freud on horseback and how Sex and the City made Marina Abramović

7 Dec 2018
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889, Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh, young and old

A portrait photograph long thought to show Van Gogh turns out to depict his brother Theo

2 Dec 2018

David Davis, the accidental Roman emperor

Plus: a street artist with a vendetta in LA and Jerry Saltz dresses up as Frida Kahlo

29 Nov 2018

Michael Jackson’s moony marginalia

A copy of a self-help book once owned by Michael Jackson is up for auction – personalised by the King of Pop himself

23 Nov 2018

A Boris blunder for the Museum of London

Plus: Picasso at Annabel’s and Donald Trump rides across a golden burger

23 Nov 2018

A cat and mouse game at a museum in Japan

A feline farce at the Onomichi City Museum of Art has got social media purring

16 Nov 2018

I’ve got a brush… Frank Sinatra’s paintings go under the hammer

Sotheby’s is selling a clutch of canvases by Old Blue Eyes – as well as a number of curious Sinatra souvenirs

16 Nov 2018

A brush with Boris Johnson

A painter in London is inviting the public to get creative with her portrait of Boris Johnson – by making their own additions

11 Nov 2018

A monumental mishandling of Mo Salah

Plus: selfie sabotage at a museum in Russia and Jim Carrey takes on Ted Cruz… with a painting

7 Nov 2018
Oliver Cromwell (detail; 1656), Samuel Cooper

Oliver Cromwell as you’ve never seen him before… in his romper suit

The Cromwell Museum in Huntingdon is displaying Cromwell artefacts that have never been shown in public before – including his baby clothes

4 Nov 2018
Fifty pence. But not the Brexit one.

Cashing in on Brexit with a new 50p coin

Plus: the poison pen of Alex Katz and the dangling doodles of Keith Richards

1 Nov 2018

A lot of love making, Your Honour

A copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover once owned by the judge who presided over the novel’s obscenity trial is up for auction

26 Oct 2018
Lil Wayne performs during the 2018 Austin City Limits Music Festival at Zilker Park on October 13, 2018 in Austin, Texas, Photo: © SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP/Getty Images

Lil Wayne’s birthday present saves an art student’s bacon

A commission to make a necklace for the rapper comes in the nick of time. Plus: David Byrne’s sceptical reaction to a sculpture by Carsten Höller

25 Oct 2018

Sophie Calle has persuaded some of the biggest names in music to pay tribute to her dead cat

The National, Jarvis Cocker, Pharrell and Bono are among the musicians the artist has corralled

19 Oct 2018

The museum that’s going out of its way to make you queasy

A display of disgusting food is about to open in Malmo. Plus: fluffy floors in Athens and the aphrodisiac art of Olafur Eliasson

11 Oct 2018
Full load: David on a washing machine.

Why David is washing his dirty laundry in public

The white goods specialists at Samsung have plonked the world’s most famous sculpture on top of a washing machine

8 Oct 2018
Matilda Wormwood as an astrophysicist, as imagined by Quentin Blake

Matilda at 30 – still top of the class and now standing up to Donald Trump

Three decades after the publication of Matilda, Roald Dahl’s heroine has been celebrated in new drawings – and with an unexpected sculpture

2 Oct 2018

Lots of bother… as Bez rigs Bargain Hunt

Plus: Rachel Whiteread’s near-miss with the Gruffalo and Mark E. Smith is immortalised on a chip shop

1 Oct 2018
Jeremy Wright MP.

UK culture secretary abandons his projection

Plus: a cannabis museum opens in Las Vegas, and Martin Parr on how Robert Mugabe informs his dress sense

27 Sep 2018

The collector who says he’s sending artists to the moon

Yusaku Maezawa has booked up Elon Musk’s first space flight for an art adventure

21 Sep 2018

Emmanuel Macron gets taken for a mug

Plus: a bizarre museum in North Korea and a top tip from Sarah Lucas for keeping your house safe

20 Sep 2018

Everything must glow – Nicky Wire is having his first solo show

The Manic Street Preachers bassist is showing mixed media works in Pembrokeshire – and he’s not the first bass-player to have a sideline in art

17 Sep 2018

Van Gogh in the shopping mall

Replicas of Van Gogh’s paintings are on a tour of major retail centres in the US. Plus: art on the loose in Toledo and Kanye goes back to school

16 Sep 2018