There can be surprises when early and contemporary paintings of one and the same artist meet up – as in the case of Rolf-Gunter Dienst.

Artist Stephan Huber has created many fantastics map. And they’re now all brought together in his “world atlas".

An attentive viewer will constantly find something new and surprising in Christiane Schlosser’s drawings.

Anyone who saw it probably headed straight for the attic to retrieve the old “Remington”, “Gabriele” or “Hermes Baby” typewriter.

Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss” is for the Austrian Gallery in the Upper Belvedere in Vienna what the “Mona Lisa” is for the Louvre in Paris. With all manner of consequences for the foyer.

Author Arno Schmidt proved way back when that popular hits can be political, if you only grasp them right.

Backdrop, sculpture or theme world? Temporary architectures in the social media age reveal more than one might at first think: an architecture analysis using Instagram.

Horst P. Horst’s fashion photography is world famous. Now a hitherto unknown facet of his oeuvre is being unveiled as part of a major retrospective at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum: his playful use of patterns of nature.

What do a matchbox and a match have to say about the state of the world in general and of art in particular?

Here are the poor, there are the rich. And neither side is finding happiness – Denmark’s National Gallery in Copenhagen is dedicating a retrospective to the artist duo Elmgreen and Dragset.

In the spaces of Louisiana Museum Olafur Eliasson has created a rough, Nordic landscape made of scree. It changes with anyone moving in it.

At Design Miami, which took place in parallel to Art Basel, the French galleries presented an awful lot of Jean Prouvé originals. The icing on the cake: Konstantin Grcic transformed an Audi TT into a mobile living machine.

Dries Van Noten is an idiosyncratic couturier who has never obeyed the laws of the fashion world and instead favors slowness and quality. Through August, Paris’ Musée des Arts Décoratifs is hosting an elaborately designed exhibition on his work tracing the art and fashion sources that inspired his unique creations.

Today’s overabundance of plastic waste is the focus of the exhibition “An Ecosystem of Excess” currently on show at the Schering Foundation in Berlin. Artist Pinar Yoldas has designed a laboratory featuring plastic-digesting monstrosities.

French designer Martin de Bie couldn’t care two hoots about conventional products. Instead of focusing on functionality and usage, he develops instruments that transform sounds into light and entice the senses.

The pile still hasn’t been cleared. But I’m tempted by what I haven’t yet seen or read. So let’s keep looking. This time in the direction of photography and drawing.

If a critical stance is the order of the day in the Mecca of German media freaks, will electronic networks such as Facebook cease to be as well accepted in the world after Snowden’s NSA revelations?

A year ago Amsterdam’s Rijksmusum launched its Rijksstudio, an online platform that allows users to download images of the museum's artworks for free and edit them at will. Sellout or seductive?

Imagine roadblocks, barbed wire obstacles and sandbag barricades against a backdrop of deserted ruins: A leading member of Magnum Photos, Josef Koudelka took his panoramic camera to document the landscape along the route of the barrier that separates Israel and Palestine. His latest volume “The Wall” presents these images in an album that is as somber as it is impressive.

Mars, the Red Planet and the Earth’s neighbor in the Solar System, has long inspired human imagination. Now, for the first time, a fascinating book of incredibly high quality photographs gives us the chance to see its barren surface in detail.

Hitherto creative types have tended to consider self-help books a waste of time. But that is about to change. Frank Berzbach has written a small book about the “Kunst ein kreatives Leben zu führen” (The art of living a creative life), which looks at how a creative person might achieve a state of Zen in their everyday life.

Always provocative, Stefan Wewerka initially became famous for his distorted reproductions of architectural monuments, before setting his mind to asymmetrical furniture. On September 14, 2013, the architect, sculptor and product designer died in Berlin at the age of 85. An obituary by Jörg Stürzebecher.

Not only a treat for lovers of music, the newly opened “Museo del Violino” in Stradivari’s birth town Cremona is also an architectural delight: a valuable collection of historic instruments housed in a beautifully converted 1940s palazzo.

Berlin’s “Illustrative Festival” offers insights into the young world of illustrators.

The central exhibition at the 55th Art Biennale of Venice tries to gather the intuitive knowledge of art in a “Palazzo Enciclopedico”. Another sets out to reconstruct a legendary 1969 show.

Not just for aviation enthusiasts: The photo book “Swissair Souvenirs” affords readers an insight into all areas of civil aviation and at the same time makes for a new piece of photography history.

There is certainly no shortage of photographs of Joseph Beuys. But few accompanied him as continuously and closely as did graphic designer Klaus Staeck and printer/publisher Gerhard Steidl. The snapshots taken on several occasions between 1972 and 1986 shed light on some surprising and unexpected facets to the artist and grand communicator.

He produces portraits of himself as a cowboy and recreated industrial objects using clay. Jon Smith studied at the Institute of Contemporary and Interdisciplinary Art in the English city of Bath and now lives as an independent artist in the Netherlands. Nina Reetzke met him for a chat.

This need to make a personal mark in public space is nothing new. But the means of intervening in buildings, public transport and green spaces are forever changing. Today it is not uncommon to stumble across Lego bricks, knitting and engraved padlocks, for example.

While NASA – following Atlantis' return to Earth – bids a weepy farewell to manned space flight, an exhibition by Slovakian artist Roman Ondák at Kunsthaus Zürich revives that atmosphere of euphoria once associated with man's exploration of outer space. What, asks Roman Ondák, has become of the Soviet Union's Sputnik, which in 1957 became the first satellite to be launched? Did it really burn up when re-entering Earth's atmosphere? Or is it still out there, orbiting the planet?

His works seem familiar and strange at once. Martin Brüger makes simple additions to everyday objects. Sometimes the proportions change, then the color effect alters, or a kind of frame is created. Nina Reetzke spoke to the Darmstadt artist about his views on the things that surround us.

Jerszy Seymour conjures up a society of amateurs, but not in the sense of "unprofessional", but rather of "lovers and friends". And when it comes to volcanoes, the designer himself becomes an amateur. A trip into a passionate and explosive world.

Once again, with his "Innen Stadt Außen" (Inner City Outside) exhibition Olafur Eliasson proves that he is able to achieve great effects with relatively modest means.

Ever more frequently exhibitions are attempting to explain the current relationship between art and design. This is also true of "Entre deux actes - Loge de Comédienne" at Kunsthalle Baden-Baden. This particular exhibition, however, relies too much on art and an antiquated concept of design.