© HEADER DRAWINGS BY MICHAEL HADDAD/HEART Leaves Byung-Chul ...

From gleaming presents to inebriating parties, discover five artists’ interpretations of the festive season

JOHANN KERNER saw the woman coming out of the darkness. She looked ancient and she moved as slowly as a snail, her back bent. She was the most likely source of information he had seen on his travels.

Kerry James Marshall, ‘poised between narrative and allegory’

Johannes Vermeer brightened his native Delft with luminous pictures of women caught in intimate moments, but the serenity of his work, of which he produced remarkably little, is at odds with a life mired in debt, as Carla Passino discovers

Sun Triptych Maxim Rysanov, Dasol Kim, Roman Mints et al; BBC Concert Orchestra/ Dobrinka Tabakova ECM 4878558 64:61 mins This is the second ECM disc to feature the extremely accessible music of Bulga