'The subject matter is secondary. The unifying thing is the surface,' Damien Hirst says of Gerhard Richter's paintings. Gordon Burn celebrates an artist who renders the ridiculous, tragic and beautiful, ordinary

The works of Cy Twombly were long regarded as suspiciously old-world and erudite. Yet, argues Gordon Burn, he is a celebratory painter with a genius for evoking moods and feelings

Roni Horn's latest work, a converted library made of ice and water, is the culmination of her relationship with the solitary landscape of Iceland. Gordon Burn braves the elements.

One day, Harland Miller picked up a Penguin, and an idea was born. The artist and novelist talks to Jarvis Cocker about his fake paperbacks, northern nostalgia and Hemingway's ego, while Gordon Burn explains the strange charm of his work.

A life in art: Drawing on advertising, the media and pornography, Jeff Koons's art is about 'aspects of entertainment'. His latest work is an assault on the shiny, happy surface of contemporary culture.

Ellsworth Kelly made his name as a painter of 'stunning emptiness'. Five decades on, he's just as compelling, and just as mysterious, says Gordon Burn.

Britain's biggest art mystery was solved yesterday - Rachel Whiteread has filled Tate Modern's Turbine Hall with thousands of boxes. Why? She talks exclusively to Gordon Burn