A brief history of tea
It had to happen. Since almost everything became either ‘artisan’ or ‘curated’, conditions have been ripe for a curator of…
Why has British art had such a fascination with fire?
‘Playing God is indeed playing with fire,’ observed Ronald Dworkin. ‘But that is what we mortals have done since Prometheus,…
British surrealism at its most remarkable and nightmarish
Holding the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936 was a coup for the British avant-garde, putting newbie surrealists such…
The joy of George Shaw’s miserable paintings of a Coventry council estate
All good narrative painting contains an element of allegory, but most artists don’t go looking for it on a Coventry…
Wicked, humorous and high-spirited: Dorothea Tanning at Tate Modern reviewed
Art movements come and go but surrealism, in one form or another, has always been with us. Centuries before Freud’s…
Enjoy a blast of Spanish sun from Joaquin Sorolla
Artists can be trained, but they are formed by their earliest impressions: a child of five may not be able…
Phyllida Barlow’s sculptural wonderland reigns supreme at the Royal Academy
‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.’ If there’s an exception to prove Shaw’s rule, it’s Phyllida Barlow. The…
The first great English artist – the life and art of Nicholas Hilliard
When Henry VIII died in 1547, he left a religiously divided country to a young iconoclast who erased a large…
A short history of ice skating
In landscape terms, the Fens don’t have much going for them. What you can say for them, though, is that…
A charming celebration of Vuillard’s muse – his mum: Barber Institute’s Maman reviewed
Fin-de-siècle Paris was not just the art capital of the world, it was also the fashion capital. In 1901, 300,000…
Women’s toplessness caused less offence to Victorians than their trousers
‘They did not look like women, or at least a stranger new to the district might easily have been misled…
The ‘idiot’ artists whose surreal visions flourished in Victorian asylums
In G.F. Watts’s former sculpture studio in the Surrey village of Compton, a monstrous presence has interposed itself between the…
Animals, tourists and raptors: the hazards of being a plein-air artist
A conservator at Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum was recently astonished to find a tiny grasshopper stuck in the paint of…
The glorious history of Chatham Dockyard, as told through the eyes of artists
‘Ding, Clash, Dong, BANG, Boom, Rattle, Clash, BANG, Clink, BANG, Dong, BANG, Clatter, BANG BANG BANG!’ is how Charles Dickens…
The pioneering artist whose creations vanished before his eyes
The impermanence of works of art is a worry for curators though not usually for artists, especially not at the…
Emotional rescue
In the 1880s the young Max Klinger made a series of etchings detailing the surreal adventures of a woman’s glove…
Raw materials
‘Art by its very essence is of the new… There is only one healthy diet for artistic creation: permanent revolution.’…
Are the British too polite to be any good at surrealism?
The Paris World’s Fair of 1937 was more than a testing ground for artistic innovation; it was a battleground for…
Pizza, choc-ice and Leonardos – the treasures of Turin
To most non-Italians Turin spells Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (Fiat). But this subalpine city has a longer history than the…
The home of Holland’s celebrity paintings gets a makeover
If things had turned out differently for Brazil — I don’t mean in the World Cup — Recife might now…
When Raquel Welch danced on a table at Cinecittà
Before there was Hello!, OK! and Closer, there was Oggi. Oggi was the magazine my Italian mother used to flick…
Henri Le Sidaner: the artist who fell between two schools
Like other species, artists club together in movements not just for purposes of identification but for longevity. Individuals who don’t…
Who knew that Cézanne had a sense of humour?
Tourists are attracted to queues, art lovers to quietude. So while the mass of Monet fans visiting Paris line up…
Do critics make good artists? Come and judge ours
Artists make good critics, but do critics make good artists? It’s hard to tell, when most are too chicken to…
When soldiers have golden helmets and the wounded have wings
‘If I go to war, I go on condition I can have Giotto, the Basilica of Assisi book, Fra Angelico…
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