From Botticelli to Marvel: why artists love St Francis
Laura Gascoigne on the pulling power of St Francis of Assisi
Hitching them together does neither any favours: Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian, at Tate Modern, reviewed
In July 1928, an unknown Swedish woman artist mounted a solo show of her revolutionary abstract paintings at the World…
Rossetti’s muse was a better painter than him: The Rossettis, at Tate Britain, reviewed
‘A queer fellow’ is how John Everett Millais described Dante Gabriel Rossetti after his death, ‘so dogmatic and so irritable…
Artists’ dogs win the rosettes: Portraits of Dogs – From Gainsborough to Hockney, at the Wallace Collection, reviewed
Walking on Hampstead Heath the December before Covid, I got caught up in a festive party of bichon frises dressed,…
Rich in masterpieces: After Impressionism – Inventing Modern Art, at the National Gallery, reviewed
Getting the words ‘impressionism’ and ‘modern art’ into one exhibition title is a stroke of marketing genius on the part…
Don’t miss the exquisite Native-American carvings at the Sainsbury Centre
It’s payback time: women, artists from ethnic minorities and non-western traditions are taking over the exhibition schedules. On the heels…
How two Dutchmen introduced marine art to Britain
In March 1675 the Keeper of His Majesty’s Lodgings at Greenwich received an order for ‘Three pairs of shutters for…
Thoroughly unsettling, never simplistic: Mike Nelson – Extinction Beckons, at the Hayward Gallery, reviewed
You enter through the gift shop. Mike Nelson has turned the Hayward Gallery upside down and back to front for…
Humanity, clarity and warmth: Alice Neel, at the Barbican Art Gallery, reviewed
If you want to be taken seriously as a contemporary painter, paint big. ‘Blotter’, the picture that won the 34-year-old…
How Vermeer learnt to embrace the everyday – and transfigured it
Laura Gascoigne on Vermeer’s women
The county that inspired a whole way of painting: Sussex Landscape, at Pallant House, reviewed
In a national vote on which county’s landscape best embodies Englishness, every county would presumably vote for itself. But when…
A crash course in all things Hispanic: RA’s Spain and the Hispanic World reviewed
‘Spain must be much more interesting than Liverpool,’ decided the 12-year-old Archer M. Huntington after buying a book on Spanish…
The grisliest images are the earliest: Bearing Witness? Violence and Trauma on Paper, at the Fitzwilliam Museum, reviewed
‘Graphic’ scenes of violence are now associated with film, but the word betrays an older ancestry. The first mass media…
Other artists’ still lifes may be showier, but none are as companionable as Giorgio Morandi’s
There are various staples of still life painting, some symbolic, some not. Skulls and musical instruments suggest the transience of…
Did this Lithuanian invent abstraction? M.K. Ciurlionis, at Dulwich Picture Gallery, reviewed
Trivia question: name a famous Lithuanian. Google came up with four I’d never heard of and one I had: Hannibal…
An Uffizi Adoration that upstages even the Botticellis
Laura Gascoigne on the shadowy Flemish artist Hugo van der Goes, whose painting in the Uffizi upstages the masterpieces of Botticelli
Brueghel’s peasant paintings were the D.C. Thomson comics of the 17th century
‘Psst! Someone’s coming!’ the skinny man with the ragged breeches and the bandaged jaw warns his fat companion out of…
Does gender matter? Making Modernism, at the Royal Academy, reviewed
The catalogue to Making Modernism opens with an acknowledgment from the Royal Academy’s first female president, Rebecca Salter, that in…
The careers of artists like Carolee Schneemann and Stephen Cripps are unthinkable today
During the 1964 debut of Carolee Schneemann’s ‘Meat Joy’ in Paris, a man in the audience tried to throttle the…
Thrilling: Hieroglyphs – unlocking ancient Egypt, at the British Museum, reviewed
‘Poor old Mornington Crescent, I feel sorry for it with this highly made-up neighbour blocking the view it had enjoyed,’…
The genius of Cezanne
Pity the poor curators of major exhibitions struggling to find fresh takes on famous masters. The curators of Tate Modern’s…
Do we need another Lucian Freud exhibition?
Do we need another Lucian Freud exhibition? After years of exposure to his paintings of naked bodies posed like casualties…
Brilliant and distinctive but also relentless: William Kentridge, at the RA, reviewed
William Kentridge’s work has a way of sticking in the mind. I can remember all my brief encounters with it,…
Biomorphic forms that tempt the viewer to cop a feel: Maria Bartuszova, at Tate Modern, reviewed
Art is a fundamentally childish activity: painters dream up images and sculptors play with stuff. It was while playing with…
Fresh and dreamy: Edward Lear, at Ikon Gallery, reviewed
‘It seems to me that I have to choose between 2 extremes of affection for nature… English, or Southern… The…
