The jewel-bright, mesmerisingly detailed pictures by Raqib Shaw are a revelation
Describing the Venice Biennale, like pinning down the city itself, is a practical impossibility. There is just too much of…
Valuable reassessment of British art: Barbican's Postwar Modern reviewed
Notoriously, the past is another country: what’s more, it’s a terrain for which the guidebooks need constantly to be rewritten.…
Beautiful and revealing: The Three Pietàs of Michelangelo, at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence, reviewed
The room is immersed in semi-darkness. Light filters down from above, glistening on polished marble as if it were flesh.…
Astonishing and gripping: Van Gogh's Self Portraits at the Courtauld reviewed
In September 1889, Vincent van Gogh sent his brother Theo a new self-portrait from the mental hospital at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. ‘You…
Feral showstoppers and some of the greatest paintings of the 20th century: Francis Bacon at the RA reviewed
Francis Bacon sensed our inner beastliness and painted it with astonishing power, says Martin Gayford
This radical Nativity is also one of the great whodunnits of art history
Martin Gayford on a radical Nativity that is the subject of one of the great whodunnits of art history
A celebration of natural wonders: the best of the year’s art books
If one of the purposes of art is to help us see the world around us, then Sebastião Salgado’s photographs…
Ignore the wall text and focus on the magnificent paintings: Tate Britain's Hogarth and Europe reviewed
There are, perhaps, two types of exhibition visitor. Those who read the texts on the walls and those who don’t.…
His final paintings are like Jackson Pollocks: RA's Late Constable reviewed
On 13 July 1815, John Constable wrote to his fiancée, Maria Bicknell, about this and that. Interspersed with a discussion…
The supreme pictures of the Courtauld finally have a home of equal magnificence
When the Courtauld Gallery’s impressionist pictures were shown at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2019, the Parisian public…
Albrecht Dürer was a 16th-century Andy Warhol
Gossipy, amusing, a little vain, Albrecht Dürer was a 16th-century Andy Warhol, says Martin Gayford
The yumminess of paint
‘Painting has always been dead,’ Willem de Kooning once mused. ‘But I was never worried about it.’ The exhibition Mixing…
Deserves to be much better known: Sophie Taeuber-Arp at Tate Modern reviewed
Great Swiss artists, like famous Belgians, might seem to be an amusingly underpopulated category. Actually, as with celebrated Flemings and…
Why I will miss our mighty cooling towers – and I suspect I am not alone
There are many examples of beautiful old buildings being knocked down in favour of undistinguished new ones. But not everything can be preserved in aspic, says Martin Gayford
Full of masterpieces: Paula Rego at Tate Britain reviewed
The Victorian dictum ‘every picture tells a story’ is true of Paula Rego’s works, but it’s only part of the…
An immensely rich show – though it consists of only two paintings: Rubens at the Wallace Collection reviewed
‘When pictures painted as companions are separated,’ John Constable wisely observed, ‘the purchaser of one, without being aware of it,…
Rodin was as modern as Magritte and Dali, but more touching and troubling than either
Rodin’s studio at Meudon in the suburbs of Paris is huge and filled with light — a sort of combined…
From temple to labyrinth — the art museum today
At a certain point, the critic Robert Hughes once noted, at the heart of American cities churches began to be…
How Algernon Newton made great art out of empty streets and dingy canals
Quite late in life Walter Sickert paid his first visit to Peckham Rye. He was excited, apparently, because he had…
Francis Bacon: king of the self-made myth
In 1953, Francis Bacon’s friends Lucian Freud and Caroline Blackwood were concerned about the painter’s health. His liver was in…
On the trail of one of the first artists to paint ordinary things
The Master of Flémalle was one of the first painters to depict in detail the reality of ordinary things. But who was he? Martin Gayford finds a prime suspect
Bright and beautiful: the year’s best art books reviewed
When he was a student, the celebrated American modernist master Robert Rauschenberg once told me that his ‘greatest teacher’ —…
Antony Gormley on why sculpture is far superior to painting
In an extract from their book, Antony Gormley tells Martin Gayford that the 3-D will always trump the 2-D
One of the greatest of all outsider artists: Alfred Wallis at Kettle’s Yard reviewed
Alfred Wallis (1855-1942) should be an inspiration to all late starters. It was not until he had passed the age…
Entertaining – but there's one abomination: National Gallery's Sin reviewed
Obviously, we’re living through an era of censorious puritanism. Granted, the contemporary creeds are different from those of the 16th…
