‘Death is a very poor painter’: the 19th-century craze for plaster casts
Bourgeois homes in the early 19th century became ‘virtual museums of death’, with models of heroes jostling replicas of the hands and feet of lost loved ones
‘The possibilities of paint are never-ending’: Sir Frank Bowling interviewed
‘I’m full of excitement waiting for this to dry out,’ Sir Frank Bowling exclaims. We are sitting in his studio,…
‘Teaching someone to draw is teaching them to look’: the year’s best art books
Subjects range from a Paleolithic bone carving to Banksy’s graffiti, via colour concepts, romanticism, tattoos and mirror painting
How a single year in Florence changed art forever
The story goes that one day early in the 16th century Leonardo da Vinci was strolling through Florence with a…
How Michael Craig-Martin changed a glass of water into a full-grown oak tree
‘Of all the things I’ve drawn,’ Michael Craig-Martin reflects, ‘to me chairs are one of the most interesting.’ We are…
Surreal visions: the best of this year’s art books reviewed
Subjects include Anna Atkins’s cyanotypes, Leonora Carrington’s paintings, Albrecht Dürer’s dreams and the photographs of Lee Miller
Why everyone should go to life-drawing classes: Claudette Johnson interviewed
While looking at Claudette Johnson’s splendid exhibition Presence at the Courtauld Gallery, I kept trying to pin down an elusive…
Unmissable: Donatello – Sculpting the Renaissance, at the V&A, reviewed
‘Donatello is the real hero of Florentine sculpture’, so Antony Gormley has proclaimed (hugely though he admires Michelangelo). It’s hard…
A choice of art books – from Carpaccio to David Hockney
Other artists include James Gillray, Quentin Blake, Lucian Freud – and those inspired over the centuries by an overlooked subject in art history: the egg
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,…
