Why was Sigmund Freud so obsessed with Egypt?
Twenty years ago, I visited the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna with a party of American journalists. Even in those…
Lucian Freud insisted a forgery could be as great as the real thing. Was he right?
Perhaps we should blame Vasari. Ever since the publication of his Lives of the Artists, and to an ever-increasing extent,…
Why haven’t we heard of the extraordinary Finnish artist Helene Schjerfbeck?
Last year I found myself giving a lecture in Helsinki. When I came to the end, I asked the audience…
Olafur Eliasson’s art is both futuristic and completely traditional – which is why I love it
Superficially, the Olafur Eliasson exhibition at Tate Modern can seem like a theme park. To enter many of the exhibits,…
Cindy Sherman – selfie queen
The selfie is, of course, a major, and to me mysterious, phenomenon of our age. The sheer indefatigability of selfie-takers,…
Remarkable and powerful – you see her joining the old masters: Paul Rego reviewed
In 1965 a journalist asked Paula Rego why she painted. ‘To give a face to fear,’ she replied (those were…
There is a jewel of a painting at Gagosian’s Francis Bacon show
‘It is no easier to make a good painting,’ wrote Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, than it is…
Virtuosic exploration of paint: Frank Bowling at Tate Britain reviewed
‘The possibilities of paint,’ Frank Bowling has observed, ‘are endless.’ The superb career retrospective of his work at Tate Britain…
The duo that broke the mould of poster design
The best double acts — Laurel and Hardy, Gilbert & George, Rodgers and Hart — are often made up of…
Moore’s art has never looked better: Henry Moore at Houghton Hall reviewed
Henry Moore was, it seems, one of the most notable fresh-air fiends in art history. Not only did he prefer…
A beautiful exhibition of a magnificent painter: Sean Scully at the National Gallery reviewed
Sean Scully once told me about his early days as a plasterer’s mate. At the age of 17 he was…
Absorbing – a masterclass in print-making: Edvard Munch at the British Museum reviewed
An eyewitness described Edvard Munch supervising the print of a colour lithograph in 1896. He stood in front of the…
Powerful elegy for a world that is slipping away: Tate Britain’s The Asset Strippers reviewed
There was a moment more than 20 years ago when Bankside Power Station was derelict but its transformation into Tate…
Full of lovely paintings that might lead you astray: The Renaissance Nude reviewed
Early in the 16th century, Fra Bartolomeo painted an altarpiece of St Sebastian for the church of San Marco in…
Few soldiers have seen as many terrible sights as Don McCullin
Diane Arbus saw mid-20th century New York as if she was in a waking dream. Or at least that is…
The odd couple: Bill Viola / Michelangelo at the RA reviewed
The joint exhibition of Michelangelo Buonarroti and Bill Viola at the Royal Academy is, at first glance, an extremely improbable…
Was Pierre Bonnard any good?
An attendant at an art gallery in France once apprehended a little old vandal, or so the story goes. He…
The joy of prints
Artists’ prints have been around for almost as long as the printed book. Indeed, they have similar origins in Gutenberg’s…
It’s hard to think of finer images of children than Gainsborough’s
When he knew that he was dying, Thomas Gainsborough selected an unfinished painting from some years before and set it…
The fascinating story behind one of the best-loved depictions of the Nativity
In the early 1370s an elderly Scandinavian woman living in Rome had a vision of the Nativity. Her name was…
Couldn’t artists let one read when sitting for them?
The 20th-century painter Balthus once suggested that the author of a book about him began with the words: ‘Balthus is…
In the 1960s the brightest star of British art was Richard Smith – and you can see why
It is easy to assume that the contours of art history are unchanging, its major landmarks fixed for ever. Actually,…
Lorenzo Lotto’s 16th century portraits come startlingly close to photography
You can, perhaps, glimpse Lorenzo Lotto himself in the National Gallery’s marvellous exhibition, Lorenzo Lotto: Portraits. At the base of…
Like today’s conceptual artists, Burne-Jones was more interested in ideas than paint
‘I want big things to do and vast spaces,’ Edward Burne-Jones wrote to his wife Georgiana in the 1870s. ‘And…
Wonderful, overwhelming, once-in-a-lifetime display of Bruegels – get on a plane now
‘About suffering’, W.H. Auden memorably argued in his poem ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’, the old masters ‘were never wrong’. Great…
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