Why it’s bad for potters to think of themselves as artists
A friend of mine once owned a vase by the potter Hans Coper — until, that is, her teenage son…
The codes and codswallop surrounding Leonardo da Vinci
‘If you look at walls soiled with a variety of stains or at stones with variegated patterns,’ Leonardo da Vinci…
The public are quite right to love Monet
Think of the work of Claude Monet and water lilies come to mind, so do reflections in rippling rivers, and…
Once seen as the coming force in British painting, John Craxton deserves another look
In late April 1992, I was in Crete, interviewing the painter John Craxton. It was the week that Francis Bacon…
Intelligent, poetic and profound: Tacita Dean at the National and National Portrait galleries
Andy Warhol would probably have been surprised to learn that his 1964 film ‘Empire’ had given rise to an entire…
Surreal jokes and juicy strokes: Martin Gayford on the power of paint
René Magritte was fond of jokes. There are several in René Magritte (Or: The Rule of Metaphor), a small but…
Magnificent paintings – oddly curated: All Too Human reviewed
In the mid-1940s, Frank Auerbach remarked, the arbiters of taste had decided what was going to happen in British art:…
Lemons and pebbles are as important to Kettle’s Yard as the art
When I first visited Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, I was shown around by Jim Ede, its founder and creator. This wasn’t…
Gursky’s subject is humanity: prosaic, mundane, extremely messy His colossal, panoramic pictures are brilliant and lowering at the same time
Walking around the Andreas Gursky exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, I struggled to recall what these huge photographs reminded me…
A sumptuous feast of an exhibition: Charles I at the Royal Academy reviewed
Peter Paul Rubens thought highly of Charles I’s art collection. ‘When it comes to fine pictures by the hands of…
Turning marble into cushions and stone into flesh: the magic of Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Seventeenth-century Roman art at its fullblown, operatic peak often proves too rich for puritanical northern tastes. And no artist was…
The time has come for one of the most fascinating and idiosyncratic Renaissance artists
Lorenzo Lotto’s portraits — nervous, intense and enigmatic — are among the most memorable to be painted in 16th-century Italy,…
After you’ve seen a few, you start to think, ‘Oh no, not another!’: Modigliani at Tate reviewed
‘It’s odd,’ Picasso once mused, ‘but you never see Modigliani drunk anywhere but at the corners of the boulevard Montmartre…
Sex and the city: the best art books of the year
‘I should like,’ Edgar Degas once remarked, ‘to be famous and unknown.’ On the whole, he managed to achieve this.…
The most impressive array of work to be seen in London in years: Cézanne’s Portraits reviewed
The critic and painter Adrian Stokes once remarked on how fortunate Cézanne had been to be bald, ‘considering the wonderful…
The advantages of turning down the colour knob: Monochrome reviewed
Leonardo da Vinci thought sculpting a messy business. The sculptor, he pointed out, has to bang away with a hammer,…
It’s the thought that counts
During a panel discussion in 1949, Frank Lloyd Wright made an undiplomatic comment about Marcel Duchamp’s celebrated picture of 1912,…
Fickle fortune
Here’s an intriguing thought experiment: could Damien Hirst disappear? By that I mean not the 52-year-old artist himself — that…
Space odyssey
Rachel Whiteread is an indefatigable explorer of internal space. By turning humble items such as hot-water bottles and sinks inside…
Silent films
On 15 September 1888 Vincent van Gogh was intrigued to read an account of an up-to-date artist’s house in the…
Snap, crackle and op
Stand in front of ‘Fall’, a painting by Bridget Riley from 1963, and the world begins to quiver and dissolve.…
What lies beneath
Last year, Gary Hume made a painting of himself paddling. At a casual glance, or even a longer look, it…
Object lesson
Why did Henri Matisse not play chess? It’s a question, perhaps, that few have ever pondered. Yet the great artist…
Animal magnetism
Picasso had a thing for bulls. Martin Gayford talks to the artist’s friend and biographer. Sir John Richardson about a lifelong obsession
Face time
As a chat-up line it was at least unusual. On 8 January 1927, a 46-year-old man approached a young woman…
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