Elephant in the room
In the centre of the new exhibition Sculpture Victorious at Tate Britain there is a huge white elephant. The beast…
Easy does it
The artist Malcolm Morley once fantasised about a magazine that would be devoted to the practice of painting just as…
Double Dutch
‘Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting,’ Henri Matisse once advised, ‘should begin by cutting out his own tongue.’ Marlene…
Rubens wronged
The main spring offering at the Royal Academy, Rubens and His Legacy: Van Dyck to Cézanne, teaches two useful lessons.…
Cellulite factor
Are Rubens’s figures too fat for the British to appreciate them? Martin Gayford investigates
Back to the future
Almost a decade ago, David Cameron informed Tony Blair, unkindly but accurately, ‘You were the future once.’ A visitor to…
Strokes of genius
The art on show over the coming year demonstrates that we still live in an age of mighty painters, says Martin Gayford
Bruegel’s Bethlehem
The world depicted by the Flemish master is not so different from our own, says Martin Gayford
Life force
‘Love of the human form’, writes the painter John Lessore, ‘must be the origin of that peculiar concept, the Life…
Bradford bohemian
David Hockney talks to Martin Gayford about 60 years of ignoring art fashion
Warts and all
Giovanni Battista Moroni, wrote Bernard Berenson, was ‘the only mere portrait painter that Italy has ever produced’. Indeed, Berenson continued,…
Privates on parade
One day, as a student — or so the story goes — Egon Schiele called on Gustav Klimt, a celebrated…
Artists’ little helpers
A 19th-century London artists’ supplier named Charles Roberson offered imitation human beings for sale or rent, with papier-mâché heads, soft…
Supreme painter of the inner life
Martin Gayford sees Rembrandt’s late works at the National Gallery – is this the greatest show on earth?
A kind of magic
Talking of Rembrandt’s ‘The Jewish Bride’ to a friend, Vincent van Gogh went — characteristically — over the top. ‘I…
Master of alchemy
Martin Gayford talks to a surprisingly jolly Anselm Kiefer about art and metamorphosis
In the gutter, looking at the stars
What he really wanted, Picasso once remarked, was to live ‘like a pauper, but with plenty of money’. It sounds…
Through the looking-glass
On Monday 21 April 1760 Joshua Reynolds had a busy day. Through the morning and the afternoon he had a…
Loose, wild and free
Martin Gayford talks to Wynton Marsalis about the rigours of playing jazz
Brilliant mistakes
Some of art’s most important steps forward began simply as misconceptions
The secret of Civilisation
No modern critic would dare match Kenneth Clark’s fearless way with sweeping statements
Weird and wonderful
In many respects the average art-lover remains a Victorian, and the Florentine Renaissance is one area in which that is…
‘Draw lines, young man’
Lucian Freud once said that ‘being able to draw well is the hardest thing — far harder than painting, as…
Acts of faith
It seems suitable that just round the corner from the Zurbarán exhibition at the Palais des Beaux Arts is the…
Double vision
As friends, artistic soulmates and rivals, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud were the Turner and Constable of the 20th century
