Martin Gayford

‘The Deluge’, 1920, by Winifred Knights

Echoes of Italy

7 July 2016 1:00 pm

‘Hidden beauty is best (half seen), faces turned away.’ So noted a young English painter named Winifred Knights in 1924.…

Jumbled up

25 June 2016 3:00 am

‘In the end, nothing goes with anything,’ Lucian Freud remarked one afternoon years ago. ‘It’s your taste that puts things…

Birthday card from Frank Auerbach to Lucian Freud

Jumbled up

23 June 2016 2:00 am

‘In the end, nothing goes with anything,’ Lucian Freud remarked one afternoon years ago. ‘It’s your taste that puts things…

Split decision

18 June 2016 8:00 am

In 1992 I wrote a column that was published under the headline ‘It’s Time to Split the Tate’. To my…

‘Babel’, 2001, by Cildo Meireles

Split decision

16 June 2016 1:00 pm

In 1992 I wrote a column that was published under the headline ‘It’s Time to Split the Tate’. To my…

Let’s talk about sex

11 June 2016 8:00 am

At one time, Damien Hirst was fond of remarking that art should deal with the Gauguin questions. Namely, ‘Where do…

‘New Hoover Quik Broom, New Hoover Celebrity IV’, 1980, by Jeff Koons

Let’s talk about sex

9 June 2016 1:00 pm

At one time, Damien Hirst was fond of remarking that art should deal with the Gauguin questions. Namely, ‘Where do…

Buried treasure: an archaeologist diver brushes clear a bovid jaw discovered in Aboukir Bay

What lies beneath

2 June 2016 1:00 pm

It was not so unusual for someone to turn into a god in Egypt. It happened to the Emperor Hadrian’s…

‘Oh god, ma tutto occupato’ (Ach herrje, ma tutto occupato), 2016, by Georg Baselitz

Happy ending

19 May 2016 1:00 pm

‘In many ways,’ Georg Baselitz muses, ‘I behaved against the grain of the times I grew up in.’ The era…

‘Oh god, ma tutto occupato’ (Ach herrje, ma tutto occupato), 2016, by Georg Baselitz

Happy ending

19 May 2016 1:00 pm

‘In many ways,’ Georg Baselitz muses, ‘I behaved against the grain of the times I grew up in.’ The era…

Satirical diptych, 1520–1530, anonymous Flemish artist

Surreal, strange and scatological

12 May 2016 1:00 pm

Why do we put one work of art beside another? For the most part museums and galleries tend to stick…

Is it art or science?

28 April 2016 1:00 pm

William Henry Fox Talbot had many accomplishments. He was Liberal MP for Chippenham; at Cambridge he won a prize for…

Detail of mosaic depicting the martyrdom of Saints Castus and Cassius, 12th century, at the Cathedral of Monreale, Sicily

The rise and fall of Sicily

7 April 2016 1:00 pm

A few weeks ago, I looked out on the Cathedral of Monreale from the platform on which once stood the…

Rebuilding phase: shipping-container shopping in Christchurch

Florence

31 March 2016 2:00 pm

Once, it seems, Sandro Botticelli played a trick on a neighbour. Next door was a weaver who possessed eight looms.…

Wooden model of a brewing and baking workshop, Egypt, c.2000 bc, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Old masters

31 March 2016 2:00 pm

The Fitzwilliam Museum is marking its bicentenary with an exhibition that takes its title from Agatha Christie: Death on the…

‘Wall Street, New York’, 1915, by Paul Strand

The counterfeiters

23 March 2016 3:00 pm

One day, in the autumn of 1960, a young Frenchman launched himself off a garden wall in a suburban street…

Repeat prescription

17 March 2016 3:00 pm

Walter Sickert was once shown a room full of paintings by a proud collector, who had purchased them on the…

Hellzapoppin’

25 February 2016 3:00 pm

The 20th-century painter who called himself Balthus once proposed that a monograph about him should begin with the words ‘Balthus…

‘Portrait of a Young Man’ by Giorgione

Whodunnit?

11 February 2016 3:00 pm

On 7 February 1506, Albrecht Dürer wrote home to his good friend Willibald Pirckheimer in Nuremberg. The great artist was…

‘Untitled (Oxidation Painting)’, 1978, by Andy Warhol

‘So quick and chancy’

4 February 2016 3:00 pm

When asked the question ‘What is art?’, Andy Warhol gave a characteristically flip answer (‘Isn’t that a guy’s name?’). On…

‘Nympheas (Waterlilies)’, 1914–15, by Claude Monet

Show me the Monet

28 January 2016 3:00 pm

Philip Larkin once remarked that Art Tatum, a jazz musician given to ornate, multi-noted flourishes on the keyboard, reminded him…

‘The Death of Sardanapalus’, 1846, by Eugène Delacroix

Wild at heart

21 January 2016 3:00 pm

At the Louvre the other day there was a small crowd permanently gathered in front of Delacroix’s ‘Liberty Leading the…

Disciple of Duchamp

14 January 2016 3:00 pm

Michael Craig-Martin has had a paradoxical career. He is, I think, a disciple of Marcel Duchamp. But the latter famously…

Monumental change: the overthrow of the statue of Napoleon I, which was on top of the Vendôme Column. The painter Gustave Courbet is ninth from the right

Moving statues

7 January 2016 3:00 pm

One of the stranger disputes of the past few weeks has concerned a Victorian figure that has occupied a niche…

'Lion Hunt', 1861, by Eugène Delacroix

Best in show

31 December 2015 3:00 pm

Until a decade and a half ago, we had no national museum of modern art at all. Indeed, the stuff…