Exhibitions

The polarising poet, sculptor and ‘avant-gardener’ who maintained a private militia

26 April 2025 9:00 am

Not many artists engage in the maintenance of a private militia, and it seems fair to assume that those who…

Was Sir John Soane one of the first modernists?

19 April 2025 9:00 am

Sir John Soane’s story is a good one. Born in 1753 to a bricklayer, at 15 he was apprenticed to…

Cartier used to be a Timpson’s for the rich

19 April 2025 9:00 am

In the fall of, I suppose, 1962, my friend Jimmy Davison and I, window shopping on Fifth Avenue, bumped into…

Absorbingly repellent: Ed Atkins, at Tate Britain, reviewed

12 April 2025 9:00 am

In the old days, you’d have to go to a lot of trouble to inhabit another person’s skin. Today you…

Wonderfully intimate: The Drawings of Victor Hugo, at the RA, reviewed

5 April 2025 9:00 am

You feel so close to Victor Hugo in this exhibition. It’s as if you are at his elbow while he…

If ‘wokeness’ is over, can someone please tell the Fitzwilliam Museum?

22 March 2025 9:00 am

Optimists believe that the tide of ‘wokeness’ is now ebbing. If so, the message has not yet reached Cambridge, whose…

The art of sexual innuendo

15 March 2025 9:00 am

Paula Rego’s 2021 retrospective at Tate Britain demonstrated that, among art critics, ambiguity is still highly prized as a measure…

A blast: Leigh Bowery!, at Tate Modern, reviewed

8 March 2025 9:00 am

Tate Modern’s latest exhibition is a bizarre proposition on so many levels. Its subject, the Australian designer, performer, provocateur and…

The greatest paintings are always full of important unimportant things

8 March 2025 9:00 am

Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection, at the Courtauld, consists of a selection of 25 absorbing paintings…

An exhilarating, uneven survey of an outstandingly eccentric British surrealist

1 March 2025 9:00 am

Ithell Colquhoun was always a bit of a mystery surrealist. Her greatest hit is the unsettling, dream-like ‘Scylla’ (1938), a…

The art of war

15 February 2025 9:00 am

On his deathbed, the Austrian writer Karl Kraus remarked of the Japanese attack on Manchuria: ‘None of this would have…

The rediscovery of the art of Simone de Beauvoir’s sister

1 February 2025 9:00 am

An exhibition of the art of Hélène de Beauvoir (1910-2001), sister of the great Simone, opened in a private gallery…

The brilliance of Cicely Mary Barker

18 January 2025 9:00 am

When Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairies of the Spring was published in 1923, a post-first world war mass wishful belief…

A dreamy, if overly ambitious show: Silk Roads, at the British Museum, reviewed

4 January 2025 9:00 am

Towards the end of the British Museum’s Silk Roads show, there is a selection of treasures found in England. Among…

Tirzah Garwood just isn’t as good as her husband Eric Ravilious

14 December 2024 9:00 am

Tirzah Garwood, wife of the more famous Eric Ravilious, is having a well-deserved moment in the sun, benefiting from this…

Warhol, Rauschenberg, Johns and Tinguely all started out as window dressers

7 December 2024 9:00 am

Christmas, and in every city already crowds congregate around the festive department store displays in defiance of the apparent disappearance…

Stimulating little exhibition: Scent and the Art of the pre-Raphaelites reviewed

23 November 2024 9:00 am

Scent and the Art of the pre-Raphaelites… there’s an obvious problem here: how do you represent one sense by another?…

We’ve got Francis Bacon all wrong

16 November 2024 9:00 am

You have to hand it to the curators of this excellent survey of Francis Bacon’s portraits. Not only have they…

Sad but beautiful exhibition of Afghanistan’s war rugs

9 November 2024 9:00 am

Decades after its inclusion in the Hippie Trail, Afghanistan is again open to tourism, according to the Taliban’s spokesman Zabihullah…

At Japan House humanity has arrived at the perfect future: food for ogling, not eating

26 October 2024 9:00 am

There is a popular Japanese television show that features a segment called ‘Candy Or Not Candy?’. Contestants are presented with…

Fog, tea and full English breakfasts: Monet and London, at the Courtauld, reviewed

12 October 2024 9:00 am

For the maids on the top floors of the Savoy, everything was in turmoil. The 6th had been commandeered by…

What has become of the Wellcome Collection?

5 October 2024 9:00 am

In 2022 the Wellcome Collection caused a stir by closing its Medicine Man exhibition on the grounds that it was…

The art inspired by the 1924 Paris Olympics was a very mixed bag

28 September 2024 9:00 am

George Orwell took a dim view of competitive sport; he found the idea that ‘running, jumping and kicking a ball…

Inside the mind of Vincent Van Gogh

21 September 2024 9:00 am

Van Gogh only got one major review in his career, and he was mystified by it. When the critic Albert…

Why has Leonora Carrington still not had a big exhibition?

7 September 2024 9:00 am

‘It had nothing to endow it with the title of studio at all,’ was Edward James’s first impression of Leonora…