Exhibitions
Two of the most interesting British artists working today
The Frieze fairs are the biggest event in London’s art calendar, and this year I managed to miss them. The…
How I wish I could have seen Gordon Matta-Clark’s death traps in the flesh
Architecture can’t be exhibited, other than indirectly in drawings, models and photographs. But this is even more true for Gordon…
The RA’s triumphant new exhibition
What a show at the Royal Academy. You go straight into a room of Cézannes and Renoirs and that is…
The Turner Prize is only 50 per cent dreadful
Nobody ever believes me when I tell them that my relatives founded Middlesbrough but it’s entirely true. Having raised the…
The singular vision of Quentin Bell
Every visitor to Charleston Farmhouse will know the work of Quentin Bell even if they don’t realise it. He made…
When will the art world acknowledge this master?
Watercolours can be fatal for your standing in the art world. ‘As soon as you say you paint in watercolour,’…
The new fourth plinth is decidedly misjudged
As I sat down to write this article, an artist friend phoned me to deliver a pithy but convincing defence…
Finally, a proper, grown-up retrospective from the Tate
A month ago in Hampstead, a work of art stopped me in my tracks. The piece was a vast rectangular…
Finally: a museum that refrains from moralising
Hull is a city of many quirks, but I didn’t expect a mermaid. Seriously: an actual mermaid, mounted in a…
A perfect little exhibition on the Isles of Scilly
I was in the most south-westerly pub in Britain, the Turk’s Head, on the Scilly island of St Agnes (population:…
Why does anyone take Ai Weiwei seriously?
When Ai Weiwei (b.1957) arrived in Europe in 2015, fresh from state-imposed house arrest, he was greeted as a hero.…
Bring back the old Tube seat designs!
Enid Marx once pondered ‘whether postage stamps are fine or industrial art. In my view the question rests on the…
Damien Hirst should burn down his gallery
I love my friends at the loucher fringes of the art world, but every now and again, someone does something…
Lartigue’s photos are made for the Insta generation
Will photography as an art form survive the age of Instagram? Now that we think we are all photographers, and…
The cult of Kahlo
A Max Beerbohm cartoon famously reduced Arthur Wing Pinero (author of that interesting play, The Second Mrs Tanqueray) to a…
Anish Kapoor – spectacular, pompous and vulgar
I miss the New Labour years, when the government gushed money at cultural initiatives and Britain, previously a backwater in…
The joy of willow-pattern ceramics
My granny used Spode willow-pattern crockery for everyday use. There was another grander service for Sunday lunch, also blue-and-white chinoiserie:…
Head to Deptford for one of the exhibitions of the year
Grim news from gallery-land, where even Manhattan’s mega-blue chips are shedding jobs by the truckload. ‘The market’s fucked,’ one soundbite-handy…
This Lucian Freud belongs on the compost
From 1940, at Benton End, near Hadleigh in Suffolk, the artist Cedric Morris brought his eye to breeding irises. Eliminating…
How did so many fail to appreciate Whistler?
I approached this exhibition like a conscientious critic, poring over the catalogue, the signage, making notes… And then, about halfway…
The Venice Biennale was just that bit worse than usual
The 61st Venice Biennale arrived freighted with portent. To cut a long story short: Russia and Israel were invited to…
How to dress a queen
The problem with exhibiting costumes is well known. Should the mannequins be lifelike with human features, or faceless? What about…
The weakness of the V&A East Museum
I’d just emerged from Stratford station when I realised it had been almost a decade to the day since I’d…
Brooklyn’s answer to Nathan Barley has struck gold
I was on the way to Cecily Brown’s exhibition at the Serpentine last week when I heard that Kensington Gardens…
Tracey Emin at her most operatic
I feared this summing-up of Tracey Emin’s career might be self-congratulatory – biennale here, damehood there. But it’s Emin at…
