Exhibitions
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:…
The strangely unique vision of Leonard Rosoman
Leonard Rosoman is not a well-known artist these days. Many of us will, however, be subliminally familiar with his mural…
Worth a trip for the David Joneses alone: Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’ reviewed
To bleak, boarded-up Margate — and a salt-and-vinegar wind that leaves my face looking like Andy Warhol’s botched 1958 nose-peel…
Edison decried the electric recording as a mere ‘volume fad’
Listen closely, among the shelves of the last remaining music shops, in student dorm rooms and amid the flat whites…
The captivating art, science and politics of hair: Beehives, Bobs and Blow-dries reviewed
One of the best things about Beehives, Bobs and Blow-dries — yep, an exhibition about hairdressing — is the reaction…
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…
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 star of the Winnie-the-Pooh show at V&A is E.H. Shepard
The thing about Winnie-the-Pooh, 91 years old this year, is that he’s the creature of E.H. Shepard, who drew him,…
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…
What can we learn from Jeremy Bentham’s pickled head?
Under the central dome of UCL — an indoor crossroads where hordes of students come and go on their way…
The time is right for an Erté revival – a new hero for our gender-anxious times
Erté was destined for the imperial navy. Failing that, the army. His father and uncle had been navy men. There…
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,…
Emotional rescue
In the 1880s the young Max Klinger made a series of etchings detailing the surreal adventures of a woman’s glove…
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,…
Raw materials
‘Art by its very essence is of the new… There is only one healthy diet for artistic creation: permanent revolution.’…
I spy
Where was Degas standing as he sketched his ‘Laundresses’ (c.1882–4)? Did he watch the two women from behind sheets hanging…
Mothers’ ruin
At the heart of Basic Instincts, the new exhibition at the Foundling Museum in London, is an extraordinarily powerful painting…
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.…
Nothing is quite what it seems
One day, somebody will stage an exhibition of artists taught at the Slade by the formidable Henry Tonks, who considered…
Object lesson
Why did Henri Matisse not play chess? It’s a question, perhaps, that few have ever pondered. Yet the great artist…
Maximum wattage
On his deathbed in 1904, George Frederic Watts saw a extraordinary spectacle. He witnessed the universe coming into being: the…
