Exhibitions
The death of the life class
‘Love of the human form’, writes the painter John Lessore, ‘must be the origin of that peculiar concept, the Life…
We must never again let this 19th century Norwegian master slip into oblivion
You won’t have heard of Peder Balke. Yet this long-neglected painter from 19th-century Norway is now the subject of a…
Does Allen Jones deserve a retrospective at the Royal Academy?
It has been a vintage season for mannequins. At the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, an exhibition called Silent Partners looks…
Are the British too polite to be any good at surrealism?
The Paris World’s Fair of 1937 was more than a testing ground for artistic innovation; it was a battleground for…
Without a model, Moroni could be stunningly dull. With one, he was peerless...
Giovanni Battista Moroni, wrote Bernard Berenson, was ‘the only mere portrait painter that Italy has ever produced’. Indeed, Berenson continued,…
Egon Schiele at the Courtauld: a one-note samba of spindly limbs, nipples and pudenda
One day, as a student — or so the story goes — Egon Schiele called on Gustav Klimt, a celebrated…
The secret world of the artist's mannequin
A 19th-century London artists’ supplier named Charles Roberson offered imitation human beings for sale or rent, with papier-mâché heads, soft…
How Rothko become the mythic superman of mystical abstraction
Mark Rothko was an abstract artist who didn’t see himself as an abstract artist — or at least not in…
Russians made the theatre space the most liberating imaginative device ever invented
You have to hand it to the Russians. They beat us into space, beat us to sexual equality, and a…
Tate Modern’s latest show feels like it’s from another planet
‘Some day we shall no longer need pictures: we shall just be happy.’ — Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter, 1966…
All my doubts about Anselm Kiefer are blown away by his Royal Academy show
In the Royal Academy’s courtyard are two large glass cases or vitrines containing model submarines. In one the sea has…
Curator-driven ambitions mar this Constable show at the V&A
The V&A has an unparalleled collection of hundreds of works by John Constable (1776–1837), but hardly anyone seems to know…
Tate Britain’s Turner show reveals an old master - though the Spectator didn’t think so at the time
Juvenilia is the work produced during an artist’s youth. It would seem logical to think, therefore, that an artist’s output…
‘Likes’, lacquered cherry pies and Anselm Kiefer: the weird world of post-internet art
In the mid-1990s the art world got excited about internet art (or ‘net.art’, as those involved styled it). This new…
Why everyone loves Rembrandt
Talking of Rembrandt’s ‘The Jewish Bride’ to a friend, Vincent van Gogh went — characteristically — over the top. ‘I…
The man who brought Cubism to New York
The American Jewish artist Max Weber (1881–1961) was born in Belostok in Russia (now Bialystok in Poland), and although he…
The Imperial War Museum finds a deadly place to display first world war masterpieces
The Imperial War Museum has reopened after a major refit and looks pretty dapper, even though it was overrun by…
The Bloomsbury painters bore me
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) claimed that nothing has really happened until it has been recorded, so this new exhibition at the…
Agitprop, love trucks and leaflet bombs: the art of protest
Titles can be misleading, and in case you have visions of microwave ovens running amok or washing machines crunching up…
Futurism’s escape to the country
Futurism, with its populist mix of explosive rhetoric (burn all the museums!) and resolutely urban experience and emphasis on speed,…
The perfect excuse to get out all the best Ravilious china
A day trip to the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne is a summer pleasure, and two concurrent shows are proving…
How Richard Wilson made Wales beautiful
‘I recollect nothing so much as a solemn — bright — warm — fresh landscape by Wilson, which swims in…
A lost opportunity to show John Nash at his best
John Northcote Nash (1893–1977) was the younger brother of Paul Nash (1889–1946), and has been long overshadowed by Paul, though…
Why did it take so long to recognise the worth of British folk art?
British folk art has been shamefully neglected in the land of its origin, as if the popular handiwork of past…
Malevich: Are Tate visitors ready for this master of modernism?
Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) is one of the founding fathers of Modernism, and as such entirely deserves the in-depth treatment with…
