Exhibitions
The power of nightmares
It is not impossible to create good art that makes a political point, just highly unusual. Goya’s ‘Third of May’…
Monet maker
When it was suggested that a huge exhibition of Impressionist paintings should be held in London, Claude Monet had his…
All in the worst possible taste
In the giftshop at the new Elvis exhibition at the Dome, you can buy your own version of his flared…
Elephant in the room
In the centre of the new exhibition Sculpture Victorious at Tate Britain there is a huge white elephant. The beast…
Easy does it
The artist Malcolm Morley once fantasised about a magazine that would be devoted to the practice of painting just as…
Art of noise
The album is not what it was. It still exists, in record collections, as part of the torrential streaming of…
Double Dutch
‘Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting,’ Henri Matisse once advised, ‘should begin by cutting out his own tongue.’ Marlene…
Rubens wronged
The main spring offering at the Royal Academy, Rubens and His Legacy: Van Dyck to Cézanne, teaches two useful lessons.…
Back to the future
Almost a decade ago, David Cameron informed Tony Blair, unkindly but accurately, ‘You were the future once.’ A visitor to…
Double vision
In 1933, two new students met on their first day at Glasgow School of Art. From then on they were…
Life force
‘Love of the human form’, writes the painter John Lessore, ‘must be the origin of that peculiar concept, the Life…
In from the cold
You won’t have heard of Peder Balke. Yet this long-neglected painter from 19th-century Norway is now the subject of a…
Erotic review
It has been a vintage season for mannequins. At the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, an exhibition called Silent Partners looks…
In the shadow of Guernica
The Paris World’s Fair of 1937 was more than a testing ground for artistic innovation; it was a battleground for…
Warts and all
Giovanni Battista Moroni, wrote Bernard Berenson, was ‘the only mere portrait painter that Italy has ever produced’. Indeed, Berenson continued,…
Privates on parade
One day, as a student — or so the story goes — Egon Schiele called on Gustav Klimt, a celebrated…
Artists’ little helpers
A 19th-century London artists’ supplier named Charles Roberson offered imitation human beings for sale or rent, with papier-mâché heads, soft…
Becoming Rothko
Mark Rothko was an abstract artist who didn’t see himself as an abstract artist — or at least not in…
Mis-en-Mars
You have to hand it to the Russians. They beat us into space, beat us to sexual equality, and a…
Art from another planet
‘Some day we shall no longer need pictures: we shall just be happy.’ — Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter, 1966…
From the sublime to the ridiculous
In the Royal Academy’s courtyard are two large glass cases or vitrines containing model submarines. In one the sea has…
Small wonder
The V&A has an unparalleled collection of hundreds of works by John Constable (1776–1837), but hardly anyone seems to know…
Old master
Juvenilia is the work produced during an artist’s youth. It would seem logical to think, therefore, that an artist’s output…
Net effect
In the mid-1990s the art world got excited about internet art (or ‘net.art’, as those involved styled it). This new…
A kind of magic
Talking of Rembrandt’s ‘The Jewish Bride’ to a friend, Vincent van Gogh went — characteristically — over the top. ‘I…
