Exhibitions
Evocative tribute to the orphaned caped crusader: Superheroes, Orphans & Origins at the Foundling Museum reviewed
Instead of wasting money, like other museums, on extravagant architectural statements, the Foundling Museum in Brunswick Square has sensibly chosen…
The exquisite pottery of Richard Batterham
Richard Batterham died last September at the age of 85. He had worked in his pottery in the village of…
Exquisite and deranged: two glass exhibitions reviewed
A ‘Ghost Shop’ has appeared between Domino’s Pizza and Shoe Zone on Sunderland High Street. Look through the laminated window…
It’s a miracle this exhibition even exists: Audubon’s Birds of America reviewed
In 2014, an exhibition of watercolours by the renowned avian artist, John James Audubon, opened in New York. The reviews,…
Fails to dispel the biggest myth of all: Whitechapel Gallery's A Century of the Artist’s Studio reviewed
Picture the artist’s studio: if what comes to mind is the romantic image of a male painter at his easel…
Valuable reassessment of British art: Barbican's Postwar Modern reviewed
Notoriously, the past is another country: what’s more, it’s a terrain for which the guidebooks need constantly to be rewritten.…
Renaissance radical: Carlo Crivelli – Shadows on the Sky at Ikon Gallery reviewed
‘Camp,’ wrote Susan Sontag, ‘is the paintings of Carlo Crivelli, with their real jewels and trompe-l’oeil insects and cracks in…
Beautiful and revealing: The Three Pietàs of Michelangelo, at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence, reviewed
The room is immersed in semi-darkness. Light filters down from above, glistening on polished marble as if it were flesh.…
How good is he? Pissarro: Father of Impressionism, at the Ashmolean Museum, reviewed
Two markers: ‘Cottages at Auvers-sur-Oise’ (c.1873) is a sweet especial rural scene of faintly slovenly thatched cottages with, at its…
Part-gothic horror, part-Acorn Antiques: Louise Bourgeois, at the Hayward Gallery, reviewed
Louise Bourgeois was 62 and recently widowed when she first used soft materials in her installation ‘The Destruction of the…
Astonishing and gripping: Van Gogh's Self Portraits at the Courtauld reviewed
In September 1889, Vincent van Gogh sent his brother Theo a new self-portrait from the mental hospital at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. ‘You…
The fascination of house fronts: Where We Live at Millennium Gallery reviewed
Paintings of houses go back a long way in British art: the earliest landscape in Tate Britain is a late…
An ouroboros of vacuity that is immune to its own failure: Kaws online at the Serpentine Gallery
The second most interesting thing about this digital exhibition is that it is not for art critics like me. I…
Ethereal and allusive, all nuance and no schmaltz: Helen Frankenthaler, at Dulwich Gallery, reviewed
In 1950 the 21-year-old painter Helen Frankenthaler, fresh out of college, went to an exhibition at New York’s Betty Parson’s…
A show of ample and eerie majesty: British Museum's Peru: A Journey in Time reviewed
Growing up on a farm outside Lima, I was aware that indigenous Peruvians did not understand time in the same…
Ignore the wall text and focus on the magnificent paintings: Tate Britain's Hogarth and Europe reviewed
There are, perhaps, two types of exhibition visitor. Those who read the texts on the walls and those who don’t.…
His final paintings are like Jackson Pollocks: RA's Late Constable reviewed
On 13 July 1815, John Constable wrote to his fiancée, Maria Bicknell, about this and that. Interspersed with a discussion…
Small but perfectly formed: the Royal College of Music Museum reopening reviewed
Haydn is looking well — in fact, he’s positively glowing. The dignified pose; the modest, intelligent smile: it’s only when…
Paintings dominate – the good, the bad and the very ugly: Frieze London 2021 reviewed
There’s a faint scent of desperation wafting through the Frieze tent this year. Pre–pandemic, this was where you came to…
The frisky side of a classical master: National Gallery's Poussin and the Dance reviewed
In the winter of 1861, visitors to the Louvre might have seen a young artist painstakingly copying one of the…
The genius of Frans Hals
Since art auctions were invented, they have served to hype artists’ prices. It can happen during an artist’s lifetime —…
Fortifying snapshot of the gardener’s year: Saatchi Gallery's RHS Botanical Art show reviewed
Elizabeth Blackadder, who died last month at the age of 89, was probably the most distinctive botanical artist of our…
The yumminess of paint
‘Painting has always been dead,’ Willem de Kooning once mused. ‘But I was never worried about it.’ The exhibition Mixing…
Deserves to be much better known: Sophie Taeuber-Arp at Tate Modern reviewed
Great Swiss artists, like famous Belgians, might seem to be an amusingly underpopulated category. Actually, as with celebrated Flemings and…
Glorious: Bernardo Bellotto at the National Gallery reviewed
What is the National Gallery playing at? Why, in this summer of stop-start tropical storms, is the NG making visitors…
