Exhibitions
Hugely pleasurable – a vision of summer: Jennifer Packer at the Serpentine Gallery reviewed
We need to talk about Eric. In Jennifer Packer’s portrait of her friend and fellow artist, Eric N. Mack sits…
Rich and strange: Eileen Agar at Whitechapel Gallery reviewed
Heads turn, strangers gawp, matrons tut or look in envy. A man doffs his bowler hat knowing when he is…
Full of masterpieces: Paula Rego at Tate Britain reviewed
The Victorian dictum ‘every picture tells a story’ is true of Paula Rego’s works, but it’s only part of the…
The magical art of boxer, labourer & sometime gravedigger Eric Tucker
Artists’ estates can be a curse on a family. The painter dies, leaving the house stuffed with unsold canvases. What…
Covid has been great for drawing
Amid the greatly exaggerated reports of the death of painting issued and reissued over the course of the past century,…
An immensely rich show – though it consists of only two paintings: Rubens at the Wallace Collection reviewed
‘When pictures painted as companions are separated,’ John Constable wisely observed, ‘the purchaser of one, without being aware of it,…
Rodin was as modern as Magritte and Dali, but more touching and troubling than either
Rodin’s studio at Meudon in the suburbs of Paris is huge and filled with light — a sort of combined…
How has this complete original been sidelined?
A party of disorderly couples has gatecrashed the Picture Gallery at Bath’s Holburne Museum, climbing on to the antique furniture,…
The politics of handbags
‘Of course, I am obstinate in defending our liberties and our law — that is why I carry a big…
One of the greatest of all outsider artists: Alfred Wallis at Kettle’s Yard reviewed
Alfred Wallis (1855-1942) should be an inspiration to all late starters. It was not until he had passed the age…
Entertaining – but there's one abomination: National Gallery's Sin reviewed
Obviously, we’re living through an era of censorious puritanism. Granted, the contemporary creeds are different from those of the 16th…
A high-end car-boot sale of the unconscious: Colnaghi’s Dreamsongs reviewed
In 1772 the 15-year-old Mozart wrote a one-act opera set, like The Magic Flute, in a dream world. Il sogno…
Spectacular and mind-expanding: Tantra at the British Museum reviewed
A great temple of the goddess Tara can be found at Tarapith in West Bengal. But her true abode, in…
As immersive art goes, nothing can compete with Berghain
In Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, the protagonist, at the Venice Biennale, muses on installations. ‘Ideally, the perfect art installation…
The beautiful upside-down world of Georg Baselitz
The hand is one of the first images to appear in art. There are handprints on the walls of caves…
Imagine being married to Stanley Spencer
It sometimes rains in Cookham. It rained all day when I visited the Stanley Spencer Gallery to see the exhibition…
We're wrong to think the impressionists were chocolate boxy
One Sunday evening in the autumn of 1888 Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin went for a walk. They headed…
Looking at Barnett Freedman makes me weep at the government's dismal graphics
Among the spoils of a lockdown clear-out was a box of my grandmother’s books: Woolf, Austen, Mitford and The Complete…
Figurative painting is back – but how good is any of it?
An oxymoron is a clever gambit in an exhibition title. The Whitechapel Gallery’s Radical Figures: Painting in the New Millennium…
The artistic response to the pandemic has so far been mind-numbingly banal
Travelling around Latin America three years ago, Stephen Chambers was attracted by pharmacy signs with pictograms advertising treatments to illiterate…
The guileful, soulful art of Khadija Saye
Gwyneth Paltrow has a new neighbour. On the same block in Notting Hill as Gwynie’s Goop store, with its This…
The joy of socially distanced gallery-going
Not long after the pubs, big galleries have all started to reopen, like flowers unfolding, one by one. The timing…
I wish John Chamberlain was still around to crush this hideous toothpaste-blue Ferrari
For three months art lovers have had nothing but screens to look at. As one New York dealer complained to…
I didn’t expect to be so moved – galleries reopen
I’m in Mayfair and I’m boarding an airplane. Or rather, I’m boarding an approximation of an airplane. In the centre…
Sumptuous and saucy: Compton Verney's virtual tour of their Cranach show
‘Naughty little nudes,’ my history of art teacher used to say of Cranach’s Eves and Venuses. Aren’t they just? Coquettish…
