Exhibitions
An exhibition about dogs, chosen by dogs: Dog Show reviewed
Stepping into any art gallery, the last thing you expect to be greeted by is a cacophony of barking and…
Lucian Freud insisted a forgery could be as great as the real thing. Was he right?
Perhaps we should blame Vasari. Ever since the publication of his Lives of the Artists, and to an ever-increasing extent,…
Olafur Eliasson’s art is both futuristic and completely traditional – which is why I love it
Superficially, the Olafur Eliasson exhibition at Tate Modern can seem like a theme park. To enter many of the exhibits,…
A brief history of tea
It had to happen. Since almost everything became either ‘artisan’ or ‘curated’, conditions have been ripe for a curator of…
Full of wonders: Takis at Tate Modern reviewed
Steel flowers bend in a ‘breeze’ generated by magnetic pendulums. This is the first thing you see as you enter…
No masterpieces but there are beautiful touches: Félix Vallotton at the RA reviewed
Félix Vallotton (1865–1925) was a member of the Nabis (the Prophets), a problematically loose agglomeration of painters, inspired by Gauguin…
Remarkable and powerful – you see her joining the old masters: Paul Rego reviewed
In 1965 a journalist asked Paula Rego why she painted. ‘To give a face to fear,’ she replied (those were…
There is a jewel of a painting at Gagosian’s Francis Bacon show
‘It is no easier to make a good painting,’ wrote Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, than it is…
Virtuosic exploration of paint: Frank Bowling at Tate Britain reviewed
‘The possibilities of paint,’ Frank Bowling has observed, ‘are endless.’ The superb career retrospective of his work at Tate Britain…
How plastic saved the elephant and tortoise
Plastics — even venerable, historically eloquent plastics — hardly draw the eye. As this show’s insightful accompanying publication (a snip…
A mesmerising retrospective: Victoria Crowe at City Art Centre, Edinburgh, reviewed
This mesmerising retrospective takes up three floors of the City Art Centre, moving in distinct stages from the reedy flanks…
The duo that broke the mould of poster design
The best double acts — Laurel and Hardy, Gilbert & George, Rodgers and Hart — are often made up of…
Would James Joyce have finished Ulysses without coloured pens?
The Mesopotamians wrote on clay and the ancient Chinese on ox bones and turtle shells. In Egypt, in about 1,800…
Moore’s art has never looked better: Henry Moore at Houghton Hall reviewed
Henry Moore was, it seems, one of the most notable fresh-air fiends in art history. Not only did he prefer…
A beautiful exhibition of a magnificent painter: Sean Scully at the National Gallery reviewed
Sean Scully once told me about his early days as a plasterer’s mate. At the age of 17 he was…
Absorbing – a masterclass in print-making: Edvard Munch at the British Museum reviewed
An eyewitness described Edvard Munch supervising the print of a colour lithograph in 1896. He stood in front of the…
Is now a good time to talk about Jews and money?
Is now a good time to talk about Jews and money? The Jewish Museum in London thinks so, and perhaps…
The joy of George Shaw’s miserable paintings of a Coventry council estate
All good narrative painting contains an element of allegory, but most artists don’t go looking for it on a Coventry…
Full of lovely paintings that might lead you astray: The Renaissance Nude reviewed
Early in the 16th century, Fra Bartolomeo painted an altarpiece of St Sebastian for the church of San Marco in…
Wicked, humorous and high-spirited: Dorothea Tanning at Tate Modern reviewed
Art movements come and go but surrealism, in one form or another, has always been with us. Centuries before Freud’s…
Phyllida Barlow’s sculptural wonderland reigns supreme at the Royal Academy
‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.’ If there’s an exception to prove Shaw’s rule, it’s Phyllida Barlow. The…
The first great English artist – the life and art of Nicholas Hilliard
When Henry VIII died in 1547, he left a religiously divided country to a young iconoclast who erased a large…
Few soldiers have seen as many terrible sights as Don McCullin
Diane Arbus saw mid-20th century New York as if she was in a waking dream. Or at least that is…
The terrifying genius of Leonardo
A cataclysmic storm is unfolding. Dense, thunderous lines of black chalk sweep rapidly around the paper in frantic curls of…
Dau is not just a pretentious fraud – it’s rather disgusting
The best booers, in my experience, are the Germans. There’s real purpose and thickness to their vocals. Italians hiss. The…
