abstraction

How Philip Guston became a hero to a new generation of figurative painters

21 October 2023 9:00 am

Why do painters represent things? There was a time when the answers seemed obvious. Art glorified power, earthly and divine,…

Birmingham barbershop meets the Folies-Bergère: Hurvin Anderson’s Salon Paintings, at the Hepworth Wakefield, reviewed

17 June 2023 9:00 am

There’s a nice irony to the title Salon Paintings when the salon in question is a barbershop, an irony that…

As cool and refreshing as a selection of sorbets: RA's Milton Avery show reviewed

30 July 2022 9:00 am

‘I like the way he puts on paint,’ Milton Avery said about Matisse in 1953, but that was as much…

Ethereal and allusive, all nuance and no schmaltz: Helen Frankenthaler, at Dulwich Gallery, reviewed

15 January 2022 9:00 am

In 1950 the 21-year-old painter Helen Frankenthaler, fresh out of college, went to an exhibition at New York’s Betty Parson’s…

How to succeed in sculpture (without being a man)

18 April 2020 9:00 am

Whee-ooh-whee ya-ya-yang skrittle-skrittle skreeeek… Is it a space pod bearing aliens from Mars? No, it’s a podcast featuring aliens from…

The rare gifts of Peter Doig

21 September 2019 9:00 am

‘My basic intention,’ the late Patrick Caulfield once told me, ‘is to create some attractive place to be, maybe even…

Virtuosic exploration of paint: Frank Bowling at Tate Britain reviewed

8 June 2019 9:00 am

‘The possibilities of paint,’ Frank Bowling has observed, ‘are endless.’ The superb career retrospective of his work at Tate Britain…

Moore’s art has never looked more in context than it does here, undulating in the spring sunshine with Palladian architecture on one side and vistas of greenery on the other: ‘Large Reclining Figure’, 1984

Moore’s art has never looked better: Henry Moore at Houghton Hall reviewed

4 May 2019 9:00 am

Henry Moore was, it seems, one of the most notable fresh-air fiends in art history. Not only did he prefer…

An artist of the floating world: Christo’s ‘Mastaba’ on the Serpentine Lake

Appealingly meaningless and improbable: Christo at the Serpentine Lake reviewed Plus: memorably pointless paintings at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery

7 July 2018 9:00 am

It’s not a wrap. This is the first thing to note about the huge trapezoid thing that has appeared, apparently…

‘Mum On The Couch’, 2017, by Gary Hume

What lies beneath

26 August 2017 9:00 am

Last year, Gary Hume made a painting of himself paddling. At a casual glance, or even a longer look, it…

A picture of pure energy: Watts’s ‘The Sower of Systems’, 1902

Maximum wattage

29 July 2017 9:00 am

On his deathbed in 1904, George Frederic Watts saw a extraordinary spectacle. He witnessed the universe coming into being: the…

Cartoon for St Luke, Chichester Cathedral Tapestry, 1965, by John Piper

The shimmering, restless, groovy fabrics of John Piper

21 May 2016 9:00 am

A story John Piper liked to tell — and the one most told about him — is of a morning…

Is this female Swedish painter a major rediscovery - or a minor footnote?

12 March 2016 9:00 am

In 1896, a group of five young Swedish women artists began to meet regularly in order to access mystical zones…

‘Nympheas (Waterlilies)’, 1914–15, by Claude Monet

The link between herbaceous borders and the avant-garde

30 January 2016 9:00 am

Philip Larkin once remarked that Art Tatum, a jazz musician given to ornate, multi-noted flourishes on the keyboard, reminded him…

Repetitive but compelling: Giacometti at the National Portrait Gallery reviewed

24 October 2015 9:00 am

One day in 1938 Alberto Giacometti saw a marvellous sight on his bedroom ceiling. It was ‘a thread like a…

‘Dead Rabbit’, 1962, by Dennis Creffield

On the frontiers of figuration, abstraction and total immateriality

3 October 2015 8:00 am

The artist, according to Walter Sickert, ‘is he who can take a piece of flint and wring out of it…

Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition reviewed: a jumble sale with pizzazz

6 June 2015 9:00 am

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition has very little in common with the Venice Biennale. However they do share one characteristic.…

‘Claros’ (woodcut), 2015, by Gillian Ayres

Modernism lite? Modigliani at the Estorick Collection reviewed

9 May 2015 9:00 am

The British painter Nina Hamnett recalled that Modigliani had a very large, very untidy studio. Dangling from the end of…