art criticism

A lovable, impossible man: Bryan Robertson, gifted curator and Spectator critic

18 January 2020 9:00 am

Andrew Lambirth claims that Bryan Robertson was ‘the greatest director the Tate Gallery never had’; but on the evidence of…

Adam Gopnik (image: Getty)

Art and aspiration

21 October 2017 9:00 am

When Adam Gopnik arrived in Manhattan in late 1980 he was an art history postgrad so poor that he and…

How pleasant to know Mr Lear

14 October 2017 9:00 am

Edward Lear liked to tell the story of how he was once sitting in a railway carriage with two women…

What narrative can be teased out of Gustave Caillebotte’s ‘The Bridge of Europe’?

The art critic who loved to provoke the Establishment

14 May 2016 9:00 am

Richard Dorment doesn’t do whimsy. Or Stanley Spencer. He’s a fan of Cy Twombly and Brice Marden, Gilbert and George…

Greta Garbo in New York in 1955

Olivia Laing: homeless and tempest-tossed in the Big Apple

12 March 2016 9:00 am

Like a lot of people, Olivia Laing came to New York to join a lover. Like a lot of people,…

The Silver Ghost, illustrated by Stefan Marjoram

Brian Sewell votes the Silver Ghost the best car in the world

12 December 2015 9:00 am

One of the great joys of the late Brian Sewell’s style of writing was his almost child-like bluntness. He had…

How honest was Bernard Berenson?

14 December 2013 9:00 am

Sam Leith suspects that even such a distinguished connoisseur as Bernard Berenson did not always play a straight bat

God in a stained glass window

14 December 2013 9:00 am

Andrew Lambirth on the art of stained glass, as exemplified by Patrick Reyntiens