Art

How I was stitched up by the Royal Academy

10 July 2021 9:00 am

The Royal Academy, a witch-hunt and me

Welcome to the Impasse Ronsin – the artists’ colony to beat them all

3 July 2021 9:00 am

Rosie Millard is transported to the Impasse Ronsin, a tiny, squalid cul de sac in Paris’s 15th arrondissement that was once the centre of the modern-art world

The art of Dolly Parton’s bra

26 June 2021 9:00 am

New York I hope this is my last week in the Bagel. I plan to fly first to Switzerland and…

The art of government: what politicians’ paintings say about them

19 June 2021 9:00 am

What politicians’ paintings say about them

It is impossible to imagine Henrician England except through the eyes of Hans Holbein

8 May 2021 9:00 am

‘Holbein redeemed a whole era for us from oblivion,’ remarks the author of a trilogy of novels set at Henry…

The high and low life of John Craxton

8 May 2021 9:00 am

Charm is a weasel word; it can evoke the superficial and insincere, and engender suspicion and mistrust. But charm in…

How 20th-century artists rescued the Crucifixion

27 March 2021 9:00 am

Two millennia ago, in the outer reaches of the empire, the Romans performed a routine execution of a Galilean rebel.…

Which Covid vaccine is really the most effective?

27 February 2021 9:00 am

State of the art Graffiti on Edvard Munch’s first version of ‘The Scream’ was revealed to be the work of…

Scenes from an open marriage: Luster, by Raven Leilani, reviewed

16 January 2021 9:00 am

One of Barack Obama’s favourite books of 2020, Raven Leilani’s debut comes acclaimed by a literary Who’s Who that includes…

As Lucian Freud’s fame increases his indiscretions multiply

5 September 2020 9:00 am

Staying with Peregrine Eliot (later 10th Earl of St Germans) at Port Eliot in Cornwall, Lucian Freud remembered that the…

Toppling a statue isn’t erasing history – it’s writing it

13 June 2020 9:00 am

I couldn’t disagree more with Sir Keir Starmer (it was ‘completely wrong,’ ‘it shouldn’t have been done in that way’)…

At last, a novel about the art world that rings true: Annalena Mcfee’s Nightshade reviewed

4 April 2020 9:00 am

On a winter’s night an artist of moderately exalted reputation and in lateish middle age journeys across London, away from…

Capturing the mood of the English landscape: the genius of John Nash

23 November 2019 9:00 am

‘If I wanted to make a foreigner understand the mood of a typical English landscape,’ the art critic Eric Newton…

In praise of cultural elitism

28 September 2019 9:00 am

At present we have a series of ‘culture wars’ over a wide range of issues — race, gender, sexuality, power…

The many faces of William ‘Slasher’ Blake

14 September 2019 9:00 am

‘Imagination is my world.’ So wrote William Blake. His was a world of ‘historical inventions’. Nelson and Lucifer, Pitt and…

Vanessa Redgrave and Timothy Spall as Mrs Lowry and her son

Why did Mrs Lowry hate her son’s paintings?

31 August 2019 9:00 am

‘I often wonder what artists are for nowadays, what with photography and a thousand and one processes by which you…

Let’s choose our politicians by random selection

20 July 2019 9:00 am

Athens Standing right below the Acropolis, where pure democracy began because public officials were elected by lot, I try to…

‘The Paston Treasure’, detail of a little girl, unknown artist, Dutch School, c. 1663

A historical whodunnit that lets you into a forgotten world: The Paston Treasure reviewed

1 September 2018 9:00 am

In 1675 Lady Bedingfield wrote to Robert Paston, first Earl of Yarmouth. Never, she exclaimed, had she seen anything so…

Detail of a fresco from the House of the Golden Bracelet, Pompeii

The sacred chickens that ruled the roost in ancient Rome

26 May 2018 9:00 am

Even the most cursory glance at the classical period reveals the central place that birds played in the religious and…

Letters: No, the Church of England is not planning an evangelical takeover

6 January 2018 9:00 am

A church for all people Sir: I enjoyed reading Ysenda Maxtone Graham’s account of debates in the Church of England…

Sally Muir marvellously captures the particular hang of a hound’s head

True, dogged likenesses

16 December 2017 9:00 am

There are currently 151,000,000 photos on Instagram tagged #Dog which is 14,000,000 more than those tagged #Cat. The enormous number…

‘Chalices’ — a lesser known enamel work by Geoffrey Clarke, 1950

Geoffrey Clarke’s imaginative talents knew no bounds

2 December 2017 9:00 am

At the height of his fame in the mid-1960s, the sculptor Geoffrey Clarke (1924–2014) was buying fast cars and flying…

What does ‘Guernica’ really symbolise?

11 November 2017 9:00 am

It takes a bold author to open his book about ‘Guernica’ with a quotation from the Spanish artist Antonio Saura…

Ali Smith’s Winter is calm, cool and consoling

4 November 2017 9:00 am

In 1939, Barbara Hepworth gathered her children and her chisels and fled Hampstead for Cornwall. She expected war to challenge…

‘The Incredulity of Thomas’, by Caravaggio. (c.1603). It is only in St John’s Gospel that Thomas is portrayed as unbelieving

A Muslim’s insights into Christianity

28 October 2017 9:00 am

I’m not a critic, I’m an enthusiast. And when you are an enthusiast you need to try your best to…