Art

Let there be light: Saint Peter’s at dawn

Rise early to see the Vatican at its best

28 March 2015 9:00 am

The sun has only just risen in Rome and we are standing bleary-eyed in a short queue outside the Vatican.…

Manet would recognise it: the Jardin des Tuileries

Seeing Paris through Impressionist eyes

14 March 2015 9:00 am

The spectre of the Charlie Hebdo killings still hangs over Paris. Outside the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, opposite the…

‘Ash tree in Winter, 2010–13

Patrick George: painting some of his best work at 91

17 January 2015 9:00 am

‘If I see something I like I wish to tell someone else; this… is why I paint.’ Patrick George is…

Dallas’s art deco Fair Park

Dallas, city of culture

3 January 2015 9:00 am

Dallas has reinvented itself as a major arts destination, says Hugh Graham

Jacques-Louis David, emboldened by Madame Vigée Le Brun, included a smiling display of teeth in his portrait of Madame de Sériziat (1795)

How the smile came to Paris (briefly)

13 December 2014 9:00 am

In 1787 critics of the Paris Salon were scandalised by a painting exhibited by Mme Vigée Le Brun. The subject…

Martha Graham and Bertram Ross in Graham’s most famous work ‘Appalachian Spring’ (1944), with a prize-winning score by Aaron Copeland

To call this offering a book is an abuse of language

8 November 2014 9:00 am

I picked up this book with real enthusiasm. Who cannot be entranced by those 20 years after the second world…

Frieze Art Fair: where great refinement meets harrowing vulgarity

25 October 2014 9:00 am

If you wanted to find a middle-aged man in a bright orange suit, matching tie and sneakers, Frieze is a…

Tate Modern’s latest show feels like it’s from another planet

18 October 2014 9:00 am

‘Some day we shall no longer need pictures: we shall just be happy.’ — Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter, 1966…

Poor, poor Effie: Dakota Fanning

Effie Gray can effie off

11 October 2014 9:00 am

Effie Gray, which has been written by Emma Thompson and recounts the doomed marriage of Victorian art critic John Ruskin…

‘Rain, Steam and Speed — The Great Western Railway’, 1844, by J.M.W. Turner

Tate Britain’s Turner show reveals an old master - though the Spectator didn’t think so at the time

27 September 2014 9:00 am

Juvenilia is the work produced during an artist’s youth. It would seem logical to think, therefore, that an artist’s output…

‘14.11.65’ by John Hoyland

Is John Hoyland the new Turner?

27 September 2014 9:00 am

What happens to an artist’s reputation when he dies? Traditionally, there was a period of cooling off when the reputation,…

‘Modern Family’, 2014, byEd Fornieles,at Chisenhale Gallery

‘Likes’, lacquered cherry pies and Anselm Kiefer: the weird world of post-internet art

27 September 2014 8:00 am

In the mid-1990s the art world got excited about internet art (or ‘net.art’, as those involved styled it). This new…

Portrait of a couple as Isaac and Rebecca, known as ‘The Jewish Bride’, c.1665, by Rembrandt

Why everyone loves Rembrandt

27 September 2014 8:00 am

Talking of Rembrandt’s ‘The Jewish Bride’ to a friend, Vincent van Gogh went — characteristically — over the top. ‘I…

‘A Battery Shelled’, 1919, by Percy Wyndham Lewis

The Imperial War Museum finds a deadly place to display first world war masterpieces

13 September 2014 9:00 am

The Imperial War Museum has reopened after a major refit and looks pretty dapper, even though it was overrun by…

‘I wish my boyfriend was as dirty as your policies’, 2011,by Coral Stoakes

Agitprop, love trucks and leaflet bombs: the art of protest

30 August 2014 9:00 am

Titles can be misleading, and in case you have visions of microwave ovens running amok or washing machines crunching up…

‘He thought he could have made it as a visual artist — if only more people had liked his work.’ Above: John Arlott reading (1977) and Kathy and Jessy (1963)

The gentle intoxications of Laurie Lee

28 June 2014 9:00 am

On Laurie Lee’s centenary, Jeremy Treglown wonders how the writer’s legacy stands up

Why the BBC will never match Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation

17 May 2014 9:00 am

No modern critic would dare match Kenneth Clark’s fearless way with sweeping statements

Della Francesca’s ‘Resurrection’

The mathematical revolution behind ‘the greatest picture in the world’

19 April 2014 9:00 am

The Indian inspiration with which Piero della Francesca created ‘the greatest picture in the world’

This beautiful new history of Kew Gardens needs a bit of weeding

12 April 2014 9:00 am

Edward Bawden’s Kew Gardens is a beautiful book. Lovers of early 20th-century British art will find it hard to stop…

Caught between a New Age rock and a theory junkie hard place

22 March 2014 9:00 am

Siri Hustvedt’s new novel isn’t exactly an easy read — but the casual bookshop browser should be reassured that it’s…

A spirit to warm Bruegel’s ‘Hunters in the Snow’

15 February 2014 9:00 am

The ostensible subject matter is misleading, as is any conflation with his lesser relatives’ wassailing peasants and roistering village squares.…

Clarissa Tan's Notebook: Why I stopped drinking petrol

25 January 2014 9:00 am

Florence was in fog the day I arrived. Its buildings were bathed in white cloud, its people moved as though…

Saving Italy, by Robert M. Edsel - a review

20 July 2013 9:00 am

During the civil war, the Puritan iconoclast William Dowsing recorded with satisfaction his destructive visit in 1644 to the parish…

When a smartphone gallery is better than the real thing

20 July 2013 9:00 am

Michael Prodger finds that new technology is transforming how we experience art – in galleries, on computers and on smartphones too

Christopher Sykes’s diary: David Hockney, Bridlington lobster, and the risks of a third martini

6 July 2013 9:00 am

I began my week with a trip to Bridlington, the closest seaside town to my childhood home. ‘Brid’, as it’s…