Book review – art history
How Hans Holbein brought portraiture to England
Before Holbein’s arrival in 1526, painting in England tended to be religious in nature. But that soon changed when his portraits spread like an exquisite virus through the country’s elites
Andy Warhol would have revelled in the chaos of his legacy
Having signed fake screenprints as his own, Warhol left his work open to questionable rulings by an authentication board, causing collectors much frustration and expense
The splendour and squalor of Venice
In his celebration of Venetian art, Martin Gayford is keenly alert to the city’s spectacular contradictions
A feast for foot fetishists
It is always interesting to see what art historians get up to when none of the rest of us is…
The London painters that conquered the world
This is an important, authoritative work of art criticism that recognises schools of painters, yet displays the superior distinctions of…
Pathos and humanity in pictures of abject misery
In 1971 the late Linda Nochlin burst onto the public scene with her groundbreaking essay, ‘Why Have There Been No…
The codes and codswallop surrounding Leonardo da Vinci
‘If you look at walls soiled with a variety of stains or at stones with variegated patterns,’ Leonardo da Vinci…
The subtle magic of Antony Gormley wraps the world
Martin Caiger-Smith’s huge monograph on Antony Gormley slides out of its slipcase appropriately enough like a block of cast iron.…
High wire act
‘Mid-century modern’ is the useful term popularised by Cara Greenberg’s 1984 book of that title. The United States, the civilisation…
The spaces in between
An unfinished painting can provide a startling glimpse of the artist at work. But the common tendency to prefer it to a finished work is being taken to extremes, says Philip Hensher
Trivial pursuits
Well, he’s back. Though you’d be forgiven for thinking he’d never been away. Fresh from delivering the Reith lectures, exhibitions…
Sexy self-advertising
At nearly eight foot high and five foot wide, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard’s portrait of herself with two of her students is…
Waspish traditionalist
Randolph Schwabe (b. 1885) was a measured man in art and in life. His drawings are meticulous, closely observed models…
Lost, found and lost again
This is an extraordinary story. In 1845 John Snare, an unremarkable Reading bookseller, goes to an auction in a defunct…
Lines of beauty
David Jones (1895–1974) was a remarkable figure: artist and poet, he was a great original in both disciplines. His was…
An exquisite flowering of talent
It seems odd that a singer, musician, television performer and sculptor who typified the 1960s as vividly as Rory McEwen…
The more deceived
Louis the Decorator and his chums in the antiques trade use the word ‘airport’ adjectivally and disparagingly. It signifies industrially…
In a niche of their own
As words commonly used to write about the visual arts become increasingly useful to advertisers, ‘to curate’ is becoming the…
Driven to abstraction
Philip Hensher on the perverse, tormented Mark Rothko, whose anger and depression — often painfully apparent in his art — only increased with his success
Divinely decorative
Italian cabinets and tables decorated with inlaid semi-precious stones known as ‘pietre dure’ were a ‘must-have’ for English milords returning…
The fine art of bluffing
My career at school and after was greatly enhanced by a series of books called The Bluffer’s Guide to….These gave…
A great visual sermon
In 1439 Abraham of Souzdal, a Russian bishop visiting Florence, was in the audience in Santa Maria del Carmine for…
Dwelling in marble halls
Phrases such as ‘Some aspects of…’ are death at the box-office, so it is not exactly unknown for the titles…
In the gutter, looking at the stars
What he really wanted, Picasso once remarked, was to live ‘like a pauper, but with plenty of money’. It sounds…
A monumental achievement
Ivor Roberts-Jones was in many ways the right artist at the wrong time. Had the sculptor been born a few…
