Book review – art history
Potato prints, paintings and the Soviet Union: the real Miss Jean Brodie
During the second world war, when not only food, but paper and artists’ materials were scarce, Peggy Angus made a…
The age of the starving artist
Philip Hensher on the precarious fortunes of even the most gifted 19th-century artists
The British countryside in prints and paper-cuts
The Yale Center for British Art holds the largest collection of British art outside the UK. An impressive collection it…
How good an artist is Edmund de Waal?
For Edmund de Waal a ceramic pot has a ‘real life’ that goes beyond functionalism.This handsome book (designed by Atelier…
Ladies' hats were his waterlillies - the obsessive brilliance of Edgar Degas
Lucian Freud once said that ‘being able to draw well is the hardest thing — far harder than painting, as…
Wonders written on the wall
‘Take away, utterly extinct and destroy all shrines … pictures, paintings and all other monuments of feigned miracles, pilgrimages, idolatry…
The selfie from Akhenaten to Tracey Emin
If ever there was a time to write a book about self-portraits, this must be it. ‘Past interest in the…
A life of Michelangelo on the grand scale
Early on in this dazzling new biography, Martin Gayford compares Michelangelo, with his daunting artistic tasks, to Hercules, the subject…
