Contemporary art
London’s best contemporary art show is in Penge
If you’ve been reading the more excitable pages of the arts press lately, you might be aware that the London…
Absorbingly repellent: Ed Atkins, at Tate Britain, reviewed
In the old days, you’d have to go to a lot of trouble to inhabit another person’s skin. Today you…
If ‘wokeness’ is over, can someone please tell the Fitzwilliam Museum?
Optimists believe that the tide of ‘wokeness’ is now ebbing. If so, the message has not yet reached Cambridge, whose…
In defence of decommissioning
There’s more than a grain of truth in the popular caricature of a curator as a mother hen clucking frantically…
Are kids’ games under threat?
We hear a lot about the rights of the child, but the first I heard of the child’s right to…
The mesmerising Olympic posters designed by the likes of Warhol and Whiteread
You could be forgiven for assuming that the citizens of Paris weren’t exactly bursting with joy at the prospect of…
It’s time to free art from being ‘interactive’ and ‘immersive’
The American artist and critic Brad Troemel once pointed out that art galleries have all turned into a kind of…
The latest Venice Biennale is ideologically and aesthetically bankrupt
Last week’s opening of the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale marks a watershed for the art world. In much…
‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’: Sophie Calle interviewed
‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’ Thus Sophie Calle objected to the first line of…
The greatest artist chronicler of our times: Grayson Perry, at the Edinburgh Art Festival, reviewed
The busiest show in Edinburgh must be Grayson Perry: Smash Hits which, a month into its run, still has people…
Policed conviviality: Serpentine Pavilion 2023 reviewed
As I sat down at this year’s Serpentine Pavilion, I overheard a curious exchange. ‘You mustn’t create art within art,’…
As seductive as Chagall: Sarah Sze’s The Waiting Room reviewed
Exiting Peckham Rye station, you’re not aware of it, but standing on the platform you can see a mansard roof…
At her best when lightly ruffling the surfaces of things: Cornelia Parker, at Tate Britain, reviewed
Cornelia Parker wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth, but when she was growing up her German godparents…
Exquisite and deranged: two glass exhibitions reviewed
A ‘Ghost Shop’ has appeared between Domino’s Pizza and Shoe Zone on Sunderland High Street. Look through the laminated window…
Fails to dispel the biggest myth of all: Whitechapel Gallery's A Century of the Artist’s Studio reviewed
Picture the artist’s studio: if what comes to mind is the romantic image of a male painter at his easel…
Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning art scene
Stuart Jeffries on Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning art scene
Part-gothic horror, part-Acorn Antiques: Louise Bourgeois, at the Hayward Gallery, reviewed
Louise Bourgeois was 62 and recently widowed when she first used soft materials in her installation ‘The Destruction of the…
How the Beano shaped art
Stuart Jeffries on the cultural influence of the comic that said it was good to be bad
Paintings dominate – the good, the bad and the very ugly: Frieze London 2021 reviewed
There’s a faint scent of desperation wafting through the Frieze tent this year. Pre–pandemic, this was where you came to…
Glorious: Bernardo Bellotto at the National Gallery reviewed
What is the National Gallery playing at? Why, in this summer of stop-start tropical storms, is the NG making visitors…
What really went on at Britain's Bikini Atoll?
Stuart Jeffries takes the ferry to Orford Ness, a strange shingle spit on the Suffolk coast, where art mingles with death
The Turner Prize shortlist is an embarrassment
In 2019 I was asked to be on the jury for the Turner Prize. I was pretty happy about this.…
How has this complete original been sidelined?
A party of disorderly couples has gatecrashed the Picture Gallery at Bath’s Holburne Museum, climbing on to the antique furniture,…
The artists ensnared by the capitalist system they affect to despise
Stuart Jeffries on the artists ensnared by the capitalist system they affect to despise
