Contemporary art
Fit for a king
What is the National Gallery playing at? Why, in this summer of stop-start tropical storms, is the NG making visitors…
Apocalypse now
Stuart Jeffries takes the ferry to Orford Ness, a strange shingle spit on the Suffolk coast, where art mingles with death
Turner Prize shortlist
In 2019 I was asked to be on the jury for the Turner Prize. I was pretty happy about this.…
The two Popes
A party of disorderly couples has gatecrashed the Picture Gallery at Bath’s Holburne Museum, climbing on to the antique furniture,…
Selling out
Stuart Jeffries on the artists ensnared by the capitalist system they affect to despise
Soul-dead crypto world
Some things are explained so many times that they become unexplainable: we can only relate to them as something complicated…
Sitting pretty
With the arts world still largely in hibernation, the launch of a big podcast is as close as we get…
The bimbofication of art
Galleries are awash with gimmicky paintings that look like they’ve been designed by algorithm. Dean Kissick on the rise of zombie figuration
A salmagundi of tedium
The White Pube started life as an influential art blog, written by Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente. The…
Culture club
In Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, the protagonist, at the Venice Biennale, muses on installations. ‘Ideally, the perfect art installation…
Age of stuckism
I’m in Mayfair and I’m boarding an airplane. Or rather, I’m boarding an approximation of an airplane. In the centre…
Kinetic suitcases
While locked-down galleries compete to keep their artists in the public eye — or ear — by uploading interview podcasts,…
Museums of the mind
Six months ago I published a book about travelling to look at works of art. One such journey involved a…
Red or dead
There was a basket of thick red wool and two pairs of large knitting needles at the start of University…
How capitalism killed sleep
What can you make a joke about these days? All the old butts of humour are off limits. No wonder…
The truth about food photography
While looking at the photographs of food in this humorous exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery, I thought of how hopelessly…
![English National Opera's triumphant new production of Harrison Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus, directed by Daniel Kramer. [Photo: Alistair Muir]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Opera_Exhibitions.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
A triumph: ENO’s Mask of Orpheus reviewed
ENO’s Mask of Orpheus is a triumph. It’s also unintelligible. Even David Pountney, who produced the original ENO staging in…
Full of wonders: Takis at Tate Modern reviewed
Steel flowers bend in a ‘breeze’ generated by magnetic pendulums. This is the first thing you see as you enter…
The women who invented collage – long before Picasso and co.
The art-history books will tell you that sometime around 1912, Picasso invented collage, or, actually, perhaps it was Braque. What…
Why has British art had such a fascination with fire?
‘Playing God is indeed playing with fire,’ observed Ronald Dworkin. ‘But that is what we mortals have done since Prometheus,…
How plastic saved the elephant and tortoise
Plastics — even venerable, historically eloquent plastics — hardly draw the eye. As this show’s insightful accompanying publication (a snip…
The joy of George Shaw’s miserable paintings of a Coventry council estate
All good narrative painting contains an element of allegory, but most artists don’t go looking for it on a Coventry…
Wicked, humorous and high-spirited: Dorothea Tanning at Tate Modern reviewed
Art movements come and go but surrealism, in one form or another, has always been with us. Centuries before Freud’s…
For many artists being propagandists has become their raison d’être
If you want to lose friends and alienate people in the art world, try telling them you support Britain leaving…
Phyllida Barlow’s sculptural wonderland reigns supreme at the Royal Academy
‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.’ If there’s an exception to prove Shaw’s rule, it’s Phyllida Barlow. The…
