Exhibitions
Decent redesign, ravishing rehang: the new-look National Gallery reviewed
A little under a year ago, it emerged that builders working on the redevelopment of the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing…
The odd couple: Austen and Turner at 250
History is full of odd couples: famous but unrelated people who happen to have been born in the same year.…
Poise and gentleness: Hiroshige, at the British Museum, reviewed
Why is Hiroshige’s work so delightful? While his close predecessor Hokusai has more drama in his draughtsmanship, Hiroshige’s pastoral visions…
Art deco gave veneer and frivolity a bad name
The jazz style was the blowsy filling between the noxious crusts of two world wars. More than 30 years passed…
Why is the National Portrait Gallery’s collection so poor?
The recent announcement that the National Portrait Gallery has purchased two works by Sonia Boyce and Hew Locke for its…
Prepare to feel nauseous at this School Dinners exhibition
If your stomach turns when you walk past a Japanese restaurant with moulded plastic replicas of sushi on display, prepare…
The polarising poet, sculptor and ‘avant-gardener’ who maintained a private militia
Not many artists engage in the maintenance of a private militia, and it seems fair to assume that those who…
Was Sir John Soane one of the first modernists?
Sir John Soane’s story is a good one. Born in 1753 to a bricklayer, at 15 he was apprenticed to…
Cartier used to be a Timpson’s for the rich
In the fall of, I suppose, 1962, my friend Jimmy Davison and I, window shopping on Fifth Avenue, bumped into…
Why is the British Museum hiding its great Orthodox icons?
The long neglected art of Byzantium and early Christianity is returning to the world’s museums. Last November, the Louvre confirmed…
Wonderfully intimate: The Drawings of Victor Hugo, at the RA, reviewed
You feel so close to Victor Hugo in this exhibition. It’s as if you are at his elbow while he…
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…
Why was this fêted Mexican painter left out of the canon?
Think of a Mexican painting, and chances are you’ll conjure up an image of an eyebrow-knitted Frida Kahlo, or a…
The art of sexual innuendo
Paula Rego’s 2021 retrospective at Tate Britain demonstrated that, among art critics, ambiguity is still highly prized as a measure…
‘The possibilities of paint are never-ending’: Sir Frank Bowling interviewed
‘I’m full of excitement waiting for this to dry out,’ Sir Frank Bowling exclaims. We are sitting in his studio,…
A blast: Leigh Bowery!, at Tate Modern, reviewed
Tate Modern’s latest exhibition is a bizarre proposition on so many levels. Its subject, the Australian designer, performer, provocateur and…
The greatest paintings are always full of important unimportant things
Goya to Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection, at the Courtauld, consists of a selection of 25 absorbing paintings…
The true birthplace of the Renaissance
The baby reaches out to touch his mother’s scarf: he studies her face intently, and she focuses entirely on him.…
An exhilarating, uneven survey of an outstandingly eccentric British surrealist
Ithell Colquhoun was always a bit of a mystery surrealist. Her greatest hit is the unsettling, dream-like ‘Scylla’ (1938), a…
Real artists have nothing to fear from AI
Christie’s is making digital-art history again – or at least trying to. Between 20 February and 5 March, it is…
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…
The art of war
On his deathbed, the Austrian writer Karl Kraus remarked of the Japanese attack on Manchuria: ‘None of this would have…
Tarot isn’t very old or esoteric – but it does work
Among my many fake and useless skills, I’m a reasonably decent tarot reader. I can do one for you now…
Save our cathedrals!
My beloved 1967 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop guitar is now locked away until December at the earliest. For the past…
The rediscovery of the art of Simone de Beauvoir’s sister
An exhibition of the art of Hélène de Beauvoir (1910-2001), sister of the great Simone, opened in a private gallery…
