Exhibitions
Joshua Reynolds’s revival
In front of the banner advertising the RA Summer Exhibition, the swagger statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) by Alfred…
Birmingham barbershop meets the Folies-Bergère: Hurvin Anderson’s Salon Paintings, at the Hepworth Wakefield, reviewed
There’s a nice irony to the title Salon Paintings when the salon in question is a barbershop, an irony that…
The woman who pioneered colour photography
Hermione Eyre on Yevonde, the pioneering 1930s photographer whose colour portraits evoke a vanishing world
Exceptional career woman, unexceptional painter: Lavinia Fontana, at the National Gallery of Ireland, reviewed
Reviewing the Prado’s joint exhibition of Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana in the Art Newspaper three years ago, Brian Allen…
Are surgical museums such the Hunterian doomed?
Margaret Mitchell on the ethics of museums of anatomical specimens
The Georgian fashion revolution
Normally, when you look at portraits you feel obliged to focus on the sitter. But quite often you’re thinking, ‘Ooh,…
The quiet genius of Gwen John
In the rush to right the historical gender balance, galleries have been corralling neglected women artists into group exhibitions: the…
‘I love twigs’: botanical painter Emma Tennant interviewed
Claudia Massie talks to the botanical painter Emma Tennant about grief, finding success later in life, and her love of twigs
Do we need another Lucian Freud exhibition?
Do we need another Lucian Freud exhibition? After years of exposure to his paintings of naked bodies posed like casualties…
Brilliant and distinctive but also relentless: William Kentridge, at the RA, reviewed
William Kentridge’s work has a way of sticking in the mind. I can remember all my brief encounters with it,…
Biomorphic forms that tempt the viewer to cop a feel: Maria Bartuszova, at Tate Modern, reviewed
Art is a fundamentally childish activity: painters dream up images and sculptors play with stuff. It was while playing with…
Fresh and dreamy: Edward Lear, at Ikon Gallery, reviewed
‘It seems to me that I have to choose between 2 extremes of affection for nature… English, or Southern… The…
When Lee Miller met Picasso
During the liberation of Paris in August 1944, the photographer Lee Miller made her way to Picasso’s studio on rue…
Promethean grandeur: Maurice Broomfield – Industrial Sublime, at the V&A, reviewed
When Maurice Broomfield left school at the age of 15, he took a job at the Rolls-Royce factory, bending copper…
There's much more to Winslow Homer than his dramatic seascapes
Winslow Homer may be too all-American for British tastes but a forthcoming retrospective could change all that, says Laura Gascoigne
Guston is treated with contempt: Philip Guston Now reviewed
Philip Guston is hard to dislike. The most damning critique levied against the canonical mid-century American painter is that he…
A victory of the imaginatively crafted over the conceptual: In the Black Fantastic reviewed
‘These artists are offering other ways of seeing,’ says Ekow Eshun, curator of In the Black Fantastic, and from the…
As cool and refreshing as a selection of sorbets: RA's Milton Avery show reviewed
‘I like the way he puts on paint,’ Milton Avery said about Matisse in 1953, but that was as much…
A showstopper is at the heart of this winning show: Dulwich Gallery's Reframed – The Woman in the Window reviewed
Themed exhibitions pegged to particular pictures in museum collections tend to be more interesting to the museum’s curators than to…
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…
From Leonardo to Hepworth: the art of surgery
Daisy Dunn on the art of surgery
A brief introduction to Scottish art
When Nikolaus Pevsner dedicated his 1955 Reith Lectures to ‘The Englishness of English Art’, he left out the Scots. The…
The jewel-bright, mesmerisingly detailed pictures by Raqib Shaw are a revelation
Describing the Venice Biennale, like pinning down the city itself, is a practical impossibility. There is just too much of…
Artist, actor, social justice warrior, serial killer: the many faces of Walter Sickert
Artist, actor, social justice warrior, serial killer. Laura Gascoigne on the many faces of Walter Sickert
Fascinating exhibitions – clunky editorialising: Breaking the News at the British Library reviewed
In The Spectator office’s toilets there are framed front covers of the events that didn’t happen: Corbyn beats Boris; ‘Here’s…
