Exhibitions
How Michael Craig-Martin changed a glass of water into a full-grown oak tree
‘Of all the things I’ve drawn,’ Michael Craig-Martin reflects, ‘to me chairs are one of the most interesting.’ We are…
Why has Leonora Carrington still not had a big exhibition?
‘It had nothing to endow it with the title of studio at all,’ was Edward James’s first impression of Leonora…
The importance of copying
The lunatics were once in charge of the asylum. The first six directors of the National Gallery were all artists:…
How did we ever come to accept the inhumane excesses of capitalism?
What was neoliberalism? In its most recent iteration, we think of the market seeping into every minute corner of human…
Porcelain-painting during the French revolution
People don’t accumulate stuff any more. When the late Victorian houses on our street change hands their interiors are stripped…
Children have the Proms. Grown-ups head to Salzburg. Snob summer
Salzburg Festival doesn’t mess about. The offerings this year include an adaptation of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain in Lithuanian, a…
This British surrealist is a revelation
When the 15-year-old Maggi Hambling arrived at Benton End in Hadleigh, Suffolk – home of the East Anglian School of…
The tragic fate of Ukraine’s avant-garde
In a recent interview Oleksandr Syrskyi, the new commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, said that he spends his time off…
How a market town in Hampshire shaped Peggy Guggenheim
On 24 April 1937 Marguerite Guggenheim – known as Peggy – of Yew Tree Cottage, Hurst was booked by a…
The beauty of pollution
On the back of the British £20 note, J.M.W. Turner appears against the backdrop of his most iconic image. Voted…
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…
The most original sea painter since Turner? Lowry
In 1958 an elderly gentleman staying at the Castle Hotel in Berwick-upon-Tweed gave the receptionist a doodle he had made…
Breathtaking: Mary Cassatt at Work, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, reviewed
Work – in the sense of toil – is about the last thing a 19th-century painter wished to be associated…
Is there still life in British still life?
‘The tyrannical rule of nature morte is, at last, over,’ announced Paul Nash in the Listener in 1931. ‘Apples have…
The woman who revolutionised British fashion: Barbara Hulanicki interviewed
‘I was one of your original customers in Kensington Church Street,’ I tell the founder of Biba when we meet.…
Fascinating insight into the mind of Michelangelo
You’re pushing 60 and an important patron asks you to repeat an artistic feat you accomplished in your thirties. There’s…
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…
How flabby our ideas of draughtsmanship have become
The term drawing is a broad umbrella, so in an exhibition of 120 works it helps to outline some distinctions.…
Impressionism is 150 years old – this is the anniversary show to see
The time that elapsed between the fall of the Paris Commune and the opening of the first proper impressionist exhibition…
The quiet brilliance of street photographer Saul Leiter
This is the second exhibition of mid-century New York street photography at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes. The first,…
