Exhibitions
‘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 importance of lesbianism to British modernism: Double Weave, at Ditchling Museum, reviewed
The name of Ditchling used to be synonymous with Eric Gill, but since he was outed as an abuser of…
How the Georgians invented nightlife
Dan Hitchens on the Georgian obsession with lavish light shows and nocturnal adventures
Champion of the female sex
‘She is a princess endowed with all the virtues of sex; long experience has taught her how to govern these…
Immaterial world
VR ‘immersion’ is everywhere in London this autumn, but is it of any value? Stuart Jeffries takes the plunge
Northern lights
Claudia Massie on the spectacular new galleries that showcase the best of Scottish art for the first time
The ruff stuff
Why is Frans Hals still not considered the equal of Rembrandt, asks Craig Raine
‘Moons are in!’
‘My daughter’s moving to Saffron Walden, away from all this,’ said the railway man at Stratford station, gesturing at the…
Master of all trades
The busiest show in Edinburgh must be Grayson Perry: Smash Hits which, a month into its run, still has people…
The house that Rach built
Fast cars, minimalist design and en suite bathrooms: Richard Bratby visits the composer’s starkly modern Swiss home
Are we human?
A little-known fact about the Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument, the first sampling synthesiser, introduced in 1979, is that it incorporated…
Riding high
In March 1913 two horse painters met at the Lyceum Club to discuss the establishment of a Society of Animal…
Top cat
If there’s one thing the internet knows, it’s that cats sell. The Scottish painter Elizabeth Blackadder, who died in 2021…
We’re off to see the wizard
At the Paris International Exhibition of 1867, Mark Twain was mesmerised by a life-sized silver swan with ‘a living grace…
Catching the zeitgeist
‘Photography has arrived at a point where it is capable of liberating painting from all literature, from the anecdote, and…
The great pretenders
In 1998 curators at the Courtauld Institute received an anonymous phone call informing them that 11 drawings in their collection…
The playful portraitist
In front of the banner advertising the RA Summer Exhibition, the swagger statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) by Alfred…
Cutting edge
There’s a nice irony to the title Salon Paintings when the salon in question is a barbershop, an irony that…
‘Be original or die!’
Hermione Eyre on Yevonde, the pioneering 1930s photographer whose colour portraits evoke a vanishing world
Shatterer of glass ceilings
Reviewing the Prado’s joint exhibition of Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana in the Art Newspaper three years ago, Brian Allen…
Bring up the bodies
Margaret Mitchell on the ethics of museums of anatomical specimens
Top gear
Normally, when you look at portraits you feel obliged to focus on the sitter. But quite often you’re thinking, ‘Ooh,…
Ladies first
In the rush to right the historical gender balance, galleries have been corralling neglected women artists into group exhibitions: the…
