Exhibitions
Lorenzo Lotto’s 16th century portraits come startlingly close to photography
You can, perhaps, glimpse Lorenzo Lotto himself in the National Gallery’s marvellous exhibition, Lorenzo Lotto: Portraits. At the base of…
To say this is a ‘once in a generation’ exhibition seems absurdly modest
‘The barbarians drive us to the sea, the sea drives us to the barbarians; between these two means of death…
Like today’s conceptual artists, Burne-Jones was more interested in ideas than paint
‘I want big things to do and vast spaces,’ Edward Burne-Jones wrote to his wife Georgiana in the 1870s. ‘And…
The true face of Islam won’t be found in mosques or Muslim schools, but at the British Museum
In Britain today, Islam in its original essence is not to be found in mosques or Muslim schools, but on…
The objects that sound witchiest on paper just look sad: Spellbound reviewed
Just in front of me, visiting Spellbound at the Ashmolean last week, was a very rational boy of about seven…
Wonderful, overwhelming, once-in-a-lifetime display of Bruegels – get on a plane now
‘About suffering’, W.H. Auden memorably argued in his poem ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’, the old masters ‘were never wrong’. Great…
Women’s toplessness caused less offence to Victorians than their trousers
‘They did not look like women, or at least a stranger new to the district might easily have been misled…
Lautrec often made the stars in his posters look appalling – but they kept coming back
You don’t need to be much of a psychologist to understand the trajectory of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Born to aristocratic…
Full of fabulous, but baffling, things: Oceania reviewed
At six in the morning of 20 July 1888, Robert Louis Stevenson first set eyes on a Pacific Island. As…
Bellini vs Mantegna – whose side are you on?
Sometimes Andrea Mantegna was just showing off. For the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, he painted a false ceiling above the…
There’s almost nothing in this Hayward show – and that’s the point
A reflection on still water was perhaps the first picture that Homo sapiens ever encountered. The importance of mirrors in…
From ancient Egyptian smut to dissent-by-currency: I object at the British Museum reviewed
‘If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear,’…
A visionary and playful heir to Duchamp: Yves Klein at Blenheim Palace
Nothing was so interesting to Yves Klein as the void. In 1960 he leapt into it for a photograph —…
If you like monstrosities, head to the Hayward Gallery
One area of life in which globalism certainly rules is that of contemporary art. Installation, performance, the doctrine of Marcel…
The ‘idiot’ artists whose surreal visions flourished in Victorian asylums
In G.F. Watts’s former sculpture studio in the Surrey village of Compton, a monstrous presence has interposed itself between the…
Appealingly meaningless and improbable: Christo at the Serpentine Lake reviewed Plus: memorably pointless paintings at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery
It’s not a wrap. This is the first thing to note about the huge trapezoid thing that has appeared, apparently…
A new exhibition gives us the real Tolkien – not his awful legacy
To no one’s surprise, the Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth exhibition at the Bodleian in Oxford, where J.R.R. spent so much…
Antony Gormley’s art works better in theory than in practice
Antony Gormley has replicated again. Every year or so a new army of his other selves — cast, or these…
Alexander Calder was a volcano of invention
In the Moderna Museet in Stockholm there is a sculpture by Katharina Fritsch, which references Chekhov’s famous story ‘Lady with…
Sorrow and pity are no guarantee of artistic success: Aftermath at Tate Britain reviewed
Some disasters could not occur in this age of instant communication. The first world war is a case in point:…
How the world was turned upside down by revelation of aerial perspectives
‘To look at ourselves from afar,’ Julian Barnes wrote in Levels of Life, ‘to make the subjective suddenly objective: this…
The best and most extensive exhibition on Napoleon in three decades
The Musée de l’Armée at Les Invalides in Paris has a new exhibition that I believe to be the best…
Edward Bawden is deservedly one of Britain’s most popular 20th century artists
‘When I’m on good form,’ Edward Bawden told me, ‘I get to some point in the design and I laugh…
How lucky we are to have the Royal Academy
What is the Royal Academy? This question set me thinking as I wandered through the crowds that celebrated the opening…
The troubling history behind the healthy, happy smile
In his Physiognomische Fragmente, published between 1775 and 1778, the Swiss physiognomist Johann Kaspar Lavater insisted that ‘clean, white and…