Francis Bacon
William Blake still weaves his mystic spell
Philip Hoare considers the ageless, hypnotic appeal of the painter, poet, visionary and ‘one-man utopia’
‘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,…
Red-letter days for Gilbert & George
After a successful show in Moscow in 1990, the odd couple went on to even greater triumph in China three years later, as the long-suffering curator of both exhibitions describes
We’ve got Francis Bacon all wrong
You have to hand it to the curators of this excellent survey of Francis Bacon’s portraits. Not only have they…
The hellraisers of Hoxton: Art, by Peter Carty, reviewed
The pretensions of the Young British Artists are lampooned in Carty’s debut novel – but there’s still something irresistible about the 1990s London it recreates
The big picture: two books on artists and their lives
Essays by Michael Peppiatt on the artists who quicken his heart, and encounters between Richard Cork and his favourites, including Jasper Johns, Henry Moore and Gilbert & George
Shakespeare sceptics are the new literary heroes
Determined sceptics will always find reasons to cast doubt on Shakespeare’s authorship, but who cares in the end, Emma Smith wonders
The well of happiness – and despair: Queer St Ives reviewed
In the winter of 1952 the 21-year-old sculptor John Milne travelled to St Ives in Cornwall to take up a…
Valuable reassessment of British art: Barbican's Postwar Modern reviewed
Notoriously, the past is another country: what’s more, it’s a terrain for which the guidebooks need constantly to be rewritten.…
Part-gothic horror, part-Acorn Antiques: Louise Bourgeois, at the Hayward Gallery, reviewed
Louise Bourgeois was 62 and recently widowed when she first used soft materials in her installation ‘The Destruction of the…
Feral showstoppers and some of the greatest paintings of the 20th century: Francis Bacon at the RA reviewed
Francis Bacon sensed our inner beastliness and painted it with astonishing power, says Martin Gayford
What did the Russians make of Francis Bacon?
The KGB might not have known much about modern art, but they knew what they liked. For instance, at what…
Sinatra, Bacon and a YouTube star: Edinburgh Fringe Festival round-up
Sinatra: Raw (Pleasance, until 15 August) takes us inside the mind of the 20th century’s greatest crooner. The performer, Richard…
There is a jewel of a painting at Gagosian’s Francis Bacon show
‘It is no easier to make a good painting,’ wrote Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, than it is…
The first great English artist – the life and art of Nicholas Hilliard
When Henry VIII died in 1547, he left a religiously divided country to a young iconoclast who erased a large…
Was Pierre Bonnard any good?
An attendant at an art gallery in France once apprehended a little old vandal, or so the story goes. He…
France gets a taste for Bacon
The case of Michael Peppiatt is a curious one. He first met Francis Bacon when he was an undergraduate at…
Remembering Soho: A conversation on debauchery, drunks and Francis Bacon
Christopher Howse has just written a book about Soho. He drank there regularly with Michael Heath, The Spectator’s cartoon editor,…
Magnificent paintings – oddly curated: All Too Human reviewed
In the mid-1940s, Frank Auerbach remarked, the arbiters of taste had decided what was going to happen in British art:…
Beyond Timbuktu
Every so often a monster comes along. Here’s one — but a monster of fact not fiction, over 700 pages…
From cave painting to Maggi Hambling: the best Christmas art books
It’s been a memorably productive year for art books (I have published a couple myself), but certain volumes stand out.…
Bacon on the side: the great painter’s drinking partner tells all
When Michael Peppiatt met Francis Bacon in 1963 to interview him for a student magazine, the artist was already well-established,…
Frank Auerbach: frightened of heights, dogs, driving, swimming — but finding courage through painting
With a career of more than 60 years so far, Frank Auerbach is undoubtedly one of the big beasts of…
Art has ceased to be beautiful or interesting — but we are more obsequious than ever to artists
Two ambitious volumes of interviews with artists have just been published. They are similar, but different. The first is by…
The dos and don’ts of the Russian art scene
They’re doing fantastic deals on five-star hotels in St Petersburg the weekend the Francis Bacon exhibition opens at the Hermitage.…
