Painting
A Tate show with dreamy, elusive power
One of the miracles of art history is how painting, so often written off, keeps on coming back. Right now…
The truth about artists’ optical aids
The first thing you see on entering this major new Viennese exhibition is not one of Canaletto and his nephew…
Defiantly creative to the end: the transgressive Dorothea Tanning
Born in Illinois in 1910 in the middle of a hurricane, the experimental Surrealist became the model of the fiercely independent artist
How sure are we that all the Michaelina Wautiers at the RA are by her?
Roll up, there’s a new old master in town. Or a new old mistress, if you prefer. Michaelina Wautier (1614-89)…
This Hockney show is disorientatingly enjoyable
When so much contemporary art is riven with obscurity and angst, it is disorientating, at first, to encounter something as…
Ovid puts today’s radicals to shame
It’s a crisp afternoon, and in a darkened room in central Amsterdam a woman is being smothered in snakes. Projected…
The art of ageing
More than 30 contemporary artists have contributed to the Wellcome Collection’s latest exhibition, which asks what it’s like to age…
Marvellous but repetitious: Gwen John – Strange Beauties reviewed
A pilgrimage to Cardiff Central, sorry, Caerdydd Canolog (according to the signage in the station, which also had my return…
How fantastic to see Hogarth’s largest paintings in their original glory
The long overlooked staircase by Hogarth at St Bartholomew’s Hospital has been cleaned and restored in a £9.5 million scheme.…
Constable, not Turner, changed the course of painting
Flanders and Swann; Tom and Jerry. Some things come in pairs. Like Turner and Constable, even though our two most…
The thrill of Stanley Spencer
‘Places in Cookham seem to me possessed by a sacred presence of which the inhabitants are unaware,’ wrote Stanley Spencer.…
Why is divorce so seldom addressed in art?
Two years ago I was flown to Reykjavik to interview the Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson. It was a weird…
A Spectator poll: What is the greatest artwork of the century so far?
Slavoj Zizek Hegel thought that, in the movement of history, the world spirit passes from one country to another, from…
The genius of William Nicholson
Even if you think you don’t know William Nicholson, it’s a fair bet that you’ve come across his work. If…
The Two Roberts drank, danced, fought – but how good was their art?
The Two Roberts, Robert MacBryde (1913-66) and Robert Colquhoun (1914-62), are figures of a lost British bohemia. Both born in…
Lice combs, vaginal syringes and cesspits: at home in 17th century Holland
The room is dark, the lighting deliberately low. At its centre stands a solitary object: a yellow and green earthenware…
The melancholy genius of Joseph Wright of Derby
If you lived in the 1760s and were affluent enough – and curious enough – science could be a family…
Are Vermeer’s paintings really coded religious messages?
‘View of Delft’ is not just a representation of some buildings seen across a stretch of dullish water but a vision of the celestial city, argues Andrew Graham-Dixon
The best artist alive? Probably
Taking place every October in Regent’s Park, the Frieze fair is probably the biggest event in London’s art calendar. It…
The staggering beauty of Fra Angelico
In 1982, Pope John Paul II surprised a few people by beatifying Fra Angelico, the 15th-century Dominican friar from near…
Condoms in 18th-century painting
Waldemar Januszczak and Bendor Grosvenor’s art podcast has returned after nearly five years. It is, says Januszczak, ‘the podcast they…
This museum is a lesson for all curators
The National Railway Museum is 50 years old, and it’s come over all literary. A quote from Howards End stands…
The best Turner Prize in years
So, the Turner Prize: where do we start? It’s Britain’s most prestigious art award, one that used to mean something…
Was Serbia the real birthplace of the Renaissance?
Where did the Renaissance begin? There has been an official answer to that question since 1550, the date that Giorgio…
I’ve had it with Anselm Kiefer
August is always a crap month for exhibitions in London. The collectors are elsewhere, the dealers are presumably hot on…
