Painting
Bruegel’s Bethlehem
The world depicted by the Flemish master is not so different from our own, says Martin Gayford
Snow men
In owning a flock of artificial sheep, Joseph Farquharson must have been unusual among Highland lairds a century ago. His…
In from the cold
You won’t have heard of Peder Balke. Yet this long-neglected painter from 19th-century Norway is now the subject of a…
Erotic review
It has been a vintage season for mannequins. At the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, an exhibition called Silent Partners looks…
Bradford bohemian
David Hockney talks to Martin Gayford about 60 years of ignoring art fashion
Warts and all
Giovanni Battista Moroni, wrote Bernard Berenson, was ‘the only mere portrait painter that Italy has ever produced’. Indeed, Berenson continued,…
Privates on parade
One day, as a student — or so the story goes — Egon Schiele called on Gustav Klimt, a celebrated…
Pop provocateur
After years of being effectively banned from exhibiting in his own country, Allen Jones finally reaches the RA with his first major UK retrospective. Andrew Lambirth meets him
Art of grunting
Mr Turner may be the gruntiest film of the year, possibly the gruntiest film ever. ‘Grunt, grunt, grunt,’ goes Mr…
Becoming Rothko
Mark Rothko was an abstract artist who didn’t see himself as an abstract artist — or at least not in…
Art from another planet
‘Some day we shall no longer need pictures: we shall just be happy.’ — Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter, 1966…
From the sublime to the ridiculous
In the Royal Academy’s courtyard are two large glass cases or vitrines containing model submarines. In one the sea has…
Old master
Juvenilia is the work produced during an artist’s youth. It would seem logical to think, therefore, that an artist’s output…
A kind of magic
Talking of Rembrandt’s ‘The Jewish Bride’ to a friend, Vincent van Gogh went — characteristically — over the top. ‘I…
Master of alchemy
Martin Gayford talks to a surprisingly jolly Anselm Kiefer about art and metamorphosis
Back to the future
Futurism, with its populist mix of explosive rhetoric (burn all the museums!) and resolutely urban experience and emphasis on speed,…
Brushes with fame
Philip Hensher on the precarious fortunes of even the most gifted 19th-century artists
Dear Mary
Q. I live far away from my brother and his family, but went to stay with them recently for the…
Maths and masterpieces
The Indian inspiration with which Piero della Francesca created ‘the greatest picture in the world’
Double vision
Artists make good critics, but do critics make good artists? It’s hard to tell, when most are too chicken to…
Spirits of Bruegel
The ostensible subject matter is misleading, as is any conflation with his lesser relatives’ wassailing peasants and roistering village squares.…
