Painting
Figurative painting is back – but how good is any of it?
An oxymoron is a clever gambit in an exhibition title. The Whitechapel Gallery’s Radical Figures: Painting in the New Millennium…
I didn’t expect to be so moved – galleries reopen
I’m in Mayfair and I’m boarding an airplane. Or rather, I’m boarding an approximation of an airplane. In the centre…
From Hogarth to Mardi Gras: the best art podcasts
If you study History of Art, people generally assume you’re a nice, conscientious, plummy-voiced girl. Sometimes, people are right. It…
How John Constable got masterpiece after masterpiece out of a tiny corner of rural Suffolk
John Constable’s paintings of a tiny corner of rural Suffolk teach us to see the beauty on our doorstep, says Martin Gayford
Europe's eye-popping first glimpse of the Americas
The earliest depictions of the Americas were eye-popping, and shaped European art, says Laura Gascoigne
Sumptuous and saucy: Compton Verney's virtual tour of their Cranach show
‘Naughty little nudes,’ my history of art teacher used to say of Cranach’s Eves and Venuses. Aren’t they just? Coquettish…
William Boyd on the miraculous snaps of boy genius Jacques Henri Lartigue
William Boyd on the miraculous snaps of boy genius Jacques Henri Lartigue
From Middlemarch to Mickey Mouse: a short history of The Spectator’s books and arts pages
The Spectator arts and books pages have spent 10,000 issues identifying the dominant cultural phenomena of the day and being difficult about them, says Richard Bratby
‘I think I’ve found a real paradise’: David Hockney interviewed
Martin Gayford talks to David Hockney about life in the Norman countryside under quarantine, how the iPad is better than paint and brush, and why he is not a communist
The life of Artemisia Gentileschi is made for Netflix, but it’s the art that really excites
The life of Artemisia Gentileschi is made for Netflix, says Laura Freeman, but it’s her art that really excites
Mother nature is finally getting the art she deserves
Exhibitions about fungi, bugs and trees illustrate the depth, range and vitality of a growing field of art, says Mark Cocker
Strange, sinister and very Belgian: Léon Spilliaert at the Royal Academy reviewed
The strange and faintly sinister works of the Belgian artist Léon Spilliaert have been compared — not unreasonably — to…
Deeply romantic and wildly sexy: Portrait of a Lady on Fire reviewed
Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire is set on a remote, windswept Brittany island in the late 18th…
Pyramids of piffle: Tate Britain’s British Baroque reviewed
British Baroque: it was never going to fly. Les rosbifs emulating the splendour of le Roi Soleil? Pas possible. Still,…
How Jan van Eyck revolutionised painting
Jan van Eyck changed the art of picture-making more fundamentally than anyone who has ever lived, says Martin Gayford
The art of pregnancy
Pregnancy has always been a public spectacle – and as the Foundling Museum’s new exhibition shows, a dangerous one
Why did David Bomberg disappear?
David Bomberg was only 23 when his first solo exhibition opened in July 1914 at the Chenil Gallery in Chelsea.…
Martin Gayford visits the greatest one-artist show on Earth
For a good deal of this autumn, I was living in Venice. This wasn’t exactly a holiday, I’d like to…
Meet Congo, the Leonardo of chimps, whose paintings sell for £14,500
Three million years ago one of our ancestors, Australopithecus africanus, picked up a pebble and took it home to its…
The forgotten masterpieces of Indian art
As late as the end of the 18th century, only a handful of Europeans had ever seen the legendary Mughal…
To fill a major Tate show requires a huge talent. Dora Maar didn’t have that
Dora Maar first attracted the attention of Pablo Picasso while playing a rather dangerous game at the celebrated left-bank café…
The pleasures and perils of talking about art on the radio
‘I like not knowing why I like it,’ declared Fiona Shaw, the actress, about Georgia O’Keeffe’s extraordinary blast of colour,…
Remarkable and imaginative: Fitzwilliam Museum’s The Art of Food reviewed
Eating makes us anxious. This is a feature of contemporary life: a huge amount of attention is devoted to how…
Free of Lucian Freud — Celia Paul’s road to fulfilment
I was looking the other day at a video of the artist Celia Paul in conversation with the curator of…
