Painting
Britain is absent from the V&A’s new Europe galleries. Are they trying to tell us something?
Before cheap flights, trains were the economical way to discover Europe and its foibles. Personally, I enjoyed the old fuss…
Why would a dissolute rebel like Paul Gauguin paint a nativity?
Martin Gayford investigates how this splendid Tahitian Madonna came about and why religion was ever-present in Gauguin's art
How pop is Peter Blake?
Painters and sculptors are highly averse to being labelled. So much so that it seems fairly certain that, if asked,…
Artistic taste is inversely proportional to political nous
‘Wherever the British settle, wherever they colonize,’ observed the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, ‘they carry and will ever carry trial…
Britain's abstract painters deserve more attention than America's abstract expressionists
Fifteen million pounds and a hefty slice of architectural vision have transformed the Whitworth from a fusty Victorian art temple…
Repetitive but compelling: Giacometti at the National Portrait Gallery reviewed
One day in 1938 Alberto Giacometti saw a marvellous sight on his bedroom ceiling. It was ‘a thread like a…
Why did Goya’s sitters put up with his brutal honesty?
Sometimes, contrary to a widespread suspicion, critics do get it right. On 17 August, 1798 an anonymous contributor to the…
On the frontiers of figuration, abstraction and total immateriality
The artist, according to Walter Sickert, ‘is he who can take a piece of flint and wring out of it…
Cut-ups, hallucinations and Hermann Goering: the extraordinary life of Brion Gysin
Among my more bohemian friends in 1980s London, Brion Gysin was a name spoken with a certain awe. He was…
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,…
Sensory overload: Paul Neagu, Anthony Caro and Bernat Klein reviewed
‘The eye is fatigued, perverted, shallow, its culture is degenerate, degraded and obsolete.’ Welcome to the Palpable Art Manifesto of…
The forgotten Swiss portraitist and his extraordinary pastels: Jean-Etienne Liotard at the Scottish National Gallery reviewed
This is not the biggest exhibition at Edinburgh and it will not be the best attended but it may be…
Why is the garden absent in English painting?
One of the default settings of garden journalists is the adjective ‘painterly’ — applied to careful colour harmonies within a…
The artist who turned the Hayward Gallery into Disney World
Gianlorenzo Bernini stressed the difficulty of making a sculpture of a person out of a white material such as marble.…
Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition reviewed: a jumble sale with pizzazz
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition has very little in common with the Venice Biennale. However they do share one characteristic.…
Modernism lite? Modigliani at the Estorick Collection reviewed
The British painter Nina Hamnett recalled that Modigliani had a very large, very untidy studio. Dangling from the end of…
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska at Kettle's Yard reviewed: he's got rhythm
One evening before the first world war, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, fired by drink, tried out such then-fashionable dances as the cakewalk…
‘This stuff goes on being alive’: Maggi Hambling on the power of painting
Maggi Hambling on Rembrandt, Twombly and the power of art
Better than Robert? Sonia Delaunay at Tate Modern reviewed
In 1978, shortly before she died, the artist Sonia Delaunay was asked in an interview whether she considered herself a…
A mad menage — and menagerie - in Mexico: the life of Leonora Carrington in fictional form
Leonora Carrington is one of those jack-in-the-boxes who languish forgotten in the cultural toy cupboard and then pop up every…
Wellington's PR machine
The history of portraiture is festooned with images of sitters overwhelmed by dress, setting and the accoutrements of worldly success.…
Richard Diebenkorn at the Royal Academy reviewed: among the best visual evocations of LA there are
It is true that, like wine, certain artists don’t travel. Richard Diebenkorn, subject of the spring exhibition in the Royal…
Flying witches, mad old men, cannibals: what was going on in Goya’s head?
It is not impossible to create good art that makes a political point, just highly unusual. Goya’s ‘Third of May’…
Inventing Impressionism at the National Gallery reviewed: a mixed bag of sometimes magnificent paintings
When it was suggested that a huge exhibition of Impressionist paintings should be held in London, Claude Monet had his…
Andrew Marr’s diary: The summer of Corbyn — and other things we didn’t see coming
Andrew Marr 22 August 2015 9:00 am
This is the Corbyn summer. From the perspective of a short holiday, my overwhelming feeling is one of despair at…