Sculpture
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…
The art of dining
Ivan Day pulls out an old Habsburg cookbook from his library. The 300-year-old volume is so thick it’s almost a…
A gallery that refuses to dumb-down
The DNA of Dulwich Picture Gallery is aspirational, in the sincerest sense. Opening in 1817 when private collections were still…
The masterpieces on your doorstep
I do not, if I can help it, catch a train to anywhere on a Sunday. Yet there I was…
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…
Wittily wild visions: Abstract Erotic, at the Courtauld, reviewed
If you came to this show accidentally, or as a layperson, it could confirm any prejudices you might have about…
The French sculptors building the new Statue of Liberty
At a miserable-looking rally for the centre-left Place Publique in mid-March, its co-president, MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, made international headlines calling…
How do you exhibit living deities?
The most-watched TV programme in human history isn’t the Moon landings, and it isn’t M*A*S*H; chances are it’s Ramayan, a…
Fascinating royal clutter: The Edwardians, at The King’s Gallery, reviewed
The Royal Collection Trust has had a rummage in the attic and produced a fascinating show. Displayed in the palatial…
The polarising poet, sculptor and ‘avant-gardener’ who maintained a private militia
Not many artists engage in the maintenance of a private militia, and it seems fair to assume that those who…
A dreamy, if overly ambitious show: Silk Roads, at the British Museum, reviewed
Towards the end of the British Museum’s Silk Roads show, there is a selection of treasures found in England. Among…
How a single year in Florence changed art forever
The story goes that one day early in the 16th century Leonardo da Vinci was strolling through Florence with a…
The art inspired by the 1924 Paris Olympics was a very mixed bag
George Orwell took a dim view of competitive sport; he found the idea that ‘running, jumping and kicking a ball…
Why has Leonora Carrington still not had a big exhibition?
‘It had nothing to endow it with the title of studio at all,’ was Edward James’s first impression of Leonora…
This British surrealist is a revelation
When the 15-year-old Maggi Hambling arrived at Benton End in Hadleigh, Suffolk – home of the East Anglian School of…
How a market town in Hampshire shaped Peggy Guggenheim
On 24 April 1937 Marguerite Guggenheim – known as Peggy – of Yew Tree Cottage, Hurst was booked by a…
Beguiling: Yinka Shonibare, at the Serpentine Galleries, reviewed
More than seven centuries ago, the medieval cartographer Richard of Haldingham created Hereford Cathedral’s Mappa Mundi; I say ‘created’ because…
The latest Venice Biennale is ideologically and aesthetically bankrupt
Last week’s opening of the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale marks a watershed for the art world. In much…
How Philip Guston became a hero to a new generation of figurative painters
Why do painters represent things? There was a time when the answers seemed obvious. Art glorified power, earthly and divine,…
Palpable and palpatable
Art is a fundamentally childish activity: painters dream up images and sculptors play with stuff. It was while playing with…
Missionary position
Alexander Chula on the uncomfortable lessons of the new Fourth Plinth statues
One out of five
The point at which the heart sinks in this exhibition is, unfortunately, right at the outset. That’s where we meet…
Doors of perception
Describing the Venice Biennale, like pinning down the city itself, is a practical impossibility. There is just too much of…
Out of this world
Notoriously, the past is another country: what’s more, it’s a terrain for which the guidebooks need constantly to be rewritten.…
