Sculpture
Lucian Freud insisted a forgery could be as great as the real thing. Was he right?
Perhaps we should blame Vasari. Ever since the publication of his Lives of the Artists, and to an ever-increasing extent,…
Moore’s art has never looked better: Henry Moore at Houghton Hall reviewed
Henry Moore was, it seems, one of the most notable fresh-air fiends in art history. Not only did he prefer…
Powerful elegy for a world that is slipping away: Tate Britain’s The Asset Strippers reviewed
There was a moment more than 20 years ago when Bankside Power Station was derelict but its transformation into Tate…
Full of lovely paintings that might lead you astray: The Renaissance Nude reviewed
Early in the 16th century, Fra Bartolomeo painted an altarpiece of St Sebastian for the church of San Marco in…
Wicked, humorous and high-spirited: Dorothea Tanning at Tate Modern reviewed
Art movements come and go but surrealism, in one form or another, has always been with us. Centuries before Freud’s…
Phyllida Barlow’s sculptural wonderland reigns supreme at the Royal Academy
‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.’ If there’s an exception to prove Shaw’s rule, it’s Phyllida Barlow. The…
![Ivory plaque of a lioness mauling a man, ivory, gold, cornelian, lapis lazuli, Nimrud, 900 BC–700 BC. [© The Trustees of the British Museum]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2018/11/lioness_plaque.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
The Assyrians of Ashurbanipal’s time were just as into pillage and destruction as Isis
The Assyrians placed sculptures of winged human-headed bulls (lamassus) at the entrances to their capital at Nineveh, in modern Mosul,…
To say this is a ‘once in a generation’ exhibition seems absurdly modest
‘The barbarians drive us to the sea, the sea drives us to the barbarians; between these two means of death…
There’s almost nothing in this Hayward show – and that’s the point
A reflection on still water was perhaps the first picture that Homo sapiens ever encountered. The importance of mirrors in…
A visionary and playful heir to Duchamp: Yves Klein at Blenheim Palace
Nothing was so interesting to Yves Klein as the void. In 1960 he leapt into it for a photograph —…
If you like monstrosities, head to the Hayward Gallery
One area of life in which globalism certainly rules is that of contemporary art. Installation, performance, the doctrine of Marcel…
The ‘idiot’ artists whose surreal visions flourished in Victorian asylums
In G.F. Watts’s former sculpture studio in the Surrey village of Compton, a monstrous presence has interposed itself between the…
Appealingly meaningless and improbable: Christo at the Serpentine Lake reviewed Plus: memorably pointless paintings at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery
It’s not a wrap. This is the first thing to note about the huge trapezoid thing that has appeared, apparently…
Antony Gormley’s art works better in theory than in practice
Antony Gormley has replicated again. Every year or so a new army of his other selves — cast, or these…
Alexander Calder was a volcano of invention
In the Moderna Museet in Stockholm there is a sculpture by Katharina Fritsch, which references Chekhov’s famous story ‘Lady with…
Sorrow and pity are no guarantee of artistic success: Aftermath at Tate Britain reviewed
Some disasters could not occur in this age of instant communication. The first world war is a case in point:…
India’s Sistine ceiling
In Tamil Nadu we found that we were exotic. Although there were some other western tourists around, in most of…
How Rodin made a Parthenon above Paris
‘My Acropolis,’ Auguste Rodin called his house at Meudon. Here, the sculptor made a Parthenon above Paris. Surrounded by statues…
The subtle magic of Antony Gormley wraps the world
Martin Caiger-Smith’s huge monograph on Antony Gormley slides out of its slipcase appropriately enough like a block of cast iron.…
Turning marble into cushions and stone into flesh: the magic of Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Seventeenth-century Roman art at its fullblown, operatic peak often proves too rich for puritanical northern tastes. And no artist was…
Geoffrey Clarke’s imaginative talents knew no bounds
At the height of his fame in the mid-1960s, the sculptor Geoffrey Clarke (1924–2014) was buying fast cars and flying…
The advantages of turning down the colour knob: Monochrome reviewed
Leonardo da Vinci thought sculpting a messy business. The sculptor, he pointed out, has to bang away with a hammer,…
I spy
Where was Degas standing as he sketched his ‘Laundresses’ (c.1882–4)? Did he watch the two women from behind sheets hanging…
Space odyssey
Rachel Whiteread is an indefatigable explorer of internal space. By turning humble items such as hot-water bottles and sinks inside…
Face time
The inimitably pukka voice of Jacob Rees-Mogg echoed through Radio 4 on Thursday morning. He was not, though, talking about…
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