Sculpture
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.…
Mourning glory
The room is immersed in semi-darkness. Light filters down from above, glistening on polished marble as if it were flesh.…
A new Arab spring?
Stuart Jeffries on Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning art scene
Gothic horror meets Acorn Antiques
Louise Bourgeois was 62 and recently widowed when she first used soft materials in her installation ‘The Destruction of the…
Strength through adversity
We had been dreading it like (forgive me) the plague: the inevitable onslaught of corona-lit. Fortunately, the first few titles…
Fit for a king
What is the National Gallery playing at? Why, in this summer of stop-start tropical storms, is the NG making visitors…
Touchy feely
Rodin’s studio at Meudon in the suburbs of Paris is huge and filled with light — a sort of combined…
Saint or sinner?
The verdict is still out on Thomas Becket, says Dan Hitchens, but there’s no doubting the brilliance of the art he inspired
Chiselled beauty
‘To see a world in a grain of sand’, to attain the mystical perception that Blake advocated, requires a concentrated,…
The great unveiling
The way an object is stored can magnify its beauty and enhance expectation. Joanna Rossiter wonders whether the opening up of galleries will have the same effect on an art-starved public
Quite contrary
Frankly, it is rather hideous — but also quite wonderful, shimmering against the weak blue of a late November sky.…
Painting vs sculpture
In an extract from their book, Antony Gormley tells Martin Gayford that the 3-D will always trump the 2-D
Car-boot sale of the unconscious
In 1772 the 15-year-old Mozart wrote a one-act opera set, like The Magic Flute, in a dream world. Il sogno…
Rare and precious
Martin Gayford explains why the Royal Academy would be wrong to sell Michelangelo’s ‘Taddei Tondo’
Sex and corpses
A great temple of the goddess Tara can be found at Tarapith in West Bengal. But her true abode, in…
Creative destruction
For three months art lovers have had nothing but screens to look at. As one New York dealer complained to…
Form, dogs, kids and jam
Whee-ooh-whee ya-ya-yang skrittle-skrittle skreeeek… Is it a space pod bearing aliens from Mars? No, it’s a podcast featuring aliens from…
