St Ives

The well of happiness – and despair: Queer St Ives reviewed

23 July 2022 9:00 am

In the winter of 1952 the 21-year-old sculptor John Milne travelled to St Ives in Cornwall to take up a…

How St Ives became Barbara Hepworth’s spiritual home

15 May 2021 9:00 am

‘To see a world in a grain of sand’, to attain the mystical perception that Blake advocated, requires a concentrated,…

A menu for the emmets

5 August 2017 9:00 am

Tate St Ives is a pale 1980s block, with a fat rounded porte cochère and sea-stained walls. It is the…

Ravilious in Essex: ‘Two Women in the Garden’, watercolour, 1932

The only art is Essex

29 August 2015 9:00 am

When I went to visit Edward Bawden he vigorously denied that there were any modern painters in Essex. That may…

The abstract art full of 'breasts and bottoms'

9 November 2013 9:00 am

Is there any such thing as abstract art? Narratives and coherent harmonies seem to me always to emerge from the…

Winner: ‘Self-Portrait’, 2013, by Thomas Newbolt

The problem with self-portraits: Ruth Borchard competition and Stranger reviewed

24 August 2013 9:00 am

My wife says you can always tell a self-portrait by the quality of its self-regard. There’s something about the eyes…