Tate modern
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,…
Huge, impersonal canvases designed for the walls of billionaires: Tate Modern’s Capturing the Moment reviewed
‘Photography has arrived at a point where it is capable of liberating painting from all literature, from the anecdote, and…
The genius of Cezanne
Pity the poor curators of major exhibitions struggling to find fresh takes on famous masters. The curators of Tate Modern’s…
Biomorphic forms that tempt the viewer to cop a feel: Maria Bartuszova, at Tate Modern, reviewed
Art is a fundamentally childish activity: painters dream up images and sculptors play with stuff. It was while playing with…
Why Tate Modern seems more like a playground than an art gallery
This book covers the period 1878-2000, offering thought provoking commentary on some 120 years of experiments in being modern, and…
Guston is treated with contempt: Philip Guston Now reviewed
Philip Guston is hard to dislike. The most damning critique levied against the canonical mid-century American painter is that he…
A feast for geeks: The Making of Incarnation, by Tom McCarthy, reviewed
Since the publication of his debut, Remainder, Tom McCarthy has established himself as the Christopher Nolan of literary fiction: his…
The tyranny of the visual
Stuart Jeffries on the tyranny of the visual
Deserves to be much better known: Sophie Taeuber-Arp at Tate Modern reviewed
Great Swiss artists, like famous Belgians, might seem to be an amusingly underpopulated category. Actually, as with celebrated Flemings and…
The art of selling vaccines
I was bemused when I first saw the photograph of spaced-out chairs and vaccination booths in the Turbine Hall of the…
Rodin was as modern as Magritte and Dali, but more touching and troubling than either
Rodin’s studio at Meudon in the suburbs of Paris is huge and filled with light — a sort of combined…
The truth about my father, Philip Guston
Musa Mayer talks to Hermione Eyre about her father Philip Guston’s cancellation and her fear that he will for ever be known as the artist who painted the Ku Klux Klan
What's an art form that feels unpopular and pointless, but isn't? Video art
How did the universe begin? Did the great god Bumba vomit us up, as the Kuba believe? Or did we…
I don’t know when I’ve been more moved: Ora Singers at Tate Modern reviewed
It’s the breath I miss most. The moment when a shuffling group of men and women in scruffy concert blacks…
The joy of socially distanced gallery-going
Not long after the pubs, big galleries have all started to reopen, like flowers unfolding, one by one. The timing…
To fill a major Tate show requires a huge talent. Dora Maar didn’t have that
Dora Maar first attracted the attention of Pablo Picasso while playing a rather dangerous game at the celebrated left-bank café…
![English National Opera's triumphant new production of Harrison Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus, directed by Daniel Kramer. [Photo: Alistair Muir]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Opera_Exhibitions.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
A triumph: ENO’s Mask of Orpheus reviewed
ENO’s Mask of Orpheus is a triumph. It’s also unintelligible. Even David Pountney, who produced the original ENO staging in…
You’ll be blubbing over a wooden boulder at David Nash’s show at Towner Art Gallery
Call me soppy, but when the credits rolled on ‘Wooden Boulder’, a film made by earth artist David Nash over…
Olafur Eliasson’s art is both futuristic and completely traditional – which is why I love it
Superficially, the Olafur Eliasson exhibition at Tate Modern can seem like a theme park. To enter many of the exhibits,…
Full of wonders: Takis at Tate Modern reviewed
Steel flowers bend in a ‘breeze’ generated by magnetic pendulums. This is the first thing you see as you enter…
There is a jewel of a painting at Gagosian’s Francis Bacon show
‘It is no easier to make a good painting,’ wrote Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, than it is…
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…
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…
Was Pierre Bonnard any good?
An attendant at an art gallery in France once apprehended a little old vandal, or so the story goes. He…
