Venice Biennale

The jewel-bright, mesmerisingly detailed pictures by Raqib Shaw are a revelation

21 May 2022 9:00 am

Describing the Venice Biennale, like pinning down the city itself, is a practical impossibility. There is just too much of…

Sun & Sea (Marina), the Golden Lion-winning opera at the Venice Biennale. Photo: © Andrej Vasilenko

If opera survives, it’ll be thanks to artists and curators, not opera houses

25 May 2019 9:00 am

It was bucketing it down in Venice, yet the beach was heaving. Families, lovebirds, warring kids, a yappy mutt, all…

True or false? The Temple of Bel, Palmyra, before and after its destruction at the hands of Islamic State

Why confront the ugly lie of Islamic State with a tacky fake?

28 May 2016 9:00 am

Can the beauty of Palmyra be reproduced by data-driven robots? Stephen Bayley on copies, fakes and forgeries

One of Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s Scots pines in the French Pavilion

Martin Gayford finds a few nice paintings amid the dead trees, old clothes and agitprop of the Venice Biennale

16 May 2015 9:00 am

Martin Gayford finds a few nice paintings amid the dead trees, old clothes and agitprop of the Venice Biennale

The Heckler: Curators were once donnish scholars. Now they’re hip illiterates

25 April 2015 9:00 am

As a purveyor of lairy souvenirs Venice outdoes even Lourdes. The scores of shops and booths that peddle this lagoonal…

Tate Modern’s latest show feels like it’s from another planet

18 October 2014 9:00 am

‘Some day we shall no longer need pictures: we shall just be happy.’ — Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter, 1966…

Jeremy Deller is lost in Walthamstow

22 March 2014 9:00 am

At the Venice Biennale last year, Jeremy Deller presented English Magic in the British Pavilion. It was an aggressive look…