visual art
Everywhere and nowhere
The second most interesting thing about this digital exhibition is that it is not for art critics like me. I…
An artist of the floating world
In 1950 the 21-year-old painter Helen Frankenthaler, fresh out of college, went to an exhibition at New York’s Betty Parson’s…
By Giorgio
Martin Gayford on a radical Nativity that is the subject of one of the great whodunnits of art history
Wain’s world
Before Tom Kitten, before Felix the Cat, before Thomas ‘Tom’ Cat, Sylvester James Pussycat Sr, Top Cat and Fat Freddy’s…
An honorary Frenchman
When the Courtauld Gallery’s impressionist pictures were shown at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2019, the Parisian public…
The eyes have it
Stuart Jeffries on the tyranny of the visual
The art of listening
There’s a great documentary film on Netflix at the moment about the late artist Bob Ross, he of the happy…
North star
Claudia Massie on the unjustly neglected artist Joan Eardley, who deserves to be ranked alongside Auerbach, Bacon and de Kooning
Ai-Da Vinci
Stuart Jeffries discusses beauty, Yoko Ono and the world’s disappointments with the first robot artist
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
The two Popes
A party of disorderly couples has gatecrashed the Picture Gallery at Bath’s Holburne Museum, climbing on to the antique furniture,…
Bring me my spear
Manet’s ‘Botte d’asperges’ are probably the most famous asparagus in the world. The artist painted the delicious white- and lilac-tinged…
Pete the Street
‘I’ve been seeing the bare bones of London,’ explains the landscape artist Peter Brown, who is known affectionately as ‘Pete…
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
Selling out
Stuart Jeffries on the artists ensnared by the capitalist system they affect to despise
Soul-dead crypto world
Some things are explained so many times that they become unexplainable: we can only relate to them as something complicated…
Not down with the kids
Some pictures are now so mediated that their actual physicality has long been dwarfed by a million reproductions. The ‘Mona…
The Regent Canaletto
Quite late in life Walter Sickert paid his first visit to Peckham Rye. He was excited, apparently, because he had…
Divine revelation
Rosie Millard gets her gloved hands on one of the world’s most lavish – and expensive – art books
From colander to bed of nails
I first became aware of the work of Marcelle Hanselaar in a mixed exhibition at the Millinery Works in Islington.…
Lost and found
These rediscovered drawings by Hokusai point to him as the father of photography and modern animation, says Laura Gascoigne
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
Spirited away
The mediumistic art of various cranks, crackpots and old dowagers is finally being taken seriously – and about time too, says Laura Gascoigne
Grubby thumb prints and peeling glue
Among the spoils of a lockdown clear-out was a box of my grandmother’s books: Woolf, Austen, Mitford and The Complete…
