visual art
Strokes of genius
The art on show over the coming year demonstrates that we still live in an age of mighty painters, says Martin Gayford
Bruegel’s Bethlehem
The world depicted by the Flemish master is not so different from our own, says Martin Gayford
Snow men
In owning a flock of artificial sheep, Joseph Farquharson must have been unusual among Highland lairds a century ago. His…
Life force
‘Love of the human form’, writes the painter John Lessore, ‘must be the origin of that peculiar concept, the Life…
In from the cold
You won’t have heard of Peder Balke. Yet this long-neglected painter from 19th-century Norway is now the subject of a…
Erotic review
It has been a vintage season for mannequins. At the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, an exhibition called Silent Partners looks…
Bradford bohemian
David Hockney talks to Martin Gayford about 60 years of ignoring art fashion
Still life
You might think it a fool’s errand to attempt programmes about art on the wireless. How can you talk about…
Privates on parade
One day, as a student — or so the story goes — Egon Schiele called on Gustav Klimt, a celebrated…
Pop provocateur
After years of being effectively banned from exhibiting in his own country, Allen Jones finally reaches the RA with his first major UK retrospective. Andrew Lambirth meets him
Artists’ little helpers
A 19th-century London artists’ supplier named Charles Roberson offered imitation human beings for sale or rent, with papier-mâché heads, soft…
Art of grunting
Mr Turner may be the gruntiest film of the year, possibly the gruntiest film ever. ‘Grunt, grunt, grunt,’ goes Mr…
Becoming Rothko
Mark Rothko was an abstract artist who didn’t see himself as an abstract artist — or at least not in…
Rough-Huhne
I love Grayson Perry. You might almost call him the anti-Russell Brand: a genuinely talented artist who also has some…
Mis-en-Mars
You have to hand it to the Russians. They beat us into space, beat us to sexual equality, and a…
From the sublime to the ridiculous
In the Royal Academy’s courtyard are two large glass cases or vitrines containing model submarines. In one the sea has…
Small wonder
The V&A has an unparalleled collection of hundreds of works by John Constable (1776–1837), but hardly anyone seems to know…
Master of alchemy
Martin Gayford talks to a surprisingly jolly Anselm Kiefer about art and metamorphosis
A Cubist in New York
The American Jewish artist Max Weber (1881–1961) was born in Belostok in Russia (now Bialystok in Poland), and although he…
Independence will lead to artistic ‘desecration’
Daniel Jackson foresees an impoverished cultural landscape for an independentScotland, with artists forced to do Salmond’s bidding
