Claudia Massie

The splendour of Edinburgh’s new Scottish galleries

30 September 2023 9:00 am

Claudia Massie on the spectacular new galleries that showcase the best of Scottish art for the first time

The greatest artist chronicler of our times: Grayson Perry, at the Edinburgh Art Festival, reviewed

2 September 2023 9:00 am

The busiest show in Edinburgh must be Grayson Perry: Smash Hits which, a month into its run, still has people…

Move fast to snap up one of Elizabeth Blackadder’s sleek cats at the Scottish Gallery

29 July 2023 9:00 am

If there’s one thing the internet knows, it’s that cats sell. The Scottish painter Elizabeth Blackadder, who died in 2021…

‘I love twigs’: botanical painter Emma Tennant interviewed

13 May 2023 9:00 am

Claudia Massie talks to the botanical painter Emma Tennant about grief, finding success later in life, and her love of twigs

It’s a miracle this exhibition even exists: Audubon’s Birds of America reviewed

9 April 2022 9:00 am

In 2014, an exhibition of watercolours by the renowned avian artist, John James Audubon, opened in New York. The reviews,…

Joan Eardley deserves to be ranked alongside Bacon and de Kooning

17 July 2021 9:00 am

Claudia Massie on the unjustly neglected artist Joan Eardley, who deserves to be ranked alongside Auerbach, Bacon and de Kooning

The genius of stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen

24 October 2020 9:00 am

Claudia Massie explores the cinematic majesty and mind-bending visual trickery of stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen

A modern-day El Dorado: the Serra Pelada gold mine, Brazil, 1986

Sebastiao Salgado – master of monochrome, chronicler of the depths of human barbarity

5 October 2019 9:00 am

Occasionally, we encounter an image that seems so ludicrously out of kilter with the modern world that we can only…

‘Paean’ (1973) by Bridget Riley

Where are the art fans in Edinburgh? Getting their eyes frazzled by Bridget Riley

17 August 2019 9:00 am

The old observatory on Edinburgh’s Calton Hill may be the most favourably positioned art venue in the world. Recently resurrected…

The women who invented collage – long before Picasso and co.

6 July 2019 9:00 am

The art-history books will tell you that sometime around 1912, Picasso invented collage, or, actually, perhaps it was Braque. What…

A mesmerising retrospective: Victoria Crowe at City Art Centre, Edinburgh, reviewed

25 May 2019 9:00 am

This mesmerising retrospective takes up three floors of the City Art Centre, moving in distinct stages from the reedy flanks…

A swirl of scienza and fantasia: ‘A Deluge’, c.1517–18, by Leonardo da Vinci

The terrifying genius of Leonardo

23 February 2019 9:00 am

A cataclysmic storm is unfolding. Dense, thunderous lines of black chalk sweep rapidly around the paper in frantic curls of…

Going to the wall: ‘Jane Avril’, 1899, by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec

Lautrec often made the stars in his posters look appalling – but they kept coming back

20 October 2018 9:00 am

You don’t need to be much of a psychologist to understand the trajectory of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Born to aristocratic…

‘Camo 15-Inch Howitzer’, 1916, by F.J. Mears

Authenticity over artistry: Brushes with War reviewed

22 September 2018 9:00 am

The first world war paintings of Paul Nash are so vivid and emotive that they have come to embody, as…

Like a multistorey car park on the run, Kengo Kuma’s V&A Dundee sits alongside R.F. Scott’s polar expedition vessel, RRS Discovery

From jute, jam and journalism to video games and the V&A: the transformation of Dundee

1 September 2018 9:00 am

Not so long ago, the Dundee waterfront was presided over by a great triumphal arch, built to commemorate Queen Victoria’s…

Face value: ‘An Old Woman Reading’, 1655, by Rembrandt, on show in Rembrandt: Britain’s Discovery of the Master at the National Galleries of Scotland

Three of the best faces, and six of the best hands, ever painted: the pick of the Edinburgh Art Festival

18 August 2018 9:00 am

The Rembrandt show at the National Galleries of Scotland (until 14 October) has a problem. A mighty haul of Rembrandt…

Landscape (North Friesland), 1920

Nolde was giddily optimistic about the Nazis – they rewarded him by confiscating his works

28 July 2018 9:00 am

The complexities of Schleswig-Holstein run deep. Here’s Emil Nolde, an artist born south of the German-Danish border and steeped in…

Sally Muir marvellously captures the particular hang of a hound’s head

True, dogged likenesses

16 December 2017 9:00 am

There are currently 151,000,000 photos on Instagram tagged #Dog which is 14,000,000 more than those tagged #Cat. The enormous number…

What does ‘Guernica’ really symbolise?

11 November 2017 9:00 am

It takes a bold author to open his book about ‘Guernica’ with a quotation from the Spanish artist Antonio Saura…

‘Spray’, by Harold Williamson (1939)

Nothing is quite what it seems

19 August 2017 9:00 am

One day, somebody will stage an exhibition of artists taught at the Slade by the formidable Henry Tonks, who considered…

‘Dinant’, by J.M.W. Turner, 1839

Watercolour

12 August 2017 9:00 am

Like many artistically inclined children, I was given a set of Daler Rowney watercolours for my birthday one year. My…

Marisol with some of her sculptures, New York, 1958

What happened to the First Lady of Pop Art?

21 May 2016 9:00 am

In 1961 the Venezuelan-American sculptor Marisol Escobar made a startling appearance at the New York artists’ group known as the…

Strange fruit: Bosch mixes scripture and folklore

Want your children to love art? Start with Hieronymus Bosch

23 April 2016 9:00 am

If you hope to inspire an appreciation of Renaissance art in your children, look to Hieronymus Bosch. Ideally, your children…

‘Street musicians’; and (right) portrait of Neville Lyttelton by Randolph Schwabe

Meet Paul Nash's great enemy at the Slade

27 February 2016 9:00 am

Randolph Schwabe (b. 1885) was a measured man in art and in life. His drawings are meticulous, closely observed models…