At the Science Gallery I argued with a robot about love and Rilke
A little-known fact about the Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument, the first sampling synthesiser, introduced in 1979, is that it incorporated…
An extraordinary woman: The Art of Lucy Kemp-Welch, at Russell-Cotes Art Gallery, reviewed
In March 1913 two horse painters met at the Lyceum Club to discuss the establishment of a Society of Animal…
Lumpy, bulgy, human: Threads, at Arnolfini Bristol, reviewed
Trophy office blocks designed as landmarks are not welcoming to humans; their glass and steel reception areas feel more suited…
The wonders of 18th-century automata
At the Paris International Exhibition of 1867, Mark Twain was mesmerised by a life-sized silver swan with ‘a living grace…
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…
Fascinating forgeries: Art and Artifice – Fakes from the Collection, at the Courtauld, reviewed
In 1998 curators at the Courtauld Institute received an anonymous phone call informing them that 11 drawings in their collection…
Joshua Reynolds’s revival
In front of the banner advertising the RA Summer Exhibition, the swagger statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92) by Alfred…
Two artists who broke the rules: Soutine | Kossoff, at Hastings Contemporary, reviewed
Rules in art exist to be broken but it takes chutzpah, which could explain why so many rule-breakers in modern…
Birmingham barbershop meets the Folies-Bergère: Hurvin Anderson’s Salon Paintings, at the Hepworth Wakefield, reviewed
There’s a nice irony to the title Salon Paintings when the salon in question is a barbershop, an irony that…
Exceptional career woman, unexceptional painter: Lavinia Fontana, at the National Gallery of Ireland, reviewed
Reviewing the Prado’s joint exhibition of Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana in the Art Newspaper three years ago, Brian Allen…
As seductive as Chagall: Sarah Sze’s The Waiting Room reviewed
Exiting Peckham Rye station, you’re not aware of it, but standing on the platform you can see a mansard roof…
The quiet genius of Gwen John
In the rush to right the historical gender balance, galleries have been corralling neglected women artists into group exhibitions: the…
From Botticelli to Marvel: why artists love St Francis
Laura Gascoigne on the pulling power of St Francis of Assisi
Hitching them together does neither any favours: Hilma af Klint & Piet Mondrian, at Tate Modern, reviewed
In July 1928, an unknown Swedish woman artist mounted a solo show of her revolutionary abstract paintings at the World…
Rossetti’s muse was a better painter than him: The Rossettis, at Tate Britain, reviewed
‘A queer fellow’ is how John Everett Millais described Dante Gabriel Rossetti after his death, ‘so dogmatic and so irritable…
Artists’ dogs win the rosettes: Portraits of Dogs – From Gainsborough to Hockney, at the Wallace Collection, reviewed
Walking on Hampstead Heath the December before Covid, I got caught up in a festive party of bichon frises dressed,…
Rich in masterpieces: After Impressionism – Inventing Modern Art, at the National Gallery, reviewed
Getting the words ‘impressionism’ and ‘modern art’ into one exhibition title is a stroke of marketing genius on the part…
Don’t miss the exquisite Native-American carvings at the Sainsbury Centre
It’s payback time: women, artists from ethnic minorities and non-western traditions are taking over the exhibition schedules. On the heels…
How two Dutchmen introduced marine art to Britain
In March 1675 the Keeper of His Majesty’s Lodgings at Greenwich received an order for ‘Three pairs of shutters for…
Thoroughly unsettling, never simplistic: Mike Nelson – Extinction Beckons, at the Hayward Gallery, reviewed
You enter through the gift shop. Mike Nelson has turned the Hayward Gallery upside down and back to front for…
Humanity, clarity and warmth: Alice Neel, at the Barbican Art Gallery, reviewed
If you want to be taken seriously as a contemporary painter, paint big. ‘Blotter’, the picture that won the 34-year-old…
How Vermeer learnt to embrace the everyday – and transfigured it
Laura Gascoigne on Vermeer’s women
The county that inspired a whole way of painting: Sussex Landscape, at Pallant House, reviewed
In a national vote on which county’s landscape best embodies Englishness, every county would presumably vote for itself. But when…
A crash course in all things Hispanic: RA’s Spain and the Hispanic World reviewed
‘Spain must be much more interesting than Liverpool,’ decided the 12-year-old Archer M. Huntington after buying a book on Spanish…
The grisliest images are the earliest: Bearing Witness? Violence and Trauma on Paper, at the Fitzwilliam Museum, reviewed
‘Graphic’ scenes of violence are now associated with film, but the word betrays an older ancestry. The first mass media…
