Exhibitions
Indiscreet astronaut
Among my more bohemian friends in 1980s London, Brion Gysin was a name spoken with a certain awe. He was…
Stars in their eyes
‘The dominant narrative of space,’ I was told, in that strange language curators employ, ‘is America.’ Quite so. Kennedy stared…
Melting pot
‘Celtic’ is a word heavily charged with meanings. It refers, among other phenomena, to a football club, a group of…
The World Goes Pop at Tate Modern - our critic goes zzzzz
The conventional history of modern art was written on the busy Paris-New York axis, as if nowhere else existed. For…
How silverpoint revolutionised art
Marshall McLuhan got it at least half right. The medium may not always be the entire message, but it certainly…
Sensory overload: Paul Neagu, Anthony Caro and Bernat Klein reviewed
‘The eye is fatigued, perverted, shallow, its culture is degenerate, degraded and obsolete.’ Welcome to the Palpable Art Manifesto of…
The only art is Essex
When I went to visit Edward Bawden he vigorously denied that there were any modern painters in Essex. That may…
Between the death of Turner and advent of Bacon, there was no greater British painter
Walter Sickert was fluid in both his art and his personality: changeable in style and technique, mutable in appearance —…
I can’t stop thinking about the Courtauld’s Unfinished exhibition
A while ago, David Hockney mused on a proposal to tax the works of art stored in artists’ studios. ‘You’d…
The forgotten Swiss portraitist and his extraordinary pastels: Jean-Etienne Liotard at the Scottish National Gallery reviewed
This is not the biggest exhibition at Edinburgh and it will not be the best attended but it may be…
Whole worlds are conjured up in a few strokes: Watercolour at the Fitzwilliam Museum reviewed
I learnt to splash about in watercolour at my grandmother’s knee. Or rather, sitting beside her crouched over a pad…
The artist who only turned into a major painter once he became a homicidal maniac
Charles Dickens’s description of Cobham Park, Kent, in The Pickwick Papers makes it seem a perfect English landscape. Among its…
There’s not a trace of shaving foam in sight in the early Turners on show at Salisbury Museum
It has often been related how, towards the end of his long life, a critical barb got under J.M.W. Turner’s…
Forget Vienna - Britain now has its own chamber of curiosities at the British Museum
Art is not jewellery. Its value does not reside in the price of the materials from which it is made.…
Poetic or pretentious? Joseph Cornell: Wanderlust at the Royal Academy reviewed
Someone once asked Joseph Cornell who was his favourite abstract artist of his time. It was a perfectly reasonable question…
![‘Sculpture with Colour (Deep Blue and Red) [6]’, 1943, by Barbara Hepworth](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/exhibitions1.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Was Barbara Hepworth a giant of modern sculpture - or a dreary relic of post-war Britain?
In the last two decades of her life, Barbara Hepworth was a big figure in the world of art. A…
The artist who turned the Hayward Gallery into Disney World
Gianlorenzo Bernini stressed the difficulty of making a sculpture of a person out of a white material such as marble.…
Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition reviewed: a jumble sale with pizzazz
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition has very little in common with the Venice Biennale. However they do share one characteristic.…
Grayson Perry - heir to Lewis Caroll and William Blake
At the Turner Prize dinner of 2003, as the winner, Grayson Perry, took a photo call with his family wearing…
Modernism lite? Modigliani at the Estorick Collection reviewed
The British painter Nina Hamnett recalled that Modigliani had a very large, very untidy studio. Dangling from the end of…
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska at Kettle’s Yard reviewed: he’s got rhythm
One evening before the first world war, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, fired by drink, tried out such then-fashionable dances as the cakewalk…
Luxury isn’t the opposite of poverty but the opposite of vulgarity - but don’t tell the V&A
Different concepts of luxury may be inferred from a comparison of the wedding feast of Charles Bovary and Emma Rouault…
Better than Robert? Sonia Delaunay at Tate Modern reviewed
In 1978, shortly before she died, the artist Sonia Delaunay was asked in an interview whether she considered herself a…
Irresistible: Ravilious at the Dulwich Picture Gallery reviewed
The most unusual picture in the exhibition of work by Eric Ravilious at Dulwich Picture Gallery, in terms of subject-matter…
Wellington's PR machine
The history of portraiture is festooned with images of sitters overwhelmed by dress, setting and the accoutrements of worldly success.…
