Exhibitions
How Philip Guston became a hero to a new generation of figurative painters
Why do painters represent things? There was a time when the answers seemed obvious. Art glorified power, earthly and divine,…
Proof that Rubens really was a champion of the female sex: Rubens & Women, at the Dulwich Picture Gallery reviewed
‘She is a princess endowed with all the virtues of sex; long experience has taught her how to govern these…
Marina Abramovic’s show is only of interest to diehard fans
‘Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?’ More than 30 years after the Guerrilla Girls…
You don’t have to be ‘woke’ to be troubled by the Fitzwilliam Museum’s links to slavery
What happens when a museum outlives the worldview of its founder? For publicly funded museums with collections amassed during the…
Surreal, pacy and fun: Christian Marclay’s Doors, at White Cube, reviewed
Sliding doors may change your life, but there’s no mystery in their transparency. A hinged wooden door is another matter;…
Lyrical and dreamlike: A World of Private Mystery – British Neo-Romantics, at the Fry Art Gallery, reviewed
‘My daughter’s moving to Saffron Walden, away from all this,’ said the railway man at Stratford station, gesturing at the…
The greatest artist chronicler of our times: Grayson Perry, at the Edinburgh Art Festival, reviewed
The busiest show in Edinburgh must be Grayson Perry: Smash Hits which, a month into its run, still has people…
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…
The 19th century Chinese craze for all things European
By the 1800s, the mechanical clock had become a status symbol for wealthy Chinese. The first arrived with Jesuit missionaries…
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 Georgian fashion revolution
Normally, when you look at portraits you feel obliged to focus on the sitter. But quite often you’re thinking, ‘Ooh,…
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…
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…
Is milk racist?
I was tired when I went to see Milk at the Wellcome Collection, having been up for much of the…
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,…
