Art
The otherworldly artist who made his name at The Spectator
There is something otherworldly about Rory McEwen’s paintings of plants, leaves and fruit. They are indisputably beautiful, often breathtakingly so,…
‘When a work lands the excitement is physical’: William Kentridge interviewed
Watching William Kentridge’s film Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot is like being submerged inside his mind, inside the coffee pot maybe.…
The curse of distraction: Lesser Ruins, by Mark Haber, reviewed
A former college professor prepares to write his long-gestated book on Montaigne, but finds his mind wandering from 1970s nudism to Balzac’s coffee dependency
Wondrous treasure troves: the Jewish country houses of Europe
Among the greatest collectors was Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, whose furniture, paintings and objets at Waddesdon Manor rivalled those of many museums
Inside the mind of Vincent Van Gogh
Van Gogh only got one major review in his career, and he was mystified by it. When the critic Albert…
What are the most ‘unsettling’ artworks to hang in 10 Downing Street?
The art of politics Keir Starmer moved a portrait of Lady Thatcher from one room at 10 Downing Street to…
Why is no one marching against VAT on school fees?
How passively we respond to revelations of Labour’s real direction of travel. As millions of pensioners brace for the confiscation…
How Miss La La captured Degas’s imagination
‘Can you come Saturday morning to my studio, 19 bis rue Fontaine?’ Degas wrote to Edmond de Goncourt in 1879.…
Women on a wind-swept island: Hagstone, by Sinéad Gleeson, reviewed
Nell, an artist, lives peacefully on an island, presumably off the west coast of Ireland. But all changes when a group of women occupy a crumbling convent overlooking the sea
Why are the Japanese so obsessed with the cute?
Some see it as a way of appearing harmless after the second world war – but an infantile delight in frolicking animals dates back to at least the 12th century
The beauty of medieval bestiaries
Spiders, owls, elephants and dragons appear alongside dog-headed men and tusked women in a wealth of texts explaining the world in the most vivid terms then available
The force of nature that drove Claude Monet
A compulsion to paint en plein air would remain with the great Impressionist for life, as well as a questing need to find new ways to express what he saw and felt
The splendour of Edinburgh’s new Scottish galleries
Claudia Massie on the spectacular new galleries that showcase the best of Scottish art for the first time
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…
Our great art institutions have reduced British history to a scrapheap of shame
Calvin Po laments the pious distortions of history at two of Britain’s best-known galleries
The secret life of China’s Banksy
The secretive life of China’s most controversial cartoonist
How to protest the protestors
These are bleak times in our land, and we must take our pleasures where we can. Personally I have been…
How to stop Just Stop Oil
The National Gallery is home to Van Gogh’s still life Sunflowers. It’s an oil on canvas that, according to the…
The ‘delishious’ letters of Lucian Freud
Love him or loathe him, Lucian Freud was a maverick genius whose life from the off was as singular as…
Bisexuality was the Bloomsbury norm
It’s been a century since the heyday of the Bloomsbury group, and now Nino Strachey, a descendant of one of…
‘I came, I saw, I scribbled’: Shane MacGowan on Bob Dylan, angels and his lifelong love of art
Graeme Thomson talks to former Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan about his first art folio
Why Christie’s is wrong to cancel Eric Gill
Why Christie’s is wrong to cancel Eric Gill
Can you tell which of these artworks was created by a computer?
Will AI change painting — or destroy it?
It’s a miracle this exhibition even exists: Audubon’s Birds of America reviewed
In 2014, an exhibition of watercolours by the renowned avian artist, John James Audubon, opened in New York. The reviews,…
