Art history
Whipping up a masterpiece: painters and their materials
Martin Gayford finds artists from Rembrandt to De Kooning mixing pigment, egg and oil together with all the skill of an accomplished chef
Observing nature observed: the art of Caspar David Friedrich
Friedrich’s scenes may appear to depict nature unbound, but they are also famous for their Rückenfiguren in the foreground, the men and women with their backs to us, facing what we also see
Portrait of the artist and mother
Even the best-known female Impressionists, such as Morisot and Cassatt, were seen as mothers first and artists second – a view Hettie Judah sets out to reverse
Jam-packed with treasures: the eccentric Sir John Soane’s Museum
The delightfully higgledy-piggledy display of antiquities, filling walls from floor to ceiling, may have been inspired by the Piranesi prints Soane also collected
‘There are an awful lot of my paintings I don’t like,’ admitted Francis Bacon
While waspishly dismissive of many of the 20th century’s greatest artists, Bacon was also critical of his own work, in conversation with David Sylvester
The golden age of Dutch art never ceases to amaze
Benjamin Moser reminds us of how freely painters borrowed each other’s subjects – and of how many of the greatest, including Rembrandt, died in poverty
Albrecht Dürer’s genius for self-promotion
Albrecht Dürer was an undoubted genius – and no one was more conscious of it than the artist himself, says Philip Hoare
The shock of the new in feminist art
Laura Elkin looks at women artists from the past century onwards who boldly portray the female body from their own intimate experience
Evil geniuses
Does knowledge of the wrongs committed by Caravaggio, Picasso, Roman Polanski and other ‘monsters’ condition our response to their art, wonders Claire Dederer
Women artists have been ignored for far too long
At first glance, Clara Peeters’s ‘Still Life with a Vase of Flowers, Goblets and Shells’ (1612) appears to be just…
Why Tate Modern seems more like a playground than an art gallery
This book covers the period 1878-2000, offering thought provoking commentary on some 120 years of experiments in being modern, and…
Alive with innovation: British art between the world wars
When I mentioned the subject of this book to someone reasonably well-informed about 20th-century British art, the response was: ‘Isn’t…
The effortless magnetism of Marcel Duchamp
One could compile a fat anthology of tributes to Marcel Duchamp’s charm – especially what one friend called the artist’s…
This radical Nativity is also one of the great whodunnits of art history
Martin Gayford on a radical Nativity that is the subject of one of the great whodunnits of art history
A keepsake – and to-do list – of Europe’s greatest cathedrals
In his new book on Europe’s cathedrals, Simon Jenkins begins with the claim that the greatest among them are our…
The life of René Magritte was even more surprising than his art
René Magritte’s life, so outwardly respectable, was as full of surprises as his art, says Philip Hensher
Bright, beautiful and deceptively simple: the art of the linocut
Charlotte Hobson describes the complicated relationship of two artists who championed simplicity
The first patrons of Modernism deserve much sympathy and respect
If Modernism is a jungle, how do you navigate a path through its thickets? Some explorers — Peter Gay and…
Like burst balloons after a party: the last paintings of John Hoyland
When the internationally acclaimed abstract painter John Hoyland died in 2011 at the age of 76, a large chunk of…
Why should art have ever been considered a male preserve?
Sixty years ago, women were still excluded from the art history canon, says Laura Freeman
Apostle of modernism: Clive Bell’s reputation repaired
Clive Bell is the perennial supporting character in the biographies of the Bloomsbury group. The husband of Vanessa Bell, brother-in-law…
A new blossoming: David Hockney paints Normandy
In 2018 David Hockney went to Normandy to look at the Bayeux Tapestry, which he had not seen for more…
Ceramic art has been undervalued for too long
The use of ‘Ceramic’ rather than ‘Ceramics’ in the title of this book indicates Paul Greenhalgh’s passionate belief that ‘ceramic…
Bright and beautiful: the year’s best art books reviewed
When he was a student, the celebrated American modernist master Robert Rauschenberg once told me that his ‘greatest teacher’ —…
From light into darkness: the genius of Goya
The great Spanish artist Francisco Goya was born in Zaragoza in 1746, the son of a gilder whose livelihood was…
