Bridget Riley
A celebration of natural wonders: the best of the year’s art books
If one of the purposes of art is to help us see the world around us, then Sebastião Salgado’s photographs…
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’ —…
The beautiful upside-down world of Georg Baselitz
The hand is one of the first images to appear in art. There are handprints on the walls of caves…
Where are the art fans in Edinburgh? Getting their eyes frazzled by Bridget Riley
The old observatory on Edinburgh’s Calton Hill may be the most favourably positioned art venue in the world. Recently resurrected…
The advantages of turning down the colour knob: Monochrome reviewed
Leonardo da Vinci thought sculpting a messy business. The sculptor, he pointed out, has to bang away with a hammer,…
Snap, crackle and op
Stand in front of ‘Fall’, a painting by Bridget Riley from 1963, and the world begins to quiver and dissolve.…
M.C. Escher: limited, repetitive, but he deserves a place in art history
‘Surely,’ mused the Dutch artist M.C. Escher, ‘it is a bit absurd to draw a few lines and then claim:…
When Britain’s avant-garde weren’t so shouty
Niru Ratnam highlights the revival of interest in artists who were popular in the 1960s and 1970s
