Drawing
‘Teaching someone to draw is teaching them to look’: the year’s best art books
Subjects range from a Paleolithic bone carving to Banksy’s graffiti, via colour concepts, romanticism, tattoos and mirror painting
‘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.…
Fascinating insight into the mind of Michelangelo
You’re pushing 60 and an important patron asks you to repeat an artistic feat you accomplished in your thirties. There’s…
Fresh and dreamy: Edward Lear, at Ikon Gallery, reviewed
‘It seems to me that I have to choose between 2 extremes of affection for nature… English, or Southern… The…
Fortifying snapshot of the gardener’s year: Saatchi Gallery's RHS Botanical Art show reviewed
Elizabeth Blackadder, who died last month at the age of 89, was probably the most distinctive botanical artist of our…
Covid has been great for drawing
Amid the greatly exaggerated reports of the death of painting issued and reissued over the course of the past century,…
The bizarre art of Scottie Wilson deserves to be better known
On eBay I have an alert set for ‘Scottie Wilson’. Nine times out of ten, it’s a diamanté Scottie dog…
Why is the smoky, febrile art of Marcelle Hanselaar so little known?
I first became aware of the work of Marcelle Hanselaar in a mixed exhibition at the Millinery Works in Islington.…
The mediums who pioneered abstract art
The mediumistic art of various cranks, crackpots and old dowagers is finally being taken seriously – and about time too, says Laura Gascoigne
Figurative painting is back – but how good is any of it?
An oxymoron is a clever gambit in an exhibition title. The Whitechapel Gallery’s Radical Figures: Painting in the New Millennium…
I didn’t expect to be so moved – galleries reopen
I’m in Mayfair and I’m boarding an airplane. Or rather, I’m boarding an approximation of an airplane. In the centre…
‘I think I’ve found a real paradise’: David Hockney interviewed
Martin Gayford talks to David Hockney about life in the Norman countryside under quarantine, how the iPad is better than paint and brush, and why he is not a communist
The gloriously indecent life and art of Aubrey Beardsley
In seven short years, Aubrey Beardsley mastered the art of outrage. Laura Gascoigne on the gloriously indecent illustrations of a singular genius
Dazzling and sex-fuelled: Picasso and Paper at the Royal Academy reviewed
Picasso collected papers. Not just sheets of the exotic handmade stuff — though he admitted being seduced by them —……
Remarkable and imaginative: Fitzwilliam Museum’s The Art of Food reviewed
Eating makes us anxious. This is a feature of contemporary life: a huge amount of attention is devoted to how…
Remarkable and powerful – you see her joining the old masters: Paul Rego reviewed
In 1965 a journalist asked Paula Rego why she painted. ‘To give a face to fear,’ she replied (those were…
The quiet genius of Posy Simmonds, Hogarth’s heir
‘It’s no use at all,’ says Posy Simmonds in mock despair, holding up her hands. ‘I can’t tell my left…
‘Lock him in a motel & he’d do something astonishing’: Hockney on the genius of Van Gogh
Being in the south of France obviously gave Vincent an enormous joy, which visibly comes out in the paintings. That’s…
The odd couple: Bill Viola / Michelangelo at the RA reviewed
The joint exhibition of Michelangelo Buonarroti and Bill Viola at the Royal Academy is, at first glance, an extremely improbable…
The joy of prints
Artists’ prints have been around for almost as long as the printed book. Indeed, they have similar origins in Gutenberg’s…
Comparing Peanuts to existentialism is an insult – to Peanuts
For the hundredth, possibly the thousandth, time, Lucy van Pelt offers to hold the football for Charlie Brown so he…
The ‘idiot’ artists whose surreal visions flourished in Victorian asylums
In G.F. Watts’s former sculpture studio in the Surrey village of Compton, a monstrous presence has interposed itself between the…
A chance to see the Moomins’ creator for the genius she really was: Tove Janssons reviewed
Tove Jansson, according to her niece’s husband, was a squirt in size and could rarely be persuaded to eat, preferring…
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,…
What is it about Bill Viola’s films that reduce grown-ups to tears?
What is it about Bill Viola's films that reduce grown-ups to tears? William Cook dries his eyes and talks to the video artist about Zen, loss and nearly drowning
