Exhibitions
Sad but beautiful exhibition of Afghanistan’s war rugs
Decades after its inclusion in the Hippie Trail, Afghanistan is again open to tourism, according to the Taliban’s spokesman Zabihullah…
How a single year in Florence changed art forever
The story goes that one day early in the 16th century Leonardo da Vinci was strolling through Florence with a…
At Japan House humanity has arrived at the perfect future: food for ogling, not eating
There is a popular Japanese television show that features a segment called ‘Candy Or Not Candy?’. Contestants are presented with…
The triumph of surrealism
When Max Ernst was asked by an American artist to define surrealism at a New York gathering of exiles in…
Fog, tea and full English breakfasts: Monet and London, at the Courtauld, reviewed
For the maids on the top floors of the Savoy, everything was in turmoil. The 6th had been commandeered by…
What has become of the Wellcome Collection?
In 2022 the Wellcome Collection caused a stir by closing its Medicine Man exhibition on the grounds that it was…
The art inspired by the 1924 Paris Olympics was a very mixed bag
George Orwell took a dim view of competitive sport; he found the idea that ‘running, jumping and kicking a ball…
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…
How Michael Craig-Martin changed a glass of water into a full-grown oak tree
‘Of all the things I’ve drawn,’ Michael Craig-Martin reflects, ‘to me chairs are one of the most interesting.’ We are…
Why has Leonora Carrington still not had a big exhibition?
‘It had nothing to endow it with the title of studio at all,’ was Edward James’s first impression of Leonora…
The importance of copying
The lunatics were once in charge of the asylum. The first six directors of the National Gallery were all artists:…
How did we ever come to accept the inhumane excesses of capitalism?
What was neoliberalism? In its most recent iteration, we think of the market seeping into every minute corner of human…
Porcelain-painting during the French revolution
People don’t accumulate stuff any more. When the late Victorian houses on our street change hands their interiors are stripped…
Children have the Proms. Grown-ups head to Salzburg. Snob summer
Salzburg Festival doesn’t mess about. The offerings this year include an adaptation of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain in Lithuanian, a…
This British surrealist is a revelation
When the 15-year-old Maggi Hambling arrived at Benton End in Hadleigh, Suffolk – home of the East Anglian School of…
The tragic fate of Ukraine’s avant-garde
In a recent interview Oleksandr Syrskyi, the new commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, said that he spends his time off…
How a market town in Hampshire shaped Peggy Guggenheim
On 24 April 1937 Marguerite Guggenheim – known as Peggy – of Yew Tree Cottage, Hurst was booked by a…
The beauty of pollution
On the back of the British £20 note, J.M.W. Turner appears against the backdrop of his most iconic image. Voted…
The mesmerising Olympic posters designed by the likes of Warhol and Whiteread
You could be forgiven for assuming that the citizens of Paris weren’t exactly bursting with joy at the prospect of…
The most original sea painter since Turner? Lowry
In 1958 an elderly gentleman staying at the Castle Hotel in Berwick-upon-Tweed gave the receptionist a doodle he had made…
Breathtaking: Mary Cassatt at Work, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, reviewed
Work – in the sense of toil – is about the last thing a 19th-century painter wished to be associated…
Is there still life in British still life?
‘The tyrannical rule of nature morte is, at last, over,’ announced Paul Nash in the Listener in 1931. ‘Apples have…
The woman who revolutionised British fashion: Barbara Hulanicki interviewed
‘I was one of your original customers in Kensington Church Street,’ I tell the founder of Biba when we meet.…
