Exhibitions
Appealingly meaningless and improbable: Christo at the Serpentine Lake reviewed Plus: memorably pointless paintings at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery
It’s not a wrap. This is the first thing to note about the huge trapezoid thing that has appeared, apparently…
A new exhibition gives us the real Tolkien – not his awful legacy
To no one’s surprise, the Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth exhibition at the Bodleian in Oxford, where J.R.R. spent so much…
Antony Gormley’s art works better in theory than in practice
Antony Gormley has replicated again. Every year or so a new army of his other selves — cast, or these…
Alexander Calder was a volcano of invention
In the Moderna Museet in Stockholm there is a sculpture by Katharina Fritsch, which references Chekhov’s famous story ‘Lady with…
Sorrow and pity are no guarantee of artistic success: Aftermath at Tate Britain reviewed
Some disasters could not occur in this age of instant communication. The first world war is a case in point:…
How the world was turned upside down by revelation of aerial perspectives
‘To look at ourselves from afar,’ Julian Barnes wrote in Levels of Life, ‘to make the subjective suddenly objective: this…
The best and most extensive exhibition on Napoleon in three decades
The Musée de l’Armée at Les Invalides in Paris has a new exhibition that I believe to be the best…
Edward Bawden is deservedly one of Britain’s most popular 20th century artists
‘When I’m on good form,’ Edward Bawden told me, ‘I get to some point in the design and I laugh…
How lucky we are to have the Royal Academy
What is the Royal Academy? This question set me thinking as I wandered through the crowds that celebrated the opening…
The troubling history behind the healthy, happy smile
In his Physiognomische Fragmente, published between 1775 and 1778, the Swiss physiognomist Johann Kaspar Lavater insisted that ‘clean, white and…
Animals, tourists and raptors: the hazards of being a plein-air artist
A conservator at Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum was recently astonished to find a tiny grasshopper stuck in the paint of…
How Rodin made a Parthenon above Paris
‘My Acropolis,’ Auguste Rodin called his house at Meudon. Here, the sculptor made a Parthenon above Paris. Surrounded by statues…
The artist more fond of flowers and vegetables than people – and who can blame him
I have occasionally mused that there is plenty of scope for a Tate East Anglia — a pendant on the…
Why it’s bad for potters to think of themselves as artists
A friend of mine once owned a vase by the potter Hans Coper — until, that is, her teenage son…
The public are quite right to love Monet
Think of the work of Claude Monet and water lilies come to mind, so do reflections in rippling rivers, and…
From Stansted to corporate swank: superstructuralism has a lot to answer for
Amid the thick of the Crimean war, Florence Nightingale dispatched a plea to the Times deploring the lethal conditions of…
The glorious history of Chatham Dockyard, as told through the eyes of artists
‘Ding, Clash, Dong, BANG, Boom, Rattle, Clash, BANG, Clink, BANG, Dong, BANG, Clatter, BANG BANG BANG!’ is how Charles Dickens…
The artist who creates digital life forms that bite & self-harm. Sam Leith meets him (and them)
Digital art is a crowded field. It’s also now older than I am. Yet despite a 50-year courtship, art galleries…
Surreal jokes and juicy strokes: Martin Gayford on the power of paint
René Magritte was fond of jokes. There are several in René Magritte (Or: The Rule of Metaphor), a small but…
Peak Picasso: how the half-man half-monster reached his creative – and carnal – zenith
By 1930, Pablo Picasso, nearing 50, was as rich as Croesus. He was the occupant of a flat and studio…
Magnificent paintings – oddly curated: All Too Human reviewed
In the mid-1940s, Frank Auerbach remarked, the arbiters of taste had decided what was going to happen in British art:…
The strangely unique vision of Leonard Rosoman
Leonard Rosoman is not a well-known artist these days. Many of us will, however, be subliminally familiar with his mural…
Edison decried the electric recording as a mere ‘volume fad’
Listen closely, among the shelves of the last remaining music shops, in student dorm rooms and amid the flat whites…
The captivating art, science and politics of hair: Beehives, Bobs and Blow-dries reviewed
One of the best things about Beehives, Bobs and Blow-dries — yep, an exhibition about hairdressing — is the reaction…
Are cruise liners the solution to the housing crisis?
Looking at the sketchbook of William Whitelock Lloyd, a soldier-artist who joined a P&O liner after surviving the Anglo-Zulu War,…
