Painting

The art of government: what politicians’ paintings say about them

19 June 2021 9:00 am

What politicians’ paintings say about them

The Dickensian delights of London in lockdown

5 June 2021 9:00 am

I’m blessed by the fact that I live almost smack-bang in the middle of old London, a pebble’s toe punt…

An immensely rich show – though it consists of only two paintings: Rubens at the Wallace Collection reviewed

5 June 2021 9:00 am

‘When pictures painted as companions are separated,’ John Constable wisely observed, ‘the purchaser of one, without being aware of it,…

The world's first robot artist discusses beauty, Yoko Ono and the perils of AI

29 May 2021 9:00 am

Stuart Jeffries discusses beauty, Yoko Ono and the world’s disappointments with the first robot artist

Rodin was as modern as Magritte and Dali, but more touching and troubling than either

29 May 2021 9:00 am

Rodin’s studio at Meudon in the suburbs of Paris is huge and filled with light — a sort of combined…

The art of the asparagus

15 May 2021 9:00 am

Manet’s ‘Botte d’asperges’ are probably the most famous asparagus in the world. The artist painted the delicious white- and lilac-tinged…

It is impossible to imagine Henrician England except through the eyes of Hans Holbein

8 May 2021 9:00 am

‘Holbein redeemed a whole era for us from oblivion,’ remarks the author of a trilogy of novels set at Henry…

The high and low life of John Craxton

8 May 2021 9:00 am

Charm is a weasel word; it can evoke the superficial and insincere, and engender suspicion and mistrust. But charm in…

The bizarre art of Scottie Wilson deserves to be better known

8 May 2021 9:00 am

On eBay I have an alert set for ‘Scottie Wilson’. Nine times out of ten, it’s a diamanté Scottie dog…

‘I’ve seen the bare bones of London’: street painter Peter Brown interviewed

1 May 2021 9:00 am

‘I’ve been seeing the bare bones of London,’ explains the landscape artist Peter Brown, who is known affectionately as ‘Pete…

The truth about my father, Philip Guston

13 March 2021 9:00 am

Musa Mayer talks to Hermione Eyre about her father Philip Guston’s cancellation and her fear that he will for ever be known as the artist who painted the Ku Klux Klan

How Algernon Newton made great art out of empty streets and dingy canals

6 March 2021 9:00 am

Quite late in life Walter Sickert paid his first visit to Peckham Rye. He was excited, apparently, because he had…

Why is the smoky, febrile art of Marcelle Hanselaar so little known?

20 February 2021 9:00 am

I first became aware of the work of Marcelle Hanselaar in a mixed exhibition at the Millinery Works in Islington.…

Francis Bacon: king of the self-made myth

13 February 2021 9:00 am

In 1953, Francis Bacon’s friends Lucian Freud and Caroline Blackwood were concerned about the painter’s health. His liver was in…

The rise of bad figurative painting

30 January 2021 9:00 am

Galleries are awash with gimmicky paintings that look like they’ve been designed by algorithm. Dean Kissick on the rise of zombie figuration

Paint in the bloodstream: The Death of Francis Bacon, by Max Porter, reviewed

9 January 2021 9:00 am

Francis Bacon once told the art critic Richard Cork: ‘I certainly hope I’ll go on till I drop dead.’ Max…

On the trail of one of the first artists to paint ordinary things

19 December 2020 9:00 am

The Master of Flémalle was one of the first painters to depict in detail the reality of ordinary things. But who was he? Martin Gayford finds a prime suspect

Antony Gormley on why sculpture is far superior to painting

7 November 2020 9:00 am

In an extract from their book, Antony Gormley tells Martin Gayford that the 3-D will always trump the 2-D

Entertaining – but there's one abomination: National Gallery's Sin reviewed

24 October 2020 9:00 am

Obviously, we’re living through an era of censorious puritanism. Granted, the contemporary creeds are different from those of the 16th…

A high-end car-boot sale of the unconscious: Colnaghi’s Dreamsongs reviewed

17 October 2020 9:00 am

In 1772 the 15-year-old Mozart wrote a one-act opera set, like The Magic Flute, in a dream world. Il sogno…

The mediums who pioneered abstract art

26 September 2020 9:00 am

The mediumistic art of various cranks, crackpots and old dowagers is finally being taken seriously – and about time too, says Laura Gascoigne

The beautiful upside-down world of Georg Baselitz

19 September 2020 9:00 am

The hand is one of the first images to appear in art. There are handprints on the walls of caves…

Imagine being married to Stanley Spencer

5 September 2020 9:00 am

It sometimes rains in Cookham. It rained all day when I visited the Stanley Spencer Gallery to see the exhibition…

Figurative painting is back – but how good is any of it?

8 August 2020 9:00 am

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

27 June 2020 9:00 am

I’m in Mayfair and I’m boarding an airplane. Or rather, I’m boarding an approximation of an airplane. In the centre…