Sculpture
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Beguiling: Yinka Shonibare, at the Serpentine Galleries, reviewed
More than seven centuries ago, the medieval cartographer Richard of Haldingham created Hereford Cathedral’s Mappa Mundi; I say ‘created’ because…
The latest Venice Biennale is ideologically and aesthetically bankrupt
Last week’s opening of the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale marks a watershed for the art world. In much…
How Philip Guston became a hero to a new generation of figurative painters
Why do painters represent things? There was a time when the answers seemed obvious. Art glorified power, earthly and divine,…
Biomorphic forms that tempt the viewer to cop a feel: Maria Bartuszova, at Tate Modern, reviewed
Art is a fundamentally childish activity: painters dream up images and sculptors play with stuff. It was while playing with…
The uncomfortable lessons of the new Fourth Plinth statues
Alexander Chula on the uncomfortable lessons of the new Fourth Plinth statues
A mess: British Museum's Feminine Power – the Divine to the Demonic reviewed
The point at which the heart sinks in this exhibition is, unfortunately, right at the outset. That’s where we meet…
The jewel-bright, mesmerisingly detailed pictures by Raqib Shaw are a revelation
Describing the Venice Biennale, like pinning down the city itself, is a practical impossibility. There is just too much of…
Valuable reassessment of British art: Barbican's Postwar Modern reviewed
Notoriously, the past is another country: what’s more, it’s a terrain for which the guidebooks need constantly to be rewritten.…
Beautiful and revealing: The Three Pietàs of Michelangelo, at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence, reviewed
The room is immersed in semi-darkness. Light filters down from above, glistening on polished marble as if it were flesh.…
Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning art scene
Stuart Jeffries on Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning art scene
Part-gothic horror, part-Acorn Antiques: Louise Bourgeois, at the Hayward Gallery, reviewed
Louise Bourgeois was 62 and recently widowed when she first used soft materials in her installation ‘The Destruction of the…
Only time will tell if there’ll be a Great Pandemic Novel
We had been dreading it like (forgive me) the plague: the inevitable onslaught of corona-lit. Fortunately, the first few titles…
Glorious: Bernardo Bellotto at the National Gallery reviewed
What is the National Gallery playing at? Why, in this summer of stop-start tropical storms, is the NG making visitors…
Rodin was as modern as Magritte and Dali, but more touching and troubling than either
Rodin’s studio at Meudon in the suburbs of Paris is huge and filled with light — a sort of combined…
Why Thomas Becket still divides opinion
The verdict is still out on Thomas Becket, says Dan Hitchens, but there’s no doubting the brilliance of the art he inspired
How St Ives became Barbara Hepworth’s spiritual home
‘To see a world in a grain of sand’, to attain the mystical perception that Blake advocated, requires a concentrated,…
The art of storing and unveiling
The way an object is stored can magnify its beauty and enhance expectation. Joanna Rossiter wonders whether the opening up of galleries will have the same effect on an art-starved public
Maggi Hambling's Wollstonecraft statue is hideous but fitting
Frankly, it is rather hideous — but also quite wonderful, shimmering against the weak blue of a late November sky.…
Antony Gormley on why sculpture is far superior to painting
In an extract from their book, Antony Gormley tells Martin Gayford that the 3-D will always trump the 2-D
