St Ives
The well of happiness – and despair: Queer St Ives reviewed
In the winter of 1952 the 21-year-old sculptor John Milne travelled to St Ives in Cornwall to take up a…
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,…
A menu for the emmets
Tate St Ives is a pale 1980s block, with a fat rounded porte cochère and sea-stained walls. It is the…
The only art is Essex
When I went to visit Edward Bawden he vigorously denied that there were any modern painters in Essex. That may…
The abstract art full of 'breasts and bottoms'
Is there any such thing as abstract art? Narratives and coherent harmonies seem to me always to emerge from the…
The problem with self-portraits: Ruth Borchard competition and Stranger reviewed
My wife says you can always tell a self-portrait by the quality of its self-regard. There’s something about the eyes…
