visual art
The art of Beatrix Potter
Her best illustrations — limpid, ethereal, carefully observed — are masterly works of art in their own right, argues Matthew Dennison
Artistic taste is inversely proportional to political nous
‘Wherever the British settle, wherever they colonize,’ observed the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, ‘they carry and will ever carry trial…
The work of Elisabeth Frink is ripe for a renaissance
In a converted barn in Dorset, not far from the rural studio where she made many of her greatest sculptures,…
Alexander Calder: the man who made abstract art fly
One day, in October 1930, Alexander Calder visited the great abstract painter Piet Mondrian in his apartment in Paris. The…
Why I find women-only exhibitions depressing
Modern Scottish Men, a new exhibition celebrating the achievements of male artists in the 20th century, opens next month in…
Repetitive but compelling: Giacometti at the National Portrait Gallery reviewed
One day in 1938 Alberto Giacometti saw a marvellous sight on his bedroom ceiling. It was ‘a thread like a…
What is it about Bill Viola’s films that reduce grown-ups to tears?
What is it about Bill Viola's films that reduce grown-ups to tears? William Cook dries his eyes and talks to the video artist about Zen, loss and nearly drowning
Why did Goya’s sitters put up with his brutal honesty?
Sometimes, contrary to a widespread suspicion, critics do get it right. On 17 August, 1798 an anonymous contributor to the…
On the frontiers of figuration, abstraction and total immateriality
The artist, according to Walter Sickert, ‘is he who can take a piece of flint and wring out of it…
Cut-ups, hallucinations and Hermann Goering: the extraordinary life of Brion Gysin
Among my more bohemian friends in 1980s London, Brion Gysin was a name spoken with a certain awe. He was…
The British Museum's Celtic masterpieces aren't Celtic - but they are fabulous
‘Celtic’ is a word heavily charged with meanings. It refers, among other phenomena, to a football club, a group of…
The World Goes Pop at Tate Modern - our critic goes zzzzz
The conventional history of modern art was written on the busy Paris-New York axis, as if nowhere else existed. For…
How silverpoint revolutionised art
Marshall McLuhan got it at least half right. The medium may not always be the entire message, but it certainly…
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…
I can’t stop thinking about the Courtauld’s Unfinished exhibition
A while ago, David Hockney mused on a proposal to tax the works of art stored in artists’ studios. ‘You’d…
Richard Long interview: ‘I was always an artist, even when I was two years old’
William Cook explores the elemental art and Olympian walks of Richard Long
The forgotten Swiss portraitist and his extraordinary pastels: Jean-Etienne Liotard at the Scottish National Gallery reviewed
This is not the biggest exhibition at Edinburgh and it will not be the best attended but it may be…
Why is the garden absent in English painting?
One of the default settings of garden journalists is the adjective ‘painterly’ — applied to careful colour harmonies within a…
Whole worlds are conjured up in a few strokes: Watercolour at the Fitzwilliam Museum reviewed
I learnt to splash about in watercolour at my grandmother’s knee. Or rather, sitting beside her crouched over a pad…
The artist who only turned into a major painter once he became a homicidal maniac
Charles Dickens’s description of Cobham Park, Kent, in The Pickwick Papers makes it seem a perfect English landscape. Among its…
John Waters interview: ‘We can’t make fun of Bruce Jenner?’
No one does transgression like the filmmaker John Waters. Jasper Rees talks to him about political correctness, post-ops and pubes
Forget Vienna - Britain now has its own chamber of curiosities at the British Museum
Art is not jewellery. Its value does not reside in the price of the materials from which it is made.…
Poetic or pretentious? Joseph Cornell: Wanderlust at the Royal Academy reviewed
Someone once asked Joseph Cornell who was his favourite abstract artist of his time. It was a perfectly reasonable question…
As blatant rip-offs go, this one is shaping up nicely: Odyssey, BBC2, reviewed
This week’s Imagine… Jeff Koons: Diary of a Seducer (BBC1, Tuesday) began with Koons telling a slightly puzzled-looking Alan Yentob…
![‘Sculpture with Colour (Deep Blue and Red) [6]’, 1943, by Barbara Hepworth](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/exhibitions1.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Was Barbara Hepworth a giant of modern sculpture - or a dreary relic of post-war Britain?
In the last two decades of her life, Barbara Hepworth was a big figure in the world of art. A…
