It falls to few artists to change the course of art. You can count the ones who have done so on one hand. Art was one thing before Michelangelo came along, before Caravaggio, before Duchamp. After them it was another thing. So it was too with Cézanne. Tate Modern’s flawed but engrossing survey of his […]

It falls to few artists to be involved as fiercely with their times as William Kentridge was and is involved with his. Born in Johannesburg in 1955, he grew up in apartheid South Africa, where he witnessed not only the repression of the black community but also its resistance and triumph. And all the time, […]

There’s an awkwardness to the big Lucian Freud exhibition that has arrived at the National Gallery. For a start, what is it doing at the National Gallery, occupying the same old master rooms occupied most recently by Raphael and before that by Titian? Freud (1922-2011) was a sizzling contemporary presence, no arguments there, but does […]

Topic of the month on the art front has been: forgotten women. Until now, it has raged chiefly on the books pages, where an assortment of feisty tomes on the subject have been receiving excited reviews. Femina, by Janina Ramirez, is “writing women back into history” by listing and celebrating the undervalued heroines of the […]