Archive

One of the most interesting paradoxes in British art has been the involvement of so many immigrants. Foreigners, foreigners, everywhere. It really is remarkable. Holbein was German. Van Dyck was Flemish. Lely was Dutch. No other important national school can boast this much aid from abroad. Before the arrival of modern times, I cannot think […]

Challenging the Past seems to be about the artist’s relationship with the old masters but also studies nature of creativity

Tate Modern exhibition tells the story of constructivism, the explosion of creativity in Russia that rerouted aesthetics

The fourth Triennial shows British modern art is clapped out and far from the creativity of Brit Art and the Lisson Gallery I’m an optimist. And I love modern art. It’s been my life, my career, my sustenance. My wife is a modern artist: it’s one of the reasons I love her. My children have […]

What is it about art that makes every Tom, Dick and Jeremy so certain they have the right to comment upon it and be taken seriously? The BBC’s enthusiasm for clipping unqualified presenters onto the fronts of its arts programmes has already given us David Dimbleby absconding from Question Time to tour Britain in his […]

The aggressive futurism to be seen at the Estorick Collection can be contrasted with Paul Day’s banal St Pancras sculpture

The aggressive futurism to be seen at the Estorick Collection can be contrasted with Paul Day’s banal St Pancras sculpture

There are various reasons why nobody has previously written a history of that powerful explosion of creativity that shook British art in the 1990s and whose perpetrators have been saddled with the unusually ugly sobriquet of the Young British Artists, or, as the time-poor were apt to condense it, the YBAs. To this day, two […]

The art world is plunging, along with the rest of the economy. Hooray

The galleries of Britain – and further afield – are serving up some tasty exhibitions this year. Our correspondent picks the best, from modern architects to Aztec emperors