Like all life’s profound pleasures, looking at art is a complex business. More accurately, perhaps, it’s a pleasure with many layers and stages. It’s like making love. Sure, you can have a version where it’s a quick in and out, and that’s it. But for the experienced art lover the real joy is in the […]
Recent articles
Are you ready for Frida Kahlo and Tracey Emin at Tate Modern?
It has been a while — too long — since Tate Modern’s exhibition plans have felt as uplifting as they do for 2026. A few loudly belted-out hurrahs are definitely in order. “The world’s leading gallery of contemporary art” has been in a rut in recent years. The preachy and the dull have recurrently been […]
Are we right to suspect the worst of Caravaggio?
Startling. That’s the word that best describes the impact of the single painting by Caravaggio from which the management at the Wallace Collection has fashioned a dramatic, unsettling and richly engrossing exhibition. Painted in Rome in about 1601, Caravaggio’s Victorious Cupid shows a naked boy, aged about 12, balanced precariously on a messy heap of still-lifes. So […]
My encounters with the smart, lethal Charles Saatchi
In art some questions are difficult to answer. Was it really Leonardo da Vinci who painted the Salvator Mundi that was sold to a Saudi prince in 2017 for $450.3 million? We’ll never know for sure. What was Marcel Duchamp really trying to say when he turned a urinal upside down and called it Fountain? Beats me. Art […]
My teenage ode to the joys of Tintoretto
When I was a teenager — jejune, pretentious, cocky — I wrote a poem about the impact on me of Tintoretto. I’d been to Venice and seen his thunderous masterpieces in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. For a few days it short-circuited my reason. Hence the poem. In almost any circumstance, I would be […]
David Hockney at 88 — he’s begun his last dance with the joy of a child
The most quoted remark by Picasso, his most telling quip, is: “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” It’s popular because it nails something tangible and crucial: the artistic joy that appears twice in a long creative life — at the beginning and at the […]
Why does death inspire so much art? It’s the killer question
When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments given to him by God, two in particular would have interested any artists gathered in the waiting crowd. One is the Second Commandment, which says, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above […]
Instead of attacking the old masters, this exciting show has fun with them
Lisa Brice is no spring chicken. She’s 56. Yet only in the past few years has she managed to transform herself from “promising female painter with complex ideas about the role of women in art” to “ubiquitous art star”. These days you need a few million in the bank to buy a hefty Brice. What’s […]
The forty million dollar man who made painting fashionable again
Peter Doig. Whenever I see the name I hear the rustle of dollar bills and the jingle jangle of a big win on the slot machines. To my mind, Doig’s art — which fetches up to $40 million a painting — has become synonymous with fiscal success, and even interchangeable with it. However, his new […]
Gilbert & George? It’s like being stuck with a pub bore
Two veteran artistic presences have appeared in London simultaneously. Both have been around the block many times. One remains fresh, active, naughty. The other has grown tired, repetitive, boring. Let’s deal with the tedious one first. Let’s deal with Gilbert & George. In the Sixties, when they were in their twenties, the two Gs were messing […]