Love. It makes the world go round and all that, but in art it’s one of the rarer subjects. Of course, love’s sister topics desire, fertility and sex have had plenty of airing, but that soppy feeling you get when someone floats your boat — the fuzz, the uplift, the light-headedness — is hardly ever […]
Recent articles
I’ve got some advice for the new Tate boss — and it’s free
Dear Jessica, We don’t know each other, but every leader needs helpful advice when they take on a big new job and as you have been announced as the next director of the Tate I am delighted to offer some. For free! Also, the latest Turner prize has just been unveiled, so that needs opining […]
The bravest modern artist — he dares to paint Jesus
If they handed out VCs to artists for courage then Peter Howson would be marching out of Buckingham Palace tomorrow with that rarest of gongs pinned to his chest. Because no subject in contemporary art is as strikingly uncool as the one he tackles in his new show at the Flowers Gallery. The show — […]
The Bayeux Tapestry
In the age of reproductions, it is the fate of some artworks to be so well known that we no longer know them. It’s happened to the Mona Lisa. It’s happened to the Girl with a Pearl Earring. Their outsides have hardened into such familiarity that they block our access to their insides. The same process, with […]
The greatest secret art collection you’ve never heard of
Gustave Fayet was a man of many parts. All the parts were remarkable. But until today no one has thought to put them together. Now the full Fayet — painter, designer, rebuilder of churches, restorer of stained glass, rug-maker, ceramicist, Buddhist, occultist and, above all, one of the greatest collectors of art to have walked […]
The surrealist genius who slit his father’s throat with a dinner knife
Death. It’s the most final of finalities, its presence so concrete no amount of good intent can blow it away. However diligently the Royal Academy tries to present Richard Dadd as an intriguing Victorian fairy painter, and that’s it, the fact that he murdered his father, believing him to be the Devil, cannot be wished off. […]
We can’t ignore Ana Mendieta’s mysterious death –– or her enthralling art
Ana Mendieta has two kinds of fame. One is as a pioneering feminist artist of the 1970s whose poetic body art predicted many paths. The other is as the wife of the minimalist sculptor Carl Andre, the creator of the infamous Tate “bricks”, who may or may not have pushed her from a 34th-floor balcony […]
Women hate this artist’s boob obsession — men aren’t so sure
Good or bad? That’s the question that buzzes round my head like a wasp at a barbecue whenever I encounter the work of John Currin. You swat it away, you bash it with a fork, but still it keeps returning. Is this good art or bad? To an obvious extent, the answer depends on your […]
No cherry blossom here — women show a different side of Japan
Japan is so photogenic it’s no surprise everyone wants to photograph it. I shudder to think how many snaps there are out there of Mount Fuji hovering on the horizon or that stripy Ginza crossing where everyone rushes over at once or the few remaining geishas in Kyoto. That Japan, the foreigner’s Japan, may even […]
Frida Kahlo is a genius — but she unleashed a monster
One of the stylistic rules we have here is that we are discouraged from using the word “icon”. It’s used too casually these days, goes the thinking, too grandly, too glibly, too often. All of which is true. But since Tate Modern has called its Frida Kahlo show The Making of an Icon it cannot, in this […]