Having read Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge, I did not expect the Black Venus show at Somerset House to be an uplifting experience. When it comes to guilt in these sensitive matters, I am the full package: white, middle class, middle-aged (going on old) and, to top it all, an art […]
Recent articles
Dear Earth review: ‘A thunderous lack of self-awareness’
Jesus walks into a synagogue in Nazareth. He addresses the congregation and they listen with interest. At the end of his speech, he repeats a well-known proverb: “Physician, heal thyself.” The doubting people of Nazareth, he predicts, will be quoting those words at him in the future. The congregation get agitated. And chase him out […]
Peter Howson: the tortured war artist who painted Madonna nude
Far back in the annals of art — it was definitely more than 30 years ago because I was still typing on an Olympia — a new movement appeared in Scotland. Its painters were figurative, cocky, colourful, so people began calling them the New Scottish Colourists, or, more hopefully, the New Glasgow Boys. At the […]
Grayson Perry is the Hogarth of modern Britain
Grayson Perry is being unpredictable. Again. The first thing to note about the big retrospective of his career that has opened at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh is that it has opened at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh — and not at Tate Modern or Tate Britain or the Hayward Gallery or the […]
Maria Prymachenko: the artist who forged Ukraine’s fighting spirit
On February 25, 2022, in the opening days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Local History Museum in Ivankiv was set ablaze by Putin’s soldiers. The invading Russians were on their way to Kyiv. And although no one can be certain they targeted the museum on purpose, it was the first building in the […]
I was left puzzled by Tate Modern’s celebration of African photography
Tate Modern’s selection of contemporary African photography, in a show called, hopefully, A World in Common, is a puzzling event. On its most basic puzzling level it is surprisingly difficult to follow. Arranged, on paper, into three distinct themes, it fails in reality to make any of them feel solid. Instead we meander backwards and forwards […]
For 66 Poles, Windrush was the end of a terrible odyssey
Thursday marked the 75th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury docks on June 22, 1948. It was, of course, a momentous landing. Lured to these shores by promises that were broken, the Caribbean arrivals of the “Windrush generation” had every reason to feel betrayed. Rightly, we heard a lot about them […]
Tracey Emin: the unlikely new face of the National Portrait Gallery
There are many artists I would expect to play a leading role — the leading role — in the momentous relaunch of the National Portrait Gallery, but Tracey Emin isn’t one of them. Not in a million years, frankly. One issue is that she’s not a portrait artist. Not in any previous incarnation of the […]
The sari is a wonder of the East — don’t let the rich kids ruin it
I was looking forward to The Offbeat Sari for primitive reasons: I have a problem with holey jeans. Every time I see someone in the street with custom-made tears in their expensive new pants I guffaw. We must be the first society in human history to spend wads of wampum on looking poorer than we are. The […]
Why Gwen John is one of my shows of the year
Searching for words to describe the Gwen John exhibition that has arrived at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, I tried the old Freudian trick of writing down the first words that came to mind. Out popped: sensitive, religious, private. Which will annoy the show’s curator, Alicia Foster. She would rather I had written: thrusting, […]