I’m stomping through the mean streets of north London with my phone map beeping, searching for a nondescript door with a nondescript number. Behind that door is Grayson Perry. Unfortunately, the phone map is lost, so there’s time to blunder and fret about the confrontation ahead: Grayson Perry. Who the hell is he? On the […]

I have been making a film about erotic art. So, naturally, I have had to seek out the paintings of Stanley Spencer. When it comes to edgy English sexology, Spencer is the gold standard. Or is that the blue standard? But there’s a problem. For a basket of interwoven reasons his paintings have become difficult […]

Tate Modern is not an institution renowned for being funny, but when I read that it was going to mount an exhibition devoted to Leigh Bowery, I guffawed heartily. They’re having a laugh! They really are! The issue with Bowery is that there are so many issues with Bowery. First, he was not an artist. […]

There are some things in life you do not say “No” to. Everybody wants to be on Desert Island Discs. Everybody wants to dance on Strictly. Everybody wants to meet Keanu Reeves. And in the 1980s and 1990s everybody wanted to be in The Face. The Face was more — much more — than a glossy style […]

Thank God for black women artists. In the past two decades they have injected vim, lip and vigour into contemporary art. From Njideka Akunyili Crosby to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Amy Sherald to Kara Walker, they have rubbed our noses in issues that need to be tackled, made the political personal and the intimate entertaining. The BWAs […]

Inever used to begin my weekly round of gallery visits with the words of Toyah Willcox, the actress and pop star, ringing in my ears, but recently I have found it useful. The art world has developed a passion for witchery, the occult, tarot, all forms of hocus-pocus. So it often helps to remember Willcox’s […]

New Contemporaries is an important show, one of the few genuinely helpful exhibitions in the art calendar. Started in 1949 and toured annually around Britain, it presents a selection of work by artists at the beginning of their careers, either still at art school or just graduated. Its value lies in the evidence it provides of […]

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is a big deal in art. She has had shows at Tate Britain in London and the Guggenheim in Bilbao. She’s in all the biennales. Her pictures sell for millions and she was recently voted “the number one most bankable contemporary artist”. So it’s heartening to see her display her latest wares not […]

Many years ago, when I was a fledgling art critic living on a council estate in east London, I had a witty meeting with a policeman. I’d been travelling around looking at shows — notably at the excellent John Hansard Gallery in Southampton — and was returning home with a bag full of catalogues and, […]

For an artist, being called “the Queen of Art Deco” is a heavy cross to bear. Poor Tamara de Lempicka. Art critics belittled her. Art historians mocked her. Museum directors ignored her. Her problem was that no one took art deco seriously: not on any intellectual level. Yes, it was the signature decorative style of […]