In 1969 Georg Baselitz began painting upside down. It was a strange thing to do. And definitely gimmicky. What it achieved, however, was to give him an unmissable pictorial identity. In the busily stacked shelves of art, he stood out. He was the guy who painted upside down. At the time, and whenever his rationale […]

The news that Britain was going to get a new sculpture park cheered me up. The world might be turning into a Hieronymus Bosch painting, but who doesn’t love a sculpture park? Wandering, free as a cloud, across a pleasing expanse of landscape while encountering sights that surprise you, combines the hijacking power of art […]

There are many reasons to enjoy — or in my case to love — Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood at the Arnolfini gallery in Bristol. The show is an in-depth examination of the relationship between mothers and their children, as seen by female artists from the 1970s to now. So it delves into the deepest […]

If you keep an eye on contemporary art, or even half an eye, you will have noticed that black art is all the rage. At the National Portrait Gallery, The Time Is Always Now looks at how black artists are “reframing” the black figure. At the Royal Academy, Entangled Pasts, 1768-Now mixes up historic art with ruminations on colonialism […]

The pairing of Francesca Woodman with Julia Margaret Cameron that has arrived at the National Portrait Gallery is insisting on an equivalence between the two artists. The show is predicated on the belief that they share important artistic concerns. Unfortunately, they don’t. Not really. True, there are some superficial similarities. Both take black-and-white photographs using […]

Dear Nicholas Cullinan, First, congratulations on becoming the new director of the British Museum. And at 46 too. It’s the biggest job in our museum world and to have risen to the post so quickly is an impressively modern achievement. That said, I was surprised by your sudden departure from your present bailiwick at the […]

The acceptance of textiles as an important and lofty art form, rather than a lowly pastime with a domestic whiff to it, has been one of the big successes of the new art history, the one being rewritten by women. Textiles used to be out. Now they are in. Why? It’s all about opportunities. While […]

It’s July 20, 1969. Just after 8pm. A crucial moment in the space race. In a few minutes man will be landing on the moon. Or will he? You’ve been glued to the television all day. The school gave everyone a holiday to witness the big finale. In Houston Mission Control is buzzing with last-minute […]

The trouble with Angelica Kauffman, whose work has arrived at the Royal Academy in a well-meaning but irritating tribute, is that she was so uneven. She had her moments. There weren’t enough of them. The show that proves this sets out to do the opposite, of course. The ambition here was to shift Kauffman (1741-1807) […]

At the National Gallery a selection of proposals shortlisted for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square has gone on show. Since it started in 1998, the Fourth Plinth project has given London some feisty artistic sights and yanked the entire territory of public sculpture out of the past and into the present. A lot rides […]