Ihave remembered a cartoon that made me giggle. Henry VIII walks into a florist. On the counter is a sign advising customers to Say It with Flowers. So Henry says: “I’ll have a bunch of stalks.” Which proves, I suppose, that saying it with flowers can be good for a laugh. But, as Hope B […]
Recent articles
My trip to Cézanne’s home town — he was a cranky genius from the start
Art has many powers but its superpower, the one that comes closest to magic, is its ability to turn nowhere into somewhere. All over the world, in situation after situation, we have seen it happen. Bilbao was one of the least visited cities in Spain until 1997, when the Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, […]
Our greatest football photographer’s secret? Ignore the game
The world of football is not, you would have thought, a world that concerns itself overly with events in art. These two great spheres of human endeavour appear fiercely separated. And in most locations they are. But not in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, where, unbelievably, a gallery has inveigled its way into the hall of balls and […]
Johnny Depp: ‘I’ve met my heroes — and they’ve never let me down’
SCENE 1 — The announcement that someone is making a film about an artist is never met with enthusiasm in my household. There have been too many horrors. Films about artists are invariably a cultural mistake — melodramatic, overwrought, inaccurate, irritating. The spectacle of Ed Harris sweating and trembling his way through the Jackson Pollock movie, […]
A pioneering threesome reveals the great erotic divide of the sexes
The differences between men and women are both obvious and subtle. The obvious ones continue to be the subject of an unpleasant turf war on X and are none of this column’s business. But the subtle differences take us deep into the world of art, and there we do need to take notice. Two women-only […]
Van Gogh/Kiefer review— everything about this exhibition is wrong
Some people were meant to come together — Lennon and McCartney, Fonteyn and Nureyev, Ant and Dec. But nowhere in God’s swirling universe was it ever a good idea to pair Anselm Kiefer with Vincent van Gogh. Yet that, absurdly, is what the Royal Academy has chosen to attempt in a show that jars like […]
Jenny Saville at the National Portrait Gallery review — a must-see tribute
Jenny Saville arrived in art with the loudest splash I can remember. One moment she was invisible, the next she was unmissable: a huge talent, painting huge pictures, of a huge subject, in a hugely different manner. Everyone noticed her. This was early in the 1990s and chiefly the handiwork of Charles Saatchi, the most […]
Drawing like a kid isn’t child’s play — but does it deserve an exhibition?
Childishness became a desirable quality in art with the arrival of modernism at the start of the 20th century. As Picasso famously quipped: “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” And it wasn’t just Picasso. An entire generation of modernists — Klee, Miró, Kandinsky — […]
Gory and gruesome — this is the bloodiest art I’ve seen
Another day, another tragedy. Look over your shoulder in any direction and the world seems to be sobbing. The Middle East — sob. The climate — sob. Ukraine — sob. So people have once again been dreaming about the healing power of art. It was something I noticed during Covid. People kept writing to say […]
Historic portrait by ‘Britain’s Caravaggio’ bought for the nation
He is handsome. Self-absorbed. Black cloak. White cravat. His hair, parted down the middle, falls around his face in dark and buoyant ringlets. Big moustache. Trendy goatee. You can imagine him as a singer-songwriter of the hippy era or perhaps, more weirdly, as a model for Jesus in a Rembrandt painting. Certainly, there is sorrow […]