Recent articles

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, […]

                  Saint Francis — an edgy messianic cult leader or Mr Nice Guy?

                    Saint Francis of Assisi at the National Gallery in London is a happy-clappy affair replete with sugar-coated religiosity and a level of investigative ambition worthy of the under-tens class at a Sunday school. What’s to blame? The coronation moment? Internal confusion at the National about critical standards? Beats me. What I do know is that the […]

                    Lavinia Fontana: the first female painter of nudes knew about desire

                      The best thing about the obsession with identity that currently drives art is the array of new voices it has forced into the open. At both extremes of art’s spectrum — old masters at the beginning, ultra contemporaries at our end — we are encountering an expanded cast. True, the me, me, meism on the […]