I’ve been making a film about Marcel Duchamp. But it keeps making me think of Damien Hirst. It’s annoying. The film is for a series called The Art Mysteries in which I unravel the complex meanings of celebrated artworks. In this case I’m looking at Duchamp’s Fountain, the upturned urinal that’s been voted “the most influential artwork of […]
Recent articles
Judy Chicago hates men and left me feeling slapped around — it felt good
The feminist artist Judy Chicago hates men. Wandering through her angry and tumultuous show at the Serpentine Gallery, I felt like a trespassing schoolboy who was getting his face smacked. “This is for picking your nose!” Smack. ”This is for destroying the planet!” Smack. “This is for making God a man!” Smack. By the time I slunk […]
Marc Quinn: a maverick goes wild in Kew Gardens
Marc Quinn has had a strange career as an artist. He emerged in the 1990s, arriving in the slipstream of the YBAs. But he was always a bit different. Having gone to Cambridge, where he studied history, he stood out: cerebral, well read, a touch superior. His debut in our consciousness was startling: a self-portrait […]
The trouble with viewing art through a modern lens
Expressionism is one of the better names for an ism. It tells you what to expect with unusual clarity. Expressionist artists express deep feelings and stormy emotions. They do it with brave and direct paintwork. No overthinking. No conceptual confusion. Expressionism does what it says on the tin. The movement’s origins lie in Van Gogh, […]
There’s a glaring blind spot in the art world …
The theme of the 60th Venice Biennale, announced in neon signs scattered about the venues, is Stranieri Ovunque — in English, “Foreigners Everywhere”. Some have complained that it can be misinterpreted as a fascist rallying cry. Which is obviously true. We live in angsty, bellicose, territorially fluid times. And the world’s most significant art event […]
Why I was wrong about Georg Baselitz and his upside-down paintings
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 […]
Go wild in the country — who doesn’t love a sculpture park?
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 […]
A very different take on motherhood — art by women (not old masters)
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 […]
Black art is too good to be a fad
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 […]
Francesca Woodman and Julia Margaret Cameron: forced focus and fuzzy parallels
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 […]