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, […]
Recent articles
Waldemar Januszczak’s tour of the Tamara de Lempicka show
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 […]
Carbuncle or coup? A sneak preview of the new-look National Gallery
Hello, 2025. And, in particular, hello, the new National Gallery, which has been completing a controversial rebuild for what feels like a couple of decades but has really been only three years or so. Rooms closed. Pictures missing. Scaffolding everywhere. They’ve managed to stay open, but it’s been an annoying place to visit. Now, at […]
A potted history of the Christmas tree — from pagans to Queen Victoria
It may have passed you by that 2024 was a significant anniversary. Unless, of course, you live in Germany, in which case you could not have missed it. Exhibitions were opened. Television films were screened. Articles were written. Because 2024 was the 250th anniversary of the birth of Caspar David Friedrich, the German Romantic genius […]
Leonora Carrington, the life and art of a rich girl rebel
Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) had a life that reads like a work of fiction. Born into money in Lancashire, she careered through a rich girl’s journey that involved being expelled from school, running away to France, going mad, finding the Devil, shacking up with the predatory German surrealist Max Ernst — who had a thing for […]
Parmigianino: The Vision of St Jerome review — a gorgeous restoration
The Italian old master Parmigianino (1503-40) is one of those artists for whom the label “old master” feels ill-fitting. He’s too youthful a presence — too fresh, lively and weird — to sit comfortably in the past. He died young as well, aged 37, so there was no time to slow down or grow wise. […]
If you care about the suburbs of modern Britain, you’ll shed a tear
Sometimes in art, a work that you think means one thing turns out to mean something else. It’s an enrichment, an enlargement of possibilities, with none of that neon-lit, clever-dickiness you get with Tate-style conceptual art. Genuinely thoughtful artists adopt a more subtle approach. George Shaw is certainly one of those. A selection of new paintings at […]
The art of getting high, from tea to ayahuasca
Abraham Lincoln, America’s second greatest president, according to the new president-elect, would perhaps have enjoyed the extraordinary event that has arrived at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich. According to persistent rumours circulating in the digital ether, Lincoln once said that two of his favourite things were “sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of […]
Frank Auerbach mined melancholy and heroism from just two subjects
The death of Frank Auerbach on Monday leaves a deep hole at the centre of art. In the final stretches of his long career he was regularly called “the greatest living artist”, an elastic and blurred title, yes, but one for which vanishingly few are shortlisted. You need to be especially potent, especially important, especially […]
We know how great art looks — but how does it smell?
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham often has fancy ideas for shows. But it’s outdone itself with Scent and the Art of the Pre-Raphaelites, an event that looks simultaneously at the way art looks and how it smells. It’s inspired by a book published in 2022 by Dr Christina Bradstreet, a curator and theoretician, […]