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 […]
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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, […]
Marvel at the Italian Renaissance masters of magic
The Royal Collection may not actually be a bottomless pit of art treasures, but it certainly feels like one. Show after show features fresh selections of goodies pulled out from far corners of the monarchical holdings and unleashed on us serfs, pleasuring us and filling us with envy. The enormous cache of Italian Renaissance drawings […]
Should we open our hearts to Vanessa Bell?
Slowly, effectively, the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes has been devoting ambitious shows to female artists whose work has been underappreciated. It’s a process that began in 2019 with a pioneering display about Paula Rego, and which has continued with examinations of the nanny turned street photographer Vivian Maier, and a tribute to the bottomless […]
Look again! There’s more to this artwork than meets the eye
Art is full of secrets. It’s one of the best things about it. However well you know a work of art, something in its story will always remain hidden. It doesn’t matter how famous you are — the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel ceiling — it doesn’t matter what you are — Leonardo’s The Last Supper, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers — […]
This is Francis Bacon’s surprising other side
I went into the Francis Bacon show at the National Portrait Gallery with a noisy doubt wedged in my mind: Bacon was not a portraitist, so what is he doing here? I came out after an hour and a half of being slapped around by exciting paintwork with a new dollop of respect for the […]
Mike Kelley: Ghost and Spirit — is this a reflection of a troubled mind?
Metaphorically, Mike Kelley was a big noise, an artist showcased at every biennale, written about in every art mag, yapped about at every curatorial gathering. Unfortunately, he was also a big noise physically, and Tate Modern’s retrospective tribute to him is so relentlessly and unpleasantly loud, with grunts, bangs, sighs, slurps, giggles, throbs and screams, […]
Finally, the abject Turner prize is worth a look
After six years, the Turner prize is back in London. This needs celebrating not because we Londoners have missed it — we haven’t — or because anyone believes London is its rightful home — we don’t — or because there was anything unworthy about the venues it ended up in on its superannuated tour of […]