The art world is always capable of preposterous behaviour — it’s that kind of world — but even by its own base standards the decision in 2020 to cancel the Philip Guston exhibition that was heading for Tate Modern was cowardly and callow. Cancel culture had sunk to a new low. At issue were the […]
Recent articles
Sarah Lucas and Marina Abramovic — which exhibition should you book first?
Two big shows by women artists have opened at prestigious London venues. Both are impressive. Both imaginative. Both tinged with what we might call “a tangible national flavour”. For my money, one of the shows is more worthwhile than the other. But which? At Tate Britain Sarah Lucas, the former enfant terrible of British art, who […]
Rembrandt as you’ve never seen before
Iwas talking to a famous art dealer the other day — they’re always good for an alternative view of art realities — and he told me that the biggest growth area in art is the private museum. Everyone everywhere, it seems, is opening them. Especially collectors of contemporary art. There are many reasons. The tax […]
Why Joan Mitchell is the $20m darling of abstraction
In a few weeks’ time, at Sotheby’s in New York, there’s a painting by Joan Mitchell coming up for sale, called Sunflowers. It was painted in 1991 and the estimate is that it will sell for $20 million. Most art world observers, however, are expecting it to go for more. Maybe a lot more. Joan Mitchell […]
Me, Tracey Emin and the most remarkable artist I’d never heard of
Do you remember Tracey Emin getting drunk on television? It was 1997, at the Turner prize. A group of arty men — including me — had come together to debate “Is painting dead?” The discussion was prompted by an article I had written in defence of Emin in this paper in which I argued that […]
Black Venus at Somerset House is riveting
Having read Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge, I did not expect the Black Venus show at Somerset House to be an uplifting experience. When it comes to guilt in these sensitive matters, I am the full package: white, middle class, middle-aged (going on old) and, to top it all, an art […]
Dear Earth review: ‘A thunderous lack of self-awareness’
Jesus walks into a synagogue in Nazareth. He addresses the congregation and they listen with interest. At the end of his speech, he repeats a well-known proverb: “Physician, heal thyself.” The doubting people of Nazareth, he predicts, will be quoting those words at him in the future. The congregation get agitated. And chase him out […]
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 […]
