Everybody loves Vermeer. He’s irresistible. The magical light, the air of perfection, the whispery moods, the intoxicating combinations of yellow and blue. They get to all of us. So it is entirely unsurprising that the Vermeer extravaganza at the Rijksmuseum — it’s the largest collection of his paintings assembled in history, featuring 28 of his […]

A few months ago I was clicking aimlessly through Tate Britain’s online paperwork when I saw a job advert that plunged a dagger into my heart. “Project Manager, Tate Britain Rehang,” blared the ad. Salary £30,000. “Oh no,” my inner art lover screamed. “A willy is about to be waggled.” Again. The gallery rehang is the […]

Was Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) a fascist? I ask the question because the Morandi exhibition, which has arrived at the Estorick Collection in north London, does not — the paperwork for the event could hardly be more gushing or unquestioning — but also because devotees of Morandi’s art seem to find his work so angelic. Perhaps […]

To prepare myself to see Spain and the Hispanic World at the Royal Academy, I did that thing psychologists advise where you write down the first words that come into your mind. As an aficionado of Spanish art, spewing the words was easy. I closed my eyes and out they poured: “Dark, passionate, exciting, Catholic, […]

Happy new year, art lovers! Now we have the pleasantries out of the way, let’s get down to tackling that scarring and insistent question that lurches up from our depths during the first hesitant steps of every new annus: where in the Devil’s name can we get a decent art fix in January? As every […]

Zanele Muholi’s self-portraits are magical

A lucky few graduates seize the moment — with work that questions nature and identity

Titian’s Poesies are united for the first time at the National Gallery, and Waldemar Januszczak is awestruck

Were Lucas Cranach’s paintings of naked ladies there to titillate — or to educate? By Waldemar Januszczak