As I made my way round the outrageously blobby and constantly surprising new show at the Hayward Gallery, I found myself thinking about the big public spaces in London that present contemporary art, and – naughty me! – ranking them from five to one. Because that’s the kind of man I am! Number five has […]
Recent articles
Barbara Kruger: the artist who punches you with tabloid English
Word art is one of the more curious ingredients of contemporary art. It’s curious because it shouldn’t exist. We already have an art that deals with words — it’s called literature. That said, words do have something visually potent going for them. They are, or can be, striking pieces of design. Translating sounds into shapes […]
My friend Yoko Ono — and her art in her words
The other day I posted something positive on X about Yoko Ono. I often do. She’s a strong, independent, courageous woman. I’ve known her for years. There’s a big show of her art coming to Tate Modern. A positive post seemed in order. Or so I thought. Over the next couple of days my timeline […]
Meet the Mannerists — a forgotten movement that gave us wild, sexy art
Imagine a pebble stuck between two huge rocks. On one side looms the Renaissance, western civilisation’s most prestigious epoch, an era that gave us Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael. On the other side looms the baroque age, the thunderously exciting century that unleashed Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Veláquez, Rubens. Squeezed between these two cultural behemoths was “mannerism”, an artistic […]
Art, science and the changing face of beauty
A stimulating way to start the art year is to visit The Cult of Beauty at the Wellcome Collection. It’s an exhibition that prompts the little grey cells into immediate action, sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad. At least the damn things are forced to work. Beauty is, of course, one of art’s great […]
Pauline Boty: pop art’s only female icon laid bare
Pauline Boty (1938-66) was many things — so many it’s difficult to see how she squeezed them all in. She was an actress, appearing with Michael Caine in Alfie, and in various plays on the BBC. She was a dancer, popping up regularly on the Sixties music show Ready Steady Go!. She modelled. She wrote poetry. She […]
My strange Christmas trip to Gauguin’s island paradise
The strangest Christmas I ever spent was in Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia. If you get yourself a world map and a piece of string, and measure out the distance from the isle of Hiva Oa to the coast of Mexico, you will see that it’s about 3,000 miles. That makes the […]
How Soutine’s woman in a black dress became a symbol of defiance
The power of art, its seriousness, its importance, is easy to forget these days. Too easy. Go round the grim Frieze art fair, as I did this autumn in London, and all you see is hawking, money-grabbing and rich people trying to get richer. Which is why the story of Chaïm Soutine, his painting Eva, and […]
600 years late, a forgotten Italian artist gets his first show — and it’s remarkable
Every art historian worth their salt dreams of discovering an unknown or critically undervalued artist. It’s the big art historical fantasy, and happens only rarely. But it does happen. Until Théophile Thoré-Bürger found him stuffed down the back of the sofa in the 1850s, no one had heard of Vermeer. Art history had lost him. […]
At last, the Turner prize finds artists with a rare quality — talent
A few will take notice when the winner of the 2023 Turner prize is announced on Tuesday. Most won’t. It’s been many a season since the once fierce Turner battled its way on to the nation’s front pages and forced Britain to take an interest in contemporary art. This year’s version takes place at the […]
