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What use are the arts?

The notion that art should serve a personal or social good is more prevalent than ever – but is usefulness really the point of creativity?

26 Feb 2024

Caravaggio goes digital in Milan

A flawless digital copy of the artist’s Basket of Fruit raises the tricky question of how much authenticity should matter to museums

20 Feb 2024

Chaos into calm – the art of Taloi Havini

The Papua New Guinean won the 10th Artes Mundi prize last month, with video works and installations that eloquently embody the history and heritage of her homeland

9 Feb 2024

Fifty years on, this biopic of Edvard Munch deserves a new lease of life

Peter Watkins’ 1974 film is no ordinary portrait of the artist – and feels more current than ever as the art-historical canon is up for debate

26 Jan 2024

Can UK museums still charge for images of artworks?

The Court of Appeal’s recent ruling in a copyright case has caused a good deal of excitement, but its relevance to reproductions of artworks remains to be seen

19 Jan 2024

The V&A is a much better home for this medieval sculpture than the Met

A 12th-century walrus ivory will head to the Met unless a UK institution can find £2m by February – but the sculpture really should stay where it is

12 Jan 2024
Giovanni Anselmo. Photo: Chris Felver; courtesy Archivio Giovanni Anselmo ETS

‘He made visible the invisible forces that govern the universe’ – a tribute to Giovanni Anselmo (1934–2023)

A leading member of the Arte Povera movement, the artist stood out among his peers for his wit, imagination and interest in elemental forces

4 Jan 2024

The passion projects of Dorothy Iannone

Work by the artist who painted herself as a sex goddess sits uneasily within the category of feminist art – and is all the better for being discomforting

2 Jan 2024

From manuscripts to memes, and back again

Olivia Swarthout has turned her hit social media accounts about medieval marginalia into a book. After recent digital disruptions, paper seems like an increasingly safe bet

19 Dec 2023

Cosmetic surgery – a Stuart beauty is restored to her natural state

The retouching of Diana Cecil’s portrait has drawn comparisons with the enhancements of Kylie Jenner – but it says more about changing beauty standards

8 Dec 2023

True art is nothing to be embarrassed about

There’s more to art than subject matter – and it’s almost impossible to find anything shameful about a style

24 Oct 2023

The artists who want to enter the monster zone

Creativity often flouts conventions, so it’s no wonder more women want to become thoroughly monstrous

23 Oct 2023

Command performance – what a lost Artemisia tells us about an English queen

The Royal Collection has found a work from the artist’s London years reveals as much about its patron as about the painter

27 Sep 2023

The history of artists’ signatures is a secret history of art

For painters from Jan van Eyck to Philip Guston, the act of signing a finished work is much more than a simple assertion of authorship

22 Sep 2023

Making art behind bars can be its own form of release

Effective rehabilitation requires offenders to imagine themselves differently – and finding a creative outlet can certainly help with that

22 Sep 2023

Demolishing post-war buildings shouldn’t be the default

Despite the creative possibilities and environmental benefits of refurbishment, developers are all too eager to start over

6 Sep 2023

Who should fix the crisis at the British Museum?

The theft of 2,000 items is a scandal that points to wider failures of leadership and oversight. So can the museum right what has gone wrong by itself?

5 Sep 2023

Will art bring life back to the office?

By brightening up corporate spaces, employers are trying to tempt remote workers back to business as usual

1 Sep 2023

The laws regarding Native American remains leave too much up to museums

In the absence of clearer rules, institutions should obey the spirit and not just the letter of the law – and be more careful with material they may have to return

22 Aug 2023

When Giacometti lit up literary London

The sculptor’s chandelier, now export-stopped by the UK government, once hung in the offices of Cyril Connolly’s Horizon magazine

28 Jul 2023

Compton Verney’s new painted ladies are more about vice than virtue

A portrait saved for the nation has been praised for representing racial equality in 17th-century Britain, but it’s mainly a warning to women everywhere

10 Jul 2023
Sculpture of a woman lying down wearing a red dress and hat

When outsider art entered the mainstream

A string of recent exhibitions have done much to raise the profile of so-called outsider artists

6 Jul 2023
UNESCO general assembly

Why is the United States rejoining UNESCO?

When the country renews its membership in July, it will pay back dues of more than $500m – but it does so on its own terms

16 Jun 2023

The Supreme Court has saved the Andy Warhol Foundation from itself

The foundation should never have pursued the copyright case against Lynn Goldsmith and it should be grateful it lost