Reviews

Crowd-pleasing art in 17th-century Amsterdam

Aside from the usual refreshments, the city’s taverns offered a highly engineered form of popular entertainment

27 Feb 2023

Ukrainian modernism deserves to be understood on its own terms

The artists of Ukrainian modernism have often been miscategorised as Russian, but an exhibition of avant-garde art seeks to redress the balance

27 Feb 2023

How Spanish is the collection of the Hispanic Society?

Archer Milton Huntington’s collection forms the backbone of the Hispanic Society in New York, but is his vision a hopelessly romantic view from the past?

27 Feb 2023

The Flemish painter who was a dedicated follower of fashion

Theodoor Rombouts was a great assimilator of styles, but he was more than just another of the Caravaggisti

25 Feb 2023

The Elizabethan whodunit that has kept art historians guessing

Has Compton Verney uncovered the identity of the mysterious Master of the Countess of Warwick?

23 Feb 2023

The deliberately difficult art of Pierre Dunoyer

A show in Paris reveals there may be more to the French artist’s paintings than meets the eye

23 Feb 2023
Edward Brezinski and friends

Take a walk on the obscure side of 1980s New York

This curious film about the painter Edward Brezinski suggests that not all forgotten artists are candidates for rehabilitation

22 Feb 2023

How Italy protected its art from the Nazis

An exhibition in Rome recounts the complicated tale of efforts to safeguard masterpieces across the country during the Second World War

17 Feb 2023

Women artists make a radical mess at the Whitechapel Gallery

A crowded display sees some 150 works of Abstract Expressionism clamouring for attention, but perhaps this is the point

16 Feb 2023

Sonia Boyce gets musical in Margate

The artist takes her Golden Lion-winning work celebrating the extraordinary achievements of Black women in music from Venice to the English seaside

10 Feb 2023

The psychedelic ceramics of Redd Ekks

The Norwegian American’s trippy sculptures are cult classics in the making

7 Feb 2023

Learning in style at the Bibliothèque nationale

The French national library’s exceptional collections now have the setting they deserve

30 Jan 2023

An insider’s guide to 18th-century Ireland

Robert O’Byrne reads between the lines of the itemised contents of great Irish houses

30 Jan 2023

Renaissance painting in its prime

David Young Kim’s ingenious study of grounds and figures takes the reader on an unfamiliar journey through familiar territory

30 Jan 2023

Constructive criticism and mid-century modernism

Eero Saarinen’s marriage to the publicist Aline Louchheim tells us a lot about how the architect made his name

30 Jan 2023

Edward Hopper’s fear of heights

The painter who defined the experience of modern New York never felt quite at home in the high-rise city

30 Jan 2023

The heavenly bodies of Guido Reni

An exhibition at the Städel Museum shows that the baroque painter’s idealised figures are certainly an acquired taste

30 Jan 2023

The art of showing things as they really are

Hyperrealist sculptors today, and still-life painters of the past, have all tried to trick their viewers into accepting fiction as truth

27 Jan 2023

In Naples, Artemisia is still a very bankable star

The imposing architecture of the Palazzo del Banco di Napoli makes a fitting stage for the artist’s gruesome scenes of greed and retribution

25 Jan 2023

Nan Goldin takes a stand – All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, reviewed

Laura Poitras’s documentary about the photographer is an inspiring account of her blurring of the lines between life, art and activism

20 Jan 2023

The French culture minister who fell out of love with the arts

In her score-settling memoir, Roselyn Bachelot calls out ungrateful artists and time-serving bureaucrats

20 Jan 2023
Ma gouvernante – My Nurse – Mein Kindermädchen by Meret Oppenheim

The mixed messages of Meret Oppenheim

The artist’s mastery of unusual materials gave her a real edge over her peers

3 Jan 2023

How to cut a statue down to size

Robert Bevan’s call to require a lot less from our public monuments has much to recommend it

3 Jan 2023
by Giorgio Vasari

The vanished collection of Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari’s famous collection of Renaissance drawings was dispersed after his death, and scholars have been trying track down its contents for centuries

3 Jan 2023