Reviews

Clive Bell is now best known as Vanessa’s husband – but a new biography replenishes his role in promoting modernism in Britain

Collectors, curators and artists have been debating the category of American folk art since the early 20th century – as a display at the MFA Boston makes clear

The ‘Rethinking Guernica’ website allows us to scrutinise Picasso’s anti-war masterpiece in greater detail than ever

2 Tone began as a ska-inspired record label, but swiftly became a look and a political stance – and a defining moment in British cultural history

Paul Greenhalgh’s ambitious survey takes us from the ancient Greeks to Picasso and beyond

A survey of new Australian art presents a planet in crisis – but it’s more uplifting than it sounds

A retrospective at the Pera Museum in Istanbul demonstrates the vast geographic sweep of the Lebanese-American artist’s work and biography – including her Ottoman roots

In ‘What Artists Wear’, Charlie Porter casts an eye over the wardrobe choices of everyone from Barbara Hepworth to Jean-Michel Basquiat

A new biography of the British painter has a fine sense of his precocious talent – and real feeling for his rakish charm

A temporary display of the museum’s collection telescopes time and space to group objects thematically – but is this a productive path to follow?

This wide-ranging book explores how women artists used self-portraiture to establish themselves in a man’s world

The first survey show dedicated to the ‘Queen of Bohemia’ presents a flamboyant figure who was single-minded about her art

Emily Mortimer’s TV adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s novel is a wonderfully glamorous affair – and its anachronisms are whip-smart

In her portraits of imaginary people, the artist conjures a world that feels joyfully real

The Breuer Building makes a minimalist foil for the Frick’s permanent collection – but Eve M. Kahn is rather glad the move is only temporary

In his heyday John Hassall was known as ‘the Poster King’ and his eyecatching ads could be seen on hoardings all over Britain

Post-war museum design had a political impetus that was public-spirited in nature – even if that meant displaying sculptures on a bed of coal

Portraits were used to further friendships – and as networking opportunities – in Enlightenment France

Two new books offer complementary perspectives – the macro and the micro – on the modern museum

An exhibition examining Black experience in America is powerful if piecemeal – and is necessarily exhausting