Reviews

(1638–40), Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Musei Capitolini, Rome.

Baroque stars – the birth of a style in 17th-century Rome

Caravaggio and Bernini are the headliners – but the Rijksmuseum’s show reveals the range of artists who adopted the baroque style

2 Mar 2020
Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

Burning desires – Céline Sciamma’s ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’, reviewed

The French director’s film about an 18th-century painter and her muse is a visual feast

26 Feb 2020
Documentation of the yard and porch of the artist Emmer Sewell.

African-American artists from the South put on a show of defiance

A survey of black artists from the American South reveals how oppression and inequality couldn’t crush their creativity

25 Feb 2020
Illustration from César-antechrist (detail; 1895), Alfred Jarry.

Personality cult – Alfred Jarry makes an impression at the Morgan Library

The creator of King Ubu and inventor of pataphysics was deeply attached to the art of the book

25 Feb 2020
Notgeld from the Harz Mountains, 1921.

Money matters – the art of German hyperinflation

The emergency money issued by many German towns during the First World War featured a range of designs – including witches, devils and donkeys

20 Feb 2020

Nature boy – how John Nash brought new life to British landscape painting

A new biography reasserts the significance of the self-described ‘artist plantsman’ among his modern British peers

19 Feb 2020
Untitled (1977), Linder.

A cut above – Linder takes over Kettle’s Yard

The artist’s feminist photomontages fill the galleries, while the house is now punctuated with her interventions – and the scent of potpourri

18 Feb 2020
Installation view of 'Vivian Suter: Tintin's Sofa' at Camden Arts Centre, 2019.

Force of nature – the weathered canvases of Vivian Suter

Vivian Suter’s paintings, on show at Camden Arts Centre, are marked by the elements of the rainforest where she works – as well as by her dogs’ paws

17 Feb 2020
Two of a deck of 78 tarot cards designed by Salvador Dalí and originally published in 1983–84.

Surreal deal – on Salvador Dalí’s tarot deck

Long out of print, the cards have been reissued by Taschen. But what of the artistic merits of their designs?

Potato Head (detail; c. 1963–65), Sigmar Polke.

Floating around on Planet Polke

Potatoes orbit around barstools and beer spurts out of coasters in the whimsical worlds explored by Sigmar Polke

13 Feb 2020
Phulkari (early 20th century), unknown maker. Bradford Museums and Galleries

Frayed histories – unravelling the stories behind seven women’s textile collections

An exhibition on the textile collections of women from the 19th century to the present day tells us as much about their own lives as about the objects themselves

13 Feb 2020
Reclining cow, Jemdet Nasr period, 3300–3000 BC, Uruk, Iraq. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Photo: Olaf M. Tessmer; © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museen

The Mesopotamian city that can claim to be the cradle of civilisation

Uruk may not be as well known as Babylon or Ninevah, but layers of complex, urban life have been uncovered there over the course of the 20th century

7 Feb 2020
Textile panel depicting the Visitation (early 17th century), unknown English maker. © Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Fertile ground – ‘Portraying Pregnancy’ at the Foundling Museum, reviewed

A visual history of hundreds of years of veneration, satire, or the breaking of taboos moves from the Virgin Mary to Demi Moore

6 Feb 2020
Cover 'The Lives of Lucian Freud: Youth' by William Feaver

The great dictator – William Feaver’s biography of Lucian Freud, reviewed

The painter exerts the force of his personality from beyond the grave in the first part of this unconventional biography

6 Feb 2020
Mary Beard at Crawford Art Gallery, Cork.

Naked positions – Mary Beard’s Shock of the Nude, reviewed

The BBC programme takes a playful look at changing attitudes to nudity in art – from Michelangelo’s David to modern life drawing

5 Feb 2020
No. 521 from Leben? oder Theater?, (1941–42), Charlotte Salomon. Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam.

How Charlotte Salomon turned her dark family history into a masterpiece of 20th-century art

‘Leben? oder Theater?’ is a totally unique work of art, produced in extreme circumstances

4 Feb 2020
I Am Still Learning (detail; 1824–28), Francisco de Goya. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

‘For Goya, the normal, the terrible, and the fantastical existed cheek by jowl’

A gathering of some 300 drawings at the Prado is a comprehensive guide to life in the artist’s cruel and chaotic world

1 Feb 2020
Tricolour Wings (1932; detail), Tullio Crali

Tullio Crali’s flights into the future

The Estorick Collection presents a rare exhibition of works by the Italian painter with a passion for planes

31 Jan 2020
Patrons and Lovers of Art (1826/30), Pieter Christoffel Wonder

The private collection that paved the way for the National Gallery

The Marquess of Stafford’s noble endeavour gave the public a taste of what a national collection might look like

29 Jan 2020
Maids of Honour (detail; c. 1890s), designed and worked by May Morris.

May Morris was a master of many crafts, but it’s her embroideries that steal the show at Dovecot Studios

The designer was born into the Arts and Crafts movement, but her achievements speak for themselves

28 Jan 2020
The Musician (detail; c. 1483–90), Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo at the Louvre is full of wonders – and a few surprises

While the paintings are astonishing, the notebooks and sketches really draw you in

27 Jan 2020
The Gamble Room at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The ace caff that now leaves a bad taste – at the V&A Café

Henry Cole had the art of the museum cafe down to a tee. Oh for his veal cutlets!

27 Jan 2020
Self-Portrait (2005), Nam June Paik.

Television licence – how Nam June Paik turned cathode-ray tubes into art

Tate Modern’s show of the artist’s experiments with technology suggests that TV was his favourite medium

22 Jan 2020
Six Recruits, (1815–16), attributed to the family of Ghulam Ali Khan, India, Haryana. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

Society painters – the Indian artists who worked for the East India Company

The Wallace Collection’s exhibition is very welcome, but could tell us more about the two-way traffic between Indian and Western artists

20 Jan 2020