Reviews

Cedric Price’s mission to make architecture amusing

Cedric Price believed that architecture should be mobile, lightweight, and temporary. Above all, he thought it should be fun

17 May 2017
Illustrated pages from the Voynich Manuscript, c. 15th century. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

The Voynich Manuscript is a book you’re not meant to read

Despite Yale’s new facsimile edition, this 15th-century manuscript happily remains as indecipherable as ever

17 May 2017
Biinjiya'iing Onji (2017), Rebecca Belmore. © Fanis Vlastaras

The successes and failures of Documenta in Athens

The decision to stage part of the 14th Documenta in Athens has been widely debated. Now that it’s open, what are the highlights of the programme?

16 May 2017
Mark Tobey in his studio (1949). Courtesy Arthur Lyon Dahl. Photo by Larry Novak

The forgotten father of Abstract Expressionism

His ‘white writing’ style helped shape the course of modern painting, so why isn’t Mark Tobey better known?

12 May 2017
Five Forms (1935), Paule Vézelay. © The estate of Paule Vézelay

The ‘living lines’ of Paule Vézelay

She was well known in the surrealist circles of the 20th century, but Vézelay’s work has been all but forgotten since

10 May 2017
Crépuscule (detail; 1892), Pierre Bonnard. © RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski / distributed by AMF

How the Japanese transformed French painting

An exhibition of Les Nabis at the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum in Tokyo explores their interest in the art of the Far East

5 May 2017
'Michelangelo & Sebastiano', installation view, National Gallery, London

Michelangelo and Sebastiano’s fraught but fertile friendship

An ambitious exhibition at the National Gallery traces the productive overlaps between these two Renaissance masters

4 May 2017
Wittgenstein in New York, (detail; from the As is When portfolio) (1965), Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, ,

More can be less when it comes to Eduardo Paolozzi

Paolozzi’s 1950s work is astonishing, but a full retrospective draws too much attention to his duller later work

4 May 2017
Minotaure dans une barque sauvant une femme (1937), Pablo Picasso. Private collection. Photo: Eric Baudouin; Courtesy Gagosian; © 2017 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

What the Minotaur can tell us about Picasso

An exhibition documenting Picasso’s obsession with minotaurs and matadors is a curatorial triumph

2 May 2017
Boy falling from a window, (1592), Italy, possibly Naples. Museo degli ex voto del santuario di Madonna dell’Arco, Naples

Religion in the Renaissance was as personal as it was public

An exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum reveals how the home in Renaissance Italy was the site of much private devotion

29 Apr 2017
Socle du Monde (1961), Piero Manzoni. Photo: Ole Bagger. Courtesy of HEART

Monuments to mundanity at the Socle du Monde Biennale

This event is a must-see if you want your understanding of Piero Manzoni and the other featured artists turned on its head

28 Apr 2017
Frogmore House, The Queen's Library, Charles Wild, Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017

The patronage of remarkable princesses

Some royal tastemakers have better taste than others – as the remarkable legacy of three Hanoverian princesses shows

25 Apr 2017
School of Beauty, School of Culture (2012), Kerry James Marshall. Birmingham Museum of Art. Photo: Sean Pathasema

Kerry James Marshall’s celebration of black bodies

The American artist reminds viewers that black subjects are seldom encountered in the museum

25 Apr 2017
Rendering of glass staircase in the Tiffany Gallery, Fourth Floor, New-York Historical Society. Courtesy Eva Jiřičná Architects

Remaking history in New York

New galleries mean a fresh start for the New-York Historical Society Museum and Library

21 Apr 2017

Stanley Spencer’s endless autobiography

The painter’s reams of autobiographical writing are as idiosyncratic as his art

20 Apr 2017
Men and boys in Southam Street, London (1959), Roger Mayne. Courtesy of the Mary Evans Picture Library; © Roger Mayne/Mary Evans Picture Library

Roger Mayne, the ‘Laureate of Teenage London’

The Photographers’ Gallery hosts the first major London exhibition of Roger Mayne’s work since 1999

19 Apr 2017

Pissarro was the unifying force behind Impressionism

This overdue survey gives some sense of Pissarro’s extraordinary range

18 Apr 2017

Maeve Brennan’s quiet filmmaking speaks volumes about conflict and culture

The artist’s meditative new film reveals how, in the midst of cyclical violence, objects and humans continue to drift

18 Apr 2017
The Critics (1927), Henry Scott Tuke. Warwick District Council (Leamington Spa, UK)

The Tate was right to look again at queer British art

Context is as crucial to this exhibition as the art itself. Tate strikes a tricky balance between the two

14 Apr 2017
Wedding Dance in the Open Air (1607–14), Pieter Brueghel the Younger. Holburne Museum, Bath. Photo: Dominic Brown

A Bruegel family reunion in Bath

The Holburne Museum reminds us that this entire family is worth celebrating – not just Pieter Bruegel the Elder

13 Apr 2017
Installation view of The 4th (2012–17) and THE TIMES THAY AINT A CHANGING, FAST ENOUGH! (2017), by Henry Taylor, at the Whitney Biennial 2017. Collection of the artist; courtesy Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo | Collection of the artist; courtesy Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York

The Whitney Biennial in counterpoint

Dana Schutz’s controversial painting of Emmett Till has dominated the headlines, at the expense of other interesting contributions

12 Apr 2017
Studland Beach (c. 1912), Vanessa Bell. Tate, London. Photo: © Tate, London 2016; © The Estate of Vanessa Bell. courtesy of Henrietta Garnett

It’s about time Vanessa Bell was judged on her own merits

It’s hard to separate Vanessa Bell from Bloomsbury, but this exhibition of her art is long overdue

11 Apr 2017

Shadows beneath the surface of the sea

On the southern coast of France, a new exhibition is exploring our troubled relationship with the world’s oceans

6 Apr 2017
Cotton Pickers (1945), Thomas Hart Benton. © Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/VAGA, NY/DACS, London

The paintings that captured a desperate decade

How the American artists of the 1930s depicted a country that was on its knees

6 Apr 2017