painting
Winslow Homer: Force of Nature, National Gallery review - dump the symbolism and enjoy the dramaTuesday, 20 September 2022
Across the pond Winslow Homer is a household name; in his day, he was regarded as the greatest living American painter. He was renowned especially for his seascapes and his most famous painting, The Gulf Stream, 1899/1906 (main picture) features in... Read more... |
10 Questions for art historian and fiction writer Chloë AshbySaturday, 11 June 2022
“Is she at a pivotal point in her life but unable to pivot…?” Eve, the young heroine of Chloë Ashby’s dazzling debut novel, Wet Paint, asks this question standing in front of Édouard Manet’s painting "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" (1882). Yet she... Read more... |
Francis Bacon: Man and Beast, Royal Academy review – a life lived in extremisThursday, 27 January 2022
Francis Bacon Man and Beast fills most of the main galleries at the Royal Academy. Thankfully, five of the rooms are empty. The exhibition is such a dispiriting experience, I’d have been hollering like a howler monkey if there’d been any more. And... Read more... |
The Lost Leonardo review - an incredible tale as gripping as any thrillerTuesday, 14 September 2021
It’s been described as “the most improbable story that has ever happened in the art market”, and The Lost Leonardo reveals every twist and turn of this extraordinary tale. In New Orleans in 2005, a badly-damaged painting (pictured below left)... Read more... |
Maylis de Kerangal: Painting Time review - safer in simulationTuesday, 11 May 2021
"Trompe-l’œil," explains the director of the Institut de Peinture in Brussels, “is the meeting of a painting and a gaze, conceived for a particular point of view, and defined by the effect it is supposed to produce”. In layman’s terms, it is the art... Read more... |
The Artist's Wife review - uninspired portrait of dementia in the HamptonsWednesday, 28 April 2021
“The only child I’ve ever had is you,” the artist’s wife (Lena Olin), spits at the artist, her considerably older husband (Bruce Dern), who retorts, “That was your goddamn choice so don’t blame it on me.”Although the setting – a wintery East Hampton... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Amina Cain on her first novel and her eternal fascination with suggestionMonday, 22 February 2021
Amina Cain is a writer of near-naked spaces and roomy characters. Her debut collection of short fiction, I Go To Some Hollow (Les Figues, 2009), located itself in the potential strangeness of everyday thoughts and experience. Her second, Creature (... Read more... |
Book extract: Nativity by Jean Frémon, with drawings by Louise BourgeoisMonday, 16 November 2020How should one paint the baby Jesus? This deceptively innocent question runs the length of Jean Frémon's Nativity, a fictional work that takes as its subject the first painter to represent the saviour of humankind without his swaddling clothes. The... Read more... |
Visual Arts Lockdown Special 4: half-way housesWednesday, 01 July 2020
With the first round of galleries opening their doors in June and a new round getting ready to open in July, we’ve a half-way home of a roundup this week. This month’s re-openings include the National Gallery, the Royal Academy, the Barbican, the... Read more... |
Visual Arts Lockdown Special 2: read, search, listen, createTuesday, 05 May 2020
Arguably one of the most poignant effects of the lockdown has been to simultaneously draw attention to the connections between the arts and the distinct ways they have evolved into their own forms. Sculpture, painting, textiles, performance art,... Read more... |
Nicolaes Maes: Dutch Master of the Golden Age, National Gallery review – beautifully observed vignettesThursday, 05 March 2020
A young woman sits sewing (pictured below right: Young Woman Sewing,1655). She is totally immersed in her task, and our attention is similarly focused on her and every detail of her environment. The cool light pouring though the window illuminates... Read more... |
The Best Exhibitions in LondonThursday, 30 January 2020
Picasso and Paper, Royal Academy ★★★ A fascinating subject that proves too unwieldy for a single exhibition. Until 13 Apr Rembrandt's Light, Dulwich Picture Gallery ★★★★ A novel collaboration between curators and cinematographer Peter... Read more... |
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