29 Dec 2020
The Hanging of Myra Hindley
The Moors Murders resonate in British minds of the post-war generation. Myra Hindley killed 5 children with her boyfriend and sexually assaulted four of them. Myra’s mug shot and the horrific crime is burnt into the memory of many. So by 1995 wh
14 Dec 2013
Winking in Art
Russian artists in the early 20th century turned to the West to absorb the latest trends happening in Paris. That’s the conventional story. Yet, little known, at the same time they were also turning eastwards towards Siberia and Russia’s ori
09 Oct 2013 | 1 Comments
Artist Crucified in his Studio
No-one you know thinks of themself as Christ which may be why most people find it so impossible to believe that artists do. My continual harping on this theme can sound like madness. One new reader, clearly dedicated to her Church, complained vo
20 Nov 2012 | 1 Comments
Bellows’ River Rats At the Metropolitan Museum.
George Bellows’ exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum opened last week and is well-deserved, showing us for the first time in modern memory the full scale of what he achieved in twenty-something years. He died at 42. The success of h
21 Sep 2012
Impressionism and Fashion
Impressionism and Fashion is the title of a new exhibition opening at Paris' Musée d’Orsay this coming Monday. The key image on the catalogue’s cover and the Museum’s website is Manet’s Young Lady of 1866
23 Jun 2012
Cindy Sherman: Inside and Out
Cindy Sherman stands in an odd position in my pantheon of art. Her portraits, critics repeatedly tell us, are self-portraits but at the same time are not about her. That is my dilemma. The very characteristic that would make Sherman’s work
24 May 2012
Durer: “For Christ’s sake, can’t you see that….
An article featured on the Home page of The Art Newspaper's website announces the opening of an important exhibition on Dürer. It reports, however, that Dürer’s Munich Self-portrait (above): “continues
22 Mar 2012
Johan Zoffany
I just missed, by all accounts, a landmark exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, the first major exhibition devoted to Johan Zoffany (1733-1810). It just moved to the Royal Academy in London where it will stay until June 10
04 Mar 2012
Advertising Art
Two prints by different artists, both American admittedly but more than thirty years apart, were in the same auction this week (top and bottom)1 using the same “hint” – for want of a better term – that the actual su
27 Feb 2012
Degas on Reflection and the Great Masters
At the entry to a small, mildly interesting exhibition of Rembrandt’s engravings and their influence on Degas, the Metropolitan Museum has highlighted the following quote:
“What I do is the result of reflectio
01 Feb 2012
Degas’ Disgusting Ballerina
When Degas’ much beloved Little Dancer Aged Fourteen was first exhibited in 1881, it was greeted with fear and disgust. One art critic wrote that Degas had selected a model “among the most odiously ugly; he makes it the standard of horror an
10 Dec 2011
Portraits: Icons of America
Portraits make popular art exhibitions because we all think we can “read” a face. It’s part of being human. Everyone is his or her own expert on other people’s faces. Besides, portraits help satisfy our natural inquisitiv
02 Dec 2011
The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini #3
Both portraits above will be in the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum (Cat. #163 and #159) and may even be hung near to each other where the similarity will surely be noticed. The portrait of Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus (left), i
04 Nov 2011
Maurizio Cattelan at the Guggenheim
The Maurizio Cattelan exhibition opening today at the Guggenheim New York (on till Jan 22nd, 2012) is entitled All because it is meant to be a complete retrospective of the Italian artist’s career. In fact, aged 51, he has formally announc
13 Oct 2011
Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus
America’s a religious and largely Christian country so an exhibition titled Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, currently in Philadelphia and soon to travel to Detroit, ought to be a popular hit. It caught my interest because – face it
04 Oct 2011
John Sloan and his Ashcan Paintings
I mentioned a month ago that I would be reviewing Michael Lobel’s article in the Art Bulletin on John Sloan, the Ashcan artist of early twentieth-century New York.1 In it he looks at half a dozen works by Sloan between 1907 and 1910 to dem
30 Sep 2011
Dylan’s Sources
Now comes the story of Bob Dylan’s paintings, currently on view at Gagosian New York. I have only seen photos but, given the buzz, I’ll be there next week. I didn’t know but Dylan, like many artists, has long been known for usi
18 Jul 2011
Show me the Money!
If you are in New York, do visit Hans-Peter Feldman’s winning installation for the annual Hugo Boss Guggenheim prize. The prize is $100,000 so Feldman took the exact amount in dollar bills and pinned all 100,000 of them to the walls and co
25 Feb 2011
The Spell of Gossaert
The Jan Gossaert (c.1478-1532) exhibition that was on at the Met in New York last year has now moved in truncated form to London’s National Gallery. There are 37 of his 63 extant paintings in London. The Met had 50. Yet there i
18 Dec 2010
A Visit to the French Ambassador
I’ve just been to see Palazzo Farnese, the great French Embassy in Rome, partly designed by Michelangelo, which is rarely open to the public. They’ve arranged a wonderful exhibition with loans from Naples and Parma to celebrate the F
03 Dec 2010
Giacometti in New York
If you are in Manhattan for the Christmas shopping season and need a few minutes' peace, pop on over to the Eykyn Maclean Gallery at East 67th Street where a small but magnificent collection of Giacometti drawings and sculptures are on displ
21 Nov 2010 | 2 Comments
Basquiat in Paris
Basquiat at the Musée de L’Art Moderne in Paris is well worth seeing for anyone who wants to come to grips with this difficult artist. It is amazing to see how much one man can produce in a short time, especially if one considers that what’
19 Nov 2010
Bronzino’s Ginger Hair
No-one knows how Agnolo di Cosimo gained his nickname, Bronzino, but the general view seems to be, without any evidence, that he may have had a dark complexion. Yet how about the color of his hair? A portrait of Bronzino by an unknown painter sh
17 Nov 2010
Bronzino’s Mirror
I just discovered a self-portrait of Bronzino that I did not know. According to the catalogue for the current exhibition in Florence and earlier scholars too, Bronzino depicted himself in a religious painting as the poet-king David (above right)
05 Nov 2010
Dante Pops Up Again!
No art historian has yet commented, positively or otherwise, on how the presence of Dante’s profile in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement makes sense within the overall concept that Michelangelo himself pronounced: “every painter paints himself
07 Oct 2010
Bronzino in Florence
The current show of Bronzino’s paintings at Palzzo Strozzi in Florence is a marvel, beautifully organized and arranged. With 70 Bronzinos, a room-full of portraits and vast tapestries designed by the master, it is a sumptuous display
12 Sep 2010
Putin’s Portraits
Recent news from Russia suggests that Vladimir Putin is not a regular user of this website. According to The Art Newspaper he has approved plans to create the first National Portrait Gallery. “Society has a huge interest in our national hi
06 Sep 2010
Mauro Molinari
I turned up on the last day of an exhibition of Mauro Molinari’s work at the Carlo Bilotti Museum in Rome, a small but fascinating show by an artist I did not know. There was only one visitor present, a short, happy Italian man in hi
03 Sep 2010
Window of a Roman Art Gallery
I have been arguing for years that the concept every painter paints himself is alive and well in the art world, even if art scholars are unaware of it. So I was particularly delighted when I came across this notice posted on the window of an art
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