Reviews

Gold Icon High tech before big tech – ‘Electric Dreams’ at Tate Modern, reviewed

These artistic experiments by early embracers of new technologies already look charmingly retro

21 Feb 2025

Gold Icon The avant-garde painters who went round in circles

Whether Orphism can be called a coherent movement is one thing, but its practitioners produced some excellent art

12 Feb 2025

When gladiators roamed the British Isles

A touring exhibition of gladiatorial objects found in Britain makes a stab at getting to the heart of our fascination with the amphitheatre, but does it succeed?

11 Feb 2025

Gold Icon The real saints and scribes of medieval Europe, celebrity edition

The British Library’s exhibition of women in the Middle Ages who were creative and intellectual pioneers is a red-carpet affair

8 Feb 2025

Picabia, the painter who refused to be pinned down

In his final works, some of which have never been shown before, the endlessly restless artist adopted an abstract style that challenges us to look for hidden meanings

7 Feb 2025

The loneliest Bauhaus architect in America – The Brutalist, reviewed

Brady Corbet’s epically long film starring Adrien Brody as a Bauhaus-trained architect in America conveniently pretends that all the real Bauhaus-trained architects who made it to America never existed

6 Feb 2025

Gold Icon Tech bros of Versailles – ‘Science and Splendour’ at the Science Museum, reviewed

Technology and ornament went hand in hand at the court of Louis XIV, and his successors expected the same from the scientific advances of their day

3 Feb 2025

Gold Icon The Donald who didn’t like Nazis

The Disney star was a marvel of 20th-century industrial production and the Second World War was his finest hour, writes Todd McEwen

3 Feb 2025

Gold Icon Meet John Singer Sargent’s favourite family

The artist painted the Wertheimers 12 times, in portraits that shed light on the changing fortunes of an extraordinary family

3 Feb 2025

Gold Icon Augustus the Strong’s weakness for luxury

Tim Blanning’s masterful biography demonstrates that the despotic ruler of Saxony and Poland was rubbish at war, but had absolutely fabulous taste in art

29 Jan 2025

Gold Icon The gardens that had to make way for London’s growth

Todd Longstaffe-Gowan’s exhibition about the capital’s lost green spaces yields a rich crop of curiosities

21 Jan 2025

Romare Bearden and all that jazz

The artist’s collages inspired by his time in Paris reflect his love of the city’s music scene and reverence for the likes of Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong

15 Jan 2025

The camp mastery of Roger Moore’s Bond

The actor may not have had much range, but he always played himself to perfection and brought that sense of panache to his most famous role

9 Jan 2025

Gold Icon The Sienese painters who sparked a revolution in European art

The innovations of artists in the first half of the 14th century created new pathways for painting for centuries to come

6 Jan 2025

Gold Icon Citizen Guillaume – the painter whose fortunes followed the French Revolution’s

The story of an artist who has been forgotten for nearly 200 years reflects the hopes and failures of the turbulent times he lived through

2 Jan 2025

Gold Icon What the shape of things to come used to look like

Glenn Adamson’s new book shows that predictions about the future have always spoken volumes about the present

30 Dec 2024

Gold Icon Pierre Bonnard’s world of interiors

The painter’s vibrant domestic scenes are full of revealing details – and so is Isabelle Cahn’s weighty new biography of the painter

24 Dec 2024

Gold Icon The art of crossing continents – ‘Silk Roads’ at the British Museum, reviewed

An exhibition about the civilisations that could be found along the trade route connects cultures at every turn, writes Sameer Rahim

22 Dec 2024

How Egon Schiele saw the world

In his paintings of landscapes and townscapes, the artist created scenes that are as psychologically complex as his portraits

17 Dec 2024

The manly art of Gustave Caillebotte

The French painter was unusual among his Impressionist peers for preferring to depict men at work and at play

13 Dec 2024

Dominique White plumbs the depths of history

An exhibition of work by the winner of the Max Mara Art Prize hints at the horror of the transatlantic slave trade

12 Dec 2024

Gold Icon A fitting tribute to Dior

An imaginative exhibition in The Hague stresses how much the fashion house still owes to its founder

9 Dec 2024

On Kawara, serial dater

Best known for the thousands of works in his ‘Date Paintings’ series, the Japanese artist has never been more of an enigma, as a pair of shows in London and Paris reveal

5 Dec 2024

Lucy McKenzie gets to grips with reality

In a major new exhibition, the artist has created a world in miniature, full of panoramic views, trompe l’oeil murals and imitations of everyday life

3 Dec 2024