Reviews
In Mati Diop’s ‘Dahomey’, restitution is given a supernatural slant
A prize-winning documentary about France’s return of 26 looted objects from Benin is a haunting tale
The arresting satire of Sigmar Polke
The artist’s depictions of life in West Germany after the war are playful in form but deeply sarcastic under the surface
Close encounters of the miniature kind
Photography largely wiped out the trend for miniatures, but the genre still says much about how we relate to images today
When London’s sleepy art trade was jolted wide awake
An insider account by a former head of Sotheby’s in the UK recounts how London’s post-war art market took off in the 1950s and has kept on reinventing itself
The textile artists who cut a rug in Cumbria
The making of rag rugs has never been considered high art, but an exhibition in Middlesborough shows just how intricate and inventive they can be
‘If Jeff Koons directed an ad for Nescafé Gold Blend’ – Rivals, reviewed
From explosions of chintz to thrusting postmodern architecture, the sets for Jilly Cooper’s bonkbuster leave us in no doubt we’re watching a 1980s period drama
The dreams of the Surrealists have become the stuff of our reality
The ideas and images of the artists who unleashed their unconscious on the world a century ago are now part of the fabric of everyday life
Why Mies van der Rohe’s designs are here to stay
The architect’s pioneering modernist buildings have outlasted critics and changing trends, as a monumental new biography makes clear
When London had a much richer interior life
A new book by Steven Brindle lovingly catalogues the lavish interiors that could once be found in London’s grandest houses but are now lost
Alison Wilding keeps up a careful balancing act
A stimulating show at Alison Jacques perfectly captures the sculptor’s ability to combine familiar materials in unexpected ways
The bohemians who trained a generation of British artists
Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines turned their backs on the London art world to create an art school with an outsize legacy
Manny Vega makes a splash in New York
The mosaic artist’s celebration of El Barrio combines influences including African clothing to Latin jazz to create something wonderfully new
The ghostly worlds of Goya and Paula Rego
The artists’ eerie prints have much in common, but this pairing at the Holburne Museum is something of a missed opportunity
Were the Impressionists really so shocking?
It suits us to think of the movement as unpopular, but the passing of time makes it harder to see why the first Impressionist Exhibition of 1874 made such a stir
Paula Modersohn-Becker’s quest to become her own person
The German painter died tragically young, but in the course of her short life she became the artist she always wanted to be
What real American women have worn at home, at work and in wartime
The New-York Historical Society weaves together personal and social histories by assembling all manner of garments, from workwear to rebelwear
How printmaking made a lasting impression
Printing is found throughout art history – and often in the places you least expect it, as Jennifer L. Roberts demonstrates in her highly original new book
The tangled history of the London Tube map
A play about Harry Beck, creator of London Underground map we still use today, shows just how tricky it was to land on the perfect design
Mark Bradford keeps on testing the limits of painting
In a show at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the American artist keeps pushing at the boundaries of abstract art
When the Cold War gave Scotland the chills
An exhibition of photographs, posters and protest objects shows the absurd side of the Cold War as well as the terror
How Van Gogh invented the art of the future
The National Gallery has pulled off a seemingly impossible feat – to allow us to experience the intensity of the artist’s vision as if for the first time
This year, the Turner Prize gets personal
The four nominees for the prize in its 40th year all fold forms of biography into their art – with mixed success
Top drawers – a brief history of sketching through the ages
Spanning several continents and 13,000 years of graphic art, Susan Owens’s new book outlines the many reasons why artists have always been drawn to drawing
The society painter who wanted to reshape Irish art
Sarah Purser’s reputation faded after her death, but an exhibition at the Hugh Lane in Dublin is putting her back in the frame
Are the art market’s problems being blown out of proportion?