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

8 Nov 2024

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

8 Nov 2024

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

7 Nov 2024

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

4 Nov 2024

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

1 Nov 2024

‘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

28 Oct 2024

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

28 Oct 2024

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

28 Oct 2024

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

28 Oct 2024

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

23 Oct 2024

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

22 Oct 2024

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

22 Oct 2024

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

18 Oct 2024

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

17 Oct 2024

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

14 Oct 2024

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

10 Oct 2024

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

10 Oct 2024

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

9 Oct 2024

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

30 Sep 2024

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

30 Sep 2024

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

26 Sep 2024

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

25 Sep 2024

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

23 Sep 2024

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

22 Sep 2024