Reviews
The heavenly bodies of Guido Reni
An exhibition at the Städel Museum shows that the baroque painter’s idealised figures are certainly an acquired taste
The art of showing things as they really are
Hyperrealist sculptors today, and still-life painters of the past, have all tried to trick their viewers into accepting fiction as truth
In Naples, Artemisia is still a very bankable star
The imposing architecture of the Palazzo del Banco di Napoli makes a fitting stage for the artist’s gruesome scenes of greed and retribution
Nan Goldin takes a stand – All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, reviewed
Laura Poitras’s documentary about the photographer is an inspiring account of her blurring of the lines between life, art and activism
The French culture minister who fell out of love with the arts
In her score-settling memoir, Roselyn Bachelot calls out ungrateful artists and time-serving bureaucrats
The mixed messages of Meret Oppenheim
The artist’s mastery of unusual materials gave her a real edge over her peers
How to cut a statue down to size
Robert Bevan’s call to require a lot less from our public monuments has much to recommend it
The vanished collection of Giorgio Vasari
Giorgio Vasari’s famous collection of Renaissance drawings was dispersed after his death, and scholars have been trying track down its contents for centuries
National lampooner: James Gillray vs the British establishment
The artist’s excoriating images have long set the standard for political satire
Lucian Freud and the art of paying attention
No one could accuse the painter of flattering his subjects, but he was certainly painstaking about capturing them on canvas
Fiona Tan turns back time in Amsterdam
The artist rifles through archives and our collective imaginations to reshape what we think we know about the past
Plaster master – Maria Bartuszova at Tate Modern, reviewed
The Slovakian sculptor poured and moulded plaster into creations that evoke the body and the natural world in equal measure
Making a song and dance about musicals in the museum
A disappointingly static display at the V&A will make you long for the stage
The Renaissance painters who turned to stone
It was Sebastiano del Piombo who rediscovered the ancient art of painting on stone and inspired others to make the most of their material
Scary storeys – ‘Horror in the Modernist Block’, reviewed
Contemporary artists explore the fearful side of modernist architecture at Ikon, but a real sense of menace may be missing
Ways of seeing at the Wellcome Collection
The eye may be our most perceptive organ, but it can sometimes make us blind to the other senses
What the Victorians liked to hang on their walls
Thanks to mass production (and reproduction), in the 19th-century some middle-class homes began to resemble miniature picture galleries
The American who conquered cafe society in Rome
For seven decades, Milton Gendel recorded his charmed existence in delightfully candid photos and diaries
The triumph of the Tudors
Other European dynasties of the period had equally thriving court cultures, but none has had such a hold on the popular imagination
The unfashionable art of Ruskin Spear
Tanya Harrod’s biography of the unfairly neglected painter champions his scenes of London working-class life
The soft resistance of Magdalena Abakanowicz’s woven sculptures
The Polish artist sometimes worked at a monumental scale, but her most impressive works are less about the size than the power of their expression
Mimic men – how artists have spurred each other to new heights
An illuminating exhibition in Vienna explores how artists from the Greeks on have revelled in rivalries
The film-maker exploring Nigeria’s hangover from colonial rule
Ayo Akingbade’s new short film, set in the first Guinness factory to be built outside of the UK and Ireland, reveals a troubling story of labour and power
The British painter who was bullied into obscurity
Denis Wirth-Miller was unfairly dismissed as an imitator of his friend Francis Bacon, but it’s now clear that his detractors were wholly in the wrong
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What happens when an artist wants to be anonymous?