Reviews
Australian art that doesn’t beat about the bush – The National 2021, reviewed
A survey of new Australian art presents a planet in crisis – but it’s more uplifting than it sounds
For Etel Adnan, a show in Turkey is a symbolic homecoming
A retrospective at the Pera Museum in Istanbul demonstrates the vast geographic sweep of the Lebanese-American artist’s work and biography – including her Ottoman roots
Rankin’s Great British Photography Challenge is too polite for its own good
The TV competition series is billed as a ‘masterclass’ – and none of the contestants will be booted off until the finale. Where’s the fun in that?
Do artists dress to impress?
In ‘What Artists Wear’, Charlie Porter casts an eye over the wardrobe choices of everyone from Barbara Hepworth to Jean-Michel Basquiat
John Craxton was a great artist – but his real talent was for living life to the full
A new biography of the British painter has a fine sense of his precocious talent – and real feeling for his rakish charm
Down the rabbit hole at LACMA
A temporary display of the museum’s collection telescopes time and space to group objects thematically – but is this a productive path to follow?
Images of strength – Jennifer Higgie’s ‘The Mirror and the Palette’, reviewed
This wide-ranging book explores how women artists used self-portraiture to establish themselves in a man’s world
In her life and art, Nina Hamnett had some serious fun
The first survey show dedicated to the ‘Queen of Bohemia’ presents a flamboyant figure who was single-minded about her art
Glam-rock Nancy Mitford – The Pursuit of Love, reviewed
Emily Mortimer’s TV adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s novel is a wonderfully glamorous affair – and its anachronisms are whip-smart
The tender fictions of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
In her portraits of imaginary people, the artist conjures a world that feels joyfully real
‘Leonardo’ is clunky and condescending – so it’s bingeable Renaissance schlock, basically
The Amazon series limps through its art history but is just about salvaged by its endearingly goofy hero
The Frick Collection makes a move into modernism
The Breuer Building makes a minimalist foil for the Frick’s permanent collection – but Eve M. Kahn is rather glad the move is only temporary
The dashing Edwardian poster designer who really cut the mustard
In his heyday John Hassall was known as ‘the Poster King’ and his eyecatching ads could be seen on hoardings all over Britain
In post-war Europe, museums dared to experiment with how they displayed art
Post-war museum design had a political impetus that was public-spirited in nature – even if that meant displaying sculptures on a bed of coal
Entente cordiale: the pally portraitists of 18th-century France
Portraits were used to further friendships – and as networking opportunities – in Enlightenment France
The notional gallery? How art museums turned into public palaces
Two new books offer complementary perspectives – the macro and the micro – on the modern museum
America the grave – ‘Grief and Grievance’ at the New Museum, reviewed
An exhibition examining Black experience in America is powerful if piecemeal – and is necessarily exhausting
Raiders of the lost art – the Gardner heist gets the Netflix treatment
The Gardner Museum heist hasn’t been solved in 30 years – and it’s perfect fodder for a true crime documentary
Hardy boy: the wild landscapes of James Morrison, from Angus to the Arctic
As a new documentary reveals, the Scottish painter braved wind, rain and Arctic ice in search of his ‘rough truth’
Fossil hunting and forbidden love – ‘Ammonite’ reviewed
Francis Lee’s film plays fast and loose with Mary Anning’s life – but at least it digs the great geologist out of historical obscurity
The stonecutter who gave life to letters
Ralph Beyer’s idiosyncratic letter-cutting isn’t to everyone’s taste but there’s no denying its power
The court painters who magnified the princely pleasures of a Rajput dynasty
Paintings from the north-west Indian city of Udaipur present life at court as a royal playground
Art is all about human touch – and right now that’s more disturbing than it sounds
With human contact all but banned, an exhibition about touch was always going to provoke mixed feelings
The Grande Odalisque – a graphic novel that flunks its art heists
A new graphic novel offers a fresh take on the museum heist genre – if you can bear its regressive sexual politics, that is
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Are the art market’s problems being blown out of proportion?