Reviews

Maeve Brennan’s quiet filmmaking speaks volumes about conflict and culture

The artist’s meditative new film reveals how, in the midst of cyclical violence, objects and humans continue to drift

18 Apr 2017
The Critics (1927), Henry Scott Tuke. Warwick District Council (Leamington Spa, UK)

The Tate was right to look again at queer British art

Context is as crucial to this exhibition as the art itself. Tate strikes a tricky balance between the two

14 Apr 2017
Wedding Dance in the Open Air (1607–14), Pieter Brueghel the Younger. Holburne Museum, Bath. Photo: Dominic Brown

A Bruegel family reunion in Bath

The Holburne Museum reminds us that this entire family is worth celebrating – not just Pieter Bruegel the Elder

13 Apr 2017
Installation view of The 4th (2012–17) and THE TIMES THAY AINT A CHANGING, FAST ENOUGH! (2017), by Henry Taylor, at the Whitney Biennial 2017. Collection of the artist; courtesy Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo | Collection of the artist; courtesy Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, and Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York

The Whitney Biennial in counterpoint

Dana Schutz’s controversial painting of Emmett Till has dominated the headlines, at the expense of other interesting contributions

12 Apr 2017
Studland Beach (c. 1912), Vanessa Bell. Tate, London. Photo: © Tate, London 2016; © The Estate of Vanessa Bell. courtesy of Henrietta Garnett

It’s about time Vanessa Bell was judged on her own merits

It’s hard to separate Vanessa Bell from Bloomsbury, but this exhibition of her art is long overdue

11 Apr 2017

Shadows beneath the surface of the sea

On the southern coast of France, a new exhibition is exploring our troubled relationship with the world’s oceans

6 Apr 2017
Cotton Pickers (1945), Thomas Hart Benton. © Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/VAGA, NY/DACS, London

The paintings that captured a desperate decade

How the American artists of the 1930s depicted a country that was on its knees

6 Apr 2017
Messum's Wiltshire has opened a new exhibition dedicated to contemporary British ceramics. © Sylvain Deleu

Contemporary British ceramics in a country barn

This is no country jumble of brown pots. The latest show at Messum’s Wiltshire is a reminder of a great, evolving national tradition

A march of 2,000 anti-conscription protesters in London,1939. © IWM

A show of pacifism at the Imperial War Museum

‘People Power: Fighting for Peace’ at the IWM London is a bold exhibition that uses individual stories to humanise major global issues

4 Apr 2017
Moses Brought Before Pharoah's Daughter, , (1746), William Hogarth, The Foundling Museum

Hogarth’s paintings fail to go the whole hog

William Hogarth’s paintings are nowhere near as ‘Hogarthian’ as his scathing, scurrilous prints

1 Apr 2017
Landscape with a waterfall, second version, British Museum, London, courtesy the Trustees of the British Museum, London

The peculiar prints of a singular Dutch artist

Hercules Segers combined printmaking and painting to create works that are in a category of their own

30 Mar 2017
Paula Rego in the studio with the Flying Mermaids. © Nick Willing

Paula Rego shares her secrets with her son

The artist discusses love, depression, abortion and infidelity in a new documentary directed by her son

28 Mar 2017

A history of dodgy dealing

An entertaining book reveals the sometimes duplicitous history of art dealing

23 Mar 2017
Untitled, n.d., Marisa Merz, mixed media, variable dimensions. Fondazione Merz, Turin; photo: Renata Ghiazza; courtesy Archivio Merz, © the artist and Fondazione Merz, Turin

The menacing charm of Marisa Merz

The playful sculptures and paintings of the only woman in the Arte Povera movement have a distinctly steely edge

22 Mar 2017
Flags I (1973), Jasper Johns. © Jasper Johns/VAGA, New York/DACS, London 2016. © Tom Powel Imaging.

Turns out the American Dream is more of a nightmare

The development of American printmaking since the 1960s is seen in the context of today’s fragile political climate

20 Mar 2017
The Old Bowling Green, Halsway Court, Somerset (1865), John William North. © The Trustees of the British Museum

The quiet revolution of British watercolours

The British watercolour tradition did not end with the death of Turner

17 Mar 2017
Elliptical Column (2016), Tony Cragg. Photo: Ned Carter Miles

Tony Cragg’s constantly evolving challenge to mass design

The artist’s exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park is a reminder of just how attuned he is to the different, varied potential of his chosen materials

14 Mar 2017
Hypothesis of a Tree (2016), Mariana Castillo Deball, at the Sharjah Biennial 2017.

Sharjah Biennial 13 has its ups and downs

This year’s programme is ambitious and wide-ranging, extending far beyond Sharjah itself, but the best of the art focuses on issues close to home

14 Mar 2017
Street Scene, (1958), Mimi Gross. Photo: Jeffrey Sturges; courtesy the artist

When New York’s art scene was run by artists

It’s about time the city’s early artist-led spaces were re-evaluated

13 Mar 2017
Mexico City suicide attempt (25 May, 1971), Enrique Metinides. Michael Hoppen Gallery, London

Enrique Metinides made an art out of looking at people looking at death

The photographer’s images of disaster combine grisly detail with gifted composition, and implicate the viewer as much as the gathering crowds at the scene

9 Mar 2017
Taureau (2003), Alfred Basbous. Courtesy the artist and Sophia Contemporary Gallery

Celebrating Alfred Basbous, the artist who breathed life into Lebanese sculpture

Alfred Basbous was inspired by European modernists, but also tapped into an ancient and timeless sculptural tradition

7 Mar 2017
Soldier from the Royal Engineers with two messenger dogs and a roadside shrine (December 1917), Ernest Brooks. Courtesy: Imperial War Museum

British wartime experience in Italy has been brought to life in London

A nuanced and often surprising exhibition at the Estorick Collection explores British depictions of the Italian frontline towards the end of the First World War

7 Mar 2017
Haskell’s House (1924), Edward Hopper. National Gallery of Art, Gift of Herbert A. Goldstone, 1996.

How American artists made watercolour great again

A new exhibition charts the transformation of watercolour painting in the USA, from an overlooked sideshow to a major cultural movement

2 Mar 2017
Capgirat, (detail) 2005, Antoni Tàpies, © Comissió Tàpies/VEGAP Courtesy Timothy Taylor

The tender brutishness of Antoni Tàpies

The Catalan artist’s large, earthy paintings at Timothy Taylor have unexpectedly intimate and spiritual concerns

2 Mar 2017