Reviews
The most beautiful calligraphy in the world
Everyone should make a point of seeing these 61 Qur’ans, in a show that sets many common misunderstandings straight.
How classicism took hold of the modern age
An exhibition at Pallant House shows how classicism was a way of reinvigorating modernist experimentation
Charting the life and times of Kenneth Clark
This major, vivid biography of the art historian is meticulously researched – and long overdue
Akomfrah and Turner make for a potent mix in Margate
Turner Contemporary reveals how both artists explore man’s struggle in the face of much bigger forces
More to Mucha than meets the eye – or is there?
An exhibition at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Museum aims to rethink the familiar work of Czech artist Alphonse Mucha – but could it have gone further?
The global ambitions of Artes Mundi
Six shortlisted artists battle it out for this year’s prize – one of the nominees, Bedwyr Williams, tells Apollo about his futuristic project
It’s the loneliness of Diane Arbus’s images that make them so discomforting today
An exhibition of Diane Arbus’s early work presents curiosities without cabinets
Della Robbia’s glazed terracotta changed Tuscan art
This superb exhibition makes us look at terra invetriata – a prodigious combination of earth, glass, and fire – through the eyes of 15th-century Tuscans
Keith Cunningham: the artist who walked away from fame
He was ranked alongside Auerbach and Kossoff: so why did Cunningham stop painting just as his career was taking off?
The illuminated manuscripts that are lighting up the Fens
The Fitzwilliam Museum’s ‘Colour’ exhibition is a triumphant introduction to medieval manuscript painting
Kai Althoff reveals the pain and the privilege of being an artist
‘I cannot defend or think of it as something people need to see or bother with’
Neo Rauch and the carnival of European art
The German artist’s work, finally on show in London, is an uprooted reunion of everything strange in the supposedly familiar tale of western art history
Why are Louise Bourgeois’s webs and spiders so captivating?
The etchings and sculptures on show at Hauser & Wirth Somerset are at their most powerful when we stop trying to understand them
Has Jeff Koons earned his place in art history?
With his Gazing Balls, Koons has created a body of work that appeals to the brain as well as the eyes
Painting through the night with Tom Hammick
‘Towards Night’ at the Towner brings together over 60 artists, but the story it tells is Hammick’s alone
How Georgia O’Keeffe transformed the American landscape
Georgia O’Keeffe’s commitment to what she called ‘the Great American Thing’ inspired her engagement with place
Seeing the sea through the eyes of British artists
‘Spreading Canvas: Eighteenth-Century British Marine Painting’ at the Yale Center for British Art is a voyage of discovery
Orlando Furioso’s imaginative universe 500 years later
An exhibition celebrating the 500th anniversary of Ariosto’s epic Italian poem is as rich as the book itself
London’s new landmark is a triumph of engineering
Conrad Shawcross’s ‘Optic Cloak’ in Greenwich is sympathetic to both its natural and social context. Can the wider redevelopment of the area follow suit?
Virginia Dwan emerges as the star of the NGA’s new galleries
The National Gallery has opened its revamped East Building with a celebration of the woman who put some of the USA’s most influential contemporary artists on the map
Why collections must stay at the heart of the 21st-century museum
A deeply felt study of the importance of museums stresses how central objects are to their function and future
Sound and vision as the Hayward Gallery goes off-site
Despite the difficulties of exhibiting sound and film, the audio-visual works on display here command our full attention
Crossing space and time with the Victorians
‘The breadth of the Atlantic, with all its waves, is as nothing’
What happens when an artist wants to be anonymous?