Reviews

Jamie Fitzpatrick, Catlin Art Prize

Art history creeps into the XL Catlin Art Prize

Figurative art is making a comeback, if this year’s shortlist of promising early-career artists is anything to go by

16 May 2016
Pavel Tretyakov (1901), Ilia Repin. State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

The Russian portraits at the NPG are a revelation

Russia’s 19th-century portraitists were more than a match for the exceptional writers and composers they painted. So why is their work so neglected?

13 May 2016
Flowers in a Glass Vase (1614), Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder.

Say it with flowers – and butterflies, ladybirds, cockroaches…

Two exhibitions in London celebrate the beautiful, subtle botanical paintings of 17th-century Holland

11 May 2016
Marker Cones

Selfies, sexuality and self-parody: when artists perform for the camera

Artists recognised the power of the staged image long before Instagram came along

11 May 2016
Love Song (2015), Howard Hodgkin.

Howard Hodgkin’s paintings get better and better

How strange that this great British painter claims to ‘hate painting’ when he is so good at it

9 May 2016

Women printmakers make a good impression in New York

Was there a distinctly ‘female’ printmaking in this period? Not really – but that’s what’s so interesting

7 May 2016

‘It is what it is.’ Dan Flavin’s iconic light fittings in the Ikon Gallery

Flavin’s fluorescent light pieces continue to transform the spaces in which they are installed. But time is changing how we see the pieces, too

6 May 2016

Manuele Cerutti and the fine art of balancing

The everyday objects in Cerutti’s Turin studio are transformed in his paintings: poised, precarious, and forever in suspense

5 May 2016
Perspective of the Palace Complex in its Landscape Setting, Viewed from Inland

Visionary palaces in a gallery’s empty basement

Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s palace designs came to ‘nothing more than a beautiful dream’ – and, thankfully, a fascinating set of prints

2 May 2016

Berlin’s wartime bunkers are becoming unlikely havens for art

Désiré Feuerle is the latest person to move his art collection underground

28 Apr 2016
Untitled (2002), Page from Art & Beauty Magazine, #2 (2003), R. Crumb.

Crumbs! Here’s a gallery full of somebody else’s seedy secrets

‘I began wasting my god-given talent drawing pictures of sexy women the way I liked ‘em’. An exhibition of R. Crumb’s work invites us all to become voyeurs

19 Apr 2016
Robert Ryman, installation view, 545 West 22nd Street, New York City

Robert Ryman and the many shades of white

An exhibition of Ryman’s eerie paintings in New York rewards repeated viewings

16 Apr 2016
Four Marilyns (Reversal Series)

Andy Warhol, Richard Avedon and five Marilyn Monroes

For a handy reminder of why Warhol was so radical, head to Gagosian Gallery’s ‘Avedon Warhol’ exhibition in London

15 Apr 2016
The Two Eyes Are Not Brothers by Ben Rivers, installed at the Whitworth, 2016.

A strange tale of cruelty and creativity in the Moroccan desert

Ben Rivers’ attempt to reveal the artifice of filmmaking is somehow dull and disconcerting at the same time

12 Apr 2016
East pediment of the Parthenon frieze at the British Museum.

Should museums be ideology-free?

A new book which argues that museums should be above politics is hardly above politics itself

11 Apr 2016
Allegory of the Immaculate Conception (detail; 1566), Carlo Portelli.

Never mind the buttocks

An exhibition in Florence finally gives Carlo Portelli the attention he deserves

7 Apr 2016

Surveillance and secrecy in Gateshead and London

Hajra Waheed’s exhibitions at BALTIC and the Mosaic Rooms are full of strange, evocative details

6 Apr 2016

Dorset, in a Mediterranean light

John Craxton is known today for his sparkling paintings of Greece. But he first found inspiration in the colder, darker landscapes of rural England

5 Apr 2016

British artists at the seaside

Dorset had a profound impact on a group of Slade painters, as an exhibition at Bristol’s Royal West of England Academy makes very clear

2 Apr 2016
A RESTORATION (2016), Elizabeth Price, two-screen video still.

This is reckless restoration of the very best kind

Elizabeth Price’s new video is an audacious act of extrapolation, that asks deep questions about our impulse to preserve, restore, and destroy

1 Apr 2016

G.F. Watts used to be ridiculed – how did he make a comeback?

With the reopening of the Watts Studios, an amazing revival of the painter’s reputation, and of his wife Mary’s, is almost complete

26 Mar 2016

An artistic pilgrimage that will make you see London in a spiritual light

You don’t have to be Christian to appreciate the ‘Stations of the Cross’ trail this Easter weekend

22 Mar 2016

Ed Ruscha mixes it up in Turin

The artist turned collector – and a display that reveals his very diverse interests

22 Mar 2016

The Met Breuer’s biggest strength is its ability to make you think

Two fresh and distinct inaugural exhibitions could set a new blueprint for the museum

17 Mar 2016