Reviews
Edward Barber’s preventative photography
Edward Barber’s photographic record of 1980s anti-nuclear demonstrators goes on display at the Imperial War Museum
Cavorting amid the ruins with Hubert Robert
The French artist’s obsessive portrayal of antiquity reveals his endless variety
Van Dyck would have relished seeing his work on show at the Frick
The ambitious portraitist was the subject of a major retrospective at the Frick Collection earlier this year
The musical forms of Fausto Melotti
Fausto Melotti’s sculptures ingeniously blur the line between figurative and abstract forms and his work deserves to be better known
Why the history of photography starts north of the border
Photography flourished in Scotland during its early development in the mid 19th century
Fitting the entire universe into an art gallery
Katie Paterson once beamed Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata to the moon and back. At the Lowry, she continues to explore the vastness of space
George Shaw finds the otherworldly in trees, porn magazines and plastic sheets
As associate artist at the National Gallery, Shaw focuses on the nondescript woodland where many of art history’s most sordid stories play out
Don Quixote of the drawing board: the visionary schemes of the Earl of Mar
The Earl of Mar has long been seen as a failed rebel and harmless utopian architect, but it’s time to take him seriously as an Enlightenment thinker
Going it alone in the modern city
Olivia Laing’s book on the art of loneliness has some excellent insights, but who is it meant for?
Porn and paranoia on Tyneside
Omer Fast puts contemporary fears and fictions on display at the BALTIC Centre
Irrelevant, boring, expensive… The book that lists everything wrong with house museums
Time for a bit of anarchy
Giacometti’s art channels the nervousness of an entire era
The Sainsbury Centre’s exhibition reveals an artist grappling with a sense of human frailty
From Turkey to China, the legacy of the Seljuq empire should be better known
There are many treasures in the Met’s new exhibition, but the most poignant are the metalwork pieces from Mosul, given the turmoil in the region today
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
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?
Say it with flowers – and butterflies, ladybirds, cockroaches…
Two exhibitions in London celebrate the beautiful, subtle botanical paintings of 17th-century Holland
Selfies, sexuality and self-parody: when artists perform for the camera
Artists recognised the power of the staged image long before Instagram came along
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
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
‘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
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
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
Berlin’s wartime bunkers are becoming unlikely havens for art
Désiré Feuerle is the latest person to move his art collection underground
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
What happens when an artist wants to be anonymous?