Reviews
Political Arts
‘I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few’. The William Morris Gallery hosts Jeremy Deller’s playful, provocative, politicised art
Capturing a Capital
James Robertson’s haunting 19th-century photographs are currently on display in Istanbul, the city that inspired them
Private Views
How do you open a private collection up to the public? A recent symposium at the Courtauld Institute looked at the topical issue
De Chirico Displaced
Exiled from their deserted piazzas, Giorgio de Chirico’s sculptural figures lack the uncanny appeal of his paintings
Found at the Fair
A round-up of the highlights from this year’s contemporary projects at the London Art Fair
Arcadia Outlined
‘A World of Private Mystery: John Craxton’ at the Fitzwilliam Museum celebrates the artist’s ‘unfashionably happy’ late paintings
Missing Genius
Castiglione’s works at the Queen’s Gallery skilfully emulate, but never quite live up to, those of his more famous contemporaries
Precious Tome
The authors of ‘Emerald’ present a sparkling visual and social history of the precious stone in this ambitious new publication
An Enlightening Show
‘Yoga: The Art of Transformation’ at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery takes an overdue look at the subject in art. Its powerful yogini statues steal the show
Trading Stories
The story of the interrelationship of textiles, taste and commerce, is told with magnificence and aplomb by the Metropolitan Museum of Art
‘Undiscribable’
What can one write about art that is impossible to define? Laure Prouvost’s ‘Monolog’ at the Contemporary Art Society relies on its mistranslation
Puppet Master
Dark but deeply compelling, Wael Shawky’s films at the Serpentine Gallery are a reminder of the power and unreliability of stories
Wire Man
Fausto Melotti, the quiet man of modern Italian sculpture, is given a first UK retrospective at the Waddington Custot Galleries
A Roman Renaissance
‘Antoniazzo Romano: Pictor Urbis’ at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome attempts to shed new light on this enigmatic artist’s career
Classical Romance
‘We can’t avoid the romance of that era’… Kevin Francis Gray discusses the influence of classical art on his own work at Pace Gallery
Reflections on Glass
‘White Light/White Heat’ at the Wallace Collection and London College of Fashion reflects on glass as a contemporary medium
Orient Expression
It’s an interesting premise, but ‘The Russian Avant-garde, Siberia and the East’ at Palazzo Strozzi is ultimately rather disorientating
Fragile Histories
Edmund de Waal creates an atmosphere of meditation at the Fitzwilliam Museum with the display ‘On White: Porcelain Stories’
Visual Feasts
Despite a few bland contemporary exhibits, ‘Art and Appetite’ at the Art Institute of Chicago is an excellent survey of a nation’s changing tastes
New Contenders
As the Turner Prize winner is announced in Derry, ‘Bloomberg New Contemporaries’ at London’s ICA seeks out tomorrow’s big names
All That Glitters
‘Artist of gems’ Joel A. Rosenthal measures the value of a stone not in carats but in colour. His designs sparkle at the Metropolitan Museum
Wit and Anger
The Fondation Cartier’s exhibition of Latin American photography features defiantly eloquent works that mix visual experiment and political fury
Super Cooper
Samuel Cooper famously painted Oliver Cromwell ‘warts and all’. It’s worth getting up close to his superb miniatures at Philip Mould’s gallery
White Walled Cage
The reification of ‘revolutionary’ work by John Cage and the Fluxus artists at MoMA is unsettlingly contradictory. The artist is dead. Long live the artist!