Features

Cameo of Shapur and Valerian (detail; after 260), Iran. Photo: © Bibliothèque nationale de France

Knight riders – displays of chivalry at the Louvre Abu Dhabi

The museum makes the most of its French connections in this survey of conduct across medieval Europe and the Middle East

24 Apr 2020
Detail of photograph of (left to right) Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Sonia Delaunay, and Jean (Hans) Arp in Grasse in 1942.

The modern artists who made the most of isolation

Sequestered in a French chateau in the 1940s, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Jean Arp, Sonia Delaunay and Alberto Magnelli joined forces to create the ‘Album Grasse’

21 Apr 2020
Octagonal Drawing (1976), Ann Churchill.

When the medium is the messenger – the art of communicating with spirits

From Victorian spiritualists to contemporary practitioners, there is a long history of art – and drawing in particular – taking an interest in the unseen

20 Apr 2020
Shropshire Regiment ‘Whitewash Brigade’ emptying items from Chinese homes in Taipingshan, Hong Kong, and burning them on the street as an epidemic control measure during the 1894 plague outbreak.

How photography has shaped our experience of pandemics

From lockdowns to mass burials, the ways we visualise Covid-19 were established by photographers in the late 19th century

16 Apr 2020

Artists on the books keeping them company in isolation

From Nikolai Gogol to Susan Sontag, Joan Didion to Olga Tokarczuk: the authors inspiring artists during a time of lockdown

15 Apr 2020
Wrap-around dust jacket designed by John Minton for Elizabeth David’s A Book of Mediterranean Food (1950)

Lads and lobsters – John Minton’s food illustrations

The artist’s designs for Elizabeth David’s cookery books evoke a happy world of fine living and dining

13 Apr 2020
Pilgrimage to the Island of Cythera (1717), Antoine Watteau. Musée du Louvre, Paris, Photo: © Musée du Louvre, dist. RMN-Grand Palais

Fashion forward – the dashing designs of Antoine Watteau

The artist’s fashion etchings hint at the delight in transient pleasures that is so evident in his paintings

11 Apr 2020
Courtesy the British Museum

Behind the screens – how museums and galleries are going virtual

What exactly does it take to create an online exhibition? And will such platforms still be of use after lockdown?

9 Apr 2020
Chicken, Game Birds, and Hares (c. 1882), Gustave Caillebotte.

Acquisitions of the Month: March 2020

A transformative gift for Cleveland Museum of Art and some metal detectorists’ finds are among this month’s highlights

7 Apr 2020
William Wordsworth (detail; 1842), Benjamin Robert Haydon. National Portrait Gallery, London

The inward eye – painting, poetry and the world of William Wordsworth

The 250th anniversary of the poet’s birth prompts a reflection on his complicated relationship with the visual arts

7 Apr 2020
‘Ways of Seeing’ app in use before Jacopo del Sellaio’s painting in the Octagon Gallery at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Schoolchildren, science and smartphones shine new light on a Florentine masterpiece

An interdisciplinary project at the Fitzwilliam Museum has revealed tantalising possibilities about Jacopo del Sellaio’s Cupid and Psyche

Barbara Palmer (née Villiers), Duchess of Cleveland with her son, probably Charles Fitzroy, as the Virgin and Child (c. 1664), Peter Lely. National Portrait Gallery, London

Mischief-making mistresses at the court of Charles II

How the women at the heart of the Restoration court ‘weaponised’ portraits that flaunted their influence over the king

4 Apr 2020
Susanna and the Elders (1652), Artemisia Gentileschi.

Keeping up with Artemisia

The National Gallery’s Artemisia exhibition may be postponed, writes its curator, but there are plenty of ways to explore her work in the meantime

3 Apr 2020
Wallpaper design, ‘Trellis’ (detail; designed 1862, first produced 1864), William Morris. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Priming up the walls – on colour and confinement

Some choose their wallpaper, some have paint schemes thrust upon them… a decorative dérive through the history of colour and interiors

1 Apr 2020
Untitled (Village Street Scene)(1948), Beauford Delaney. Terra Foundation for American Art. © Estate of Beauford Delaney, by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire, Court Appointed Administrator

‘Here is a man who could do whatever interested him in paint’ – on the paintings of Beauford Delaney

After a period of critical neglect the artist is at last in the ascendant, as his great friend James Baldwin always thought he would be

30 Mar 2020
Neon sign made in the 1950s for Raymond Revuebar in Soho, London, photographed in 2015 after restoration and reinstallation.

Light fantastic – a short history of neon

From Raymond Chandler to Tracey Emin, writers and artists alike have long been seduced by the melancholy brilliance of neon

25 Mar 2020
Paul Klee in his atelier at the Bauhaus Weimar, 1923 (photo by Felix Klee). Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern; © Klee-Nachlassverwaltung, Hinterkappelen

Feat of Klee – how the Swiss-born artist saw comic potential in dark times

The final years of Paul Klee’s life coincided with the rise of Nazism – but the painter deployed his taste for humour and satire to the last

23 Mar 2020
The Towpath (1912), C.R.W. Nevinson

Grand union – how canals have captivated British artists for centuries

Painters from Constable to the present day have been inspired by urban waterways as a place for both lovers and labourers

21 Mar 2020
View of the port of Algiers from the Casbah, January 2020. Photo: Layli Faroudi

The Algerians battling to save the Casbah from crumbling

It may be on Unesco’s list of World Heritage sites, but the houses of the famous district have suffered years of neglect

19 Mar 2020
Albertina Modern

The Albertina Modern’s opening has been delayed – so what are we missing out on?

The contemporary art satellite of the Albertina was set to open last week. Visitors will find solace there, says its director, when the lockdown is over

16 Mar 2020
The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838 (1839), J.M.W. Turner.

Rigged results – the artistic licence of Turner’s Fighting Temeraire

In depicting the final journey of a fêted battleship, Turner tweaked the facts to inflate the pathos of the scene

12 Mar 2020
Alpine Mastiffs Reanimating a Distressed Traveler (detail; 1820), Edwin Landseer.

Acquisitions of the Month: February 2020

One of Landseer’s earliest masterpieces and a 16th-century drug jar are among this month’s highlights

10 Mar 2020
Kasper, photographed in his apartment in New York in March 2017.

Kasper (1926–2020)

The fashion designer, who has died at the age of 93, filled his Upper East Side apartment with art – from Old Master drawings to Anselm Kiefer. In this republished interview from 2017, he discussed the evolution of his collection

9 Mar 2020
(Left) Anti-slavery medalliion (c. 1787), modelled by William Hackford and manufactured by Josiah Wedgwood. Metropolitan Museum of Art; (right) Sugar box (1744/45), Paul de Lamerie. Metropolitan Museum of Art

British aisles – the Met’s new galleries don’t shy away from addressing a complicated past

The collection is now displayed with a greater sense of social history – without sacrificing aesthetic delight

6 Mar 2020