Robert O’Byrne reads between the lines of the itemised contents of great Irish houses
David Young Kim’s ingenious study of grounds and figures takes the reader on an unfamiliar journey through familiar territory
Eero Saarinen’s marriage to the publicist Aline Louchheim tells us a lot about how the architect made his name
The painter who defined the experience of modern New York never felt quite at home in the high-rise city
An exhibition at the Städel Museum shows that the baroque painter’s idealised figures are certainly an acquired taste
Hyperrealist sculptors today, and still-life painters of the past, have all tried to trick their viewers into accepting fiction as truth
The imposing architecture of the Palazzo del Banco di Napoli makes a fitting stage for the artist’s gruesome scenes of greed and retribution
Laura Poitras’s documentary about the photographer is an inspiring account of her blurring of the lines between life, art and activism
In her score-settling memoir, Roselyn Bachelot calls out ungrateful artists and time-serving bureaucrats
The artist’s mastery of unusual materials gave her a real edge over her peers
Robert Bevan’s call to require a lot less from our public monuments has much to recommend it
Giorgio Vasari’s famous collection of Renaissance drawings was dispersed after his death, and scholars have been trying track down its contents for centuries
The artist’s excoriating images have long set the standard for political satire
No one could accuse the painter of flattering his subjects, but he was certainly painstaking about capturing them on canvas
The artist rifles through archives and our collective imaginations to reshape what we think we know about the past
The Slovakian sculptor poured and moulded plaster into creations that evoke the body and the natural world in equal measure
A disappointingly static display at the V&A will make you long for the stage
It was Sebastiano del Piombo who rediscovered the ancient art of painting on stone and inspired others to make the most of their material
Contemporary artists explore the fearful side of modernist architecture at Ikon, but a real sense of menace may be missing
The eye may be our most perceptive organ, but it can sometimes make us blind to the other senses
Thanks to mass production (and reproduction), in the 19th-century some middle-class homes began to resemble miniature picture galleries
For seven decades, Milton Gendel recorded his charmed existence in delightfully candid photos and diaries
Other European dynasties of the period had equally thriving court cultures, but none has had such a hold on the popular imagination
Tanya Harrod’s biography of the unfairly neglected painter champions his scenes of London working-class life
