Reviews

Detail of a print depicting a raven by John James Audubon.

Lord of the wings – how Audubon’s career got off to a flying start

James John Audubon’s illustrations of birds endure to this day, even if many of the species he depicted didn’t make it

1 Apr 2022
Howard Carter photographed with the golden sarcophagus of Tutankhamun in 1922 by Harry Burton (colourised version).

Golden boy – the timeless appeal of Tutankhamun

A century after the discovery of his tomb, our interest in the teenage pharaoh says more about the present than the past

1 Apr 2022
Yves Saint Laurent’s Mondrian dress (Autumn-Winter 1965), displayed next to Piet Mondrian’s Composition en rouge, bleu et blanc (1937).

‘A six-gun salute to the bespectacled one’ – Yves Saint Laurent in Paris, reviewed

The designer’s infatuation with the fine arts ran deep, as a series of exhibitions throughout the city’s museums makes clear

24 Mar 2022
(1942), René Magritte.

Meet Magritte – the man behind the apple

Bowler hats off to a new biography of the painter that chips away at the Belgian’s bourgeois veneer

18 Mar 2022
Robert Dudley (detail; c. 1575), unknown Anglo-Netherlandish artist. Photo: © National Portrait Gallery, London

A full house of Tudors at the Holburne Museum

Seeing the National Portrait Gallery’s treasures in a new setting allows us to appreciate the larger-life-than personalities behind the paintings in new ways

17 Mar 2022
Saint Mary Magdalene (detail; c. 1491–94), Carlo Crivelli. Photo: © National Gallery, London

In Carlo Crivelli’s tricksy paintings, nothing is as it seems

The painter employed trompe l’oeil like no artist before or since – and his box of tricks makes for a real treat at Ikon in Birmingham

11 Mar 2022
Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.

How every age has invented a Stonehenge to suit itself

The prehistoric monument may seem timeless, but enthusiasts have constantly reimagined the site to suit their own preoccupations

4 Mar 2022
Benton End, Suffolk, home of the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing from 1939–78.

School for sandals – educating artists at Benton End

Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines’s art school in Suffolk was an unusual meeting of rural idyll and bohemian vice

3 Mar 2022
A Member of the Wedigh Family (detail; c. 1533), Hans Holbein the Younger. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Holbein’s signs and seals really deliver at the Morgan Library

By homing in on Holbein’s miniatures, this survey of the Renaissance master gives us a broad picture of the world he lived in

28 Feb 2022
(detail; 1933), Koga Harue.

Did Surrealism really travel all that well?

The movement begun by André Breton in Paris found followers all over the world, but displaying their efforts all together makes for a muddled show

22 Feb 2022
Self absorbed, much? Julia Garner as Anna Sorokin in Inventing Anna.

Only the art world could have been fooled by Anna Sorokin for so long

The story of the scammer who passed herself off as an heiress should make for must-see television, but reality far outstrips Shonda Rhimes’s overly safe retelling

18 Feb 2022
Lintel 1 from Laxtunich (773), Guatemala. Current location unknown.

The mystery of the lost Maya sculpture

Andew James Hamilton follows the efforts to find a Maya carving that was first uncovered in 1950, but has since seemingly disappeared from view

18 Feb 2022
Apparition of the Crucifixes of Mount Ararat in the Church of Sant’Antonio di Castello,

In Renaissance Italy, the making of altarpieces was an amazingly exacting affair

In this hugely ambitious survey, David Ekserdjian encourages us to see some of the most remarkable artworks of their time with fresh eyes

18 Feb 2022
Digitising your VHS tapes can be a nightmare.

In ‘Archive 81’, restoring VHS tapes turns out to be a complete nightmare

In this Netflix series a film conservator is tasked with rescuing a set of videotapes from the 1990s. What could possibly go wrong?

11 Feb 2022

Travel agency – ‘Dürer’s Journeys’ at the National Gallery, reviewed

To trail the artist through Europe, as this lively exhibition does, is to realise that his art relied on movement

11 Feb 2022
Helen Mirren, Jim Broadbent and Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington star in ‘The Duke’, directed by Roger Michell.

The man who made off with a Goya – ‘The Duke’, reviewed

Roger Michell’s last film tells the unlikely story of how the Duke of Wellington’s portrait was stolen from the National Gallery – and found in a train station four years later

11 Feb 2022
Saint Michael Smiting the Devi(1692), Luisa Roldán. Monastery of El Escorial, Madrid.l

Courting success – the colourful career of Luisa Roldán

The artist’s independence of mind and spectacular skill led to her becoming the first female sculptor to the Spanish king

28 Jan 2022
From ‘Taming the Garden’ (dir. Salomé Jashi).

The Georgian billionaire who is digging up the nation’s most majestic trees

Salomé Jashi’s film ‘Taming the Garden’ documents how a tree-hogging former prime minister is pillaging the landscape to create a private paradise

26 Jan 2022
Isamu Noguchi with study for Luminous Plastic Sculpture, 1943

Light years ahead – ‘Isamu Noguchi’ at the Barbican, reviewed

The familiarity of the designer’s most famous products has long obscured his more utopian side

21 Jan 2022
Due Dormienti (1966), Domenico Gnoli. Private collection.

The peculiar perfectionism of Domenico Gnoli

In the six years before his tragically early death, the Italian artist zoomed in on the details of the everyday – to supremely unsettling effect

14 Jan 2022
Pyxis (c. 950–975), Córdoba. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

When it came to art, the religions of medieval Spain had a lot in common

Christianity, Judaism and Islam shared a visual language on the Iberian peninsula – but it was a fragile balance at the best of times

22 Dec 2021
Apsley Street, Stockport (1964), Alan Lowndes

It’s time for Alan Lowndes to emerge from L.S. Lowry’s shadow

When it came to painting the industrial north-west, Stockport-born Alan Lowndes could hold his own

16 Dec 2021
Linda Evangelista wearing a ‘Watteau’ evening gown in Vivienne Westwood’s 1996 Spring/Summer ready-to-wear collection, shown in Paris, October 1995.

Vivienne Westwood’s rococo approach to fashion

The designer’s favourite museum is the Wallace Collection, so it’s no wonder her clothes are full of flourishes from Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard

14 Dec 2021
(1920), Nicolai Aluf. Stiftung Arp e.V., Berlin

True to form – Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s touching faith in geometry

In the course of her adventures in abstraction, the artist seemed determined to test herself in every available medium

14 Dec 2021