Reviews

A scholar’s 40-year quest to trace the origins of the world’s most famous length of linen makes for a gripping read

A biography of the artist known as the ‘painter of light’ explores his fascination with gloomy subjects

Matisse was already in his 60s when he began to design books – but this new direction would inspire some of his most engaging works

The quilts made in Gee’s Bend, Alabama are often compared with modern paintings, but should be seen as great works in their own right

All the world’s a set for the director’s films, according to an enjoyably idiosyncratic travel guide

This career-spanning survey presents an artist whose work consistently teeters between the absurd and the poetic

A new study examines the 18th-century artist’s pioneering use of pastel and her capacity for self-promotion

Two welcome volumes survey how the movement made its mark on religious buildings across the UK

Kettle’s Yard shows off its unrivalled collection of work by the mariner-turned-painter, for whom every boat had ‘a beautiful soul shaped like a fish’

The globe-trotting Dutch photographer was always on the lookout for a good picture – and took some 100,000 of them

A sound installation by the Istanbul-based artist Cevdet Erek draws on the complex history of the ancient monument

Diana Darke’s new book makes the case for the widespread influence of Islamic architecture on European buildings. But how convincing are her claims?

An expanded catalogue raisonné of the artist’s prints sheds new light on her pioneering approach to colour and composition

The duo’s wry installations uncover the realities architecture often hides – and examine how buildings can manipulate people

A film and a series of watercolour-on-silk paintings at Chisenhale Gallery reflect on the ‘beauty and suffering’ of the Mekong River

After a lifechanging encounter with Isamu Noguchi, J.B. Blunk dedicated himself to carving out his own path

A memoir as raw and unfiltered as the photographs that made Bailey’s name at Vogue, this curious book offers up some brilliant anecdotes but ultimately lacks focus

This much-anticipated exhibition does justice to the restless creativity of Artemisia Gentileschi in her many guises

Radical collectives in the 1970s were keen to make documentary photography more democratic

The photographer’s first UK retrospective explores his abiding interest in the experience of outsiders in society

The artist was a reluctant photographer – yet from the 1920s to ’40s, the Surrealist vision he brought to fashion photography helped elevate it to an art form in its own right