Reviews

The feuding artists who shaped art after the Russian Revolution

The story of Kazimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin’s competing artistic outlooks is told with verve in Sjeng Scheijen’s new book

21 Jul 2024

How Marguerite Duras reinvented cinema

Though she remains best known as a writer, the French avant-gardist was a formidable force behind the camera, as a season at the ICA in London demonstrates

19 Jul 2024

The light relief of Anthony McCall

When viewed in the right environment, the artist’s sculptures in light and experimental films illuminate new ways to think about objects in space

18 Jul 2024

How to paint a revolution in miniature

The British-Iranian artist Laila Tara H’s refined images are thoughtfully framed to express her frustration with a patriarchal society – but never at the expense of playfulness

18 Jul 2024

Olivia Laing’s guide to radical growth

Gardens aren’t just lovesome things. In the writer’s gently rambling book on the subject, they are seedbeds of rebellion too

12 Jul 2024

How Bomberg and Auerbach reached dizzying heights

Before and after the Second World War, David Bomberg explored a vertiginous new style of landscape painting – and his student Frank Auerbach was clearly taking notes

10 Jul 2024

From Bruges to the beach, it’s a big summer for sculpture in Belgium

Between the Bruges and Beaufort Triennials, contemporary art enthusiasts are spoiled for choice – and may see some unexpected sights

9 Jul 2024

The art dealer who scammed his way to the top

A memoir by the friend and business partner of convicted fraudster Inigo Philbrick raises disturbing questions about the art world

9 Jul 2024

Contemporary art casts a spell in a London chapel

The Fitzrovia Chapel is an atmospheric choice of venue for an exhibition with an occult edge

The last bohemians living in New York

The ‘Loft Law’ of 1982 protected artists living in industrial zones from rising rents and eviction. Joshua Charow’s photographs record the members of an endangered tribe

4 Jul 2024

Getting down and dirty with Albert Serra

At the Eye Filmmuseum, the latest provocation by the Catalan artist and director features French libertines and turns us all into Peeping Toms

4 Jul 2024

The puckish figures of Franciszka Themerson

The Polish-born artist’s paintings and drawings may have an air of the doodle, but her politically radical work is thrillingly inventive

2 Jul 2024

Royals with really grand designs

From Louis XIV to Catherine the Great, monarchs didn’t just commission ambitious projects, but also played a serious part in the design process

The afterlives of the wives of Henry VIII

Being married to the monarch was a hazardous business, but all six queens have lived on in popular memory and the artistic imagination

28 Jun 2024

The British artists who took a restless approach to still life

Still-life painting in Britain really took off in the 20th century when artists adopted a more experimental approach

28 Jun 2024

The weird reflections of Jean Cocteau

An exhibition in Venice underscores the artist’s restless imagination and shapeshifting tendencies

26 Jun 2024

Michelangelo’s careful image management

An exhibition at the British Museum shows that the artist deliberately shaped his legacy by the drawings he chose to leave behind

20 Jun 2024

For Carole Gibbons, there’s no place like home

Now 88, the Glaswegian artist is finally being fêted for her unpredictable visions of domesticity

20 Jun 2024

The dazzling paintings of Matthew Wong

The self-taught artist died tragically young at the age of 35, but there’s no denying the talent he demonstrated in his all-too-brief career

14 Jun 2024

Who should we believe about the British Empire?

Drawings and watercolours of India belonging to a Scottish railway engineer take on new meaning if we look for what they don’t show

12 Jun 2024

The optical allusions of Constantin Brancusi

Identifying the inspirations for the Romanian sculptor’s enigmatic works remains quite the puzzle

12 Jun 2024

The British colourist who passed down the lessons of Matisse

Matthew Smith’s striking use of colour, learnt from the Post-Impressionists, left a mark on the British artists who succeeded him

6 Jun 2024

The burning ambitions of Roger Ackling

Using nothing but a magnifying glass and the sun’s rays, the artist created sculptures that defy easy categorisation

The Renaissance patrons who were no saints in religious paintings

Christopher Wood’s account of a turning point in early Renaissance art is typically demanding and always stimulating

3 Jun 2024