Reviews

How Rainham Hall, a house with a history but no original contents, has come to life

At Rainham Hall, the National Trust has risen to the challenge of animating and interpreting an 18th-century sea captain’s house

23 Jun 2016
MINT (2016), Debora Delmar Corp.

This year’s Berlin Biennale should get rid of the art

The curators’ vision of an iDystopian world can only work if it’s all-encompassing. The more obvious artworks just dilute the effect

22 Jun 2016
A female nude (1930), Frank Dobson

Don’t miss Dobson’s drawings at Daniel Katz gallery

The rough-and-tumble humanity of the modern British sculptor’s sketches is refreshing to see

22 Jun 2016
Paradox of Praxis 5: Sometimes we dream as we live & sometimes we live as we dream; Ciudad Juárez, México (2013), Francis Alÿs in collaboration with Julien Devaux, Rafael Ortega, Alejandro Morales, and Félix Blume

Poetry and violence in the work of Francis Alÿs

The Belgian artist brings the subject of drug wars in Mexico to the heart of Mayfair: but he insists that art comes before politics

19 Jun 2016
Abashed at her delight; of her deep joy afraid. Folio from a Gita Govinda series. Pahari, by a member of the fist generation after Nainsukh; (c. 1775–80)

‘Taste the essence’ of Indian painting

A new book promises to open up the world of Indian art to a wide new audience

15 Jun 2016

This Cindy Sherman exhibition is good – but have we seen it all before?

Sherman’s groundbreaking work paved the way for so many of today’s artists – but her own creations are starting to seem too familiar

14 Jun 2016
Portrait of Dora Wheeler (1882–83), William Merritt Chase.

What William Merritt Chase learned from Europe

The 19th-century artist who brought modern spirit to American painting

14 Jun 2016
Self-portrait (1773–74), Pompeo Batoni.

Pompeo Batoni didn’t just paint aristocrats abroad

The most prestigious portrait painter in 18th-century Rome also had a flair for religious and mythological subjects

9 Jun 2016

The timeless modernity of a forgotten Danish painter

C.W. Eckersberg’s 19th-century paintings are barely known outside Denmark and Germany, but they should be…

8 Jun 2016

Peggy Guggenheim steals the show in Florence

A show about the Guggenheim’s art collections is really about the battle between Peggy and Solomon

8 Jun 2016

The work of Mona Hatoum bristles with a bodily charge

This large exhibition provides an opportunity to engage with the physical effects of Hatoum’s work

7 Jun 2016
'Embrace the Base’: 30,000 women link hands, completely surrounding the nine mile perimeter fence at RAF/USAF Greenham Common, Berkshire (1982), Edward Barber.

Edward Barber’s preventative photography

Edward Barber’s photographic record of 1980s anti-nuclear demonstrators goes on display at the Imperial War Museum

3 Jun 2016

Cavorting amid the ruins with Hubert Robert

The French artist’s obsessive portrayal of antiquity reveals his endless variety

2 Jun 2016
Portrait of a Woman (c. 1640), Anthony van Dyck.

Van Dyck would have relished seeing his work on show at the Frick

The ambitious portraitist was the subject of a major retrospective at the Frick Collection earlier this year

1 Jun 2016

The musical forms of Fausto Melotti

Fausto Melotti’s sculptures ingeniously blur the line between figurative and abstract forms and his work deserves to be better known

28 May 2016
Stereocard depicting Balmoral Castle from the north-west (1863), George Washington Wilson (1823–90) & Co., Aberdeen. © National Museums Scotland

Why the history of photography starts north of the border

Photography flourished in Scotland during its early development in the mid 19th century

26 May 2016
Totality, 2016, Katie Paterson

Fitting the entire universe into an art gallery

Katie Paterson once beamed Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata to the moon and back. At the Lowry, she continues to explore the vastness of space

26 May 2016
The Rude Screen (2015–16), George Shaw

George Shaw finds the otherworldly in trees, porn magazines and plastic sheets

As associate artist at the National Gallery, Shaw focuses on the nondescript woodland where many of art history’s most sordid stories play out

24 May 2016

Don Quixote of the drawing board: the visionary schemes of the Earl of Mar

The Earl of Mar has long been seen as a failed rebel and harmless utopian architect, but it’s time to take him seriously as an Enlightenment thinker

24 May 2016

Going it alone in the modern city

Olivia Laing’s book on the art of loneliness has some excellent insights, but who is it meant for?

23 May 2016

Porn and paranoia on Tyneside

Omer Fast puts contemporary fears and fictions on display at the BALTIC Centre

19 May 2016
Giacometti Self-Portrait

Giacometti’s art channels the nervousness of an entire era

The Sainsbury Centre’s exhibition reveals an artist grappling with a sense of human frailty

18 May 2016

From Turkey to China, the legacy of the Seljuq empire should be better known

There are many treasures in the Met’s new exhibition, but the most poignant are the metalwork pieces from Mosul, given the turmoil in the region today

17 May 2016