tue 08/07/2025

Visual Arts Reviews

Goya: The Portraits, National Gallery

Fisun Güner

The brute nature of man in times of war, religious persecution and hypocrisy, and the destructive power of superstition. Francisco de Goya’s fame today largely rests on such themes, and they go a long way to explain just why he’s often considered the first modern artist. 

Read more...

Turner Prize 2015, Tramway, Glasgow

Fisun Güner

What’s going on? It seems the Turner Prize judges not only ran out of Scots to nominate this year, but actual artists. The socially enterprising architect-design collective Assemble don’t even call themselves artists so what must they make of the novelty of being shortlisted for the UK’s premier contemporary art prize? I’ve no doubt they’re delighted, especially since they appear favourites to win, but what a turn up.  

Read more...

Ben Rivers: Earth Needs More Magicians, Camden Arts Centre

Sarah Kent

Filmmaker Ben Rivers is drawn to outsiders and misfits, people who prefer solitude over society and live in shacks in the sticks rather than bungalows in the suburbs. Living in the Kent cottage she shared with her painter husband Roy Oxlade until his death last year, Rose Wylie hardly fits the bill; yet one can see why Rivers was drawn to her.

Read more...

Ai Weiwei, Royal Academy

Fisun Güner

Ai Weiwei’s first major survey in the UK is a better looking exhibition than I had anticipated, but what it gains in looks it sadly lacks in substance – backstory and information not being quite the same.

Read more...

The World Goes Pop, Tate Modern

Florence Hallett

There’s no sign of Oldenburg, Warhol or Lichtenstein and British pioneers Eduardo Paolozzi and Peter Blake are notably absent from this gritty vision of Pop art. Only in the final room do we come face-to-face with a Campbell’s Tomato Soup tin, the comforting bright colours and clean, supermarket-aisle lines blackened, singed and fragmented as if salvaged from some unimaginable disaster.

Read more...

Drawing in Silver and Gold: Leonardo to Jasper Johns, British Museum

Fisun Güner

Unlike Venice, where colour reigned supreme among artists such as Titian and Veronese, Florence was the city where drawing – disegno – was held up as the cornerstone of the artist’s education. Think of the well-defined musculature of Michelangelo’s figures. Florentine artists of the Renaissance practiced an art of detailed precision, mastering clarity of line and structural rigour.

Read more...

The Gap: Selected Abstract Art from Belgium, Parasol Unit

Florence Hallett

From its title, you could be misled into dismissing this show as narrow and self-referential: a small exhibition in a small gallery curated by a Belgian artist concerned only with his own countrymen. In fact, it is something of a survey, featuring works with influences that range from Piet Mondrian, Ad Reinhardt and Lucio Fontana, to the Color Field painters.

Read more...

Soup Cans and Superstars, BBC Four

Marina Vaizey

Pop went the easel, and more, as we were offered a worldwide tour – New York, LA, London, Paris, Shanghai – of the art phenomenon of the past 50 years (still going strong worldwide). We were led by a wide-eyed interlocutor, the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Alastair Sooke, to the throbbing beat of – what else? – pop music, Elvis and much else besides.

Read more...

Shirley Baker, Photographers' Gallery

Florence Hallett

When a photographer is as little known as Shirley Baker, it is probably only natural that we scour her work for clues to the personality behind the camera. Certainly, Baker’s photographs of inner city Salford and Manchester, taken over a period of 20 years, seem to offer as full and intriguing a picture of Baker herself as of the disappearing communities she was committed to recording.

Read more...

Alice Anderson, Wellcome Collection

Sarah Kent

A flight of golden stairs gleams seductively under the spot lights; free of architectural constraints, it serves no practical purpose other than to encourage the mind to wander and perhaps to imagine it as the stairway to heaven. The beauty, simplicity and purity of the structure promise a trouble free ascent to astral spheres; one can almost hear the strings of angelic harps twanging celestial harmonies up above. 

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Live Aid at 40: When Rock'n'Roll Took on the World...

“Bob’s not the kind of guy you can say no to,” said Sting, reminiscing about the origins of 1984’s Band Aid charity single “Do They Know It’s...

theartsdesk Q&A: actor Emma Mackey on 'Hot Milk...

Emma Mackey might have had her breakthrough role as a teenage tough cookie in Netflix's hit Series Sex Education (2019-20223), but there...

Blu-ray: A Hard Day's Night

Andrew Sarris, doyen of auteurist film critics, dubbed A Hard Day’s Night “the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals”. Wild over-...

Sabrina Carpenter, Hyde Park BST review - a sexy, sparkly, s...

Has Sabrina Carpenter officially conquered London? A year after bestie and fellow Disney alumni Taylor Swift declared the “Summer of Sabrina”...

Album: Olafur Arnalds and Talos - A Dawning

Silken ambience is the name of the game on this set from Icelandic composer-producer Olafur Arnalds and dreampop singer Talos, aka Eoin French,...

Music Reissues Weekly: Motörhead - The Manticore Tapes

Manticore was owned by Emerson, Lake and Palmer and their manager. The organisation provided the name for the band’s label. Apart from ELP and its...

Kiefer / Van Gogh, Royal Academy review - a pairing of oppos...

When he was a callow youth of 18, German artist Anselm Keifer got a travel grant to follow in the footsteps of his idol, Vincent van Gogh. Some...

Siglo de Oro, Wigmore Hall review - electronic Lamentations...

Siglo de Oro are a vocal ensemble who specialise in older music – and especially neglected older music – but they have also...