Reviews Archive

Rebecca Scott Beneath The Silk and Gloss – Jude Cowan Montague

Rebecca Scott's huge oil paintings of defaced magazine pages: it's a visceral exhibition by a confident painter, secure in her style, able to wow...

Lynette Yiadom Boakye In Lieu Of A Louder Love – Ilka Scobie

A couple of years after Lynette Yiadom Boakye dazzled New York with her solo show at the New Museum, she returns to the city...

Mayfair’s Golden Oldies: Bernard Jacobson At 50 and Stephen Buckley @ Mayor Gallery – Edward Lucie-Smith

The Bernard Jacobson Gallery in the heart of London has had a long connection with artists’ prints and printmaking since it first opened its...

Pailthorpe And Mednikoff The Birth of Psychorealism – Edward Lucie-Smith

This Christmas and New Year it was an exhibition at the sternly Modernist – yes, with a big M - De La Warr Pavilion...

How Egon Schiele Became Egon Schiele – Fondation Louis Vuitton – Jude Cowan Montague

When I visited art college studios as a jealous English student in the 1980s, the cool, edgy artists had pictures of skinny, edgy women...

Irving Penn Paintings: A Kind Of Photographic Sub-Stratum – Edward Lucie-Smith

Irving Penn (1917-2009) was one of the great stars of 20th century American photography, at a time when the United States was becoming the...

Philip Colbert / Marshmallow Laser Feast – Saatchi Gallery- Review Edward Lucie-Smith

In the current context of London exhibitions, the unabashed rock-'n’roll energy of the Philip Colbert Hunt Paintings' show, recently opened upstairs at the Saatchi...

Jean-Michel Basquiat – Fondation Louis Vuitton – Review Jude Cowan Montague

Where are the black artists in the galleries? We think it's bad now, what about during the 1980s? The early 1980s before Basquiat?

Thomas Gainsborough: A Thirst For Visible Originality – Edward Lucie-Smith

After various adventures away from its traditional subject-matter – the recent Michael Jackson show being a case in point, the National Portrait Gallery returns...

Breeeeze: Four Artists Consider The Ambivalence Of Domestic Space – Elizabeth Fullerton

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” Virginia Woolf wrote in her famous essay...

Edwin Landseer The Return Of A Moralistically Empathetic Artist – Edward Lucie-Smith

How times have changed! And how much they haven’t! A small but telling display of work by the celebrated Victorian artist Sir Edwin Landseer,...

Bloomberg New Contemporaries South London Gallery – Review – Jude Cowan Montague

I confess straight away that I didn't have as much time as I would have liked to spend on this exhibition. It has a...

Plaster Casters: Victoria & Albert Museum Cast Courts Reopen – Edward Lucie-Smith

The full re-opening of the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Cast Courts occurs at an apposite moment.

Richard Long: The Tide is High – Edward Lucie-Smith

There can be no doubt that Richard Long is one of the giants of British art. Or so a very impressive curriculum vitae would...

Tomas Saraceno: On Air – Palais de Tokyo Paris – Virginie Puertolas-Syn

Tomas Saraceno “On Air” an exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo is definitely one of the most extraordinary exhibitions I have ever seen. A...

Chiharu Shiota: Immersive Elegant Scarlet Threads – Blain|Southern – Edward Lucie-Smith

Today London’s official art world is full of enthusiasm for so-called ‘minority art’, made by artists of guaranteed ‘minority origin’. On the whole, however,...

Iain Baxter& &Information – Hales Gallery – Jude Cowan Montague

That famous aphorism 'the medium is the message' was spouted by Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian professor, philosopher and public intellectual back 1964, when his...

Five Academicians: Glasgow Print Studio – Clare Henry

You have to be reasonably senior to be an Academician of any sort. Put five together? The result is an exciting and extremely varied...

Fernand Léger A Mechanical Visual Language – Tate Liverpool – Alice Lenkiewicz

It was captivating to see the Fernand Léger exhibition (until 17 March 2019) at Tate Liverpool.

Robert Rauschenberg Light-Hearted Works With Serious Meaning – Edward Lucie-Smith

The Robert Rauschenberg show Spreads: 1975-83 just opened at Thaddaeus Ropac here in London comes complete with a museum-worthy hardcover catalogue, and is indeed,...

Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair 2018 Round-Up – Jude Cowan Montague

It was a personal pleasure to visit this fair, now in its third year. The ambitious project has taken over the huge warehouse scale...

Gordon Matta Clark: The Chaos Of The 1970s – Edward Lucie-Smith

Gordon Matta Clark died quite some time ago now – in August 1978. And he died quite young, aged only 35. However, like a...

Josef Albers Life And Work – A New Book – Review Edward Lucie-Smith

Once you struggle through the fairly formidable Introduction to this biography – a chapter devoted to orientating the reader concerning Josef Albers’ major achievement,...

Paul Lock: You Simply Are – Review Noho Showrooms – Simon Tarrant

Gauguin once reportedly exclaimed of self-taught artist Henri Rousseau’s self-portrait, “There is the truth and future! There is painting!”

Hilma af Klint: Paintings For The Future – Guggenheim Museum NY – Ilka Scobie

Hilma af Klint’s abstract paintings first dazzled me when I encountered her work in the 2013 Venice Bienalle.

Perdita Sinclair An Impressive Visual Interpretation Of Micro-science – Jude Cowan Montague

Angiosperms (roughly flowering plants) produce an incredible variety of seeds that are dispersed in creative, innovative ways, sometimes involving tricksy relationships with particular animals.

Alex Katz And Richard Smith Two Current London Exhibitions – Edward Lucie-Smith

Despite its title, Coca-Cola Girls, Alex Katz’s new show at Timothy Taylor doesn’t really belong in the realm of Pop Art. It does, however,...

Mantegna and Bellini In Presence of the Triumphs – National Gallery – Edward Lucie-Smith

This exhibition at the National Gallery is a landmark event. It brings together a rich selection of paintings, and some drawings, by two of...

Peter Howson: The play is over – Flowers Gallery – Revd Jonathan Evens

‘Life-destroyer’, ‘get lost’, ‘monkeys’, ‘in bad faith’, ‘malediction’, ‘concealed dungeon’, ‘poison head’, ‘parasite’, ‘disenchantment’, ‘lechery’. The titles of Peter Howson's latest work, in translation...

Bradley, Burden, Fischer and Pascali Four London Shows – Edward Lucie-Smith

Here, lumped together for the sake of convenience in an overcrowded Autumn season, are four London galleries.

Lorenzo Lotto Metaphors Through Gestures And Symbols – Edward Lucie-Smith

Tucked away in a group of spaces on the gloomy ground floor of the National Gallery is a superb exhibition that seems likely to...

Modern Couples Shaped By The Society Of Their Time – Barbican – Edward Lucie-Smith

The Modern Couples show currently at the Barbican has eyes slightly too big for its own – or at any rate for my stomach....