Reviews Archive

Eco-Visionaries: Moralistic Participation – Edward Lucie-Smith

The Eco-Visionaries show just opened at the Royal Academy, in its new set of galleries (easiest entry via Burlington Gardens) embraces the current fashion...

Vienna’s Spectacular Exhibitions Of Durer, Caravaggio and Bernini – Paul Carter Robinson

Vienna knows how to produce a blockbuster, and this Autumn/Winter season they have mounted two. For the first time in nearly twenty years, a...

George IV: The Art Of Spectacle – Queen’s Gallery – Edward Lucie-Smith

The Queen’s Gallery, behind Buckingham Palace, is the place where the British Royal Collection Trust displays its treasures. The latest exhibition there – George...

Tessa Traeger – New Art Centre – Roche Court – Sue Hubbard

Fog was rising over the Wiltshire fields and the majestic beeches of Roche Court Sculpture Park dripping with November rain when we arrived for...

Anselm Kiefer: Everything is connected – Jude Cowan Montague

White Cube, in this instance, seems the perfect place for this exhibition. So perfect I feel it is over-designed. The perspex boxes of wires,...

Dora Maar: Shedding The Muse Label – Sue Hubbard

In 1998 the first sales of the Dora Maar collection were put on sale in Paris. They revealed a life dedicated to photography, painting...

Steve McQueen: Year 3 – Tate Britain – Edward Lucie-Smith

I increasingly get the feeling that the two London Tates are struggling to know what to do with the huge central spaces that are...

Three London Shows November 2019 – Edward Lucie-Smith

As the nation plunges towards Brexit, and, as the official galleries - specifically the two big London Tates - grow more and more self-satisfied...

Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize 2019 Returns To NPG – Edward Lucie-Smith

The Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize has come round once again, just as the announcement went out that the NPG will very soon close its...

You Feel Me: A Place Without Division – FACT Liverpool – Alice Lenkiewicz

I found this latest exhibition at FACT Liverpool thought-provoking. It challenges the way we view the world and what we are being taught to...

Bridget Riley: Dynamic Interactions And Optical Wizardry – Edward Lucie-Smith

At a time when there is a continual fuss about giving ‘fair representation’ to women artists, many of whom were not, in fact, central...

Lucian Freud / Antony Gormley Two RA Autumn Shows – Edward Lucie-Smith

Lucian Freud / Antony Gormley, two shows at the RA, both by contemporary British artists. Apparently very different from one another

Nam June Paik Outstripped By Technology Tate Modern – Edward Lucie-Smith

Nam June Paik (1932-2006) was a Korean-born artist who lived and worked in Japan, Germany and the United States. He played a considerable role...

Tearing up the Rule Book: Paintings By Day Bowman at Atelier Melusine

There’s something very irresistible in Day Bowman ’s abstract paintings, currently showing on two floors of what was once an épicerie/cordoniere and its living...

Sterling Ruby: Gagosian – Britannia Street – Edward Lucie-Smith

The main items in Sterling Ruby’s exhibition at Gagosian Britannia Street (his first solo show with the gallery here in London) are huge works...

Victoria Crowe: Half Century Of Painting – Edinburgh – Clare Henry

Beauty. Not a word used much today. Not a popular concept. Not necessarily an accolade. Yet Victoria Crowe creates beauty with her every brushstroke,...

The Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood Re-evaluated – Edward Lucie-Smith

All too often, when there is a sudden enthusiasm for a particular cause, those promoting it achieve the opposite of what they intend. This...

The Turner: An Exhibition of Past Turner Prize Nominees – Clare Henry

Glasgow: Love it or loathe it, the Tate Turner prize is here to stay. It's a huge accolade. And you don't need to win....

Cabarets, Clubs And Modern Art – Barbican – Edward Lucie-Smith

A new show at the Barbican is devoted to the theme of Cabarets and Clubs in Modern Art.

Rembrandt-Velázquez And de Hooch: Two Major Autumn Exhibitions – Sue Hubbard

If you are planning an imminent trip to the Netherlands, there are two must-see exhibitions on at the moment. Pieter de Hooch in Delft:...

Reading Stones & Beyond The Body Two Shows – Jude Cowan Montague

The stone tower of Saint Augustine is a dramatic setting for an art exhibition and has been host to some interesting shows by alternative...

Cy Twombly, Gagosian – Song Dong, Pace – Edward Lucie-Smith

Two London shows from big commercial galleries reflect different but related aspects of the current international scene. One, at Gagosian Grosvenor Hill, is for...

Bridget Riley, Rebecca Parker, Elizabeth Peyton Three London Shows – Edward Lucie-Smith

Two exhibitions of modest size – Bridget Riley at Lindsey Ingram, and Rebecca Parker at Huxley-Parlour – both at the very centre of the...

Mark Bradford: Monumental Excavations Of Humanity Hauser & Wirth – Sooz Belnavis

I am a painter, and as a painter, I tend to look at other painters work, under the scrutiny of deciphering the surface, the...

Gauguin Not A Role Model For Our Time – Edward Lucie-Smith

Gauguin both is and isn't a hero for our time. In one sense it's brave of the National Gallery to mount a big show...

Mona Hatoum: Emotional Formalism – Jude Cowan Montague

Burnt-out domesticity. Chicken-wire with burnt-black wood wedged inside in the shape of the chair.

Do The Undone: John Giorno at Sperone Westwater – Ilka Scobie

“I had an idea in the late sixties, like putting my poems on matchboxes. I wanted to do poems on marble. I was a...

Amy Sherald: The Heart of the Matter – Hauser & Wirth NY – Ilka Scobie

“I want to be my own connection to America,” Amy Sherald tells the rapt audience, at her spectacular inaugural show at Hauser and Wirth.

Mark Leckey: The Power of Bleakness – Tate Britain – Edward Lucie-Smith

Having just opened an exhibition devoted to the work of William Blake, who is, for all his eccentricities, a representation of art as we...

Yassine Balbzioui – James Ostrer – Kristin Hjellegjerde London – Jude Cowan Montague

Yassine Balbzioui/James Ostrer - Kristin Hjellegjerde London: Masked figures in balaclava style hats, only their eyes visible peer directly at the viewer

Damien Hirst Butterfly Genocide – White Cube – Edward Lucie-Smith

Damien Hirst’s show Mandalas, at White Cube Mason’s Yard, has already attracted indignant commentary in The Times. Rachel Campbell-Johnson’s review

Maurizio Cattelan: Broken Plumbing And Leaky Democracy – Blenheim Palace – Paul Black

Maurizio Cattelan's 'Victory is Not an Option' is a perfectly timed exhibition that parodies Britain's long slide into populist self-destruction.