Inspired madness of the artist
The average man sitting on the Tube, according to Gilbert of Gilbert & George, sees nothing but breasts. Now, that may underestimate the range of interests of the average man (though it is entirely...
View ArticleSensitive to the drama of light
If a portrait ‘happened to be on the easel’, wrote Henry Angelo of Thomas Gainsborough, ‘he was in the humour for a growl at the dispensation of all sublunary things. If, on the other hand, he was...
View ArticleIn love with economic disaster
We spent part of the last two weeks – as has become a family custom – mooching round Siena. And although, like Venice, the place can absorb a huge number of visitors before becoming unpleasantly...
View ArticleSwimming pool or work of art?
One of the most amusing broadcast moments of the early 1990s was a radio debate between the painter Patrick Heron and various citizens of St Ives. The subject was the proposal to build a new art...
View ArticleThe Good News of Isenheim
In the Christkindlesmarkt — the Christmas market — in Nuremberg at about this time of year you will see an astonishingly large array of Christmas decorations. The market stalls are full of them —...
View ArticleLuxury Goods: Absolutely priceless
A couple of weeks ago I attended a reception in the Banqueting House on Whitehall to mark the opening of an exhibition by the American painter Cy Twombly at the Serpentine Gallery. A vast and lavish...
View ArticleFine Arts Special: The rights and wrongs of conquest
France gave back artefacts looted by Napoleon. So what’s different today? asks Martin Gayford ‘Give us back our marbles’ is the cry. Passionate demands are made for the return of famous works of...
View ArticleA certain something
Could Caravaggio draw? That might seem a startling, even a ridiculous, question, but it expresses a doubt with which I was left by the admittedly magnificent exhibition that is about to close at the...
View ArticleMad genius
Martin Gayford examines the extraordinary lives — and deaths — of great artists and suggests that there is a link between manic depression and creativity In the summer of 1667 the architect Francesco...
View ArticleMartin Gayford
I have recently returned from a fortnight spent floating around the Baltic. Because of global warming — which seems to be making the Mediterranean very hot — and cheap air travel (which seems to be...
View ArticleBones of contention
All over the world, scholarly folk look to Neil MacGregor — who writes opposite — to hold the line. All over the world, scholarly folk look to Neil MacGregor — who writes opposite — to hold the line....
View ArticleHug a hoodie and Gilbert & George
I know that just now people are queuing up to propose new policies to the leader of the opposition — wind turbines, green taxes and what not — but even so I have a modest proposal for the David Cameron...
View ArticleScraps of Van Goghiana
Having spent a chunk of my life living, mentally, in 1888 with Vincent van Gogh in Arles I find that I still have not completely left that place. The book is published, the paperback is out, my...
View ArticleThere is a great deal to be said for living in a tip
In 1864 a Talmudist named Jacob Saphir arrived at Cairo. He made his way to the district confusingly named ‘Babylon’ after a Roman fort. There he visited the ancient Synagogue of Ben Ezra, and after...
View ArticleFlemish tour de force
Some years ago I was walking through the closed galleries of the Uffizi with a group of journalists, when we passed the Portinari Altarpiece. In those spaces, free for once of jostling crowds, it was...
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Exhibition suspicion
Martin Gayford questions the point of art shows. Should they educate or give pleasure — or both? Towards the end of June, 1814, Maria Bicknell, the wife-to-be of the painter John Constable, went to an...
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Wanted! Lost portraits
Criminals can turn into detectives: consider the career of Eugène-François Vidocq, thief, convict and subsequently head of the Paris Sûreté. And, as we have seen recently in London, political...
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Worshipping a golden calf
Martin Gayford considers whether we are in the final, pre-popping stages of an art bubble Journalists arriving for the press view of Renaissance Faces at the National Gallery last week were greeted by...
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A Yorkshire genius in love with his iPhone
‘Who would ever have thought,’ asked David Hockney, ‘that drawing would return via the telephone?’ It is a typical Hockney point, wry, unexpected, connecting high-tech with low — and in this case...
View ArticleDiary
For years I’ve been trying to persuade friends and acquaintances that art criticism is a job with an arduous, physical side. Last Wednesday, for example, between 6 p.m. and 8.45 p.m. I attended three...
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