Art

He is best known for The Great Wave off Kanagawa, but Japan’s Hokusai also produced an extraordinary ‘encyclopedia’ of art. Lost for decades, it is now the subject of a blockbuster exhibition at the British Museum.

An exhibition in Oxford explores the creativity and chaos of the Japanese capital.

This year’s Turner Prize finalists have been chosen for their promotion of social causes. But has rewarding virtue left any room for art?

As Italy and the literary world marks 700 years since the death of Dante Alighieri, portraits by his namesake, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, resound with the writer’s influence on the painter’s art.

On his centenary, Germany’s best-known post-war artist remains as influential – and contentious – as ever.

Five years before the Festival of Britain came another international exhibition showcasing post-war UK innovation. Seventy five years on, it is a sombre reminder of some of the qualities which – despite much voguish rhetoric – the country has lost, writes RICHARD HOLLEDGE

An exhibition of ten British African artists in Cambridge challenges and inspires, writes RICHARD HOLLEDGE

A stunning new sculpture in a disused Spanish lighthouse seems to offer a portal to the earth’s core.

WILL SELF on his visit Stephen Wright’s House of Dreams and its extraordinary insider-outsider artwork

FLORENCE HALLETT investigates how the painter’s discovery of ancient Iberian art changed his work forever.

The secretive artist whose works command millions at auction has returned with new street pieces in Great Yarmouth and other eastern coastal towns. But as prices continue to rise, what is it like to have been one of the early adopters who bought one of his early prints for a song nearly 20 years ago?

A remarkable new book and exhibition chart a series of extraordinary events and rituals along the river, from its muddy source to its expansive estuary.

How Jean Dubuffet reinvented cityscapes, the female nude.. and even his own work. By CLAUDIA PRITCHARD

Bernard Arnault and François Pinault, two of France's richest men and the powers behind some of the world's most glamourous brands, fell out in a business dispute 20 years ago.

A new exhibition shows how Bristol’s love of what used to be called graffiti art fuelled a global movement

Nina Hamnett's artistic career shone brilliantly and briefly, until overshadowed by her lifestyle. A new show restores the focus on her work

Herbrand Sackville, the 9th Earl of de la Warr, was ahead of his time in his belief that art could breathe new life into a town. A century on, RICHARD HOLLEDGE looks at the must-see art of the east coast

A new book and exhibition focuses on the emperor’s appetite for the paintings and sculptures of the lands he conquered.

A new exhibition celebrates the pioneering British artist Eileen Agar and her sideways look at the life aquatic Seven months before the outbreak of the Second World War, left wing and anti-war artists exhibited together at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Henry Moore, Victor Pasmore and Vanessa Bell were among those contributing some 200 works to the exhibition […]

Gender bias means that the history of art has been written by men, about men. But there are some signs that the tide is finally beginning to turn It’s been 50 years since the pioneering feminist art historian Linda Nochlin posed the provocative question ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’ – a ground-breaking […]

The life of Rosa Bonheur, often considered the most famous female painter of the 19th century Rosa Bonheur might have been one of the greatest artists of the 19th century but you probably wouldn’t have wanted her living next door. Having moved from Bordeaux to Paris in the late 1820s when she was six years old, […]

Restrictions might be easing and art galleries opening their doors again, but are virtual visits now here to stay?  So here I am in the National Gallery relishing the pulsating drama of Rembrandt’s Belshazzar’s Feast. By my side, Dr Gabriele Finaldi, director of the gallery, no less, is enthusing about the “huge emotional punch” of the painting which […]

An intriguing new exhibition allows the public to view paintings from the Golden Age of Dutch art while experiencing the smells associated with them.  A painting is a painting is a painting. You look at it. It might mesmerise you; Jackson Pollock. Make you smile ironically; Rene Magritte. Lift your soul to the heavens; Tiepolo or, a Damien […]

A new exhibition brings together the works of four artists who, in their very different ways, emerged at a time when female roles in British society were about to change forever.  They were among the most innovative and, at times, sought-after artists of their day, a quartet of painters who are celebrated together in an […]

A fascinating new book focuses on the works of artists who died under the age of 30. Some are households name, but many more are those who would have been if only their lives had not been cut so tragically short The heavy thump of another coffee table art tome being delivered by the postie can evoke groans – and not […]

CLAUDIA PRITCHARD on an artwork, an exhibition and a book which all demonstrate the way that artists have been inspired by trees. In our new, more outdoor life, trees have been a consolation, ever-changing but constant, by turn prickling with promise, brimming with plenty, stripping down for winter, and bubbling into life again. As the […]

The Arts and Crafts movement provided a bridge from tradition and nostalgia to the modernism that was to follow. Few of its leading lights display this shift as sumptuously as Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo.  Between the Arts and Crafts pioneering work of William Morris and the lean soaring lines with floral motifs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a third and influential “M” helped define the look […]

A new exhibition showcasing the works of Venetian artist Giovanni Antonio Canal, dubbed Canaletto, is set to open in Bath.  To begin when Covid restrictions permit, Canaletto: Painting Venice will run at the city’s Holburne Museum until September 5.   As Claudia Pritchard reports, such was Canaletto’s importance to our understanding and appreciation of the historic Italian city that his work is now helping assess its vulnerability […]

Claudia Pritchard on a festive masterpiece which – as a result of technology and the requirements of being covid-secure – can now be viewed as never before. “A Foreign Gentleman has brought into England a picture that astonishes every person who has seen it… It is to be viewed.. from ten in the morning till […]

The paintings of JMW Turner tell the fast-paced story of the modern age bursting into being. Claudia Pritchard reports on a new exhibition which recounts this gripping tale. At first glance, the silvery mound of fresh-caught fish in the foreground looks ready for pan and the plate, but the pilchards in Joseph Mallord William Turner’s […]

The Tate Modern and three US galleries have postponed a major exhibition of Philip Guston’s work, alarmed at his depictions of the Ku Klux Klan. Claudia Pritchard reports on a raging art controversy. In November 1970, the American avant-garde composer Morton Feldman went to see his artist friend Philip Guston’s new exhibition at the Marlborough […]

CLAUDIA PRITCHARD on a captivating new book in which artist David Hockney and critic Martin Gayford discuss the history of one of humanity’s oldest impulses, to create pictures Photo: Provided – Credit: Archant As a boy, laughing in the cinema at the antics of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, the artist David Hockney was entertained […]