conceptual art
London’s best contemporary art show is in Penge
If you’ve been reading the more excitable pages of the arts press lately, you might be aware that the London…
In defence of decommissioning
There’s more than a grain of truth in the popular caricature of a curator as a mother hen clucking frantically…
How Michael Craig-Martin changed a glass of water into a full-grown oak tree
‘Of all the things I’ve drawn,’ Michael Craig-Martin reflects, ‘to me chairs are one of the most interesting.’ We are…
‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’: Sophie Calle interviewed
‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’ Thus Sophie Calle objected to the first line of…
A salmagundi of tedium
The White Pube started life as an influential art blog, written by Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente. The…
Kinetic suitcases
While locked-down galleries compete to keep their artists in the public eye — or ear — by uploading interview podcasts,…
Why has figurative painting become fashionable again?
The figure is back. Faces stare, bodies sprawl, fingers swipe, mums clutch, hands loll. The Venice Biennale was full of…
Art is often best experienced on the radio
At its best audio can be a much more visual medium than the screen. Making Art with Frances Morris (produced…
The winner of the 2018 What’s That Thing? Award for bad public art is…
Not a bad year for the award. Honourable mentions must go to the landfill abstractions of Oxford’s new Westgate Centre,…
A visionary and playful heir to Duchamp: Yves Klein at Blenheim Palace
Nothing was so interesting to Yves Klein as the void. In 1960 he leapt into it for a photograph —…
It’s the thought that counts
During a panel discussion in 1949, Frank Lloyd Wright made an undiplomatic comment about Marcel Duchamp’s celebrated picture of 1912,…
In defence of conceptual art
At the tail end of last year, an artist called Peter Goodfellow mounted an exhibition of paintings titled Treason of…
Best in show
Martin Gayford recommends the exhibitions to see — and to avoid — over the coming year
High life
This is going to be one hell of a year, hell being the operative word. It will be the year…
Bursting the bubble
The conventional history of modern art was written on the busy Paris-New York axis, as if nowhere else existed. For…
The Long view
William Cook explores the elemental art and Olympian walks of Richard Long
In praise of affectation
Jonathan Beckman 20 February 2016 9:00 am
Aversion to pretentiousness was probably an English trait before Dr Johnson famously refuted Bishop Berkeley’s arguments for the immateriality of…