sun 27/07/2025

Visual arts

'Before punk, there was Rauschenberg'

In this cut and paste world, we have become used to a multiplicity of images: screens, words and pictures from across the globe and across history flicker through our field of vision, competing for our attention with the natural world, the urban...

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Portrait of the Artist, The Queen's Gallery

Born in Rome and taught by her artist father, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1652) led a colourfully energetic life. As an adolescent she was raped by her father’s assistant  – an episode which unusually, then as now, actually came to public trial...

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Flaming June, Leighton House Museum

The chances are, you’ve only ever seen Flaming June in reproduction: since 1963 it has resided in the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico, an out-of-the-way location that reflects the universal disdain for Victorian art in the post-war period....

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Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2016, National Portrait Gallery

It’s that time of year again. The National Portrait Gallery exhibits the finalists in the annual Taylor Wessing Portrait prize. The judges have seen 4,303 photographs from 1,842 photographers and now show us 57.The imprimatur of the National...

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The Radical Eye, Tate Modern

“For me photography is a journey of discovery”, says Elton John. “I buy what I like and if it's not fashionable I don’t care. The more you collect, the more sophisticated your eye becomes.” He realised he had become a serious collector when, in 1993...

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Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans, Royal Academy

James Ensor? Who he? A marvellous Anglo-Belgian artist (1860-1949) little known outside Belgium, whose masterpiece, The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889, 1888, is a trophy painting at the Getty, California. It is present here in his own print...

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Bowie/Collector, Sotheby's

David Bowie needs no introduction, yet he kept one aspect of his life largely hidden away: his art collecting. Now Sotheby’s, which is auctioning off around 400 items of his private art collection in a three-part sale on 10 and 11 November, is...

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Paul Nash, Tate Britain

In Monster Field, 1938, fallen trees appear like the fossilised remains of giant creatures from prehistory. With great horse-like heads, and branches like a tangle of tentacles and legs, Paul Nash’s series of paintings and photographs serve as...

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Adriaen van de Velde, Dulwich Picture Gallery

Oh, those dogs: just a flick of the brush, and there they are, bursting with life. Pets, hunting dogs, companions, strays: romping on beaches, or in Dutch forests, living on farms and in imagined arcadias. Adriaen van de Velde was a 17th century...

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Opinion: ArtReview Power 100

Compiled by an anonymous panel, the 15th edition of ArtReview magazine’s annual list of the most powerful and influential people in the art world was published on Thursday. And who doesn’t like lists, to poke fun at, to argue with – or perhaps even...

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Rodin and Dance: The Essence of Movement, Courtauld Gallery

This is an inspired and beautifully curated exhibition. It is subtitled The Essence of Movement, but it could equally be called The Essence of Art. What marks it out is not only the sensitively selected and tightly focused content, but also its...

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The Vulgar, Barbican Art Gallery

In this autumn’s Vagabonds Collection, Viktor and Rolf showed a pink top covered in hundreds of buttons and framed with elaborate furls of pale pink and blue tulle; did they intend the model to look as if she was wearing a giant vulva across her...

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