Reviews

The budding stars of Irish botanical art

Patricia Butler’s account of 300 years of botanical drawings from Ireland is both a history of art and a history of science

3 Nov 2023

How Finland eventually fell for Impressionism

The movement was slow to find favour in the north, but this gave Finnish artists time to take what they wanted from France

2 Nov 2023

By Lake Lugano, two painters who really saw the light

Giacomo Balla and Piero Dorazio worked nearly 50 years apart, but a dazzling show reveals their shared interest in capturing sensations

2 Nov 2023

How Iannis Xenakis abandoned architecture and remade modern music

The Greek polymath who once worked for Le Corbusier is the subject of an appropriately wide-ranging survey in Athens

30 Oct 2023

Manet and Degas face off at the Met

The different approaches of the two great friends and rivals form a thrilling contrast when seen side by side

28 Oct 2023

The Jewish designers who had success all sewn up

The Museum of London celebrates the designers who turned the capital into a fashion centre while also remembering the people who wore their clothes

27 Oct 2023

The club for unconventional and international women who were ahead of their time

For 80 years, the Women’s International Art Club allowed artists to exhibit work that had yet to find wider acceptance

26 Oct 2023

The Victorians who were drawn to colour

The Ashmolean’s new show vividly demonstrates how strong colours became a mainstay of 19th-century art

23 Oct 2023

What Renoir saw by the sea in Guernsey

Nearly a century and a half after the painter’s trip to the Channel Islands, his paintings of Guernsey can now be compared to the actual views

18 Oct 2023

Brute force – the savage post-war paintings of George Grosz

The artist’s later work is usually regarded as apolitical but, as the Stick Men paintings show, he produced some of his most savage work after the war

5 Oct 2023

This year’s Turner Prize nominees display a weariness with institutions

The shortlisted artists highlight the fragility of the existing order, with the best of them upending what we expect from a show in a gallery

3 Oct 2023

Colour saturation – how the world stopped seeing in black and white

Kirsty Sinclair Dootson shows that a history of colour processes is also a history of shifts in society

3 Oct 2023

Stitches in time – the power of Palestinian embroidery

The history of Palestinian dress is inseparable from that of the nation itself – and now the subject of an invaluable exhibition

3 Oct 2023

Local hero – Joshua Reynolds returns to Plymouth

To mark the painter’s 300th birthday, the Box in Plymouth is staging a thoughtful show that encourages us to look beyond the obvious

3 Oct 2023

Christian Marclay opens the doors of our perception

The artist’s compilation of entrances and exits in the movies takes viewers deep into a labyrinth – and leaves us to find our own way out

22 Sep 2023

Downhill all the way with Isa Genzken

In the Neue Nationalgalerie’s celebration of the sculptor’s 75th birthday, modernity is never what it used to be

19 Sep 2023

How to read books without words

Modern artists have managed to make surprisingly strong statements on blank or partially erased pages

15 Sep 2023

The avant-garde artists who went wild in Paris

Fauvism may have been a short-lived movement, but the explosively colourful compositions of Matisse, Derain and co. remain undimmed

14 Sep 2023

Nocturnal animals – a new Nordic festival journeys into the night

A former pig farm is a meeting place for artists and scientists delving into the mysteries of the dark

8 Sep 2023

Ingres and the endless quest for perfection

The painter was always reluctant to regard his paintings as finished and revisted some of his greatest compositions several times

8 Sep 2023

Beatriz Milhazes brings a touch of Brazil to Margate

The artist’s colourful paintings have transformed Turner Contemporary inside and out

31 Aug 2023

Making great panes for the Gilded Age

When it came to designing stained-glass windows, Henry Holiday was more than a match for his friend Edward Burne-Jones

30 Aug 2023

The painters who made a great play for the stage

An understanding of theatrical culture in the 18th century is vital for understanding the most important painters of the period

29 Aug 2023

The Jewish footballers who left everything out on the field

An exhibition in Vienna tackles the involvement of Jewish players in some of Europe’s oldest clubs – and how those clubs acknowledge this history

25 Aug 2023