Features

Caresses (detail; 1896), Fernand Khnopff. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. Photo: J. Geleyns Art Photography

Modern art, with a Belgian flavour

Fernand Khnopff was among the most original artists of the fin-de-siècle – but his dreamlike images are unmistakably Belgian

22 Dec 2018
Still from BRIDGIT (2016), Charlotte Prodger, courtesy the artist, Koppe Astner, Glasgow and Hollybush Gardens

How political is political art?

Many artists take themes such as migration, climate change, and human rights as their subjects, but what are they actually doing with them?

8 Dec 2018
View across Lake Seeberg to the Muntigalm (1778), Caspar Wolf.

Acquisitions of the Month: November 2018

A major collection of Swiss art and an early Dutch genre painting are among this month’s top acquisitions

7 Dec 2018
Photograph of Robert Morris; date and photographer unknown.

A tribute to Robert Morris (1931–2018)

The artist is remembered as a pioneer of Minimalism, but his legacy as an experimental performer is equally powerful

5 Dec 2018
Untitled (Igbo Landing) (group of figures from series; 2018), Gerald Chukwuma. Gallery 1957, Accra

‘Art X Lagos is more like an arts festival than your average art fair’

The liveliness of the international art fair shows that the Nigerian arts scene is going from strength to strength

29 Nov 2018
The Cast Courts at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, photographed in the late 19th century.

‘Shouldn’t David be in Florence?’ – on the Cast Courts at the V&A

The museum’s gallery of historic plaster casts – newly restored – has long inspired conflicting responses

27 Nov 2018
Vessel with flame-like ornamentation, Middle Jomon period (3,000–2,000 BC), from Sasayama site, Tokamachi-shi. Tokamachi City Museum, Niigata

The precocious potters of ancient Japan

During the Jomon period the Japanese archipelago was home to one of the prehistoric world’s most innovative societies

24 Nov 2018
Kreuzwegstation, Hermann Nitsch

Acquisitions of the month: October 2018

Major Native American and contemporary Austrian art collections are among this month’s top museum acquisitions

9 Nov 2018
The Replica scanner developed by Factum Arte, currently digitising the photographic library of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice. Photo: Matteo De Fina; courtesy Fondazione Giorgio Cini

How high-resolution photography is changing the way we look at art

Advances in digital imaging are revolutionising the study of art history

6 Nov 2018
The Scullery Maid (detail; c. 1738), Jean-Siméon Chardin. Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow

Pots, pans and pondering in Chardin’s domestic scenes

The 18th-century painter’s depictions of servants paused at work raise questions about the nature of attention

2 Nov 2018
Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie Des Grauens (still; 1922), dir. F. W. Murnau.

Seven Halloween horror films for art historians

From Nosferatu to the Scream franchise – Apollo’s editors select some arty horror movies

30 Oct 2018
Peasant Dance, Pieter Bruegel

The sophisticated side of Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Bruegel may have painted many peasants, but he was one of the most complex – and urbane – artists of his day

27 Oct 2018
Anni Albers photographed at her weaving studio at Black Mountain College in 1937 by Helen M. Post, Photo: courtesy the Western Regional Archives, State Archives of North Carolina

Anni Albers weaves her magic at Tate Modern

A major exhibition devoted to the artist restores her – and the craft of weaving – to the heart of the modern movement

20 Oct 2018
Aerial view of the Pavilions and Michael Heizer’s Compression Line (1968/2016).

A game-changing expansion for the Glenstone Museum

The reopened museum in Maryland raises the bar for what we can expect from private collections

16 Oct 2018
Bolton Mills (1938), Julian Trevelyan.

How Julian Trevelyan made an art of everyday life

The British artist was a key figure in the social research movement known as Mass Observation

15 Oct 2018
Young Girl with a Vase (detail; 1889), Berthe Morisot. Private collection.

Berthe Morisot comes into her own

A landmark exhibition puts the painter back where she belongs – at the heart of the Impressionist movement

6 Oct 2018

Acquisitions of the month: August/September 2018

A Cubist collage and a portrait of Dylan Thomas are among the top works acquired by public collections recently

3 Oct 2018
Bible Keghi (1586), copied and illuminated by Hakob of Julfa (Hakob Jughayets‘i). Private collection.

What the art of Armenia can tell us about a place and its people

The Met’s exhibition helps us understand a region that has always been hard to define, but there are many other stories to be told

29 Sep 2018
Geta Brătescu in 2012.

The utopian visions of Geta Brătescu

An exhibition in Berlin has turned into a fitting tribute to the late artist and her inspiring attitude towards the world

28 Sep 2018
MoCAB, Belgrade.

The museums of Belgrade are well worth a visit – now that they’ve finally reopened

After years of closure, the National Museum in Belgrade and MoCAB are both open again

24 Sep 2018
Portrait of Horace Walpole, Joshue Reynolds

The treasures of Horace Walpole come home to Strawberry Hill

Much of Walpole’s extensive collection is about to return to its original neo-gothic surroundings

24 Sep 2018
Drawings by W.S. Graham over the pages of Artificial Limbs: For Use After Amputation and Congenital Deficiencies by F.G. Ernst (1923).

‘No story of painting in St Ives is complete without W.S. Graham’

An exhibition on the art of the Scottish poet reveals the impact that his friendship with the St Ives artists had on his own work

20 Sep 2018

How the V&A Dundee is rewriting the history of Scotland

The country’s first design museum is taking a cosmopolitan approach to presenting the national story

14 Sep 2018
Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, main building at Ausstellungsstrasse, 2017.

The Design Museum Zurich gets a stylish makeover

The refurbished museum is filled with fascinating objects from New Wave typography to a Swiss railway clock

12 Sep 2018