Art Review
Anish Kapoor Is a One-Trick Illusionist
What does the British artist have to offer beyond monumental scale and costly optical illusions?
Olivia McEwan
Olivia McEwan is a trained art historian and freelance writer focusing on the London art world. She is also a practising artist, lending a keen eye and understanding of painterly technique which informs her criticisms of historical and emerging arts.
Art Review
James McNeill Whistler’s Music for the Eyes
A long-awaited Whistler retrospective at Tate Britain makes the case that every brushstroke, color, and omission serves the pursuit of harmony.
Art Review
You Can Love David Hockney and Still Hate His iPad Paintings
No amount of curatorial artspeak counters the sense that the late artist’s massive digital painting lacks the inventive mark-making and use of color that characterized his life’s work.
Obituary
Artist Valie Export, Who Saw Right Through the Male Gaze, Dies at 85
Her performances and filmed media works reclaimed the female body through guerrilla modes of delivery that bypassed institutional restrictions.
Art Review
Michaelina Wautier Finally Known by Her Name
For centuries, her masterpieces were misattributed to male painters. A new exhibition at London's Royal Academy corrects the record.
Art Review
Tracey Emin’s Cult of the Self
The YBA artist spearheaded contemporary art's trend of coupling extreme self-introspection with relentless self-promotion.
Art Review
Seurat and the Sea Is Postcard Perfect
Painted during summer trips to the Channel coast, Seurat intended his seascapes to “cleanse one’s eyes of the days spent in the studio.
Book Review
Michelangelo and Titian’s Rivalry That May Never Have Been
William E. Wallace openly uses what he calls “informed imagination” to explore the relationship between the two masters in his new study.
Art Review
John Singer Sargent’s Essence in a Brushstroke
Though it offers little in the way of Sargent’s artistic engagement with the city he called home for a decade, “Dazzling Paris” is a reminder of his uncommonly skillful brushwork.
Art Review
Joseph Wright of Derby’s Candlelit World
Using an extreme form of chiaroscuro, Wright portrays the dramatic moment of intellectual or moral revelation in his paintings of scientific subjects.
Art Review
Jacques-Louis David Knew That Style Is Political
Where art history is a subjective observer, he was on an active quest for the representational form for the “truth.”
Art Review
The Anti-Caravaggio of the Baroque Era
Georges de La Tour incorporated chiaroscuro into austere genre compositions, lending them a uniquely intimate and spiritual quality.