Art
Seeing Beyond Basquiat's Market Value
With Basquiat’s work transformed into an overhyped commodity, it can seem difficult to assess it for ourselves.
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
One Color But Not One Dimensional
The curators of Monochrome: Painting in Black and White adopt an inventive approach by selecting examples that take the viewer through an utterly absorbing display in which there are almost as many uses for grayscale as there are exhibits.
Art
Dalí and Duchamp’s Lasting Friendship, and the Art It Might’ve Inspired
For the first time, an exhibition explores these artists' friendship and the visual parallels within their distinct work.
Art
Hokusai’s “Great Wave” Was Only a Drop in the Bucket
Already fully accomplished by his fifties in a range of styles, from his sixties Katsushika Hokusai’s paintings and prints begin to accelerate in ambition and sophistication, leaping between styles and subjects.
Art
Seeing Beyond Alberto Giacometti’s Bronzes
Tate Modern's retrospective of the Swiss sculptor, which gathers some 250 pieces, highlights his multi-pronged process and sustained work in plaster, wood, terracotta, oil paint, and more.
Art
Chronicling the Rivalry and Camaraderie of Michelangelo and Sebastiano
The exhibition methodically and academically does what it says on the tin: offer compelling instances of collaboration and reveal the twists and turns of a 25-year friendship and artistic relationship.
Art
How Michelangelo and Sebastiano’s Roman Chapel Was Recreated in London
For its current exhibition on the Renaissance artists, the National Gallery collaborated with Factum Arte to create a complex reproduction of one of their most famous collaborations.
Art
The Digital Decline of David Hockney
The epic heights he reached in the 1960s are apparently so magnificent that they have given him a free pass ever since.
Art
Tripping Through James Ensor’s Macabre Painted World with Luc Tuymans
Tuymans steps up to the bar, and this feels like a kaleidoscopic tour of Ensor’s clearly voraciously imaginative brain.
Art
A Contemporary Take on Rococo Over-Intellectualizes Its Point
Tom Ellis’s detached intellectualizing of the Wallace Collection’s contents and history unfortunately leaves the soul unstirred.
Art
Lessons from the Unfolding Old Masters Forgery Scandal
The authenticity of recently "discovered" works purported to be by Frans Hals, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Orazio Gentileschi has been called into question, and they might only be the tip of the iceberg.
Art
A Naughtier, Contemporary Take on Old Masters Debauchery
In direct response to scenes of mythical debauchery depicted in paintings by Titian and Poussin, George Shaw uses the woodland backdrop to imagine the morning after.