Artworks that opened up new ways of experiencing the world
Sometimes a painting or a sculpture breaks through your conscious mind and leaves an impression that lasts for years, perhaps even a lifetime. I’ve chosen five paintings that had that effect on me and ultimately changed the way I look at art. …
“Impression, Sunrise” by Monet (1872)
When, in 1874, Claude Monet first exhibited his painting Impression, Sunrise, the initial response was hostile. Critics thought the work was technically limited, more like a childish daubing than a mature oil painting.
The most notorious review of the exhibition was written by a journalist (and artist) named Louis Leroy…
When artist’s paint themselves, they do so much more
Self-portraiture can be one of the most complicated and revealing forms of art. For when an artist paints themselves, they are always asserting something more. An aspect of the artist’s self-identity is put on show, sometimes consciously expressed and sometimes there to be read between the lines.
Here I look…
Will algorithms ever become artists?
How do we look at art? What are our expectations around it?
Perhaps we think that a work of art was made to express a set of emotions or as a subjective response to a situation?
If so, are you willing to look at a painting made by a computer…
Artistic iconography of time and mortality
Death has an unappealing reputation. It must come to us all, levelling out the discrepancies of status and wealth that life has opened up.
Rich or poor, high or low, time passes for everyone and always runs out in the end.
Artworks about death tend to take one of two…
A perfectly ambiguous portrait by the Dutch master
See how she turns and glances over her shoulder.
On her head she is wearing a blue and yellow turban. It covers her whole head, replacing her hair with a shimmering costume. …
The incredible productivity of Paul Klee’s later years
By the time he died, in 1940 at the age of 60, Paul Klee was one of the most famous artists of his generation. He had worked at the Bauhaus and could count such luminaries as Wassily Kandinsky and Walter Gropius as his colleagues and friends.
Despite his eventual accomplishments…
The dappled light at an afternoon party
I have vivid memories of first seeing this painting in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. I was in my late teens and visiting Paris for the first time. …
Early photography at its best
The work of early photographers constitute some of the most arresting and alluring images of all photography.
Here I take a brief survey of five pioneering photographers working around the early part of the 20th century. I hope you enjoy their work as much as I do.
László Moholy-Nagy
Hungarian-born László Moholy-Nagy…
The creative power of Weimar Germany
Germany of the 1920s was an enormously creative and liberalised time, no more so than in its capital, Berlin. It was a city of bright lights and bustling streets, of decadent pleasure-spots and fervent nightlife.
During this time, artists adopted new forms of painting and performance art. Nightclubs transformed into…
