The Tate’s Walter Sickert show is a foggy panorama of Victorian dirt and vice
Inspired by the Frenchman’s scenes of the ballet in Paris, Sickert repeatedly portrayed the performers and audiences in London’s music halls. Gallery of the Old Bedford (1894–5)…
An A to Z of Surrealism: not a style, but a state of mind
C is for Cairo In the mid-1930s, the Egyptian surrealist Georges Henein began using the pages of the journal he edited, Un effort, to reflect the ideas…
Art or crime? How street art took over the world
Has Banksy lost that edge? His style is now as ubiquitous and cosily British as Union Flag-stamped tea-towels. And his work commands the kind of prices that…
Rex Whistler’s ‘racist’ mural to stay in place at Tate Britain
In September 2020, members of the Tate’s ethics committee were “unequivocal in their view that the imagery of the work is offensive”, and that the offensiveness of…
Robot artists, group-think and a £52m JPEG: the year the art world went mad
Of course, the art world’s decadence has long amused outsiders, and, despite the generally sombre mood generated by the pandemic, 2021, in this respect, didn’t disappoint. A…
The 100 best cultural events of 2021
What began as a difficult year for the arts – with theatres, cinemas, and concert-halls all closed due to Covid restrictions – nevertheless brought plenty to enjoy,…