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Martin Gayford

With Leonardo, improbable speculations are never-ending, The Da Vinci Code enthusiasts see the figure of St John (on the right in this detail of ‘The Last Supper’) as Mary Magdalene, hiding in plain sight

The codes and codswallop surrounding Leonardo da Vinci

Martin Gayford 14 April 2018 9:00 am

Leonardo da Vinci has suffered more than most artists from fake history and misinterpretation. But it doesn’t make him any less fascinating, says Martin Gayford

The Church at Vétheuil, 1878

The public are quite right to love Monet

Martin Gayford 14 April 2018 9:00 am

Think of the work of Claude Monet and water lilies come to mind, so do reflections in rippling rivers, and…

Once seen as the coming force in British painting, John Craxton deserves another look

Martin Gayford 7 April 2018 9:00 am

In late April 1992, I was in Crete, interviewing the painter John Craxton. It was the week that Francis Bacon…

‘Majesty’, 2006, by Tacita Dean

Intelligent, poetic and profound: Tacita Dean at the National and National Portrait galleries

Martin Gayford 24 March 2018 9:00 am

Andy Warhol would probably have been surprised to learn that his 1964 film ‘Empire’ had given rise to an entire…

‘The Appearance’, 2018, by Eric Fischl

Surreal jokes and juicy strokes: Martin Gayford on the power of paint

Martin Gayford 17 March 2018 9:00 am

René Magritte was fond of jokes. There are several in René Magritte (Or: The Rule of Metaphor), a small but…

‘Melanie and Me Swimming’, 1978–9, by Michael Andrews

Magnificent paintings – oddly curated: All Too Human reviewed

Martin Gayford 10 March 2018 9:00 am

In the mid-1940s, Frank Auerbach remarked, the arbiters of taste had decided what was going to happen in British art:…

Domestic harmony: Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, ‘a work of art in itself’

Lemons and pebbles are as important to Kettle’s Yard as the art

Martin Gayford 10 February 2018 9:00 am

When I first visited Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, I was shown around by Jim Ede, its founder and creator. This wasn’t…

‘Amazon’, 2016, by Andreas Gursky

Gursky’s subject is humanity: prosaic, mundane, extremely messy

Martin Gayford 3 February 2018 9:00 am

Walking around the Andreas Gursky exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, I struggled to recall what these huge photographs reminded me…

‘Anne Cresacre’, c.1527, by Hans Holbein the Younger

A sumptuous feast of an exhibition: Charles I at the Royal Academy reviewed

Martin Gayford 27 January 2018 9:00 am

Martin Gayford is overwhelmed by the sheer concentration of visual splendour amassed by Charles I

‘Apollo and Daphne’, early 1620s, by Bernini

Turning marble into cushions and stone into flesh: the magic of Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Martin Gayford 13 January 2018 9:00 am

Seventeenth-century Roman art at its fullblown, operatic peak often proves too rich for puritanical northern tastes. And no artist was…

There’s something about Mary: ‘Madonna of the Rosary’, 1539, by Lorenzo Lotto

The time has come for one of the most fascinating and idiosyncratic Renaissance artists

Martin Gayford 16 December 2017 9:00 am

Lorenzo Lotto was overlooked by 16th-century Venice, but now, says Martin Gayford, his time has come

‘Beatrice Hastings’, 1915, by Amedeo Modigliani

After you’ve seen a few, you start to think, ‘Oh no, not another!’: Modigliani at Tate reviewed

Martin Gayford 2 December 2017 9:00 am

‘It’s odd,’ Picasso once mused, ‘but you never see Modigliani drunk anywhere but at the corners of the boulevard Montmartre…

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, photographed by Annie Leibovitz (From Annie Leibovitz: Portraits 2005–2016)

Sex and the city: the best art books of the year

Martin Gayford 25 November 2017 9:00 am

‘I should like,’ Edgar Degas once remarked, ‘to be famous and unknown.’ On the whole, he managed to achieve this.…

‘Self-Portrait’, 1880–1, by Paul Cézanne

The most impressive array of work to be seen in London in years: Cézanne’s Portraits reviewed

Martin Gayford 11 November 2017 9:00 am

The critic and painter Adrian Stokes once remarked on how fortunate Cézanne had been to be bald, ‘considering the wonderful…

The advantages of turning down the colour knob: Monochrome reviewed

Martin Gayford 4 November 2017 9:00 am

Leonardo da Vinci thought sculpting a messy business. The sculptor, he pointed out, has to bang away with a hammer,…

‘The First Days of Spring’, 1929, by Salvador Dalí

As a visual experience it is less than overwhelming: Dalí/Duchamp reviewed

Martin Gayford 21 October 2017 9:00 am

During a panel discussion in 1949, Frank Lloyd Wright made an undiplomatic comment about Marcel Duchamp’s celebrated picture of 1912,…

‘The Japanese’ by Hans Makart, 1870–75

How do artists vanish?

Martin Gayford 23 September 2017 9:00 am

Here’s an intriguing thought experiment: could Damien Hirst disappear? By that I mean not the 52-year-old artist himself — that…

‘Untitled (Clear Torso)’, 1993, by Rachel Whiteread

At her best, Rachel Whiteread is almost edibly attractive – but less is more

Martin Gayford 16 September 2017 9:00 am

Rachel Whiteread is an indefatigable explorer of internal space. By turning humble items such as hot-water bottles and sinks inside…

Still life: ‘A Kiss’, 1891, by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

The Victorian painter who shaped cinema

Martin Gayford 9 September 2017 9:00 am

On 15 September 1888 Vincent van Gogh was intrigued to read an account of an up-to-date artist’s house in the…

Moving pictures: ‘Achaean’, 1981, by Bridget Riley

Snap, crackle and op: no one can beat Bridget Riley

Martin Gayford 2 September 2017 9:00 am

Stand in front of ‘Fall’, a painting by Bridget Riley from 1963, and the world begins to quiver and dissolve.…

‘Mum On The Couch’, 2017, by Gary Hume

‘The abstract paintings all went in the bin’: Gary Hume interviewed

Martin Gayford 26 August 2017 9:00 am

There is more to the artist Gary Hume than glossy surfaces, as Martin Gayford finds out when he meets him

Matisse’s ‘Still Life with Shell’ (1940) with his beloved chocolate pot, top left

The importance of odds and ends in the work of Matisse

Martin Gayford 5 August 2017 9:00 am

Why did Henri Matisse not play chess? It’s a question, perhaps, that few have ever pondered. Yet the great artist…

A picture of pure energy: Watts’s ‘The Sower of Systems’, 1902

The Victorian artist who was more Jackson Pollock than Pre-Raphaelite

Martin Gayford 29 July 2017 9:00 am

On his deathbed in 1904, George Frederic Watts saw a extraordinary spectacle. He witnessed the universe coming into being: the…

‘Old Woman Wearing a Ruff and Cap’ (c. 1625–40), attributed to Jacob Jordaens

Full of visual pleasures: National Portrait Gallery's The Encounter reviewed

Martin Gayford 22 July 2017 9:00 am

Some art can be made in solitude, straight out of the artist’s head. But portraiture is a game for two.…

‘Landscape Near Kingston, Jamaica’, 1950, by John Minton

John Minton: well-known but not great enough; John Virtue: great but not well-known enough

Martin Gayford 15 July 2017 9:00 am

Wherever one looked in the arts scene of the 1940s and ’50s, one was likely to encounter the tragicomic figure…

« 1 2 3 4 5 6 … 9 »

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