Royal Academy’s Spain and the Hispanic World – an expert in Spanish art reviews the exhibition
The Royal Academy’s first big show of 2023 is unusual. As well as presenting an impressive collection from Spain and the Hispanic world (around 150 items covering over 4,000 years, including paintings, sculptures, maps, books and manuscripts), it also tells…
The art of balding: a brief history of hairless men
Balding is really common, affecting more than 50% of men. It’s also physically inconsequential (bald men live just as long as haired men). So why, in his memoir Spare, does Prince Harry refer to his brother’s baldness as “alarming”? An…
Why David Hockney’s Bigger and Closer is an important step forward for immersive art shows
Artist David Hockney has ridden many technological waves. While his mark-making has remained resolutely painterly, he has challenged the practice of painting. He was an early adopter of computer-assisted drawing, using the iPad and iPhone. His latest work, Bigger and…
My art uses plastic recovered from beaches around the world to understand how our consumer society is transforming the ocean
I am obsessed with plastic objects. I harvest them from the ocean for the stories they hold and to mitigate their ability to harm. Each object has the potential to be a message from the sea – a poem, a…
Basquiat: A multidisciplinary artist who denounced violence against African Americans
The exhibition Seeing Loud: Basquiat and Music, currently running at the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, demonstrates that the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, which is usually associated with painting, also calls upon other media, including music — the main theme…
ChatGPT, DALL-E 2 and the collapse of the creative process
In 2022, OpenAI – one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence research laboratories – released the text generator ChatGPT and the image generator DALL-E 2. While both programs represent monumental leaps in natural language processing and image generation, they’ve also…
White Noise review – director Noah Baumbach skilfully captures Don Delillo’s ‘unadaptable’ novel
Never one to downplay the power of film, Stanley Kubrick once said that “almost every novel could be successfully adapted”. He carried this confidence into his own filmmaking, working not from original screenplays, but from adaptations of novels as different…
How to set up a kids’ art studio at home (and learn to love the mess)
Many parents want to encourage their children to be creative. This is not just about training the next Archibald Prize winner. Young people develop important emotional and cognitive skills when they make art. But at the same time, it can…
Why Wellcome closed its Medicine Man exhibition – and others should follow suit
In November the Wellcome Collection closed their Medicine Man gallery. In a Twitter thread, they acknowledged that “the display still perpetuates a version of medical history that is based on racist, sexist and ableist theories and language.” Medicine Man told…
Albanian migration has spurred a generation of artists to reflect on issues of identity and belonging
There’s been a great deal of xenophobia directed at Albanian immigrants to the UK recently. It’s easy to argue that Albanians are being scapegoated for the current crisis in Britain’s migration system. But prejudice against Albanians across Europe is not…
