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“I work” the great Catalan painter Joan Miró once said, “Like a gardener, or a vine grower. Things come slowly. At a certain point you have to cut”. As the splendid exhibition of his work at Tate Modern, “The Ladder of Escape” (until Sept 11) demonstrates, Miro’s work did indeed develop organically and steadily, and he pruned away a great deal of excess over the years. At one point he even held a bonfire. >> Continue reading

In Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s great novel The Leopard, Tancredi famously informs his uncle that, “In order for everything to stay the same, everything must change”. Much the same applies to the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition (until August 15). Now in its 243rd year, this is the world’s longest-running exhibition, the Mousetrap of the art world. >> Continue reading

It was a tale worthy of Wilkie Collins or Anthony Trollope. The cast of characters included penny-pinching schoolmasters, waspish clergymen and a famous, thin-skinned architect – plus six elderly ladies whose rights somehow had to be preserved throughout and three cadavers in sarcophagi. At the centre of the plot was a collection of masterpieces by great painters, intended for an Eastern European monarch, and an ancient school on the outskirts of London.

It is now two hundred years since the foundation of Dulwich Pi >> Continue reading

Art has long had an affinity with stardom. It goes back many years before Andy Warhol started making silk-screen pictures of Marilyn Monroe, as is demonstrated by a delightful small exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery: Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril: Beyond the Moulin Rouge (until September 18). >> Continue reading