It may seem paradoxical, but it is the case that some of the most powerfully life-affirming and enriching art and literature is not work that appears to be “positive”, “optimistic”, “hopeful” and “encouraging”, or that shows how the world could… Continue Reading
On 6 October 1960, the film Spartacus opened in New York City’s DeMille Theatre.1Time Magazine celebrated “a new kind of Hollywood movie: a superspectacle with spiritual vitality and moral force”.2 Long-standing New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther was less… Continue Reading
Last summer the British Museum devoted a major retrospective to the printmaker and painter Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). He is perhaps Japan’s most influential and internationally renowned artist, viewed by some as the father of modernism.1 These days most of us… Continue Reading
A review of Revolution: Russian Art 1917–1932 Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, London, 11 February-17 April 2017 Little is more contested in art history than works from revolutionary Russia. The latest show from the Royal Academy (RA) and most of… Continue Reading
Art has often judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past has suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. John Berger, 1985.1 In 1969 Kenneth Clark presented a 13-part television series… Continue Reading
Michelangelo stands at the very summit of human fame, or celebrity as we now call it. His position is secure among that very small band of individuals—Aristotle, Shakespeare, Goethe, Mozart, da Vinci and so on—who seem to tower over history,… Continue Reading