Just looking: Bellini and the East at the National Gallery

Last December I tried to write a review of the Royal Academy’s Turks exhibition. I didn’t succeed.
At the time I blamed this on the fact that Turks was, in some ways, such a richly annoying experience. On the day I visited, the rooms were so tightly packed with jostling pre-Christmas hordes, locked in all-absorbing battles [...]

Jacob van Ruisdael: Master of Landscape at the Royal Academy

‘Landscape’ is an English misspelling of the Dutch landschap, a fact which goes some way towards suggesting how significant Dutch painting has been to a particularly English tradition of depicting nature — even, perhaps, to a certain way of seeing the world around us. And when it came to influencing English taste, especially during the [...]

Over there: Americans in Paris 1860-1900 at the National Gallery

[This article first appeared on the website of the Social Affairs Unit.]
Three centuries on, the passionate affair between the United States of America and France shows no signs of cooling. As is usually the case with affairs, this one has to no small degree proved an exercise in self-definition. Because for Americans, at any rate, [...]

The Welfare Show at the Serpentine Gallery

Too Much Like Hard Work
Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset : The Welfare Show at the Serpentine Gallery
[The following article first appeared on the website of the Social Affairs Unit.]
Whatever its defects, The Welfare Show at the Serpentine Gallery is not short on grand ambition. Here’s the sort of scope the organisers promise us:
What is the [...]

Dan Flavin at the Hayward Gallery

This article first appeared on the website of the Social Affairs Unit.
Strange to say, on the day after I’d been round the major Dan Flavin retrospective currently showing at the Hayward Gallery, I found myself in a DIY shop, staring at a display of fluorescent lighting.
For most of us, these days, fluorescent lighting is sufficiently [...]

Henry Rousseau: Jungles in Paris at Tate Modern

A Preference for the Primitive
Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris at Tate Modern
The following article first appeared on the website of the Social Affairs Unit.
“Loony! He’s a loony! Don’t you think he’s a loony?’
The oldish woman who said this to me at the press view of Jungles in Paris, the current Henri Rousseau exhibition at [...]

Self Portrait: Renaissance to Contemporary at the National Portrait Gallery

[The following article first appeared on the website of the Social Affairs Unit.]
Self portraits are, at best, paradoxical things. As I was walking through the National Portrait Gallery the other day, looking for the entrance to the new exhibition there, Self Portrait: Renaissance to Contemporary, I was stopped in my tracks by a massive painting [...]

Rachael Whiteread’s Embankment at Tate Modern

Box-Fresh Minimalism
The Unilever Series at Tate Modern: Rachel Whiteread’s Embankment
[This article first appeared on the website of the Social Affairs Unit.]
No one who keeps an eye on the British contemporary art scene will need a much of an introduction to Rachel Whiteread, the 42-year old artist whose massive installation, Embankment, currently occupies the east [...]

Babies by the book: a personal journey through the literature of parenting

This article first appeared on 31 October 2005 on the website of the Social Affairs Unit
As with most things in life that ought by rights to come naturally, yet somehow don’t — radiant health, sustaining relationships, happiness, the speedy creation of sophisticated yet effortless-looking dinners for eight and so forth — there are lots of [...]

The BP British Art Displays 1500-2006 at Tate Britain

[The following article first appeared on the website of the Social Affairs Unit.]
There are plenty of British institutions which, having developed out of some unrepeatable melange of historical contingency, accident and the arbitrary whims of those long dead, and having acquired over the intervening years the inimitable patina of fond familiarity, are now, in their [...]