Michael Prodger is Reviews Editor at the New Statesman. He is an art historian, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Buckingham, and a former literary editor.
From 500 years of Leonardo to the Anglophile Van Gogh, 2019 promises an eye-opening year in painting and sculpture.
An image of imperial hubris or an environmental allegory?
A new exhibition highlights the great difference between the two artists’ drawings: Klimt’s tend to be observations, Schiele’s are confrontations.
But as performance art it is undoubtedly his masterpiece.
The Spanish baroque painter depicted the senses – and the senses are never more alive than when in extremis.
The history of art is filled with family relationships: but perhaps the most distinguished is that between brothers-in-law Andrea Mantegna (c1430-1506) and Giovanni Bellini (c1435-1516).
When the war finally came to an end, artists on both sides had to face the problem of how to paint the peace.
Thomas Cole’s pictures revealed to his fellow citizens the majesty of their land while warning them of hubris.
His paintings are joyous and beautiful, great sheets of throbbing colour interspersed with squares, circles and ragged patches of different hues.
Jones’s burners are off, but his face shows no fear: here is a creature that would luxuriate in hellfire as if it were as pleasurable as a hot shower.
