Art is never made in a vacuum. It carries traces of language, place, family, migration, belief, memory, politics, craft and the body. Even when an artwork looks abstract, it can st
Linocut art has a way of looking both historic and current at the same time. A good lino print can feel rooted in early twentieth century modernism, poster design, craft tradition
René Magritte is one of those rare artists whose images remain instantly recognisable even to people who do not usually follow art history. A man in a bowler hat with his face hid
Landscape art used to be described as a way of looking at the world. Now it is often a way of reading what is happening to it. That shift is one of the most important changes in co
Something has changed in the way people look at images. We are surrounded by them more completely than ever, and many of them now arrive with a new kind of smoothness. They can be
If you have ever stood in a gallery looking at a plain cube, a row of repeated forms, a short sentence on a wall, or an ordinary object placed with unusual seriousness, you may hav
Shadows are one of the quietest forces in art, but they do some of the heaviest work. They build atmosphere, shape space, suggest time, direct attention and transform ordinary scen
Andy Warhol remains one of the few artists whose work is recognised even by people who do not usually follow art history. A stack of soup cans, a repeated image of Marilyn Monroe,
If surreal art feels unusually familiar at the moment, that is probably because daily life already contains many of the conditions surrealist artists once tried to visualise. We li
