Venice Biennale: slaps, drenchings and Dobermans on the prowl
16 May 2017 • Syndicate
The main show is a woolly walk through hand-wringing hippydom and flowerpot trainers. But elsewhere, the biennale bares its teeth in works of danger and daring
Tag: Adrian Searle
REVIEW: Phyllida Barlow – Venice invaded by loo rolls and brilliant buffoonery
9 May 2017 • Syndicate
British Pavilion, Venice Biennale
The 73-year-old sculptor’s most significant show yet is a crowded game of associations, where skeletal megaphones spar with concrete clods. But is there space for us to play too?
Turner prize 2017: a cosmopolitan rebuff to Brexit provincialism
4 May 2017 • Syndicate
Amid all the rule changes, Lubaina Himid is surely the favourite to win British art’s most important prize this year
REVIEW: Picasso: Minotaurs and Matadors – sex and death in the bullring
29 April 2017 • Syndicate
Gagosian, London
The macho man of Spanish painting was obsessed with bulls. For him they were symbols of mythic power, but also impotence and mortality
Queer British Art 1861-1967 review – strange, sexy, heartwrenching
4 April 2017 • Syndicate
From Man Ray’s portrait of Virginia Woolf to Orton’s library book collages and Noël Coward’s dressing gown, this vital survey is bursting with fascinating stories
Frieze art fair 2016 review: Everyone’s a performer in the boozy, fruity house of fun
7 October 2016 • Syndicate
From the crocheted loo seats to the pram-cum-barbecue and roving wet bar, there are stunts and stage-props galore. Then you turn a corner and find an artwork that sticks in your head and stays there
Has Contemporary Art Sold Out To The Market?
12 July 2016 • Tabish Khan
A lively and good humoured debate, with a shock result
Georgia O’Keeffe at Tate Modern review – one long, strange trip
7 July 2016 • Syndicate
Tate Modern, London
This blockbuster retrospective seeks to show there is more to Georgia O’Keeffe than anodyne prints, signature aprons and sexual stereotypes – but her own gorgeous, awkward art compounds the cliches
Wake up and smell the Manifesta: piles of poo and a look inside Houellebecq’s head
18 June 2016 • Syndicate
The art biennial known for pushing boundaries of taste has outdone itself in Zurich, sculpting a day’s worth of excrement, medically exhibiting the French author and making a Paralympic champion wheelchair on water
Glasgow rules the waves
11 April 2016 • Mark Westall
From skateboarding clams and swimsuit performance art to QE3’s maiden voyage, Sarah McCrory’s Glasgow International 2016 festival programme is awash with freewheeling energy, but some big shows sink under their own weight
Michael Craig-Martin review – a malevolent graveyard of tech
26 November 2015 • Mark Westall
Serpentine gallery, London
Whether he’s painting tape cassettes, Xbox controllers or iPhones, Craig-Martin’s odd, lurid objects don’t just show us the days we’ve lost – they glower back at us
Anthony Caro in Yorkshire review – sculpture that can take your breath away
20 July 2015 • Mark Westall
His monumental forms make you dance, his table-top works are in drag – and his shapes are so simple you can’t believe he dared. As a vast two-site retrospective proves, Caro’s best work remains audacious, alluring and disarming
Nuts, bolts and art: the man who turned a hardware store into hard cash
29 April 2015 • Mark Westall
Theaster Gates wants to make the world a better place, so he transforms everyday objects – from old basketball courts to the entire contents of the shop he just bought – into art to raise funds for his community projects in rundown Chicago
REVIEW: Bruce Nauman – an electrifying carousel of ideas
20 March 2015 • Mark Westall
The artist’s new Paris show combines works that play on adult fears with childlike instructions and repetitive movement – a compelling lesson for young and old alike
REVIEW: Leon Golub: Bite your Tongue – so terrific, the paintings roar off the walls
4 March 2015 • Mark Westall
Serpentine gallery, London
Late Chicago-born artist has never had the retrospective he deserves in US – perhaps galleries are afraid, for his work is as shocking as it is powerful
Me me meme: artists’ selfies paint the full spectrum of self-obsession
28 January 2015 • Mark Westall
Turner Contemporary, Margate
From a Van Dyck self-portrait to Ian Breakwell’s heartbreaking valediction as he lay dying of cancer, this absorbing show sorts the vain from the glorious
Why Belgium’s plagiarism verdict on Luc Tuymans is beyond parody
23 January 2015 • Mark Westall
One of Europe’s most influential painters has been found guilty of plagiarism. Even if you don’t buy that Luc Tuymans’ painting of a newspaper photo was parodic, it is still a part of his career-long interrogation of all images
Despite artworld hype Eddie Peake still has a way to climb
9 May 2013 • Mark Westall
It might have cartoon giraffes and marble staffies, but his show at Southend’s Focal Point Gallery is much duller than his experiments with naked five-a-side
Deutsche Börse Photography prize show: mashups and moon walkers
18 April 2013 • Mark Westall
The Deutsche Börse Photography prize show draws on Google, space travel and Bertolt Brecht – but one artist stands head and shoulders above the rest
Rachel Whiteread still casts a spell
12 April 2013 • Mark Westall
With her new London exhibition featuring casts of the common garden shed, the artworld veteran makes us slow down our thoughts and attend to the world’s smallest details
Fabrice Hyber: but is it fruit?
27 March 2013 • Mark Westall
Fabrice Hyber has filled the Baltic with vegetable men, mini-weather systems and a salt mountain. Is he just trifling with us?
Roy Lichtenstein: too cool for school?
18 February 2013 • Mark Westall
Roy Lichtenstein deflated the macho mystique of American art and produced some of the most recognisable work on the planet. But does he go any deeper than surface gloss? Adrian Searle joins the dots at a new Tate Modern retrospective
Artist Bruce Nauman’s carnage-littered carousel will blow your mind
31 January 2013 • Mark Westall
Brutal yet beautiful, a new exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in London gives Nauman’s artworks a psychoanalytic twist
How the Hayward Gallery’s Light Show monkeys with your eyeballs
30 January 2013 • Mark Westall
This dazzling, frazzling light show takes visitors to the moon – and beyond. It’s a bit like being punched in the face, warns Adrian Searle