Walk Through British Art – review
19 May 2013 • Mark Westall
Tate Britain’s ambitious rehang has been widely hailed as a triumph, but our critic finds the new display congested and frustrating
Tag: The Observer
Gary Hume: ‘I couldn’t hold down a job. That’s why I became an artist’
19 May 2013 • Mark Westall
A fully paid-up member of the rowdy YBA generation in the 90s, the artist made his name with his household gloss-painted life-size door paintings. On the eve of a solo show at Tate Britain, he talks about his agent Jay Jopling, his farm in upstate New York – and why he now confines his excesses to the studio
Derry gets its cultural kicks and a new start from local heroes
19 May 2013 • Mark Westall
All communities are reaping the benefit in the 2013 UK city of culture, as visitors pour in and a new generation of talent flourishes, with a little help from old hitmakers
Fiona Rae; New Order: British Art Today – review
28 April 2013 • Mark Westall
Towner Gallery, Eastbourne; Saatchi Gallery, London
Mystery of missing art of Pauline Boty
28 April 2013 • Mark Westall
Boty was a central figure in Swinging London in the 1960s. As a new show aims to restore her forgotten reputation, the hunt for her lost paintings goes on
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: The Happiest Man; Two Mountains – review
9 April 2013 • Mark Westall
Ambika P3; Sprovieri Gallery, London
Hanging Man: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei, by Barnaby Martin – review
6 April 2013 • Mark Westall
This account, based on illicit interviews, reveals an artist weakened by incarceration, but a figurehead still for China’s vital cultural movement
The 10 best … photographic self-portraits
24 March 2013 • Mark Westall
From Andy Warhol in drag and Giles Duley’s ‘broken statue’, to John Coplans’s back and Gillian Wearing as her father
It’s a man’s world… but why is sexism ingrained in the arts?
24 March 2013 • Mark Westall
Once again, the top jobs at two major British cultural institutions, the BBC and the Royal Opera House, have gone to male appointees
David Bowie heads for No 1 and breaks V&A records
17 March 2013 • Mark Westall
The new album and his museum exhibition are both hits – and tour rumours are growing
Olivia Bee: ‘People don’t take me seriously – until they see me work’
24 February 2013 • Mark Westall
Brooklyn-based photography prodigy Olivia Bee is only 18 and has already shot advertising campaigns for the likes of Nike, Converse and Hermès – and her ambition doesn’t end there
Smarties with Andy Warhol
17 February 2013 • Mark Westall
How best to get the artist’s attention? Offer him some chocolate
Claerwen James: The art of being Clive James’s daughter
9 February 2013 • Mark Westall
Claerwen James’s new show marks her as a cultural force in her own right
Eliot Porter: In the Realm of Nature by Paul Martineau – review
3 February 2013 • Mark Westall
The late photographer Eliot Porter has left a stunning record of the shrinking American wilderness
Extraordinary Stories About Ordinary Things – review
3 February 2013 • Mark Westall
An exhibition of objects amassed by the Design Museum over 24 years shows it has yet to shake off a bad postwar hangover. Perhaps a trip to Milan is in order…
DIY billionaire turns dairy into gallery to rival Charles Saatchi’s
27 January 2013 • Mark Westall
Frank Cohen pledges to show ‘art for everyone’ in Bloomsbury venture
Roy Strong attacks galleries for safe choice of ‘endless Renoir’ and Bowie
20 January 2013 • Mark Westall
Former head of V&A says choice of new exhibitions is dictated by ‘box office and box ticking’
Gerard Byrne: A state of neutral pleasure – review
20 January 2013 • Mark Westall
Whitechapel Gallery, London