One of the more interesting art history books published in 2016 was Modern Art and the Life of a Culture: The Religious Impulses of Modernism by American academics Jonathan A. Anderson and William A. Dyrness. This book is of particular interest because it explores the...
London has three of the most innovative artist-designed Christmas Trees on display this year. The Tate, which has the most substantial track record in commissioning such trees, is reprising an earlier triumph. Shirazeh Houshiary’s Christmas Tree 2016 reimagines her...
We face the world in which it appears ever more likely that a Clash of Civilisations will be played out on the world stage, potentially with weapons of mass destruction, as the axis of the world appears to have shifted significantly in this year of political shocks....
Although to some, such as Anselm Franke [i], ‘Faith is incompatible with art’ and even ‘destroys the sovereignty of art,’ the practice of a church like St Martin-in-the-Fields eloquently demonstrates that that need not be so. By contrast with Franke’s view,...
Caravaggio - “What a man! What a painter, but what a man and what a believer.” Those are the words of François Bousquet, Rector of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, the church which, in the stunning Contarelli Chapel, houses the magnificent paintings which formed...
1989 was 'Museums Year' in the United Kingdom, a celebration of our cultural institutions which inspired Lubaina Himid to make a body of work that was displayed at Chisenhale Gallery in London in the summer of that year. Her installation, 'The Ballad of the Wing',...
In this month's diary, I'm mainly reconnecting with artists, collections, movements and prizes I've featured previously in my writing. Mark Dean and I worked together when I was priest-in-charge at St Stephen Walbrook. We held an all-night Easter vigil as part of a...
The Vanity of Small Differences is an exhibition of six huge tapestries by Grayson Perry, which has recently opened to the public at Salisbury Cathedral. The tapestries have toured extensively over the last few years, but this is the first time they have been seen in...
The first major exhibition of Glyn Philpot R.A. (1884-1937) in almost 40 years is currently at Pallant House Gallery, while Tate Britain has the first major retrospective of Walter Sickert at Tate in over 60 years. The differences and similarities between these two...