We are bowled over! 

We knew that theartsdesk.com had plenty of supporters out there – we’ve always had a loyal readership of arts lovers and professionals alike – but the response to our appeal to help us relaunch and reboot has been something else.

My walk through Hyde Park was an absolute joy. Spring is in the air, the weeping willow is in leaf (pictured below right: photo by S.K), the narcissi are in bloom and the sun was shining, yet the Serpentine Gallery is plunged into darkness.

American photographer Catherine Opie took her first self-portrait at the age of nine with a Kodak instamatic she’d been given for her birthday. There she stands in the garden, a little toughie flexing her biceps like a muscle man.

A brand new sign in a contemporary font (Centra No.2 I am told) signals my arrival at the wooded grounds of Goodwood Art Foundation. This contrast, between cool, clean design and the timeless but perhaps parochial charms of the English countryside makes for a fascinating morning at this recently renamed and revamped sculpture park in rural West Sussex. 

I’ll never forget watching Tracey Emin reduce an audience to tears at the Royal Festival Hall. About 25 people were expected, but some 500 turned up even though she wasn’t well known. It was 1995, four years before she was propelled into the limelight by entering My Bed into the Turner Prize. (The dishevelled bed where she’d spent four days in a state of catatonic despair after a break-up caused a furore. How could such a squalid installation be considered art?)

Rose Wylie’s paintings are a blast of fresh air. Direct, anarchic, exuberant and determinedly daft, they make a mockery of the self-importance that so often infects the art world.

Some exhibitions make you feel inspired, others perplexed. Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting at the National Portrait Gallery left me feeling battered and bruised – as if I’d been hit by a wrecking ball.

The show doesn’t start out that way. In the early 1940s, Freud spent several years perfecting his drawing technique. At first, he used a mapping pen, which produces clear, sharp lines perfect for detailed observation.

If you stand close to a picture by Georges Seurat, the experience is totally different from being a few feet away. To a certain extent this is true of any painting since, close to, any brush marks and fine details are more apparent; but with Seurat the discrepancy is not only more emphatic, it was factored into his way of working.

Turner and Constable, Rivals and Originals, Tate Britain, November 2025

Whoever thought of creating an exhibition comparing the brilliance of JMW Turner with that of John Constable deserves a medal. Even if you are familiar with the work, seeing their paintings hung side by side reveals surprising similarities as well as differences.

Whoever thought of creating an exhibition comparing the brilliance of JMW Turner with that of John Constable deserves a medal – maybe Tate Britain’s senior curator, Amy Concannon? Even if you are familiar with the work, seeing their paintings hung side by side reveals surprising similarities as well as differences.