Review

Marsden Hartley's Maine: what the Modern painter took from his home state—and what he left behind

An exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum looks at the profound role Maine played in peripatetic artist's life and work

The grandfather of Post-Modernism

Picabia at his most brilliant, perverse and energetic

Did he influence Dürer or Dürer him? On Jacopo de’ Barbari

As an artist, Jacopo de’ Barbari became almost invisible

Snapshot from a brighter moment: the 2017 Whitney Biennial reflects a pre-Trump America

Many of the works in this year’s exhibition respond to the country’s social tensions, but the pressing question about what art can do during a crisis remains unanswered

The devil is always lurking: on Hieronymous Bosch

A survey of the best books that have come out of Hieronymus Bosch’s quincentenary

When the American dream almost died: on After the Fall at the Royal Academy of Arts

The Great Depression led to range of responses by American artists, whose works are on show in London

Artist to artist: Dara Birnbaum on Marisa Merz

The video artist takes us on a tour of Merz’s Met Breuer retrospective and explains why her smaller work is best

Instrumental versus ideal art

Art for art’s sake, or for the sake of socioeconomic benefits? Two writers reach very different conclusions

Very varied, inquisitive, lively and wide-ranging

On the eve of his 100th birthday, James Ackerman shows no signs of slowing down in this collection of essays

A proposal on attribution: Jonathan Brown on Velázquez portraits at the Metropolitan

The art historian suggests that Velázquez's former slave may have painted two works in the show

A hard act to follow: on Caravaggio's followers

A group of books looks at the artists Caravaggio influenced—more or less

Cosmic collectors: how the Guggenheim family came into its art

An exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York looks at how the collection was shaped

Influential then, forgotten since, remembered again: on Nino Costa

The influential “Etruscan” painter and Risorgimento patriot deserves our recognition

Wrong in the right way: Kenneth Goldsmith on why Picabia’s false Modernism feels so true

The French avant-garde artist’s work was prescient about our era of “post-truth” politics and culture

The Howards under scrutiny

Science is the key to the story of the 16th-century aristocratic tombs in a Suffolk parish church

Magic metal

Medieval notions of bronze as a living, divine substance

A bridge to something better: on artist-run galleries in mid-century New York

A show at the Grey Gallery looks at a time when artists could afford to run their own spaces

What a vivid imagination: on Sergei Eisenstein's erotic work

A group of "sex drawings" by the Soviet filmmaker are on show in New York

What they do and how they do it: why museums matter

A new books makes a passionate argument for museums

A translator from east to west: Kenneth Baker on John McLaughlin in Los Angeles

A survey of the painter’s work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art reveals his affinities for Asian cultures

Life is changed, not ended: how the Medieval English dealt with death

Not everyone could afford their own mortuary churches or chapels

Credence and credulity: on Islamic art and the supernatural

This small book is ground-breaking, bringing to light Islamic beliefs and superstitions

Shine a light: ICA Boston examines ten years of collecting

By turns successful and unsuccessful, the show presents a retrospective of the museum

A bright spot in an otherwise darkened Egypt

Mohamed Abla's show of new works in Cairo is on amid a moment of prolonged political agony in the country

Reviewnews

Blockbuster on a manageable scale: on Richard Dorment

A farewell collection of reviews by the American-born, British art critic