The Escape Ladder 1940 – from the Constellations series Joan Miró has long been presented as Surrealism’s child: its painter of innocence, of simplicity, joy and whimsical charm. Perhaps that is why this Tate show is Britain’s first large-scale exhibition of his work in half a century: in the art-world, pain equals importance, and Miró [...]

Pablo Picasso’s Nude Green Leaves, and Bust sold for 106,482,500 USD (approximately 82,000,000 euros) to an unidentified telephone bidder, setting a new world record for any work of art sold at auction in New York City, New York, USA, 04 May 2010 Nude, Green Leaves and Bust – the Picasso painting that last year became [...]

French painter Paul Gauguin gets his first major exhibition in Britain for over 50 years this week, and early reviews suggest it was worth the wait. A woman walks by French artist Paul Gauguin’s artwork ‘Aha oe Feii? (What! Are You Jealous?)’, at the Gauguin: Maker of Myth exhibition, at the Tate Modern, in London. [...]

JMW Turner, Sun Setting over a Lake circa 1840 It will be interesting to see whether Tate Britain’s new director, Penelope Curtis, can do anything about the curse of the Clore Gallery. This museum-within-a-museum housing Turner’s bequest to the nation of 300 oil paintings and more than 20,000 works on paper opened in 1987 to [...]

A member of the public looks at The Charnel House as part of the Picasso: Peace And Freedom exhibition. Lenin used the term “useful idiots” to describe Western liberals who turned a blind eye to the true nature of totalitarianism – and few were more idiotic or more useful to the Soviet cause than Pablo [...]

Ai Weiwei, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995). Photograph: Ai Weiwei The cavernous space of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall has been dwarfed by a massive spider, cleaved by a 167-metre crack and baked by an artificial sun. Now, the gallery has announced, the space is to be filled by its most politically adventurous commission yet.

The “five-to-10 good years” phenomenon, first articulated by former Tate director Alan Bowness, suggests that virtually all artists do their best work in a relatively short period, whether it was the 10 years Delacroix had between 1824 and 1834, Courbet’s six (1849 -1855) or Munch’s three (1892-95). After a major artist makes his breakthrough, he [...]