Danish master Christian Købke painted empty skies, intimate portraits and melancholy landscapes. Jonathan Jones gets lost in a world of infinite mystery
When the Danish painter Christen Købke set out to depict the sprawling architectural mass of Frederiksborg castle, a dark genius seemed to possess him. The castle was a national …

Those who campaign against public artworks, as in Wales recently, promote a mindless, cultureless vision of Britain
Public art may be hitting the buffers, after years in which it swept all before it. An installation devised for Cardigan in Wales, by an alliance of local people and artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer – …

From a Boeing 777 to a Mini Cooper and a even a fruit bat, Brit artist and X-ray boffin Nick Veasey has captured them all

The artist says: Thanks for reading my contemporary art blog! If you are involved in the art and culture industry in any way, and would …

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After the initial vituperation hurled in the direction of Kate Mosse’s women-only Orange prize for fiction, it has now grown to be a highly anticipated part of the literary calendar. I wonder whether the Max Mara prize for women artists, now in its third edition, …

National Portrait Gallery to stage exhibition of works by Hungarian-born society portraitist whose style fell out of fashion

John Singer Sargent was reputed to have said: “Every time I paint a portrait, I lose a friend.” The same could not be said of Philip de László, his successor as the leading …

Debt woes and a sprawlingly diverse programme haven’t stopped this year’s Dubai art fair from showing some exhilarating art – just don’t expect any nudity
Much more exciting than the recent completion of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa (renamed at the last minute as a shout out to Dubai’s …

Study finds food portion sizes have soared 69% in paintings of Jesus’s last meal with his disciples
According to the gospels, as Jesus led the consumption of bread and wine at the start of the Last Supper, he beseeched his disciples: “Do this in remembrance of me”.
While that final dinner is …

If only more public artworks could be like The Burghers of Calais, a powerful monument to everyday heroes
It’s great to be able to celebrate a genuinely powerful and moving public sculpture. There have been so many disappointments, and that’s a gentle way to describe the ugly, stupid stuff our cities …

Artes Mundi’s rhetoric doesn’t convince – but its flashes of beauty do
The trucks roar through Kyrgyzstan, on what was once the Great Silk Road. Laden with scrap metal and heading for western China, they fill the air with dust. A lone boy on a horse chases them. A New Silk …

The artist Jacques-Louis David was no pacifist. But his epic painting of the Spartans’ last stand doesn’t merely glorify war
A war leader sits frozen at the heart of a bristling crowd of soldiers in Jacques-Louis David’s daunting canvas Leonidas at Thermopylae, a battle painting so vast that it would only …