Electric Dreams at Tate Modern shows the sheer extent to which human imagination and inventiveness harnessed technological progressions in the infancy of computing.
Olivia McEwan
London based Olivia McEwan is a trained art historian with BA and MA degrees from the Courtauld Institute, now a freelance writer focusing on the London art world; this academic background contributing to a writing style that — positive or negative — is argued with crucial fairness and balance. Combined with curatorial awareness, she is also a practising painter of predominantly figurative work, lending a keen eye and understanding of painterly technique which powerfully informs her criticisms of historical and emerging arts.
Posted inBooks
Scheming Dealers, Auction House Collusion, Pub Gossip, Oh My!
A new book spills the tea on the 20th-century London art scene.
Posted inArt
Was Freud a Feminist?
A new show at London’s Freud Museum throws feminist ideas at the wall to see what sticks.
Posted inArt
Incarcerated Artists Get a Stage for Artistic Expression
Co-curated by Jeremy Deller and John Costi, No Comment is an exhibition of artworks created in criminal justice settings, entries to the 2024 annual Koestler award.
Posted inArt
Hew Locke Probes the British Museum’s History
The volume of problematic artifacts Locke uncovered in the British Museum’s archives illustrates the fundamental importance of objective historical research.
Posted inArt
The Eternal Dance Between Beauty and Decay
A London show examines the concept of beauty and its inevitable decay across pan-historical, pan-geographical, and pan-religious examples.
Posted inArt
An Exhibition Pairs Two Artists and Somehow Both Seem Worse
If it had simply suggested that François Boucher and Flora Yukhnovich are united in creating tasteful house decoration for the rich, the exhibition would be a success.
Posted inArt
London’s National Gallery Celebrates Its Birthday With Van Gogh
Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers boasts some curatorial firsts and delights in the artist’s explosion of experimental color and expressive, urgent feeling.
Posted inArt
David Hockney Celebrates His Renaissance Inspirations
The core message of visual analysis and close looking in Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look is an apt mantra for the National Gallery’s history.
Posted inArt
Women Artists Take Over Tate Britain
What’s clear in Now You See Us is that the artists were excluded from the canon because of sociopolitical factors, not artistic merit.
Posted inArt
The Six Wives of Henry VIII Get Their Due
Six Lives seeks to fill in the queens’ backstories and present them as individuals rather than supporting players to the King.
Posted inArt
How Should Art History Judge Angelica Kauffman’s Work?
Though technically proficient, the painter and Royal Academy cofounder owed a great deal of contemporary recognition to her active social networking.