8 h. ago Art lovers rejoice: the National Gallery can finally show us when painting really gets exciting | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

Curators can now chart the seismic shifts in 20th-century art – and include more works by women and artists of colourSign up for our new weekly newsletter Matters of Opinion, where our columnists and writers will reflect on what they’ve been debating, thinking about, reading and moreOne of my favourite paintings in the National Gallery’s collection technically breaks the rules: Paul Cézanne’s Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses) was painted in the last decade of his life, its date given as about 1894-1905. It was probably finished after the gallery’s cut-off date of 1900, a cut-off the gallery has just announced it will be jettisoning.To say that I am pleased is an understatement. It always struck me as bizarre that the end date occurs just at the exact point in history when painting is about to become very interesting. Just look at the Baigneuses and what they represent: the leap towards abstraction in the representation of the human form; the composition and its unidentifiable, but un...

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1 week ago A new pavilion at London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery charms mini art lovers

A new pavilion at London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery charms mini art lovers  The Spaces

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1 week ago Downton Abbey Grand Finale premiere: Michelle Dockery leads red carpet glamour

The stars of Downton Abbey have come together for one final time as they head to Leicester Square in London for the final premiere of the last film, The Grand Finale

Politics

1 week ago ArtPlay Pavilion at Dulwich Picture Gallery: You'll have to drag your children from it

Dulwich Picture Gallery has unveiled its biggest redevelopment in years with a winning focus on the youngest generation of art lovers

Politics

3 w. ago It’s the great grandparent revolt – and it shows we parents aren’t the only ones burnt out by family life | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

Politicians are scrabbling to raise birthrates, but when the older generation is the only childcare safety net, that’s a problem ‘Enslaved grandparent syndrome” – sounds extreme, doesn’t it? But that’s what some psychologists in Spain are calling the childcare burden faced by older people in that country, where 35% of people over the age of 65 take care of their grandchildren several days a week. In my London neighbourhood, the sight of a grandparent pushing a baby in a buggy, or a toddler in a swing, is fairly common, but in Madrid, even more so. The latest Europe-wide survey, in 2016, found the proportion of over 65s undertaking childcare at least several days a week in southern European countries – Spain especially, but also in Italy and Greece – is much higher than in France (13%) and Germany (15%) or the UK (18%).This is the result of historical cultural norms of shared care between generations, but now some Spanish grandparents are fighting back. After working all their lives,...

Society

4 w. ago I thought I didn’t care about Renaissance art. Then life happened to me – and I saw its power | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

There’s a reason these works have influenced great contemporary artists such as Jenny Saville. It just took me a while to truly see itThere is a painting that I think about often. The Madonna del Parto, a masterpiece painted by Piero della Francesca in about 1460, is housed in a dedicated museum in the Tuscan town of Monterchi. It depicts a heavily pregnant Virgin Mary flanked by two angels. To local women, this painting is considered a protector of fertility and the lives of pregnant women during birth. During the second world war, local women surrounded two men whom they had mistaken for a Nazi intent on stealing it. In 1954, they led a protest against its proposed movement to Florence for an exhibition. I remember reading as a student that the women had lain down in the street to block its departure.I thought about those women again yesterday, as I walked around the Jenny Saville exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, tracing the influence of the Renaissance on her work. Sa...

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