A Rose is a Rose is a Rose – see FEATURES

The Molten Force of Vincent’s Sunflowers – in REVIEWS

The Challenge of Latex: the danger of gender-fluidity spillage – read all about Kiss My Genders at the Hayward Gallery, London in REVIEWS

Dancing with St Peter – read about Natalia Goncharova at Tate Modern in REVIEWS

Venice: Bingeing Soberly on the Biennale’s Bellinis

Arms rise up in prayerful anguish from the Venetian Arsenale

Henry James once described Venice as infinitely sad; touchingly, agonisingly haunted by the loss of its own once great significance as one of the greatest maritime empires the world has ever known.And a journey after nightfall up the Grand Canal by Vaporetto Uno in the general direction of San Marco, starting at the miserably noisy and congested smash-and-grab mobbery of the Piazzale Roma, puts you in mind of why he might have judged the sometime Queen of the Adriatic quite so deflatingly almost one hundred and fifty years ago. READ MICHAEL GLOVER IN FULL IN FEATURES…..

The Bruiser’s Back! Sean Scully’s new show is at the National Gallery – in REVIEWS

What is Art for?

What is art for? Art exists to give us pleasure. Art is a mirror of the world. Art teaches, informs, reproaches and delights. Art illuminates the soul. Art depends for its success upon visual allure, a canny eye, a lucky break. Discuss.

There is good art and there is bad art. There is very poor art which deserves to be ignored, and art which compels our attention.

And then there is also the world in which this art goes on display, as a sop to vanity or a manifestation of success or taste or prosperity. Great country houses. Museums. Private art galleries. Art colleges. Auction houses. Private homes. Biennales.

All this art merits close scrutiny in order to determine whether it is brilliant or wretched, skin-deep or gutsily meritorious.

The Opthalmologist (1995), Ruth Dupré, oil on board

FEATURES: Ben Nicholson, magpie internationalist

The function of The ARTlicker is to bring a serious level of steady looking to bear upon that which has the daring, the chutzpah to proclaim itself as art.

REVIEWS: Scully at the National Gallery; Munch at the British Museum; Van Gogh at Tate Britain; Phyllida Barlow at the Royal Academy; Sorolla at the National Gallery

INTERVIEWS: Ryan Mosley in his Sheffield studio; Rose Wylie at the Royal Academy; Neo Rauch in his Leipzig studio

NEWS: Bullshit Alert at the National Gallery!