The Big Review

The Big Review: Grayson Perry: Smash Hits at National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh ★★★★☆

The hugely popular English artist has, in this retrospective, set out his case as a chronicler of the British psyche

The Big Review: Gary Simmons: Public Enemy at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago ★★★★★

A powerful retrospective of the New York-born artist that is all too timely in its examination of racism in American culture

The Big Review: Georg Baselitz: Naked Masters at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna ★★★★★

Bold pairings of paintings by the contemporary German artist with those of the Old Masters are both provocative and elegiac

The Big Review: Picasso Celebration at the Musée National Picasso-Paris ★☆☆☆☆

A baffling show in which Pablo Picasso’s works become accessories for the British designer Paul Smith’s decorations

The Big Review: Peter Doig at the Courtauld Gallery in London ★★★☆☆

Oblique views of London, Caribbean memories and poetic etchings highlight the itinerant artist’s flair for reinvention

The Big Review: Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum ★★★★★

A less-is-more approach to the biggest ever exhibition of the Dutch Old Master’s paintings makes this blockbuster a triumph

The Big Review: Max Beckmann at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich ★★★★★

The show takes a "maniacal and majestic" triptych as its departure point, before using a skilful combination of works and personal effects to provide a deep understanding of the German artist

The Big Review: Vittore Carpaccio at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC ★★★★☆

The painter’s masterpieces show that his influences stretched beyond Venice and at times touch on the miraculous.

The Big Review: Just Above Midtown at the Museum of Modern Art ★★★★★

New York's Just Above Midtown gallery launched the careers of numerous artists of colour, and this five-star exhibition about it is a celebration of the power of art

The Big Review: Alice Neel at the Centre Pompidou ★★★★★

While her New York peers were fighting over the future of abstraction, Alice Neel was urgently capturing life

The Big Review: Milton Avery at the Royal Academy of Arts in London ★★★★☆

The American artist was a brilliant colourist who pushed figuration to its limits but never went the way of “the abstract boys”. Plus, what the other critics said about the show

The sitcom as social critique: Martine Syms foregrounds Black banality in major Chicago exhibition

The Los Angeles artist’s exploration of the Black experience in the US can be poignant, humorous and unsettling, as evidenced in her solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

The Big Review: Fugues in Colour at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris

An intoxicating summer exhibition focuses on five abstract artists—Megan Rooney, Sam Gilliam, Steven Parrino, Niele Toroni and Katharina Grosse. But the chromatic emphasis denies broader interpretations of their work

The Big Review: Donatello in Florence

This unrepeatable show, spread across the Palazzo Strozzi and Museo Nazionale del Bargello, reflects the Florentine master’s journey from late Gothic elegance to classical sensuality

The Big Review: Postwar Modern—New Art in Britain 1945-1965 at Barbican Gallery

A show shaped by refugees and immigrants who made new lives on British shores has a war-stained resonance with today

The Big Review: Faith Ringgold at the New Museum

Each work in the Harlem-born artist’s biggest retrospective to date deserves equal attention

The Big Review: 'Allison Katz: Artery' at Camden Arts Centre, London

The Canadian artist’s paintings are full of puns and wordplay, but also possess a bodily power

The Big Review: 'Georg Baselitz—The Retrospective' at the Centre Pompidou in Paris

The German painter has made a clear mark with his brutal expression and upended motifs. But what is his legacy?

The Big Review: Michael Armitage at the Royal Academy of Arts

Probing the legacies of colonialism, Armitage's seductive paintings on East African bark cloth root themselves in a non-European Modernist tradition

The Big Review: Kaws at the Brooklyn Museum

He is a global brand, but can a museum show lend Brian Donnelly’s art any credibility?

The Big Review: Goya's Graphic Imagination at the Met

This urgent and timely show of the Spanish master's works on paper illuminates the artist’s dim view of humanity and his extraordinary imagination

The Big Review—Working Together: the photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop

An important show reflects a New York collective’s chronicles of Black life amid pervasive discrimination in the 1960s and 1970s

The Big Review: Gauguin and the Impressionists at the Royal Academy of Arts

The London exhibition has many highlights, but viewing this long-planned show is unlike anyone could have envisaged before the coronavirus pandemic

The Big Review: Raphael at the Scuderie del Quirinale

The stimulating show in Rome tells the life story of one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance—but in reverse

The Big Review: Andy Warhol at Tate Modern

Can yet another Warhol retrospective tell us anything new about the Pop Art icon?

The big review: Edward Hopper at the Fondation Beyeler

The Basel exhibition on the painter's landscapes takes a fresh look at the American icon

The Big Review: Kent Monkman at the Met

The latest commission for the Met's Great Hall continues the New York institution's upending of the colonial-settler narrative of American history

The Big Review: Troy at the British Museum

With an impressive range of objects, this show evokes the eternal power of the greatest stories ever told

The Big Review: Leonardo at the Louvre

This once in a lifetime retrospective has a freshness and coherence which appeals to public and scholar alike