Arts news

• The Guardian view on living more creatively: a daily dose of art | Editorial

  09-01-2026 18:51
  It can make us healthier, happier and live longer. Engaging in culture should be encouraged like good diet and exerciseThe second Friday in January has been dubbed “Quitter’s Day”, when we are most likely to give up our new year resolutions. Instead of denying ourselves pleasures, suggests a new batch of books, a more successful route may be adding to them – nourishing our minds and souls by making creativity as much a daily habit as eating vegetables and exercising. Rath
  
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• Did Leonardo da Vinci paint a nude Mona Lisa? I may have just solved this centuries-old mystery

  09-01-2026 16:43
  It is one of the most tantalising – and entertaining – puzzles in art, stretching from the Louvre to the Loire via, well, Norfolk. And our critic thinks he has just worked it outIncreased security after the recent heist has made the queues at the Louvre even slower, yet on this rainswept, very wintry morning, no one grumbles. After all, the Mona Lisa is waiting inside for all these tourists who have come from the world over. Leonardo da Vinci’s woman – swathed in dark clo
  
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• Anonymous painting bought at auction on ‘hunch’ identified as two-in-one Rubens

  09-01-2026 14:53
  Study of man often featured in works by the Flemish master reveals hidden painting of woman beneath model’s beardIs it a bald elderly man with a big bushy beard and a wine-addled stare? Or a friendly young woman with flowing locks and a crown of braids?To Belgian art dealer Klaas Muller, an answer to that question mattered less than the fact that this particular take on the duck-rabbit optical illusion was painted by one Peter Paul Rubens. Continue reading...
  
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• Hawaiian headwear, Beuys’ bathtub and Nan Goldin’s photo diaries – the week in art

  09-01-2026 13:00
  Jewels of island life go on display, Beuys introduces heroism to washtime and Nan Goldin’s classic The Ballad of Sexual Dependency reveals itself – all in your weekly dispatchHawai‘i
  Some of the most spectacular masterpieces in the British Museum, including feathered war helmets and glaring gods collected by Captain Cook, make this exhibition created in collaboration with Hawaii community leaders and artists entrancing.• The British Museum, London, from 15 January to 25 Ma
  
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• Marie Goodenough obituary

  09-01-2026 11:49
  My mother, Marie Goodenough, who has died aged 90, was a prolific painter but primarily considered herself a sculptor, mainly working in wood but also using papier-mache, fibreglass and metal. She had an original and humorous outlook; the sculpture Boris Godunov, purchased by the Andrew Duncan Clinic in Edinburgh, was a play on words, and Newspaperman, made from copies of the Scotsman, was a tribute to the art critic Edward Gage and exhibited in the Royal Glasgow Institute.Born in York, Marie wa
  
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