EXHIBITIONS / Critics Choice

Dog Woman 1994

Paula Rego's series of large pastels creates a woman or rather a type of woman transformed into a dog through body language rather than by physical metamorphosis. Though not all are successful, Rego produces a strong and complex image, one which becomes a metaphor for both freedom and enslavement.

Marlborough Fine Art Making and Meaning: the Young Michelangelo This is above all an occasion to reconsider The Entombment, his only altarpiece. Perhaps no other of his works provides quite so stark a demonstration of the intense sensuality and spirituality that were so strongly and uniquely combined in him.

National Gallery James McNeill Whistler Beautiful, exemplary but somewhat dispiriting retrospective of this intriguing artist's work. He was forever complicating and diluting things and only very rarely cut loose to invent a kind of painting that was hisown. In fact, he did it only once during the period which saw the creation of his most nearly abstract Nocturnes. This is the most daring and effectively displayed exhibition ever seen at the Tate.

Tate Gallery