Tim Smith-Laing

London

Reviewer, Arts Critic and Writer at Freelance

Writer, reviewer, listener for @TelegraphBooks, @apollomag, @frieze_magazine, etc ... All views my own, etc.

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Articles

Can art survive the AI juggernaut?

5 days ago | apollo-magazine.com | Tim Smith-Laing

This review of Medium Hot: Images in the Age of Heat by Hito Steyerl appears in the June 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here. During the second half of the 20th century the favoured metaphor for the effortless and detached exercise of power was ‘the push of a button’. It linked everyone from ordinary citizens through to the leaders of nations, for whom this same gesture could activate anything from an ice maker to nuclear war.
Leprosy never went away

5 days ago | telegraph.co.uk | Tim Smith-Laing

Leprosy, as Oliver Basciano notes in his fascinating and humane book Outcast, is more than an illness. It's a byword, a "cultural artefact" that functions as "a receptacle for nightmares and prejudice"; a kind of "Ur-stigma" that has run through our collective nightmares for two millennia. Those who suffer from leprosy aren't just sick, but unclean.
Pictures that look good enough to eat

1 month ago | apollo-magazine.com | Tim Smith-Laing

When a picture looks good enough to eat THIS ARTICLE IS FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY The Mass of Saint Gregory (c 1490; detail), attr. Diego de la Cruz. Philadelphia Museum of Art
Murder, corruption and ancient Rome

2 months ago | telegraph.co.uk | Tim Smith-Laing

Reviewers are mildly allergic to claims that a book is "timely" or, worse still, "urgent". If books were as timely and urgent as publishers' marketing departments like to suggest, they should come equipped with sirens and blue lights. And yet, once in a while a book calmly slips into the world that really does feel both of those things.
The wild imagination of Maurice Sendak

Dec 6, 2024 | apollo-magazine.com | Tim Smith-Laing

The reinvention of the Museum of Childhood as Young V&A has been a great success. Should more institutions follow its example and become younger at heart?
December 2024 | Apollo Magazine

Nov 25, 2024 | apollo-magazine.com | Edward M Behrens |Tim Smith-Laing |Hettie Judah |Conrad Landin

In this issue • The floral paintings of Rachel Ruysch• What do museums think about climate protests?
The ghostly worlds of Goya and Paula Rego

Oct 17, 2024 | apollo-magazine.com | Tim Smith-Laing

At first glance, the pairing of Francisco de Goya and Paula Rego seems like an ideal one. If Goya’s influence on Rego will hardly come as a revelation to most viewers, it is nevertheless something that bears re-examining. Consciously working in an Iberian tradition in which Goya was a central figure, Rego was a true fan. His influence on her is so pervasive that it is hard to point to specifics: alongside Velázquez and Picasso, Goya is ever-present in her work.
Book Review: Alec Soth, Advice for Young Artists

Sep 15, 2024 | ocula.com | Tim Smith-Laing

Tim Smith-Laing considers Alec Soth's latest photographic offering. Alec Soth, Advice for Young Artists (2024). Embossed linen hardcover with tip-in, 72 pages. 26.6 x 27.3 cm. Published by MACK. Courtesy the artist and MACK. 'Patience is all', wrote Rainer Maria Rilke in his Letters to a Young Poet (1929). If someone is to be an artist, he stated, they must learn to stand like a tree through the seasons of life unafraid that summer might not, this time, follow spring.
Endangered Languages by Evangelia Adamou and An Atlas of Endangered Alphabets by Tim Brookes, review

Aug 15, 2024 | telegraph.co.uk | Tim Smith-Laing

The Māori language was threatened by New Zealand's "Native Schools" Credit: Anders Ryman/The Image Bank Try to imagine being the last generation to speak English. Or, worse, being the last person to speak it.
Is it time English spelling was reformed?

Jul 9, 2024 | telegraph.co.uk | Tim Smith-Laing

A dedicated cohort advocate for scrapping the English spelling system Here’s a challenge for you: read the following paragraph aloud. Fork the potatoes and work the tomatoes? Hoe the rows now, then mow, and wait to weigh the hay? Plough the rough right through? With this cough, though? The very thought.

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