James Cahill

‘My art​ is formalist,’ Frank Bowling wrote in 1988, ‘and my experience is that of a black artist.’ What might appear an opposition between formalist concerns and lived experience has proved, for Bowling, a powerful dualism. His current retrospective at Tate Britain (until 26 August) is his first at a British gallery. Institutional recognition has been slow, despite...

A black and white​ photograph from 1958 shows Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dalí on a hot August day in Cadaqués, on the east coast of Spain. The artists are trekking uphill with their wives, Alexina (‘Teeny’) Duchamp and Gala. Duchamp is in shorts and a straw hat; Dalí is dressed like a toreador in a white suit, clutching a gnarled staff. The image says...