Unmounted and unframed, all the Rembrandt prints in the exhibition at the British Museum and all the drawings from Goya's private albums at the Hayward Gallery - a few hundred sheets of paper, most no bigger than the page of a novel - would hardly fill a modest portfolio. On the gallery walls they draw you forward into exhilarating and troubling encounters. Were images really alive - as one can feel these are - some of the mighty crated works which struggle to get through gallery doors would have to bow down before them.

LRB 8 March 2001 | PDF Download