Just a little something to warm you up

On these chill, colourless days, there could be nothing more warming than Howard Hodgkin's new exhibition at London's Hayward Gallery.

This covers 20 years' work of someone considered by many to be our greatest living painter. Within a few days of opening, the show has been showered with superlatives.

In today's Tabloid section, our critic Bryan Robertson says: ``Before you begin to wonder about content or what's going on in real, recognisable terms, you are electrifyingly aware of broad areas of blazing or smouldering red, a deep moody blue or a luminously verdant green practically hitting you from the wall. You're aware of a passionately decisive welter of big, slashed brush-strokes, luscious but alert and bristling in their intensity. Like the smile of the Cheshire cat in Alice, a generalised light-drenched mood seems to be transmitted from the paintings.''

You get the picture. On The Riviera (above) may not be cheaper than a radiator, but it's a lot more fun.