Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Jonathan Jones

A surreal stunner, human body parts and Napoleon-era Paris – the week in art

Disturbing ... Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Dorothea Tanning.
Disturbing ... Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Dorothea Tanning. Photograph: Mark Heathcote/Samual Cole/DACS

Exhibition of the Week

Dorothea Tanning
Not only one of the surrealist movement’s great women but also one of its last faithful exponents: Tanning’s art ranges from dream paintings to disturbing installations.
Tate Modern, London, 27 February-9 June.

Also showing

Detail from A Carnival Scene, 1832, by Louis-Léopold Boilly.
Detail from A Carnival Scene, 1832, by Louis-Léopold Boilly. Photograph: courtesy of the Trustees of the Ramsbury Manor Foundation

Facing Out
Sensitive portraits by Lucy Burscough of people who have had facial cancer, created during a residency at the Christie Hospital.
Whitworth, Manchester until 2 June.

John Bellany and Alan Davie
Two contrasting painters, Bellany, a figurative artist, and Davie, a follower of abstract expressionism, add up to an interesting take on modern British art.
Newport Street Gallery, 27 February-1 September.

Spare Parts
Artists and scientists explore what it means to replace parts of the human body.
Science Gallery, London, 28 February-12 May.

Boilly: Scenes of Parisian Life
Paintings of French society in the age of Napoleon and the Romantic movement.
National Gallery, London, 28 February-19 May.

Masterpiece of the Week

undefined

St George and the Dragon, 1889-90, by Gustave Moreau
A knight in glistening metallic-blue armour spears a reptilian monster in a dreamlike landscape ... but hang on. This intense fantasy scene was painted after Manet and the impressionists had brought a new urban realism to French art. Is it a backward step? On the contrary. Moreau is the artist par excellence of the inward turn in late 19th-century art. Similarly to his contemporaries Edvard Munch and Aubrey Beardsley, he creates introspective symbolic dreamscapes. His luscious paint tumbles in sensual cascades and fades into abstract reveries. This is a surrealist painting before surrealism.
National Gallery, London.

Image of the week

The view from Fen Court roof garden.
The view from Fen Court roof garden. Photograph: Dirk Lindner

Fen Court, a new office block in the City of London which opened last week, is one of the most well-crafted buildings the City has seen for some time, writes Oliver Wainwright. Designed by Eric Parry Architects, its free-to-enter roof garden offers one of the most exhilarating vantage points in central London.

What we learned

Why Girl With a Pearl Earring author Tracy Chevalier travelled the world to see every Vermeer painting

How artists are fighting climate change … starting with a foil-wrapped glacier

And how the Guardian reported the German design group Bauhaus in the 1930s

A new exhibition in Paris celebrates a potent mix of migration, music and anti-racism activism

And Nan Goldin is threatening a London gallery boycott over £1m gift from Sackler fund

Why there’s a rise of Latin American art in museums

Magdalene Odundo’s spectacular ceramics evoke the human form

While Santu Mofokeng documented everyday life in apartheid-era South Africa

Pixy Liao’s best photograph explores the link between open fruit, eating and sexuality

While Betsy Karel documents the masked musicians, military tanks and real characters of New York’s Times Square

This free-to-enter rooftop garden in London is a candy-striped miracle

Franz West’s clumsy papier-mache twists and wearable sculptures are utterly absorbing

Why photographers Diane Arbus and Don McCullin are two lone souls out in the world

Marina Abramović’s much vaunted show is tedious and trite

One art lover has the solution to the Parthenon marbles

A David Hockney book paints a portrait of the artist through his brother’s eyes

Tiny Elizabethan masterpieces blaze with passion, desire and mystery

Pubs, K-pop and Wilfred Owen feature in the Baltic Artists’ award show

And a stained-glass artist is looking to the celebrated Reliant Robins for inspiration

A San Francisco exhibition looks back at a controversial 1968 photo essay about the Black Panthers

Royal Academy Schools receives £10m from a Tetra Pak heir

The Saatchi Gallery announces the mummy of all Tutankhamun shows

Thousands of publicly owned sculptures in the UK collection to be catalogued in an online database

A free digital archive of aerial photos going back to 1945 captures a changing Britain

A family-run workshop in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter reveals the art of watchmaking

If Beale Street Could Talk and Tommy Cash are among the picks of what to see in the UK this week

Why Dorothea Tanning’s Birthday put the first lady of surrealism on the map

New York’s Met Museum showcases the power of camp

Don’t forget

To follow us on Twitter: @GdnArtandDesign

Sign up to the Art Weekly newsletter

Data protection laws have changed in the UK, under an initiative called GDPR. Make sure you continue to receive our email roundup of art and design news by confirming your wish here.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.