Exhibition of the week
Drawing in Silver and Gold: The art of silverpoint drawing has something alchemical about it that results in drawings of ethereal beauty. This is a seductive and satisfying encounter with truly great art, from Leonardo da Vinci’s head of a war-hardened warrior to Albrecht Durer’s portrait of a troubled youth to works by Jasper Johns and Bruce Nauman. Superb stuff.
British Museum, London WC1B until 6 December
Other exhibitions this week
Bridget Riley and Seurat
The pointillist art of Seurat inspired Bridget Riley when she was inventing her eye-dazzling abstract art in the 1960s. This show brings together two painter-scientists fascinated by optics and how the mind makes sense of the world – or doesn’t.
Courtauld Gallery, London WC2R from 17 September until 17 January
Cedric Christie
The power of colour and the boundaries between sculpture and painting are the themes of Christie’s new show.
Flowers Gallery, London W1S until 3 October
Bob and Roberta Smith
The statement-making artist shows new works about art and education in the rolling Yorkshire dales. You get a lovely cup of tea in the cafe.
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield WF4 until 3 January
Barnaby Barford
A huge pile of china shops, displayed in the V&A’s Renaissance scultpure court, comments on commerce, property and life in London.
V&A, London SW7 until 1 November
Masterpiece of the week
Piero di Cosimo – The Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs (c 1500-1515)
Shocking violence and an eerie sadness poison a pastoral landscape in this horrifying scene of a wedding gone wrong. The Lapiths, a tribe of early humans, invited their half-human, half-horse neighbours the Centaurs to a wedding but when these bestial beings tasted wine, they lost it and a fierce battle broke out. Piero’s vision of this Greek myth (he got it from the Roman poet Ovid) bursts with dreamlike detail and macabre fantasy.
National Gallery, London WC2N
Image of the week
What we learned this week
What Ai Weiwei’s thoughts are on art, life, Allen Ginsberg and censorship – live on our website
What the hottest exhibitions to see in autumn are
Anish Kapoor’s ‘queen’s vagina’ sculpture in Versailles was vandalised with anti-semitic graffiti ... a sign of the rise of cultural fascism in France
What Richard Rogers’ Y:Cube homes for homeless people look like
That Wilton’s Music Hall, the East End’s best-kept secret has had a ramshackle restoration
Why artworks are being cut into parts for charity
How one photographer has captured the lost Yugoslavia
In a critique of consumerism, a 21st-century Tower of Babel has been built out of mini shops
Why photographers are lemmings
Who the first artist in space will be
To celebrate her longest reign as a British monarch, the Queen became a street art pin-up
Smile for Andy! What Warhol’s Polaroids of his famous friends are like
That the Colosseum is becoming a living artwork powered by its own bacteria
Why pharmaceutical art is so addictive
How life is for America’s convicted teens
What the sharpest rudeboys on the street today look like
And finally ...
Put yourself in the picture: share your artworks about art in our new Readers’ art project
Come to Your art, our walls: an exhibition of the best artworks by Guardian readers from 17 September to 8 October at The Guardian, Kings Place London N1 9GU
