Exhibition of the week
Joseph Beuys
This visionary artist brought his charismatic presence to the Edinburgh festival in his lifetime and now returns in spirit with a show based around his expressive, mythological drawings.
• Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 30 July–30 October.
Also showing
Christian Boltanski
Memory and a sense of common humanity are the stuff of Boltanski’s powerful art. He has created a new permanent installation for this entrancing sculpture park.
• Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh, 30 July until 25 September.
Olivia Webb
A capella singing is at the heart of this sound work in one of Edinburgh’s most beautiful buildings.
• Trinity Apse, Edinburgh, until 28 August.
Graham Fagen
A Neon installation that ponders the history of Edinburgh and touches on the sensitive subject of Robert Burns’s plan to become a slave overseer in Jamaica.
• Jacob’s Ladder, Edinburgh, until 28 August.
Raqib Shaw
Psychedelic reinterpretations of Renaissance paintings in which east meets west to create a dizzy colourist’s delirium.
• White Cube Bermondsey, London, until 11 September.
Masterpiece of the week
This is one of the most extraordinary Renaissance paintings in Britain, not least because it was commissioned for Edinburgh’s Chapel of the Holy Trinity – a very rare case of a great 15th-century artist getting British patronage. Van der Goes was in demand all over Renaissance Europe and his Portinari altarpiece, sent to Florence and today in the Uffizi, influenced artists including Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli. This complex painting with its movingly stricken Christ, music-playing angels and praying monarchs typifies his melancholic, sensitive art. He eventually went mad, a tragedy that morbidly fascinated Vincent van Gogh. Trinity Chapel was demolished in the 19th century to make space for Waverley Station. Today all that remains of it are this painting, and its partial reconstruction as the lovely Trinity Apse.
• Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh.
Image of the week
Photographer Antoine Agoudijan, the grandchild of Armenian genocide survivors, met Ishran in the small town of Aparan, outside Armenia’s capital. “He told me his son had died – his pride and joy – and that I looked just like him. I asked if he would dance for me … a celebratory resilience in the face of overwhelming loss.”
What we learned
Images of East London’s Olympicopolis arts quarter plans have been unveiled
The Armada portrait of Elizabeth I is staying put after a £7.4m funding drive
The Fitzwilliam’s new medieval manuscript show is a five-star triumph
Adam and Eve are naked again … but why are we still shocked by art nudity?
Sophia Al-Maria said: “people are titillated by Islam” ahead of her Whitney show
What life is really like for war photographers: ‘The camera is not a shield’
Yuri Pattison’s has transformed the Chisenhale into an eerie silicon ghost office
Marina Abramović said having children would have been a disaster for her art
Photo España is the place to go to rediscover neglected female photographers
Robert Rauschenberg’s goat is galloping across to Tate Modern later this year
Meanwhile, Tate Britain has been ordered to reveal its BP sponsorship in full
Olly Wainwright has rounded up Boris Johnson’s design disasters
While Sean O’Hagan opened our eyes to the street photography of Eamonn Doyle
The V&A has acquired the world’s largest collection of paper peepshows
A pop-up art show spoke truth to power at the Democratic convention
We may have forgotten the difference between being a hoarder and collecting
Illustrator Camilla Perkins has riffed marvellously on African subcultures
Ellie Davies’ forest photography reminds us of a lost, near-mythical England
There are plans to re-open beautiful Alexandra Palace theatre after 80 years
And finally … the selfie economy is worth a shedload of money
Artist’s video
‘Art cannot explain things but it can expose them – that’s why art here is so important and necessary,’ says Doris Salcedo as she takes us on a tour of Bogotá and her studio.
Get involved
A-Z of readers’ art – your art on the theme of illumination
J is for juxtaposition – share your new artwork now
And finally
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