Exhibition of the week
Art of the Terraces
Mark Leckey and more look at the subculture of soccer casuals.
• Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 5 November-12 March
Also showing
Turner on Tour
Two majestic European scenes by JMW Turner on loan from New York’s Frick Collection.
• National Gallery, London, until 19 February
Defaced!
A survey of how money has been altered or destroyed as protest and art, from the suffragettes to Banksy.
• Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until 8 January
John Currin
The grotesque and beautiful intertwine in Currin’s perversions of Renaissance art.
• Sadie Coles HQ, London, until 26 November
Amy Sherald
A restaging of the VE photo of a couple kissing in New York is among Sherald’s latest essays in portraiture and history.
• Hauser & Wirth, London, until 23 December
Image of the week
Andy Warhol’s White Disaster (White Car Crash 19 Times) is expected to reach $80m when it goes to auction in New York later this month. The 12ft by 6ft screen-printed canvas, which is part of Warhol’s Death and Disaster series, has not been seen in public for 15 years. Experts say that the work’s elevation of a grisly accident is linked to the artist’s Catholicism and is intended to invoke awe and reverence.
What we learned
Francis Bacon nearly lost an eye after a drunken brawl with his lover
A man has been jailed after glueing his head to Girl with a Pearl Earring
The authenticity of a Vermeer painting has caused a transatlantic standoff
A painting by Mondrian has been hanging upside down for 75 years
New York photographer Saul Leiter’s unseen work has been unearthed
Australian painter Nicholas Harding and Norwegian artist Christopher Rådlund have died
A Rembrandt sketch described as a ‘crude imitation’ has been found to be genuine
The Head On photo festival has returned to Sydney
Masterpiece of the week
Execution of the Conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot, 1606, by Claude Jansz Visscher
Remember, remember – as Britain’s Bonfire Night becomes gradually less of a Protestant ritual, this drawing connects us with its origins. The annual commemoration of the foiling of the Catholic Gunpowder Plot and arrest of Guy Fawkes in autumn 1605 was established by law the following January with the passing of the Observance of 5th November Act. This drawing shows the atmosphere of terror and violence in which this official festival was invented. Here some of the convicted plotters are dragged through the streets, hanged until nearly – but not quite – dead, then eviscerated and dismembered, their limbs and entrails thrown on a fire. This is a precise visual rendition of what it meant to “hanged, drawn and quartered” for high treason. Visscher doesn’t only show the details of this terrible rite but its popularity: a respectfully attentive crowd of well-dressed women and men watch, while children play amid the smoke and gore. Just like Bonfire Night.
• British Museum
Don’t forget
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