Exhibition of the week
Bacon to Doig
This ambitious survey of modern British art drawn from a rich private collection ranges from Freud to Perry, Hepworth and Hockney, and should be an exciting view of the art of our place and times.
• National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, 18 February–31 January 2018
Also showing
Genecraft
Artists and scientists collaborate to create art that uses the latest genetic research as its subject and even material.
• BOM, Birmingham, 22 February–13 May
Places of the Mind
John Singer Sargent and Paul Nash are among the stars of this examination of British watercolour art from 1850 to 1950.
• British Museum, London, 23 February–27 August
Sidney Nolan in Britain
This powerful Australian artist who painted Ned Kelly had to come to Britain to succeed, this exhibition shows.
• Pallant House, Chichester, 18 February–4 June
Park Seo-bo
Abstract paintings inspired by Korean calligraphy and philosophy.
• White Cube, Mason’s Yard, London, until 11 March
Masterpiece of the week
Claude – Landscape With Aeneas at Delos (1672)
Claude creates an eerily beautiful dream of ancient history in this painting inspired by Virgil’s Latin poem the Aeneid. The figures are really just part of an abstracted composition, in which watery blue light and calmly proportioned architecture work together like a softly played cello concerto, sustaining a mood of sombre nostalgia.
• National Gallery, London
Image of the week
A shot from Richard Mosse’s new video work Incoming, which opened this week at the Barbican’s Curve gallery. Mosse filmed migrants from Syria and elsewhere with a military thermal-imaging camera. “Does an artwork that sets out to challenge documentary tropes end up aestheticising human suffering by rendering it mere spectacle?” wondered the Guardian’s Sean O’Hagan. “The tension between the wilfully unreal textural beauty of the film – and it is pure texture, from start to finish – and the human tragedy it records is undoubtedly part of its power.”
What we learned this week
Wolfgang Tillmans’s Tate Modern show opened to a five-star review from Adrian Searle …
… and the artist himself talked to us about his career and political activism
Kate Connolly met the gold-fixated artist Joe Ramirez in his Berlin studio
Olafur Eliasson told us about his cultural highlights, from Adam Curtis to Rebecca Solnit
Rowan Moore champions the under-threat University of Durham building Dunelm House
Hairdresser to the homeless Mark Bustos talked us through the photos of his work
Sotheby’s has hired forensic scientists amid a wave of forgeries
And the auction house has also said postwar German artists are currently defining the market
A Hockney print that hung in a Bradford chippy is going on sale
Children’s illustrator Dahlov Ipcar died aged 99 – here are some of her best works
The Bodleian’s new exhibition shows that the power of volcanoes will never lie dormant
Laura Cumming reviewed the RA’s exhibition of Russian revolution-era art
A Parmigiano painting could go overseas if the UK doesn’t find nearly £25m for it
Vandals have targeted a display of multifaith artworks at Gloucester Cathedral
Get involved
Book now for Guardian members’ events: a private view of the Robots exhibition at the Science Museum in London, a private view of Never Going Underground: The Fight for LGBT+ Rights at the People’s History Museum in Manchester, and a private view of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize at the Photographers’ Gallery in London.
Our A-Z of Readers’ Art series continues – we’re now asking for your artworks on the theme of Q is for Quality. Submit them here.
Don’t forget
To follow us on Twitter: @GdnArtandDesign.
