1 Whales: Beneath the Surface
The Natural History Museum wants to prove whales are just as exciting as dinosaurs. Not only has it replaced the famous diplodocus in its great hall with a blue whale, but this exhibition takes you further into the world of the largest animals that have ever lived. It is a moving and absorbing encounter with extraordinary creatures, including the whale stranded in the Thames in 2006, the humpback whales who invent new songs that spread through the oceans, and evidence that whales and dolphins look after their disabled.
Natural History Museum, SW7, to 28 February
2 Portraying a Nation: Germany 1919-1933
The grotesque imagination of Otto Dix is one of the marvels of modern art. Dix saw the horrors of the first world war and came home to a Germany divided and decadent. His print series The War relentlessly portrays landscapes of death. His paintings of Weimar republic brothels and cabarets are outrageous. This exhibition sets his lurid vision against the steely photographic gaze of August Sander to show us Germany on the eve of Hitler’s rise to power.
Tate Liverpool to 15 October
3 Raqib Shaw
There is a Victorian machinery below the surface glimmer of Shaw’s elaborately colourful paintings. Their mixture of fantasy and precision is all too reminiscent of the fairy paintings of Richard Dadd and the fey dreams of the pre-Raphaelites. Those are not the best models for a painter in my book, but feel free to be wowed by his bejewelled canvases.
The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, to 19 November
4 Giovanni da Rimini
This exhibition revisits the moment when medieval Italian artists began to break free from the straitjacket of Byzantine style and tried to paint what the world actually looked like. By turning their eyes to reality, painters such as Giovanni da Rimini paved the way for Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci. This is both a reconstruction of a lost masterpiece by Giovanni and a reclamation of the artist himself from centuries of obscurity.
National Gallery, WC2, to 8 October
5 The Encounter
Astonishingly life-filled portraits by Hans Holbein are a highlight of this survey of how Renaissance and baroque artists drew people close-up. Holbein’s “snaps” are so compelling you can see why Henry VIII relied on his portraits to choose brides. It is unfortunate, however, that the single drawing by Da Vinci is so devastatingly great it even puts Holbein in the shade.
National Portrait Gallery, WC2, to 22 October
