Exhibition of the week
David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not smaller & further away)
Britain’s greatest pop artist continues his unique trajectory through the modern world with an immersive spectacle that plunges you into his pictures.
• Lightroom, London, 22 February to 4 June
Also showing
Golden Mummies of Egypt
This newly modernised Victorian museum shows off its world-class collection of ancient Egyptian embalmed people.
• Manchester Museum, 18 February to 31 December
Mike Nelson: Extinction Beckons
A retrospective of Nelson’s fictional places that snare you in his mind’s dark labyrinth.
• Hayward Gallery, London, 22 February to 7 May
Beyond the Streets London
Jenny Holzer, Brassaï and Gordon Matta-Clark are among the less predictable inclusions in this history of graffiti art.
• Saatchi Gallery, London, until 9 May
Annie Morris and Idris Khan: Two Worlds Entwined
This artist couple show together for the first time.
• Newlands House, Petworth, until 7 May
Image of the week
A Banksy artwork appeared on the streets of Margate on Valentine’s Day, showing a woman with a swollen eye and a missing tooth disposing of a man’s body in a chest freezer. The image above shows a council worker removing the freezer “on the grounds of safety” after its presence had been highlighted by the national press. It was later returned, only to be removed a second time by a local gallery.
What we learned
The Rijksmuseum’s Vermeer show, in Amsterdam, continues to pick up accolades
Alice Neel’s sexy, wonky portraits at the Barbican, London, are fearless and tender, too
Ghanaian painter Tafa has a “visceral, transcendent and abstract” show at New York’s Pictor Gallery
An exhibition at the Whitechapel in London celebrates 80 female artists from around the world
Historians assumed Thomas Commeraw, the Black 19th-century potter, was white
British architect David Chipperfield is to revamp Greece’s ‘museum of museums’
The first Tate Britain rehang in 10 years will foreground female artists
Masterpiece of the week
Manchester Madonna, Michelangelo, about 1494
In 1857, the Manchester Art Treasures of Great Britain exhibition drew direct comparison between the booming capital of Britain’s industrial northwest and the great commercial cities of the Italian Renaissance. One of its highlights was this early painting by Michelangelo, which has been known as the Manchester Madonna ever since. Michelangelo, who was about 19 when he left this work unfinished, was a protege of the Medici, bankers and effective rulers of Florence, but by 1494 the city was in revolution. Oligarchic tyranny was replaced by a popular government under the sway of the prophet Savonarola. Michelangelo captures the intense mood of religious renewal in this visionary painting of curly haired angels surrounding a pensive Mary. He’s visibly influenced by his older contemporary Botticelli, who was a disciple of Savonarola. But this is also a farewell to Florence and its artistic heritage: soon he would move to Rome where he made a name for himself by faking a pagan love god.
• National Gallery, London
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