Margate gets Childish and Krasner steps out of…

Margate gets Childish and Krasner steps out of Pollock's shadow – the week in art

Untitled, 1969, by Lee Krasner. Painting: Jewish Museum/© The Pollock-Krasner Foundation/courtesy Kasmin Gallery.

Exhibition of the week

Lee Krasner
One of the great abstract expressionist painters finally gets her due. Krasner gave a lot of herself to her difficult husband, Jackson Pollock, but here she shines alone.
• Barbican Art Gallery, London, 30 May-1 September.

Also showing

Frank Bowling
An overdue retrospective for this powerful painter who imagines empire and postcolonial history on an epic abstract scale.
• Tate Britain, London, 31 May -26 August.

Luchita Hurtado
Visionary images of the body by an artist whose surrealist affinities transfigure her self-portraits into carnal landscapes.
• Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London, until 20 October.

Billy Childish
A former Shoreditch gallery that has moved to Margate as part of the seaside town’s artistic renewal opens with Childish’s painterly punk introspection.
• Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate, 26 May -25 August.

Seaside: Photographed
Photographers from Martin Parr to the composer Benjamin Britten record the splendours of the British seaside.
• Turner Contemporary, Margate, 25 May-8 September.

Masterpiece of the week

Portrait of George Gage With Two Attendants, by Anthony van Dyck (probably 1622-23)
An English aesthete is haggling over a piece of ancient sculpture in this snapshot of the art world of 17th-century Rome. In the early 1600s, the court and aristocracy of Stuart Britain became increasingly enamoured of art. Courtiers like the Earl of Arundel purchased European art treasures by the cartload, laying the foundations of today’s great collections of continental treasures on these islands. Gage served as an agent for collectors back home. Van Dyck, who would later be “collected” by the British himself when he became a court artist to Charles I, stresses the nonchalant pose with which Gage confidently negotiates a good price. The painting brilliantly advertises his skills in what may be the first portrait of a British art dealer. You can still meet his type in London’s commercial galleries and auction houses.
• National Gallery, London.

Image of the week

Untitled, 1971, by Luchita Hurtado
The indomitable Venuzuela-born artist Luchita Hurtado is having her first solo show in a public gallery, at the age of 98. She seems to have known the majority of the past century’s major artists, from Duchamp to Chagall to Rothko to the Guerrilla Girls. Her work is colourful and vibrant; and in self-portraits, such as the one above, her face is unseen, and we view the scene as if from her eyes. London’s Serpentine Sackler Gallery show tells her story. Read the full review.