Jonathan Jones's top shows to see this week
Peter Blake: A Museum for Myself
Last chance to see this exhibition by the man who designed Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and whose taste for folk culture kept pop art from mere brutalist modernity.
• At Holburne Museum, Bath, until 4 September
Mike Kelley: Exploded Fortress of Solitude
Superman fans and lovers of west coast American art alike will flock to see this always fascinating artist's new work.
• At Gagosian Gallery, Britannia Street, London WC1, from 8 September until 22 October
Blk Art Group
In the 1980s, after riots rocked the nation, the Blk Art Group was founded to change perceptions of black art in Britain – here is an important piece of cultural history.
• At Graves Gallery, Sheffield, until 24 March 2012
Tacita Dean
Among Tacita Dean's most perturbing works are her film portraits of artists: here is her portrait of the arte povera visionary Mario Merz, to accompany an exhibition of his works.
• At Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, from 7 September until 4 December
Shelley's Ghost
The image of the most politically defiant of the Romantic poets is explored in the lovely setting of the lakes.
• At Dove Cottage, Grasmere, until 30 October
Up close: artworks in detail
Salisbury Cathedral
There is no more profound aesthetic experience in Britain than the spire of Salisbury, rising in medieval sobriety above the city and the plain. Painted by Constable, hymned by William Golding, this is a lofty brilliance.
• At Cathedral Close, Salisbury, Wiltshire
George Stubbs, The Nilgai, 1769
The medical man and art collector William Hunter commissioned this portrait of an exotic species from the sublime Stubbs, who is most famous for his eerily beautiful paintings of horses. Stubbs studies the Nilgai not only as a scientific specimen but as a soulful creature, an image of the solitary self.
• At The Hunterian, Glasgow
Jackson Pollock, Summertime: Number 9A, 1948
The season is over, but a little bit of summer daze lives forever in this abstract invocation of light, heat, energy and the unsayable.
• At Tate Modern, London SE1
Samuel van Hoogstraten, Peepshow, c1655-60
You thought the National Gallery just had paintings in it? Think again. This 17th-century Dutch artist created his peep show to demonstrate the optics of illusion and the way the mind completes a picture: stare through the little holes in the side and you will see a three-dimensional interior, created by the magic of perspective painting.
• At Room 25, National Gallery, London WC2
Giambologna, River God, c1580
This sensual sculpture is a rapid blur of motion as the finger marks of the artist working wet clay are preserved forever. Giambologna made it as a model, really a three-dimensional sketch, for a colossal sculpture. You can see how the form emerged from his tactile, improvised manipulation of the clay, in a way that resembles Michelangelo's unfinished works. Giambologna fired the clay and so this monument to creativity endures.
• At Renaissance Galleries, V&A, London SW7
What we learned this week
How a band of volunteers saved the memories of a nation
Who won the great Post-it war in Paris
Why Steven Soderbergh has swapped film-making for abstract art
Why Gillian Wearing wants the public to bear all on film
How to tell one celebrity artist's studio from another's
Image of the week
Your art weekly
@rachelguthrie8 #artweekly Review of Thomas Struth at the Whitechapel Gallery http://bit.ly/qRPOGF
Have you been to any of these shows? What have you enjoyed this week? Give your review in the comments below or tweet us your verdict using #artweekly and we'll publish the best ones.
