Exhibition of the week
Picasso 1932: Love, Fame, Tragedy
Picasso said his art was his diary and this exhibition takes that literally to investigate one year of his creative and personal life.
• Tate Modern, London, 8 March to 9 September
Also showing
Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography
Outstanding exhibition of the daring and originality of the 19th-century photographers Julia Margaret Cameron, Oscar Rejlander, Clementina Hawarden and Lewis Carroll.
• National Portrait Gallery, London, 1 March to 20 May
Ian Cheng/ Sondra Perry
Two American artists working at the cutting edge of technology and politics.
• Serpentine Galleries, London, 6 March to 20/28 May
POP! Art in a Changing Britain
The Beatles and Mick Jagger make guest appearances in this survey of British pop art starring Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, Eduardo Paolozzi and more.
• Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, until 7 May
Eric Fischl: Presence of an Absence
Strange painted scenes of well-heeled but unsatisfying American life.
• Skarstedt Gallery, London, until 26 May
Masterpiece of the week
The Toilet of Venus (The Rokeby Venus), 1647-51, by Diego Velázquez
If this painting seems voyeuristic, turn your eyes from the model’s back to her face reflected in the mirror. Velázquez has deliberately created an uneasy disjunction between the sensual nude lying on an exquisitely painted sheet of grey silk and her melancholy, introspective expression. This great artist of reality, whose paintings delight in paradox and ambiguity, shows us both the woman’s eroticised body and her mysterious inner life. This double vision of her is unsettling and profound. A nude picture becomes a rich insight into the complexity of human life.
• National Gallery, London
Image of the week
Femme au Béret et à la Robe Quadrillée (Marie-Thérèse Walter), 1937, by Pablo Picasso
Sold this week at Sotheby’s for £49.8m, this was highest price achieved by a painting at a European auction. The portrait was until recently owned by the artist’s estate and its value was estimated at £35m. Harry Smith, a London art adviser, bought this for an unnamed client, along with three other Picasso pieces at Sotheby’s and nine of the artist’s works the previous evening at Christie’s, a haul totalling £113m. Interest in the artist has been boosted by Tate Modern’s first solo exhibition of Picasso’s work.
The portrait of the artist’s lover at the time was painted just months after Picasso completed his 1937 masterpieces Guernica and Weeping Woman, which added to the painting’s appeal. It was created at a time of flux in Picasso’s personal life, as his new muse, Dora Maar, was entering the frame.
What we learned this week
The Mona Lisa might be going on tour
It’s possible to make skis out of tree trunks
A long-lost portrait of Nigerian princess Tutu was found in a London flat …
... and an x-ray test discovered a hidden painting of Modigliani’s partner under one of his masterpieces
Photographer Bobby Klein smoked hash with Jim Morrison
There’s such a thing as “an architectural detective agency”
The Barbican’s latest photography exhibition brings outsiders in
Tate Britain’s survey of modern figurative painting, All Too Human, is a five-star exhibition
Wolfgang Tillmans has edited a collection of essays that investigate the post-truth era
Grey Hutton’s photographs of homeless people taken with a thermal imaging camera are chilling
Architects from all over the world are working to make cities more child-friendly ...
... and Richard Sennett, a sociologist of urban design, is a keen but nervous gardener
Carrie Boretz has published a book of her photos of New York street life in the 70s, 80s and 90s
Don’t forget
To follow us on Twitter: @GdnArtandDesign.
