Exhibition of the week
Henry Taylor
Intimate, evocative paintings and disturbing, edgy assemblages from this poised yet restless LA artist.
• Hauser & Wirth Somerset.
Also showing
Ray Harryhausen
The killer skeletons are back as a retrospective of the great movie myth-maker reopens its doors.
• Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two), Edinburgh from 26 April.
The Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers
Intricate and haunting quilted artworks from Alabama, by a dynasty of creators including Loretta Pettway Bennett, Qunnie Pettway and Candis Mosely Pettway.
• Alison Jacques Gallery, London until 25 April.
Jessica Rankin
Intensely lyrical paintings somewhere between landscape and pure abstraction. Every light mark seems weighty with feeling and memory.
• White Cube Bermondsey, London until 1 May.
Georg Baselitz
Gnarled, thin, dried-out hands, leathered by age, are final, funny, desperate marks of the human in this great artist’s new prints.
• Cristea Roberts, London until 15 May.
Image of the week
Actor Juliet Stevenson told us how painting has helped her get through lockdown and the loss of a child. “If you look at the world as though you’re going to paint it all the time, everything is interesting,” she says. Read more here.
What we learned
Why the “Banksy of the internet” put blood in 666 Nike Air Max
We tell the inside story of how a Caravaggio was found in Spain
A five-year-old curator leads summer art exhibition in Bath
An online exhibition is facing the facts with a look at Covid mask-wearing
London is getting his first artist-designed supermarket
The British Museum takes a fresh look at Roman emperor Nero
In the Instagram age, you actually can judge a book by its cover
A new Taschen book gives its spin on innovative album covers from the 1950s on …
… While an Iberian collective is saving commercial shop signs
Landmark UK department store buildings are under threat
Darn tootin’: how to decorative mend with Celia Pym
Portrait photographer June Newton captured celebrities off guard
John Edmonds offers new perspectives on the Black experience
Luis Tato tells us about his best shot: a girl in a massive baobab tree
The Great British Art Tour took a look at Chagall’s living nightmare in London, an artist’s quiet gaze in Lincolnshire and a regal view in Teesdale.
Renowned photographer Graciela Iturbide offers a view on Mexico … from skull brides to iguana hats
Masterpiece of the week
Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, 1654-56, by Johannes Vermeer
You could pass this painting without noticing it is by one of the most popular artists in history, Vermeer – for it is so different from his famous enigmatic scenes of a servant pouring milk or a girl turning her face towards us. But look again. This may seem a more conventional religious scene, yet the story of Christ visiting an ordinary home, where Mary sat to listen to him while Martha got on with her chores, resonates tellingly with his more familiar realist scenes. Maybe all his women are Marys or Marthas. Closing in on this scene, the depiction of Martha holding a basket of bread is pure Vermeer: take away the holy visitor and she could be in one of his Dutch interiors. Yet the inwardness of Mary, too, is of a piece with his absorbed women reading letters or playing the virginals. This may not be Vermeer’s most hypnotic work, but its Biblical message may be the key to all his art: the Vermeer Code.
• At the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh.
Don’t forget
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