Exhibition of the week
Turner in January
This annual artistic treat unveils the fiery blasts of light that are JMW Turner’s watercolours.
• Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, 1-31 January.
Also showing
Bloomberg New Contemporaries
Check out where art is headed at the dawn of our century’s third decade.
• South London Gallery until 23 February.
Rembrandt’s Light
The deep nocturnes and embers of illumination in Rembrandt’s introspective art speak to the soul in winter.
• Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, until 2 February.
Kara Walker
The visceral satire of Walker’s colossal shark-infested fountain is the most old-fashioned yet politically furious work ever made for Tate’s Turbine Hall.
• Tate Modern, London, until 5 April.
Forgotten Masters
A little known yet wondrous moment, when India’s miniaturists painted nature for 18th-century British patrons, makes for a truly beautiful exhibition.
• Wallace Collection, London, until 19 April.
Image of the week
An overlooked painting by LS Lowry is headed to auction on 21 January. The Mill, Pendlebury depicts people at leisure with the Acme Spinning Company mill in the background. “It is a lovely painting and a great composition,” said Nick Orchard, the head of modern British art at Christie’s. “You’ve got everything you want in a Lowry … lots of people doing lots of different things, terraced houses, factories in the background.” The painting was owned by Leonard D Hamilton, a researcher involved in the discovery of the structure of DNA. Hamilton died in June 2019 at the age of 98. Read more about the painting.
What we learned
How Tracey Emin is giving Munch the mother he never had
A forgotten Lowry painting had its story revealed
The top photography, art and architecture shows for 2020 – from Warhol to Don McCullin
Josef Koudelka strode the borders of the Holy Land
Artists of all kinds are fascinated by fungi
Liam Ashley Clark gets his own back on Hitler, with gunge
A Delhi slum has been given a colourful makeover
Arts Council’s Nicholas Serota vows more early-career funding for artists
Guardian picture editors chose AP’s Felipe Dana as their agency photographer of the year
A Hepworth sculpture has been donated to a public collection
The British Museum will explore Thomas Beckett’s life and murder
Dozens of ‘Goyas’ are not by the master’s own hand, claims an art historian
How our US photographers saw America in 2019
2019 was a bumper year for art
The climate crisis had an impact on architects …
… while exotic new airports are becoming symbols of prestige for strongman leaders
We remembered textile designer Agnes Wimborne …
… along with artist and author Alasdair Gray …
… and album sleeve designer Vaughan Oliver
Masterpiece of the week
Snow Scene at Argenteuil, 1875, Claude Monet
A snowy day was an experiment in light for the impressionists. This painting of winter sunshine weakly stumbling over dollops and tumuli of blue-white snow in a Paris suburb was created in the early and controversial years of this modern movement, when Monet and his friends were infamous rebels. It is an insouciantly radical work. Look at the daubed and splashed people. They are just expressive patches of colour, not properly drawn figures. And note how Monet paints the snow as a fluffy abstract overlay of visual ambiguities. Impressionist art’s true theme is the unsettling impermanence and ethereality of modern life. Monet sees in snow what he could also see in a dawn sky or a cloud of steam: a new age when nothing is solid any more.
• National Gallery, London.
Don’t forget
To follow us on Twitter: @GdnArtandDesign.
Sign up to the Art Weekly newsletter
If you don’t already receive our regular roundup of art and design news via email, please sign up here.
