Exhibition of the week
Rachel Kneebone
Sensual and surreal sculptures that look like the outcome of an unholy marriage between Rodin and the Chapman brothers.
• White Cube online until 14 March.
Also showing
Inside The Dig
If the Netflix film The Dig has inspired you about Anglo-Saxon archaeology, this curator’s introduction to the British Museum’s treasures from the real Sutton Hoo ship burial is a good place to start.
• British Museum online.
Chris Johanson
Wispy, dreamy, rainbow cascades painted last year while the artist and musician was isolated in Oregon and California.
• Modern Institute, Glasgow online.
Electronic
A video tour of this exhibition that surveys tech’s impact on music from the avant garde to the dancefloor.
• Design Museum online until 14 February.
How to Paint like Bowling
This practical and enjoyable teach-in lets you explore the abstract art of Frank Bowling by trying to emulate his (inimitable) touch.
• Tate online.
Image of the week
A new photo project revives 70s advertisements for beauty products yet recasts them with racially diverse and LGBTQ models. The old ads are being reshaped for 2021 with a diverse range of models, from queer to trans and non-binary, and featuring bright eyeshadow, cheesy smiles and updated phrases that reflect today. The series, co-created by New York photographer Julia Comita and makeup artist Brenna Drury, shows how far we’ve come over the past 50 years, and how far we still need to go. Read more here.
What we learned
Edward Lear’s natural history drawings informed his majestic nonsense poems
Actor Jason Lee recast himself as a photographer of America’s strange beauty
A row has erupted over the legacy of artists’ muse June Furlong
An expert claims a Fabergé show at the Hermitage Museum has dozens of fakes
Ray K Metzker pioneered abstract photography
Prix Pictet gathered responses to Covid-19 by 43 artists from 20 nations
Leonora Carrington painted surreal tarot cards
An exhibition of Gary Krueger’s photographs shows the ‘golden age’ of 1970s and 80s Los Angeles
Nick Hedges looked back at Britain’s slum housing crisis
Our Great British Art Tour encountered a Polish paratrooper, gender defiance, an Aids memorial, the Lady of Shalott and Mick Jagger’s 1967 drugs arrest
Nathan Myhrvold likes a snowflake
After a year with few chances to explore, the 2020 Travel photographer winners were announced
Masterpiece of the week
The Rising of the Sun, 1753, by François Boucher
These are serious times, so how about escaping to the hedonist fripperies of the French Rococo? Nudes disport themselves in a flouncy silken sea and myth becomes a weightless playground in the sugared sky in this flamboyantly eroticised painting commissioned by Madame de Pomadour, mistress to King Louis XV, and meant for his eyes only. Pompadour intended it as an allegory of royal duty and glory: the “sun” evokes her lover’s predecessor Louis XIV, the powerful Sun King. This was a design for a tapestry to hang in Louis XV’s bedroom and show the intermingling of work and pleasure. So you could see it as a vision of working from home, 18th century style.
• Wallace Collection online.
Don’t forget
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