Exhibition of the week
Sargent and Fashion
The sensually ironic social portraiture of John Singer Sargent is a modern artistic miracle, and this sideways approach could be a brilliant key to his enigma.
• Tate Britain, London, from 22 February to 7 July
Also showing
Edward Burtynsky: Extraction/Abstraction
Ambitious and incongruously beautiful photographs of a planet in crisis.
• Saatchi Gallery, London, until 6 May
Flaming June
A Victorian “masterpiece” by Lord Leighton, in a free display with works from the RA collection.
• Royal Academy, London, from 17 February to 12 January
Saul Leiter: An Unfinished World
Street photography, nudes and colour experiments by the rediscovered New York master.
• MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, from 17 February to 2 June
Taloi Havini
Last chance to see this show by the winner of the Artes Mundi prize.
• Mostyn, Llandudno, until 24 February
Image of the week
This is Dead Man’s Switch, a project by Russian artist Andrei Molodkin. The 29-tonne vault contains 16 works of art estimated to be worth $45m, which the artist says he will destroy with an “extremely corrosive” chemical substance should Julian Assange die in prison. He says that he hopes not to but it is not the first time art has been used as a political ransom.
What we learned
Unravel, the Barbican’s textile art show, is a glorious, five-star tangle
Victorian Radicals includes paintings so intoxicating you want to climb inside them
An art expert wants London’s National Gallery to show 20th-century work
The 1-54 African art fair is showcasing work from across the continent
Whitechapel Gallery is being transformed into film sets in a show that wowed Venice
Anarchic architect Marcel Raymaekers transformed Belgium
Outi Pieski mines her Sámi heritage to produce work that is both joyous and bleak
A new show of landscapes by African diaspora artists gets a little kitschy
Yoko Ono’s Tate retrospective is interactive, engaging and a little silly
Masterpiece of the week
Portrait of Elena Carafa by Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, about 1875
Elena Carafa has a face like a lemon, tilted in a challenging slope as she stares back at someone she knows well. Perhaps there’s a joke going on between them, a bit of comic aggression. Degas was Carafa’s cousin so posing for him was a relaxed and natural thing to do rather than a social commission. He was at the forefront of the avant garde, for this was painted soon after he took part in the 1874 exhibition that unveiled the provocative “impressionist” movement. But clearly he finds Carafa fascinating. She lived in Naples and was in fact an aristocrat. Her character is still a punchy presence after nearly 150 years.
• National Gallery, London
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