South African creativity, Krasiński's illusions and…

South African creativity, Krasiński's illusions and Paul Nash's horrorscapes – the week in art

detail of BMW Art Car 12, 1991, by Esther Mahlangu. Photograph: BMW Group Archives

Exhibition of the Week

South Africa: Art of a Nation
100,000 years of art history are spanned in the blink of an eye in this survey of South Africa’s many arts – from the earliest known painting workshop to the video art of William Kentridge.
• British Museum, London, from 27 October to 26 February.

Also showing

Edward Krasiński
The humour of this Polish conceptual artist, who died in 2004, is infectious and liberating. False perspectives and illusory architecture question the nature of reality but his most surreal stunt was putting a line of blue tape over everything. You had to be able to laugh in Soviet-ruled Poland.
• Tate Liverpool until 5 March.

Paul Nash
One of the most powerful and original British painters of the early 20th century bears witness to the horrors of war and the magic of landscape.
• Tate Britain, London, from 26 October until 5 March.

Power and Protection: Islamic Art and the Supernatural
Astrolabes, talismans and the protective image of the Hand of Fatima are among the beautiful objects in this magical journey through Islamic art.
• Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, until 15 January.

Victorians Decoded
This exhibition based on an academic research project finds connections between telegraphy and art in 19th-century Britain.
• Guildhall Art Gallery, London, until 22 January.

Masterpiece of the Week

A stag antler headdress made from the skull of a red deer, circa 8,000BC. Photograph: The British Museum

This strange and evocative object, a pair of antlers made into a headdress, conjures up images of wild ritual dances in stone age Britain. It comes from Star Carr in Yorkshire, and suggests that shamanism – a belief in animal transformations, may have been prominent in prehistoric culture.
• British Museum, London.

Image of the week

Erin O’Connor smashes a piano in 2001 to celebrate John Galliano’s first five years at Dior. Photograph: Nick Knight

For this week’s My best shot, Nick Knight selected his photograph of supermodel Erin O’Connor, wearing a Clockwork Orange-style nose while smashing a piano. “Erin loves all the drama and performance of a shoot, so I just said: ‘OK, here’s a piano, here’s a sledgehammer, off you go.’”

What we learned this week

Scrapping the art history A-level is a bad idea according to Cornelia Parker, Yinka Shonibare, Anish Kapoor and Stuart Maconie

The Serpentine’s artistic director Hans-Ulrich Obrist AKA “the curator who never sleeps” is the most powerful man in art

The Hepworth gallery in Wakefield launched a new prize for sculpture

The Moomins are coming to Britain next year in a major retrospective of the work of creator Tove Jannson

British art used classicism to talk about difficult, sometimes unspeakable subjects after the first world war

Yves Klein painted with fire and naked women – and was ridiculously cool

Ten years ago, Iggy Pop felt too young to pose for Jeremy Deller’s life drawing class but at 69 he was ready

After reanimating Philip Seymour Hoffman, digital artist Cecile B Evans is organising a robot pool party

Heath Robinson was ahead of his time with his ideas about how to live in a tiny flat

Sometimes a headless baby Jesus is better than one that looks like Maggie Simpson

Russia and the US fought the cold war through building sites

Bornean orangutans are champion climbers, as evidenced by Tim Laman’s award-winning shot for wildlife photographer of the year

Get involved

Join us for an exclusive private view event in November: The Hepworth Prize for Sculpture at The Hepworth Wakefield; Beyond Caravaggio at The National Gallery, London; and Artist Rooms: Andy Warhol at The Whitworth, Manchester.

Our A-Z of Art series continues – share your art with the theme ‘m for majesty’