Exhibition of the week
Jon Tonks
Romantic photographs of remote British landscapes that offer images of getaways and ideas for adventurous staycations.
• James Hyman Gallery, London, online until 21 March.
Also showing
GalleryPlatform.la
While galleries remain closed, you can virtually globetrot. This online platform brings together 80 Los Angeles galleries and gives a feeling of the west coast US art scene.
• galleryplatform.la.
Digital Realness
A new season of online art about “reality”, featuring artists Sian Fan, Rebecca Jagoe and Vishal Kumaraswamy.
• Site Gallery, Sheffield, online until 31 May.
Jonathan Monk
This exploration of artistic and personal identity can be seen in a video online and also from the street.
• Lisson Gallery, Cork Street, London, until 24 April.
Responsive Space
A digital exhibition on the theme of the spaces we live in, taking in subjects from breathing exercises to Oxford homelessness.
• Modern Art Oxford, online until 31 March.
Image of the week
Artists Gilbert and George have responded to the pandemic with comic, haunting works that depict the pair being buffeted around a chaotic London. We spoke with them about lines of coffins, illegal raves and “shameful” statue-toppling. Read the full interview.
What we learned
Beyoncé’s stage designer wants London Design Biennale to advance UN sustainability plan
Work by black British artists will inspire black schoolchildren
That a $600,000 meme could be a work of cryptoart
Grayson Perry’s hit celebrity TV show returns – and it’s a heartening, lockdown-era tonic
Brexiters have bought KGB artefacts for “museum of communist terror”
The National Trust is in a “race against time” to save a Liverpool photographer’s archive
Jeff Koons, Derrick Adams and others are helping making hospitals less stressful for kids
Female artists are reclaiming women’s sexuality
A new Moma exhibition asks: how can architecture help rather than harm blackness?
A second Jacob Lawrence painting missing for 60 years has been found …
… while a painting full of humanity has won the John Moores art prize
Norwegian artist Vanessa Baird’s debut UK show is filthy, furious and fun
Janette Beckman’s best shot is of the “bad girls” of gangland LA …
Monet, Renoir and Degas paintings are headed to Melbourne for a big new show
Six out of 10 museums now fear for their survival – but there are surprising positives
French street artist JR created a powerful eulogy for Australia’s Murray-Darling
Campaigners make plea to save historic “Versailles of Wales” before it falls into ruin
Six Dr Seuss books were withdrawn from publication over racist and insensitive portrayals
Philip Hoare summons the eclectic travels of artist Albrecht Dürer in a passionate new book
Watch and sniff: The Hague’s Mauritshuis teaches visitors how to smell a Dutch still life
Previously unpublished images feature striking images from debut photographers
Rachel Mounsey captured a day at the Errinundra forest blockade in Australia in our photo essay
The outgoing Museum of Contemporary Art director in Sydney leaves an enormous legacy
The Observer’s political cartoonist Chris Riddell shares the sketchbooks that got him through 2020
Mars seen from a Nasa rover is among 20 of the Observer’s photographs of the week …
… while Iggy, Siouxsie and businessmen in kilts are among Brian Griffin’s stellar photos
‘I’d like to join Pixar one day’: Sara Barackzay on being Afghanistan’s first female animator
Matilda Boseley spoke with 20-year-old TikTok pottery queen and cancer survivor Shelby Sherritt
A striking new documentary captures Scottish painter James Morrison’s awe for the natural world
This week, the Great British Art Tour visited Glyndebourne, London, Winchester and Nottingham
Masterpiece of the week
Mountain Landscape with Lightning, c1675, by Francisque Millet
This vertiginous Alpine view riven by a jagged streak of fire in the sky was painted in the age when French artists raised landscape to a new status as a serious and poetic artistic genre. Millet, who was based in Paris, shares the grandeur of his contemporaries Claude and Poussin. But we tend to picture their landscapes as calm and still, tinted with Mediterranean light – in short, “classical”. That moderate atmosphere digusted the Victorian critic John Ruskin, who contrasted such milquetoast stuff with the British romanticism of Turner. Here, however, Millet creates an electrifying storm erupting from a calm day, its gold light and black clouds searing against the cool Alps: a scintillating bolt from the blue.
• National Gallery, London.
Don’t forget
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