Exhibition of the week
Rachel Maclean
Surreal meditations on modern Scottish identity from this audacious creator of grotesque video masquerades.
• National Gallery, London, from 29 November to 3 February.
Also showing
Darren Almond
This chilly photographic artist tries his hand at painting – in a coolly minimalist style, of course.
• White Cube Bermondsey, London, from 28 November to 20 January.
Cornelia Parker
Parker’s melancholy installation Perpetual Canon displays crushed brass instruments overlooking the cold winter sea.
• Turner Contemporary, Margate, until 7 April.
Affinity and Allusion
Edinburgh gets a new contemporary art space on historic Calton Hill featuring artists including Catherine Payton, Tessa Lynch and Dineo Seshee Bopape.
• Collective, Calton Hill, Edinburgh, from 24 November to 10 February.
Charles II: Art and Power
Excellent survey of Charles II’s libertine court and its enthusiasm for art, sex and science.
•The Queen’s Gallery, Edinburgh, until 2 June.
Masterpiece of the week
The Vision of Saint Eustace, c. 1438-42, by Pisanello
According to medieval legend, Eustace was out hunting when he saw a stag between whose antlers Christ on the cross miraculously materialised. He converted to Christianity on the spot. Pisanello portrays the mystic stag amid a gallery of superbly observed animals including birds, rabbits and Eustace’s hounds. This vivid forest scene is one of the first masterpieces of the Renaissance. The painter’s fascination with the true appearance of nature brings a chivalrous legend magically into the real world, in a forest halfway between the middle ages and modern science.
•National Gallery, London
Image of the week
Charles Dickens (1843) by Margaret Gillies
A lost portrait of Charles Dickens missing for 174 years has been discovered in a tray of trinkets at an auction in South Africa. It was found last year in a general sale when the buyer paid the equivalent of £27 for a cardboard tray containing a metal lobster, a brass plate and a small painting so covered with mould that the face could barely be made out. He was moments away from throwing it away. Read the full story.
What we learned
The RIBA has picked the world’s best building: a remote Brazilian school made out of wood
Edinburgh’s City Observatory has embarked on a new mission
Qatar hospital visitors are greeted by Damien Hirst’s gigantic foetus sculptures …
And Hirst’s gigantic uteruses are a bold correction to shocking ignorance
David Hockney painting earns record $90.3m for living artist …
But it is not a “break-up picture” says the painter’s ex-lover
Norman Foster hopes his new “cocktail cornichon” will get him out of a pickle
Dorothy Bohm caught a lesser-seen view of Paris in the 1950s
Souls Grown Deep is helping to preserve the legacy of black art
For a mere $150, you can see inside Florida’s dazzling modernist holiday homes
How life drawing can increase empathy
Five lesser-known stories about modern art – from a ‘“racist” square to rotting beef
A Rembrandt painting featuring artist’s ‘fingerprints’ will go on sale
Georges Seurat captured a woman with whom he had a secret relationship
Thomas Gainsborough was an 18th-century feminist dad …
And one of his restored paintings has gone on show in London …
While Margaret Drabble weighs in on Gainsborough’s family portraits
Meanwhile, the authenticity of Da Vinci’s $450m Salvator Mundi is further questioned
Mohamad Hafez uses artwork to celebrate Syria’s past
US artist Nick Cave creates darkly exquisite installations
Ilse D’Hollander’s serene landscapes betrayed no sign of her inner turmoil
Turner-winning artist Wolfgang Tillmans staged a radical War Requiem with ENO
Rob Hann’s photo of a mysterious Arizona billboard is “really really good”
Isabella Rozendaal is Amsterdam’s first official pet photographer …
And she’s captured some of the city’s most remarkable animals
Dutch artist Suzanne Jongmans’ photographs echo the old masters – with a twist
Teenage female wrestler Gia Scott is on the rise
Blackpool is full of curious characters – including extraterrestrials
Pranksters have planted a “stolen Picasso” in Romania
If only we all took selfies like Andy Warhol
A New York exhibition is celebrating artworks with hidden messages
While Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art tackle late-stage capitalism
Archigram’s surviving members discuss – and defend – their legacy
From Hockney to Jagger to Björk – you can own a limited-edition print by Jane Bown
Don’t forget
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