1 The Turner prize
Helen Marten was the deserved winner of this year’s Turner prize. Her mysterious, private, poetic assemblages possess a complexity and nuance. Is art getting more grown up? Well, not if Anthea Hamilton has anything to do with it. Her giant bum steals the show despite being a lesser work of art. An ideal winner would be a cross between these two: Hamilton provides the provocation that Marten’s goody two-shoes talent lacks. JJ
2 Intrigue: James Ensor By Luc Tuymans
It is fitting that today’s deadpan Belgian art star Luc Tuymans should curate his 19th-century countryman James Ensor’s work. Ensor’s seaside morbidity is redeemed by painterly flurries (as seen in The Skate), while Tuymans’s own Gilles De Binche is the most haunting image in the show. RC
3 Yves Klein
A rare survey of the career of the multifaceted, visionary, postwar Parisian conceptualist and cultural flâneur Yves Klein. Here we see his International Klein Blue canvases, his deceptively play school-like sponge sculptures and documentation of his 19-year-old self signing the sky with an outstretched finger, an act he proclaimed to be his premiere performance. RC
4 You Say You Want A Revolution? Records And Rebels 1966-1970
Of all the V&A’s journeys into pop culture, this surely has the best music. The late 60s, whose turbulent vibe is explored here, saw Jimi Hendrix play Woodstock, Bob Dylan and the Band record The Basement Tapes, the Beatles release Hey Jude, Pink Floyd make Interstellar Overdrive and Lou Reed write I’m Waiting For The Man. Pop in its age of genius. JJ
Victoria & Albert Museum , SW7, to 26 Feb
5 Abstract Expressionism
This is a sombre feast of majestic art. Mighty paintings by the greatest artists of the US loom everywhere you look. After a handful of portraits to open proceedings – including Mark Rothko’s touchingly awkward self-portrait – you are thrown into an abstract yet wildly individualistic realm. Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, Clyfford Still and Willem de Kooning are among the most compelling artists in rich and rugged company. But greatest of all, on this showing, is Rothko, who seems tortured by his own genius for sensual colour. JJ
6 Beyond Caravaggio
The art of Caravaggio cuts into your heart and scars your memory. His St John The Baptist, included in this exhibition, is a sensual masterpiece of luminous flesh and stark shadows. It is a must-see for that great work alone but this fascinating show also reveals the creativity Caravaggio unleashed in his imitators. Artemisia Gentileschi and her father Orazio shine; Georges de La Tour is sublime. Go on, treat yourself. JJ
National Gallery, WC2, to 15 Jan
7 Robert Rauschenberg
Long before the world went digital this American genius anticipated the many-layered complexity of modern communication. Images flicker and fade, are lost and found in his epic art of love, life and politics. Rauschenberg’s collections of mysterious fragments have the comedy and tragedy of a dazzling novel about everything and everyone in the world. JJ
8 Louise Bourgeois
There’s just time to catch this exhibition of work by the late 20th-century art world’s darling. The gallery’s extended cowsheds and piggeries are infiltrated by one of her alter-ego giant spiders, both a lurking menace and maternal guardian. RC
Hauser & Wirth Somerset, Bruton, to New Year’s Day
9 The Hepworth prize for sculpture
Just prior to winning this year’s Turner, Helen Marten scooped this new art prize. While there seems to be a regrettable trend for galleries to court public curiosity by emulating the prurient competitiveness of TV talent shows, at least this exhibition provides an opportunity to sample Marten’s work. Phyllida Barlow, Steven Claydon and David Medalla provide a complementary accompaniment. RC
The Hepworth, Wakefield, to 19 Feb
10 Guerrilla Girls
In 1989, the Guerrilla Girls asked Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into the Met. Museum? Now they pose the question “Are museums today presenting a diverse history of contemporary art or the history of money and power?” Agitprop works suggest the latter, while a banner proclaims only a quarter of European institutions bothered to answer their questionnaire. After 30 years of activism, an air of weary desperation prevails. RC
