Exhibition of the week
Christo and Jeanne-Claude
The celebrated site-specific artist who once wrapped the Reichstag floats a giant sculpture made of oil barrels on the Serpentine.
• Serpentine lake and Serpentine Gallery, London, 18 and 19 June until 9 September.
Also showing
Frida Kahlo
The artist as icon and saint: this exhibition is at once fascinating and frustrating as it delves into Kahlo’s life yet is light on her art.
• Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 16 June until 4 November.
Richard Wallace
It’s 200 years since the birth of the man who created this glorious art collection and he is being celebrated with the inaugural show in its new exhibition space.
• Wallace Collection, London, 20 June until 6 January.
A Slice Through the World
A survey of drawing by contemporary artists with Kate Davis, Ian Kiaer, Kathy Prendergast, Lucy Skaer and more showing their sketches.
• Modern Art Oxford, 16 June until 9 September.
Alex Prager
Shockingly bright colours and eerily staged scenarios make Prager’s pictures of modern life uneasily powerful.
• Photographers’ Gallery, London, 15 June until 14 October.
Masterpiece of the week
Humanity and other animals merge in sorrow in this painting full of poetic depth and psychological mystery. The satyr, half man, half goat, has an incredibly sensitive face as he looks in pity on the nymph killed by a hunter. His compassion is mirrored by the dog that sits in shared mourning. Satyrs were usually portrayed as embodiments of lust but Piero di Cosimo turns the myth upside down to make us wonder if humanity is so very unique after all. All animals have feelings. The artist’s admiration for the natural world is expressed not just in the figures but the intensely evocative and freshly observed landscape with its birds haunting a dreamy blue lake.
• National Gallery, London
Image of the week
Frida Kahlo’s prosthetic leg
All kinds of ephemera are on show at the V&A’s Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up exhibition. But does it help us understand her art any better? And what does it say about a world overflowing with “Fridolatry”?
What we learned
A different Mexican Frida (Escobedo) cut a dash with her Serpentine Pavilion
Ed Ruscha feels “kissed by angels”
White Pube are changing art one emoji at a time
Miriam Escofet won the 2018 BP portrait award
A shortage of architects is a deadly issue in Uganda
Dark and dangerous thoughts occupied artists at Tasmania’s Dark Mofo festival
Historic England has mapped a new top 10 of heritage gems
Liverpool is unveiling treasures for the city’s biennial
US public art has come out for the summer
Crime photographer Weegee is going into graphic novels
Britain fought to save German art from the Nazis’ “degenerate” label
… while this week in 1936, the surrealists came to London
It’s time to check your attic for £14m vases
The House of Windsor and Artemisia Gentileschi could make a formidable stand together for women
Juergen Teller is really into football
… and so are the fiery fans of Angola
… while graphic designers have turned great World Cup moments into beermats
MoMA’s sojourn in Australia is exhilarating
Polish photography is in focus
Hicham Benohoud turned his Moroccan school pupils into art
Influential artist Charles White helped transform the image of black Americans
… while film-maker William Ferris helped give voice to the US south
Women’s right to vote prompted a living artwork
Alex Prager’s America is a hyperreal place
We took a backward glance at New York in the summer of ’78
… and remembered portraitist Michael Noakes
Don’t forget
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