Exhibition of the week
Andy Warhol
Once Warhol was dismissed for pop cultural shallowness. Today he’s loved for pop cultural savvy. Both those views are wrong. Warhol was a very serious artist with a darkly moral view of the modern world. And he is still teaching us to see ourselves in his mirror.
• Tate Modern, London, 12 March to 6 September.
Also showing
Drawn to Nature
Art inspired by the 18th-century naturalist Gilbert White, from his great rustic contemporary Thomas Bewick to 20th-century imitators.
• Pallant House, Chichester, 11 March to 28 June.
Joana Vasconcelos: Beyond
Floppy Portuguese sculpture that spills its colours everywhere.
• Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, 7 March to 3 January.
British Surrealism
No, we weren’t as good at it as the French, Spanish or Belgians, as this excavation of yet another side-road of 20th-century British art reveals.
• Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, until 17 May.
Piranesi Drawings: Visions of Antiquity
For this 18th-century visionary the ruins of ancient Rome were surreal and sublime. The classic and gothic meet in his drawings.
• British Museum, London, until 9 August.
Image of the week
A rarely seen Canaletto painting of Westminster Abbey has gone on public display for probably the first time in more than two centuries. Since 1792, it has hung in the private living quarters of the dean. It’s the earliest work of art to depict the abbey’s famous west towers, completed in 1745. Planned refurbishment of the deanery and the opening of gallery spaces in 2018 has now allowed the abbey to put one of its jewels on public display. Mainly known for his pictures of Venice, Canaletto lived in England in 1746-55 and painted many London views, the majority of which were bought by George III and remain in the Royal Collection. Read the full story here.
What we learned
Venice postponed its architecture Biennale because of coronavirus
Environmental art is taking precedence at New York’s Armory show
Ulay died at 76, and we saluted his naked genius
Adelaide biennial confronts the unknown
US photographer Stephen Shore recalls being chased off lawns
Anne Helen Gjelstad captured a matriarchal society in Estonia …
… while we took a dip in nearby Lithuania’s art scene
European critics assessed British culture in turn
Cao Fei is looking for love in challenging times
Young Rembrandt made teenage mistakes like everyone else
Sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees
… and then all you see is wood
… but there’s a revolutionary new sustainable material in town: stone
Barry Flanagan’s hare-brained scheme wasted three decades
US galleries gear up for Women’s History Month
… while Barbara Hepworth gets a blue plaque
Renegade architect Herb Greene looked back at his prairie years
… and Daniela Soleri revealed she was abused by her architect father, Paolo
Judy Watson powerfully evokes her Indigenous Australian ancestors’ stories
Bob Ross’s gentle art lessons are coming back to TV
René Groebli’s lens found scandalous beauty in the postwar years
Photography competition This is Gender unveiled its entries
Artemisia Gentileschi is getting her first London show
Maria Lax went in search of UFOs in Finland
Donald Trump wants to make federal buildings beautiful again
Masterpiece of the week
Princess Pauline de Metternich, about 1865, by Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas
In the 1960s, Warhol silkscreened the media images around him on to canvas to create stark black images against intense flat colour showing car crashes, suicides or the face of Marilyn Monroe. A century earlier, Degas was already basing a painting on a photograph. This portrait of a 19th-century celebrity was not done from life but from a photo he found on Princess Pauline’s visiting card. He has eerily painted her with the blurs and shadows of early photographic images. This is unmistakably a photographed face copied in paint, with colour added from imagination, for this was the era of black-and-white prints. Degas, like Warhol, reveals something ghostly and sinister in the camera’s frozen moment: we are looking into the face of death.
• National Gallery, London
Don’t forget
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