Exhibition of the week
Leon Kossoff
Few people have ever painted London’s streets, swimming pools and churches with the power and truth of Kossoff. This is a career survey of one of Britain’s great artists.
• Piano Nobile, London, until 22 May.
Also showing
Joan Snyder
Fizzing abstract paintings in the tradition of Jackson Pollock by this veteran American artist who has never shown in Britain before.
• Blain|Southern, London, 4 April to 11 May.
Gladys Nilsson
Comic, whimsical, inventive depictions of the human form by this Chicago painter with artistic roots in 1960s counterculture.
• Hales Gallery, London, until 27 April.
Eric Parry
Sensitive architectural drawings in the sublime setting of Sir John Soane’s museum of wonders.
• Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, until 27 May.
Alex Katz
Effortlessly stylish abstracted realities by one of the true masters of contemporary art.
• Tullie House, Carlisle, until 16 June.
Masterpiece of the week
A Man Offering Gold and Coins to a Girl, c 1665-70, by Godfried Schalcken
A candle in the dark casts a disreputable light in this erotic painting from the Dutch golden age. Its warm glow glints on the payment a man is offering a woman in what appears to be an ornately decorated brothel, with a fine carving of the love god Cupid. It’s all very sinful, and the painting’s purpose is as ambiguous as that flickering flame. Is it a moral warning? If so, nothing punitive seems to be happening to the prostitute or her client. So perhaps this is meant simply to excite middle-class Dutch connoisseurs. The 19th-century Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu saw a third meaning in Schalcken’s shadows. In his story Schalcken the Painter, he imagines a horrific encounter with sex, death and the supernatural that left this curious artist mentally scarred.
• National Gallery, London.
Image of the week
Art installation, Bombay Beach Biennale, Slab City, California
The fourth annual Bombay Beach Biennale – a “renegade celebration” of art, music, and philosophy" – took place from 22-24 March on the shores of the Salton Sea, a shallow lake south of Palm Springs. Artists and performers transformed abandoned housing, vacant lots and decaying shoreline into an extraordinary immersive event, and drawing attention to the once-flourishing area and its environmental crisis.
What we learned
Pierre Bonnard’s nudes wear Theresa May kitten heels
Toby Leigh made a vibrant cartoon record of his walk across London
Yorkshire Sculpture Park opened a heroic new visitor centre
Britain changed Van Gogh – and he transformed Britain’s art …
… though Tate Britain’s Van Gogh blockbuster is flabby …
… and EU museums have Brexit concerns about their loaned masterpieces …
… plus, the cash-strapped Dutch artist’s dazzling pink has turned coffee brown
A copy of a Botticelli turned out to be a rare original
Painter Rose Hilton, the last link with the wilder art diaspora beyond St Ives, died
Scandi novelists revealed what Edvard Munch means to them
A California beach town was turned into an immersive art experience
Peru-born Ian Howorth documents Britain with a stranger’s eye
German artist Anne Imhof has brought an air of BDSM to Tate Modern …
… and Tate Modern has become the top UK visitor attraction
A Dutch art detective recovered a stolen Picasso painting after 20 years
Gazza’s tears changed football – and photographer John Ingledew’s career
French masterpieces have been renamed after their black models in a pioneering exhibition
Tate will no longer accept donations from the Sackler family …
… as pressure builds for other art institutions to follow suit
Photographer Kwame Brathwaite worked to elevate natural black beauty in the 1950s and 60s
Grayson Perry is taking his art to the Edinburgh festival
It might be the end of the Stirling prize-winning pier for Hastings
Mike Nelson has created a breathtaking landscape of Britain’s recent past
Vincent Fournier’s space odyssey took him from Nasa to Svalbard
Don’t forget
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